Lerner's slim novel offers three distinct sections. In the first, a pivotal, wandering interview fails to be recorded; then the "reconstructed" aspect of that interview becomes clear; and ultimately, issues of memory, parenthood, technology, art, faulty recollections, and forgiveness shape the story. The unnamed narrator of Ben Lerner's short (144-page) novel has traveled to interview his 90-year-old mentor Thomas (who is also his best friend Max's father) to write what will likely be the art world giant's final published interview. But when the narrator drops his phone in the hotel sink beforehand, he arrives at Thomas's home without a way to record--and whether due to embarrassment, an unexplained inability to shift plans, or what seems to be a mysterious compulsion, he is unable or unwilling to reveal this fact. In Transcription, Lerner offers a novel in three parts, including the strange set of events that follow the smartphone fiasco. In the first section, our narrator begins a false start of an interview, posing initial questions to Thomas and pretending to record, yet all the while suggesting that the real interview occur the following day--when he believes he will have a working recording mechanism. That evening, Thomas offers some gems of memories but frequently departs abruptly from the posed topic or query and heads into the conversational ether, abandoning any link to logic or conventional discourse in order to put forth ideas about dreams the narrator have had that he posits have intersected with his own reality and his own dreams; nebulous artistic concepts; and faulted recollections in which he conflates his somewhat estranged son Max and his interviewer. This is a disjointed section of text, full of stops and starts, hesitancy on the narrator's part, bossy pushiness from Thomas, confusion, strange mental wanderings, and indications that Thomas is experiencing dementia. A skip in time to the book's second section finds various academics in Spain honoring Thomas after his death. We witness the shock waves of our narrator's casual admission that he "reconstructed" portions of his pivotal, often-quoted, seminal final interview with the artist. The final section of the novel was the most compelling, poignant, and beautiful for me. Thomas's son Max explores his daughter's eating difficulties, his heartfelt, eloquent last words to his father (who survived his severe case of Covid, and who later seemed to have no recollection of that outpouring of forgiveness and the generous, sweeping understanding shown by his son), and his fraught relationship with his father. Memory, technology, parenting, vulnerability, dreams, and faulty recollections all shape the book's events and its characters. This was a fascinating, brief read. The sections felt somewhat disjointed, but the final portion of the book was lovely and drew the points of view and elements together. More Titles to Explore Ben Lerner is also the author of The Topeka School, Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04, and The Hatred of Poetry. For more short books I've Bossily reviewed, please check out the titles at this link.

This slim (122-page) novel builds from a real-life tragedy to a deep, disturbing, fascinating exploration of morality, responsibility, chance, circumstances of birth, and judgment and empathy. I was intrigued by the unsympathetic narrator as well as the thought-provoking, unflinching, pointed questions directed at the reader. Vincent Delecroix takes a grueling set of real-life events and builds a short, powerful, thought-provoking novel that plunges the reader into its plausible, gripping details--as well as the complex emotions, responsibility, morals, and considerations around the situation and more broadly, our world. In 2021, an inflatable boat carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the English Channel, and all but two of the 29 people on board died. The vessel contacted French authorities with desperate pleas for help. They were told they were in British waters and must ask the UK for help--but that was untrue. Small Boat is told from the fictionalized point of view of the French navy officer who refused the passengers' pleas for help. Delecroix imagines a scenario in which the naval officer willingly comes forward for a police interview and details the conversations that ensue--increasingly emotional on the side of the police, and increasingly calm on the side of the woman who was manning the radio. Yet Small Boat is far more than an exploration of the moral dilemmas within, justifications around, and aftermath of the greatest loss of life in English Channel history. In undulating, haunting turns of events, Delecroix forces the reader into the incredibly unsympathetic point of view of the faulted naval officer. The police and the narrator each consider whether she was negligent by incompetence or intent. They discuss whether her indifference to refugees' suffering adds to her condemnation or, as she asserts, if having become immune to impassioned pleas is essential to her job of indiscriminately saving lives. She is angry at the many desperate people who set out in leaky boats and then ask for her help, while realizing that she is employed for the purpose of coordinating life-saving assistance. She is damned by the callous, cruel (and recorded) words she spoke regarding the impossibility of saving the boat load of passengers while signing off from the fateful caller the night he and his boatmates died. But she asks whether the words or sentiments matter, particularly when considered against the thousands of lives she has helped save in the line of duty. Delecroix crafts an intriguing scenario in which the narrator sees distinct physical similarities and mannerisms common between herself and the police officer who is execrating her, which calls into question whether the interview is real or whether the narrator is embodying both sides of the situation and exploring both the accusations against her and her defenses for the deaths and her responsiblities around them. Within her cold, self-involved persona we begin to see hints of empathy as she builds (unfair) correlations to her own life, the safety of her own child, and her own plights. Without redeeming the naval officer, Delecroix poses uncomfortable questions to the reader about their own culpability, their own empathy's limits, and their own likely willingness to step in and take desperate measures. The novel considers not only situations at sea, out of range of most of our immediate awareness and assistance, but also for example the highly visible, numerous unhoused, hungry figures we regularly encounter and the other in-need people who surround us. I found this disturbing and absolutely fascinating. More Books to Explore Vincent Delecroix has published ten works of philosophy and eight works of fiction. Explore these links for more Bossy reads around refugees, morality, and more short books that pack a punch.

Harpman's slim novel poses a mysterious situation without promising concrete explanations. Our main protagonist knows little about her situation or location, yet persists in her quest for answers and builds a rich inner life filled with wonder. In Jacqueline Harpman's novel I Who Have Never Known Men , forty women (one is a young girl, our main protagonist) live year after year as prisoners in an underground cage. Male guards come and go, feeding the women minimal rations and never speaking. The women have no recollection of how they came to be in this place, and no information is forthcoming about why they are trapped there. They are not allowed to touch each other but may speak, and to bond and pass the time, they share stories of their past lives, bicker over infinitesimal variations in how they may prepare their food or sew their own clothing, and simply kill time until their almost certain death inside the cell. Then a blasting alarm sounds, the nearest guard drops his keys and flees, and the women scramble for an escape they never anticipated. But what awaits them on the other side of the bunker doors? My friend Amy suggested that I read this one, and Harpman's slim novel is mysterious, eerie, and strange. The pacing is appropriately slow as characters wander, wonder, and come across little new information as they search for others. The tone doesn't assure a satisfying set of answers as to why the women were chosen for this imprisonment, insight into what its purpose might be, or details as to its location. Yet I was intrigued by the post-apocalyptic, puzzling situation and by the main protagonist's persistence and rich inner life, which exists in stark contrast to the physical barrenness that seems to surround her. More about Jacqueline Harpman Jacqueline Harpman was a Belgian novelist. I Who Have Never Known Men  was originally published in 1995, and later it was the first of her books to be translated into English. For more postapocalyptic and dystopian stories I've Bossily reviewed, please check out the titles here .

The playful tone and clever main protagonist in Olivia Waite's science-fiction novella make for an appealing mystery and lay the groundwork for subsequent books. In Olivia Waite's slim science-fiction mystery, Dorothy wakes up...in a body that's not her own. It's uncomfortable but not unheard of. Still, Dorothy was supposed to be in stasis for years after suffering an emotional loss. Yet even more concerning than her situation is the spaceship HMS Fairweather 's current state. An electrical storm has knocked systems offline, and even worse, it seems that someone has deliberately been sabotaging the Library, where the backup for each passenger on the ship is stored. In this outer-space-set mystery, Dorothy must figure out who's behind the destruction and how to save the ship's passengers from further danger. I'm somewhat in love with Dorothy's no-nonsense approach to the issues at hand, her striding manner, and her clever reading of a situation's nuances. She is often exasperated and very funny. The tone of this novella (it's 112 pages) is playful--it reminded me somewhat of Becky Chambers's science fiction --and it also addresses poignant, relevant aspects of the human condition while giving the (correct) impression that happy endings are at hand. I enjoyed this very much and wished it were a full-length novel. More Olivia Waite Olivia Waite is also the author of the Feminine Pursuits series and many other stand-alone novels. For more of my Bossy science-fiction favorites, check out the titles at this link .

Seth Haddon's slim science fiction debut offers action and a risky space quest, revenge, and love, but it's also a poignant, lovely story about being seen for your true self, being vulnerable, and thinking beyond traditional standards. Wylla's ship has seen better days, and she's desperate for a break. When she catches wind of a valuable, mysterious piece of technology on another planet, she banks on her wiliness and speed to beat other treasure hunters to it. Wylla's own mask is outdated, and scavenging the cutting-edge mask would give her powers she couldn't have dreamed of. Masks bestow upon the wearers the instincts, abilities, and reaction times of the animals after which they're modeled. But the mask Wylla is after also turns out to be sentient, and if she's going to wear the mask, she'll need to work with the mask's creator and help it seek vengeance for past injustices. I love a ragtag crew on a quest (you can check out other titles with this theme that I've reviewed here ), and Volatile Memory is action-packed entertainment, but more importantly it's poignant, exploring issues of bodily autonomy, transgender characters, characters without bodies but with sentient selves, duty and loyalty, revenge and ruthlessness, and mercy and grace. This slim science fiction novel packs a punch. I can't wait to read more of this immersive world and of Haddon's compelling story. More Space Quests Volatile Memory  is Seth Haddon's science fiction debut. I love a story about a ragtag crew on a quest (you can check out other titles with this theme that I've reviewed here ).

This classic memoir is told through letters between Hanff, living a passionate reader and writer's life in New York City, and a group of booksellers across the ocean who are struggling in postwar Great Britain. The structure allows for poignancy and wonderfully frank self-reflection. In interviews about her wonderful book The Correspondent , Virginia Evans mentioned another epistolary book, the 1970 classic memoir 84, Charing Cross Road , and I hadn't ever read it so I decided to dive in. This slim book consists of the charming twenty-year correspondence between a hotheaded, opinionated New York writer (Hanff) and an antiquarian bookseller in London, Frank Doel. Deep friendships build across the ocean through Hanff's particular book requests and life commentary, Frank's steady, warm replies, Hanff's postwar parcels of food and treats for the staff, and the grateful reactions sent her way. Along with Helene ("HH") and Frank's correspondence, the gradual expansion of Helene's communication to others working in the shop, Frank's wife, and, ultimately, his daughters, paints a poignant picture of the significant roles the pen pals played in each other's lives. The memoir's back-and-forth gems illuminate the evolving wartime struggles of British citizens such as the booksellers and their loved ones, and in comparison we hear of the relative largesse Hanff is able to provide from across the ocean. Yet it becomes clear that Helene lives a frugal New York City existence focused on books, self-taught education, writing, and stimulating her mind. Her generosity is significant, but her ability to share her meager resources emphasizes the chasm between the existences of the parties who are corresponding with each other. A much-anticipated, repeatedly postponed visit between the pen pals seems destined to never occur, yet the emotional bonds between the various parties are meaningful and substantial. Candid observations and occasional confessions flow freely between the friends who have never met in person. When one side suffers a loss, it is a blow felt on the other side of the ocean. The correspondence is only half Hanff's, but this epistolary memoir structure and its rich content allow for poignant self-reflection, honest observations, deep connections, and a rich portrait of the author. More from Hanff and More Epistolary Gems Helene Hanff is also the author of The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and Q's Legacy . You can find my review of The Correspondent here ; and for more Bossy reviews of epistolary novels, please click this link .

Keegan offers a gorgeously wrought Irish story of childhood, hope, love, and loss that is spare, lovely, heartbreaking, and that brought me to tears. “You don’t ever have to say anything," he says. "Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.” In Claire Keegan's slim novel Foster, a young girl in Ireland is taken by her unreliable, frequently drunk gambler of a father to spend the hot summer with previously unknown-to-her relatives, a couple living on a rural farm. Her bitter mother has just had another baby, and her various other siblings are fighting for resources. Her home life is hectic, hardscrabble, and emotionally cold, but she has never known life to be any other way. It’s a hard feeling but as we walk along I begin to settle and let the difference between my life at home and the one I have here be. The loving, affectionate household in the country allows her to feel more open and secure than she has before. She has plenty to eat, useful work to do, she learns to love books, she finds laughter. She can't help wondering if she might possibly be here to stay of if she'll be thrust back into her rough home, and which she'd prefer. Summer is ending, and there's a mysterious, unspoken, dark undercurrent at the Kinsellas'. I absolutely adored this book. It's beautiful, spare, and powerful. I was brought to tears at the end. I'm in for all Claire Keegan books forever now and just ordered her story collection Antarctica through my local bookstore. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I loved Claire Keegan's novel Small Things Like These, about Irish-small-town coal salesman Bill Furlong. Each of his small choices build to a crescendo of spilled secrets and an upended decades-old system of cruelties and greed. You can check out my Bossy review of Small Things Like These here. Keegan is also the author of the story collections Antarctica and Walk the Blue Fields as well as the novella The Forester's Daughter, all of which I plan to read.

A former artist-in-residence at a hospice, MacNaughton distills the process of witnessing a loved one's end of life into a few elements we can direct--and encourages us to accept the beauty of the perfectly imperfect, inevitable, departure. In How to Say Goodbye, Wendy MacNaughton, former artist-in-residence at a hospice in San Francisco, illustrates the words of kindness, thoughtful approaches, and wisdom she gained by spending time around hospice caregivers and the people relying upon them, the dying and their loved ones. While acknowledging how much is out of our control regarding our loved ones' final moments, How to Say Goodbye shines a light on the things we can potentially shape--including sharing memories, expressing love, and offering forgiveness. Focusing on respect, love, and closure, MacNaughton offers a guide to creating a path through the precious time leading up to death. The circumstances may be complicated or fraught, or they may be heartbreaking yet straightforward, but How to Say Goodbye beautifully distills the title's process--of standing by, helping, embracing silence, and turning over the reins to the person who is passing away--into its essence. MacNaughton's text feels like a poem and her illustrations offer brutal beauty and express their own lovely, heartbreaking, poetic message that embraces the perfection of imperfection and lack of control. I received a prepublication copy of this slim, powerful, gorgeous book courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing. How to Say Goodbye is scheduled for publication July 18, 2023. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If this book is of interest to you, you might also be interested in the books on my Greedy Reading List Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality.

Harding bases his slim historical fiction novel This Other Eden on a real-life, racially integrated island off the coast of Maine, tipping his eccentric characters farther and farther toward tragedy as mainland men motivated by greed aim to destroy the community. Back in 1792, a formerly enslaved man Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife found a safe haven on an island off the coast of Maine. A century later, the Honeys' descendants and their diverse neighbors--some have escaped from trouble, while others are seeking peace and a simple life--make up a hardscrabble community that must scratch and claw to subsist. Yet they remain on their island, safe from the judgment and danger of the mainland. When a schoolteacher-turned-missionary arrives to educate the island's children, he draws the attention of eugenics-focused authorities, who set out to forcibly evacuate the island. The title of Harding's book comes from Shakespeare's Richard II: This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself The secluded community in the book is like a large family, dependent on only each other, and they are focused on nature and on subsisting independently. The story is inspired by the real-life, formerly integrated Malaga Island off the coast of Maine (in the book it is called Apple Island). One fair-skinned boy is sent to the mainland in an effort to better his circumstances and so that he may take art classes, with his teacher's unspoken hope that he will pass for white, but his past--about which he is guileless--threatens to destroy his future due to others' rash assessments. Harding meanwhile offers a quickly unraveling series of events on the island as government officials impose destructive mainland judgments and values on the island's inhabitants. The story tips its island characters farther and farther toward tragedy, then plunges headfirst into the various heartbreaking consequences of mainland strangers' decisions, cold cruelties, and greedy motivations, culminating in the forceful removal of the peaceful Apple Island inhabitants. Harding's language is beautiful as it evokes the harsh landscape and the characters' connection to the weather, the terrain, and the natural world. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I received an audiobook version of this book courtesy of Libro.fm (Libro.fm supports local bookstores!) and Recorded Books, Inc. The book is wonderfully narrated by Edoardo Ballerini. Paul Harding is also the author of Tinkers.

Bossy Favorites of the Month I've had a great reading month, and I hope you have too. Here are my six Bossy favorite reads of September. We've got a dark fantasy sequel, the first in a science fiction series, the first in a historical fiction mystery series, a feminist mythological retelling, captivating and strange literary historical fiction, and edgy contemporary fiction. Have you read any of these titles? What were some of your favorite reads this month? 01 Dead Beat (Ninth House #3) by Leigh Bardugo The third and final installment of Bardugo's Ninth House dark fantasy series offers more gritty corruption, seemingly insurmountable challenges, the threat of the entirety of hell's wrath, wonderfully morbid humor, some hard-won romance, and a ragtag group of loyal allies bent on thwarting the spread of evil. In the first two books in this series we met Alex Stern, who was offered a new start after surviving a mysterious multiple homicide. She became an unlikely member of the Yale freshman class, but the darkness of her past was matched only by the danger of the magic and rituals being used by the secret societies she was meant to be monitoring. In Dead Beat, Alex, now with a ragtag group of loyal allies, must figure out how to close the gates to hell--while fending off the nefarious Yale faculty members, malicious family members, and random demons out to make sure they fail. Dead Beat explores fate, reinvented futures, revenge, and redemption. Bardugo writes dark-tinged fantasy better than almost anyone, and she allows for romance between social-outcast heroes in a gritty world, so that it never feels like romantasy. I'm in for all the Bardugo books I can get my hands on. Leigh Bardugo is the author of the first two books in this series, Ninth House and Hell Bent, as well as The Familiar, the Shadow and Bone series, the King of Scars duology, and other books. For my full Bossy review, please check out Dead Beat. 02 Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati Clytemnestra is often depicted as a villain. Here, her layered, sympathetic motivations are revealed. Trained as a warrior and now a queen, she must cope with brutality and frustrating circumstances in this tale of power, love, and vengeance. Clytemnestra was born a Spartan princess (sister of the beautiful Helen--later "of Troy") who married for love, then was married off against her will by her father to cruel Agamemnon, who killed her first husband--and her child. She becomes queen in her adopted land, raises Agamenon's children, and suffers another devastating loss. She rules throughout her husband's absence during the years-long battle of Troy, building up strength, eliminating those who would betray her, trusting unlikely allies, and biding her time for her ultimate revenge. Casati allows us to understand Clytemnestra's motivations, her growing ferocity, her undying loyalty, and how her training as a warrior shapes her life, her personality, and the path of her future. This is a feminist retelling of a notorious figure in Greek mythology who is often painted as a villain. (In the Odyssey, Agamemnon's ghost tells Odysseus about his death at Clytemnestra's hands.) Here, we see a more sympathetic and layered view of her sometimes ruthless actions, shaped by her love for her children and her refusal to bend to men's wills. Odysseus appears in the story, a faulted figure problematically at odds with Clytemnestra and her goals. For my full review of this book please see Clytemnestra. 03 Moss'd in Space (Moss'd #1) by Rebecca Thorne I love a sci-fi story about a ragtag space gang trying to salvage a desperate situation. The first in Thorne's series delivers charming, heartwarming adventure and a cast of characters I can't wait to spend more time with in book two. In Rebecca Thorne's cozy sci-fi adventure Moss'd in Space, it's sometime after the year 90,000, and Torian's years of saving have finally allowed her to buy a spaceship. Now she'll finally be able to take her sister to a distant planet where the air quality will allow her to live longer than her current grim estimate. Torian just has to convince her sister to come along...and get her centuries-abandoned, moss-covered ship in working order. But the moss all over the spaceship is sentient, bossy, and suffering emotionally from having been left alone for so many years. It's also been busy advancing its significant capabilities. When Moss ends up face to face with the loved one who left it centuries earlier--who is key to understanding the ship and how to facilitate Torian's mission--it's not inclined to forgive and forget. This is charming, creative, and wonderfully strange. I loved how much warmth Thorne injected into this story; bighearted sci-fi is my absolute favorite type. The worldbuilding and Thorne's various creatures and their histories were intriguing. I loved the story's coziness and tone, which assured me that everything was going to work out. Moss's dry delivery was somewhat reminiscent of Murderbot. And the cliffhanger was delightful. I can't wait to read book two. Rebecca Thorne is the author of many other books, including Can't Spell Treason Without Tea. The next title in this series, Moss Effect, is scheduled for publication next spring. For my full review, please check out this link. 04 The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes #1) by Laurie R. King The first mystery in King's 19-book series builds an irresistibly layered professional partnership and personal, friends-like-family bond between Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. The story's detail, pacing, plot, and character development are all fantastic. I look forward to reading more titles in this series. It's 1915 and Sherlock Holmes is bored out of his mind and languishing in retirement...until he happens to meet 15-year-old Mary Russell on the Sussex Downs. She's curious, clever, doesn't mince words, and isn't concerned about social niceties. Holmes is drawn back into a vibrant, exciting life by Mary's promising intellect--and her initially vague interest in his extensive knowledge and methods of investigation. Soon he is teaching Mary all he knows, and she is reluctantly absorbing his information, then adding her own observations. Soon they're faced with the urgent mystery of a senator's kidnapped daughter, and they work together to solve the case. Mary shows herself to quickly be growing into Holmes's equal. It's satisfying to witness Holmes's initially begrudging acceptance of Mary's instincts and talent as his own abilities wane with his age, then to see the duo's heartfelt, eccentric, growing father-daughter bond. I loved the steady but patient pacing, which allows for rich character development, particularly regarding Holmes and Mary (the Watson characterization is also fantastic, although limited). The story's details of the time and the setting are fantastic, the plot twists are intriguing, and the complicated, shifting dynamic between Mary and Sherlock is endearing. The layered, sinister long game aimed at besting Holmes is chilling and wonderfully imagined. You can find more Bossy mystery reviews here. Please click here for my full review of this title. 05 Field Notes from an Extinction by Eoghan Walls Walls uses a journal structure to draw the reader into a singular story I can't stop thinking about. In Field Notes from an Extinction, we witness the innermost thoughts of a grumbly hermit ornithologist who is thrust into a parenting role, then must face a pirate queen out for revenge on British colonial rulers amid the Irish Potato Famine. Ignatius Green is sent by the Royal Society to the remote Irish island of Tor Mor to study some of the last Great Auks left in the world. Meanwhile the potato famine ravages the mainland Irish population and all order seems lost. A trickle-down effect begins to break down the strict systems Ig has imposed upon his wild surroundings. When the ruffian local suppliers row over not only his (rifled-through, partially stolen) supplies but also a small, feral child (he eventually learns that her name is Bridget), all hope seems to be lost of continuing his seemingly doomed mission of observation, documentation, and providing an orderly report of the endangered birds. Add to the complicated situation that Bridget's mother is said by the untrustworthy rowboat operators to be the most dangerous, fabled, infamous pirate in the land, Grace O'Malley, rumored to be carrying out renegade justice on the British officers kicking Irish tenant families out of their homes, leaving the people to starve. I was delighted by the tone, the structure, and the unexpected evolution within Field Notes from an Extinction. I can't stop thinking about this book. You might also like these books set in Ireland, books about found family, or books about island life. For my full review, please see Field Notes from an Extinction. 06 Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash This was my favorite read of the month! Cash crafts a delightfully campy, oddball novel around a family of characters who for various reasons abandon social acceptability as they aim to find fulfillment, solve a mystery, discover compatibility, seek purpose, and coexist together. This is a darkly humorous, sometimes quirky tale that's edgy and provocative. The reader can tell what Catherine and Bud Flynn cannot: their open marriage is either directly or indirectly further destroying their dysfunctional family. Cash actively makes over-the-top choices that are likely to cause discomfort. The many edgy elements along with the open marriage that pushes the family off balance in the first place mean that nothing here is considered taboo. Cash commits her protagonists to unsympathetic behavior and uses their out-of-bounds acts and words to illustrate her characters' multifaceted abandonment of societal norms and acceptability. In some ways, the messy, chaotic Flynn family reminded me of the sometimes feral Herdman family in The Worst Christmas Pageant Ever. The stakes of the story's situations are quite high, but the tone of Lost Lambs assures the reader that no untimely deaths or horrors will occur (outside of the lunacy and tragedies Cash has already put in place). This was surprisingly heartwarming and wonderfully sardonic. You might also like these edgy books, darkly funny books, oddball, and bonkers books, as well as books about families. For my full review, please check out Lost Lambs.

Bossy Favorites of the Month Here are my six Bossy favorite reads of July. I was already in love with five of these six authors' other books before I read these newest works, and I'm thrilled that the sixth is a new-to-me author with a backlist I can now explore. Have you read any of these titles? What were some of your favorite reads this month? 01 Country People by Daniel Mason Mason plays with the tone of his newest literary fiction, offering vast rural expanses, claustrophobic woods, childlike wonder, growing paranoia, sudden danger, haunting beasts, and the comfort of everyday familial patterns as a backdrop to characters' struggles to grow, adapt, and, in some cases, reimagine their paths. Patriarch Mike is a dreamer and a romantic--over a decade late achieving his Russian folklore PhD, and increasingly worried that he is a disappointment to everyone. When his wife Kate is offered a visiting professorship at a university in Vermont, their family treks from California and traipses into a town with a colorful cast of characters, legends and stories, and woods that seem magical--making a life unlike anything they've experienced before. Mason plays with the tone of the book, meandering between pastoral, peaceful settings, what seems to be magical realism with dark undertones, Mike's growing paranoia, and reassuring familial comforts. Various levels of disaster and darkness exist alongside the widespread, convoluted, intriguing, outlandish hopes of many within the community. The novel leads to a heartwarming conclusion in which certain fates are accepted and other shifts in life are achieved. Characters' reimagined futures feel all the more powerful after the struggles within the book. I'm in for all the Daniel Mason books, always. I read a prepublication edition of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Random House. Daniel Mason is also the author of other wonderful books like The Winter Soldier, North Woods, and The Piano Tuner. For my full Bossy review, please check out Country People. 02 The Foursome by Christina Baker Kline Kline takes what might be a voyeuristic-feeling story of two North Carolina sisters (distant relations of hers) who married the world-famous conjoined twins from Siam, Chang and Eng, and builds a suitably complicated set of dynamics; a layered story of hope, emotion, and tragedy; and enough details of the time to bring it all to life. The Foursome paints a fascinating story of of the uncommon family structure and its logistics. The couples collectively had twenty-one children, and the novel delves into supposing the how-to of procreation and sex--including the participants' imagined mental tricks to creating distance in the mind to cope with complications around physical ability, emotional reactions, and lack of privacy. As with all relationships, things get complicated; here, the stakes are higher and the ability to create space or have one-on-one conversations is impossible. The relationships between the sisters, the brothers, and the four adults evolve and show cracks, are repaired, then threatened again. Kline puts forward plausible doubts, magnetism, conflict, seeming impossibilities, and outsiders' desire for salacious details in this sympathetic, layered story. She is skilled at building a story within a specific place and time, and the details made this story come alive. I received a prepublication version of this novel courtesy of NetGalley and Mariner Books. Christina Baker Kline is also the author of Exiles, which I liked, Orphan Train (which I really liked), and A Piece of the World (which I loved). For my full review of this book please see The Foursome. 03 Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love by Marianne Cronin Cronin's heartwarming, charming novel about nonagenarian Eddie and his new, younger best friend offers hope after grief and loss and the possibility of redemption in second chances. Eddie Winston is a 90-year-old gentleman who has loved but somehow has never been kissed. He spends his days working at a charity shop, a benevolent recipient of others' unwanted items, sometimes garbage-level junk, and, often, beloved items with associations so painful, they must be removed from sightlines and daily life. Eddie and 24-year-old Bella become friends after she comes in to donate items from a loved one who has died. Bella is grieving, and as they spend time together, she puts her energy into renewing Eddie's potential for a love life. I loved this sweet story of renewed hope, platonic love, and romantic promise. It's often funny and consistently charming, but never cloyingly sweet. Cronin strikes the perfect tone with these wonderful characters and their lives. I read this book for my book club, and it was a perfect summer read. Marianne Cronin is also the author of One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, a book I loved and gave five Bossy stars. You might also like these books I found heartwarming, or more titles that features friends who are like family. For my full review, please check out this link. 04 The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher Lex Croucher's foray into dark academia is fantastic, with angst, mature themes, magical adventure, sinister plots, far-reaching repercussions, and a childhood heartbreak that is revisited and revised in heartbreaking, satisfying form. Briar and Sebastian are childhood best friends, but when Sebastian is accepted into the renowned nearby magic school at age 11 and Briar is not, the two have a heartbreaking, fraught split. Then Briar works their way into a temporary maintenance job at the school and soon realizes that their old friend (now called Bastian) has become one of the most feared, powerful, cold students on campus. And Briar also discovers that the school is hiding dark secrets with unimaginable potential repercussions for the world. The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones is dark, edgy, yet also warm, with mature magic-focused plot points, deep friendships, romance, adventure and strategizing, plus opportunities for redemption. (This is the type of tone and grown-up magical adventure and dark academia that I had hoped Lev Grossman's The Magicians might be; for me, the feel of that book was grim and lacked satisfying character development.) I'm a huge Lex Croucher fan and I'm in for all Croucher books, always. I listened to this novel as an audiobook courtesy of Libro.fm and Harper Voyager. Lex Croucher is also the author of the wonderful Not for the Faint of Heart and Gwen & Art Are Not in Love, as well as the upcoming Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay. Croucher also wrote romcoms with a Regency-era twist, Reputation, which I'm about to dive into, and its sequels Infamous and Trouble. Please click here for my full review of this title. 05 Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth I loved the octogenarian main protagonist of Elsie and the darkly funny start to the book. Her heartbreaking history surprised me, as did the revelations at the end of the novel. This was my first Sally Hepworth read but won't be my last. Elsie is an 81-year-old living in a Melbourne suburb, grumbling and mainly keeping to herself, aside from her best friend since childhood, a persistent 7-year-old girl who's determined to befriend her, and Peter, a kind young man across the street who she doesn't mind running into. The playful tone of the early pages reminded me of Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club series, which I love. But there's darkness in Elsie's past, and ultimately, tragic, poignant aspects of her life become clear. Delving into Elsie's childhood is heartbreaking. She experienced staggering loss, disappointment, glimmers of hope, and a few key loved ones who anchored her. Her coping mechanisms, which we come to understand, are wrapped in shocking truths. My heart ached for the child she was and all that she endured. Some of the modern-day denouements were surprising, and those, along with the friends-like-family elements, made for an ending I didn't wholly expect. Sally Hepworth is also the author of The Good Sister, Darling Girls, The Mother-in-Law, The Family Next Door, and other books. For more Bossy reads featuring elderly protagonists, check out this link. And for more mysteries, please check out these Bossy titles. For my full review, please see Mad Mabel. 06 The Land and Its People: Essays by David Sedaris Sedaris's first collection of essays in four years offers his delightfully jarring observations and rejection of social niceties, including a hilarious emotional reliance on Duolingo, various entertaining and nerve-racking encounters, and powerfully poignant reflections on his decades-long friendship with his best friend. In David Sedaris's latest book of essays, The Land and Its People, his first in four years, he brings his offbeat humor, acerbic observations, and surprising heart to recounting stories about travel, adventures, mishaps, shortcomings, true friendship, love, families, loss, aging, and the complicated, fascinating, sometimes disappointing nature of human beings. As always, Sedaris delivers enough edge to keep me feeling slightly, delightedly nervous about what's to come, yet much of the time he manages to end essays on a thoughtful or surprisingly heartwarming note. Some of the poignancy in his essays shows up when you read between the lines, which feels only fitting for his sharp observations and his often-barbed voice. The final lines of the essays felt at times a little bit sentimental or cute, but he does have to wrap these up, after all. David Sedaris is also the author of Happy-Go-Lucky, The Best of Me, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Santaland Diaries, and other books. You might also like these Bossy reviews of other collections of essays. For my full review, please check out The Land and Its People.

Great Backlist Mystery and Suspense Reads You know what I love about a backlist roundup of great reads? They're all likely to be available at the library. If you like cozying up with some fall mystery reading like I am, make sure to check out these titles, if you haven't read them. These six four-star mysteries are all so good and so different--they were my favorites of the year a couple of years ago, and they're so solid that I thought I'd repost again. I hope you'll check them out if you're in the market for mystery and suspense. You might also like these other Greedy Reading Lists of Bossy mystery favorites. I'd love to hear about your favorite mystery reads! 01 The Witch Elm by Tana French Within a suspenseful mystery structure, French explores privilege, interconnectedness, and the many shades of gray that complicate her characters' fraught situations. A Tana French mystery is usually a good bet for me, and I plowed through The Witch Elm to find out what was happening under French's layers of story. In The Witch Elm, French dips her toe into exploring how luck, (sometimes blind) loyalty—and, in several instances, a shocking absence of guilt and potentially skewed sense of justice—shape lives and carry events. French is the author of six Dublin Murder Squad series titles: In the Woods, The Likeness--this is my favorite of hers, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser. French has also written three books in the Cal Hooper series, The Searcher, The Hunter, and The Keeper. For my full review of this book, please see The Witch Elm. 02 The Lost Man by Jane Harper Harper's mysteries read like twisty character-driven Westerns set in Australia, and things aren’t always what they seem. I thought this was great. Nathan and Bub come together to grieve the loss of their brother Cam. Cam had been bothered by something before dying unexpectedly in the Australian outback desert, but was his death suicide--or did someone kill him? Nathan is no detective, but he owes it to Cam not to give up until he figures it out. Harper skillfully builds the pool of potential culprits for Nathan to examine in this story of uncovering truths, family history, loyalty, stubbornness, and love. Harper's books read like Westerns to me, and her sometimes spare tone suits the setting, the situations in which she places her characters, and the characters themselves. Things aren’t what they seem in The Lost Man, but Harper isn’t manipulative or tricky, either. I thought this was great. For my full review, please check out The Lost Man. And for more Bossy reviews of other Jane Harper books, please check out this link. 03 Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips Julia Phillips's interconnected stories follow in chapters that take place each month for a year after the disappearance of two girls on the edge of Russia. The rural Siberian settings are exquisitely wrought, with stark, rugged, lush landscapes serving as the backdrop for a mystery that shakes a small community. The story is as much about the varied cast of characters, the closed-off community, and the vivid sense of place Phillips imagines as it is about the mystery itself. It isn't a police procedural; this is a starkly beautiful book that happens to be a mystery. Disappearing Earth was Phillips's first book, and she built the story's pace steadily toward a crescendo. The ending doesn't necessarily provide all the answers, but Phillips provides enough pieces of the puzzle to create closure. You might also be interested in Julia Phillips's second book, Bear. 04 The Last Child by John Hart I loved John Hart's brusque, determined Clyde Hunt, the scrappy and unstoppable young Johnny Merrimon, the sinister underbelly of their rural North Carolina town, and basically everything about this intricate literary mystery-thriller. Hart knows how to masterfully build a story around unforgettable characters with layers they reluctantly reveal. I didn't expect the resolution Hart allows to unfold at the end. But I was in for whatever he was dishing up, and I was fascinated all along the way. I love Hart's imperfect, brave, relentlessly tough protagonists. He's a gifted storyteller. John Hart has also written many other books, including The Unwilling, The Hush, which is the second in the Johnny Merrimon series, and Redemption Road. (Note: I had difficulty reading the horrific cruelties perpetuated by multiple characters in Redemption Road.) For my full review of this book, please see The Last Child. 05 City of Windows (Lucas Page #1) by Robert Pobi I loved Pobi's mystery; the character of Lucas Page, a retired detective who is pulled back onto a case; and the smart commentary about gun ownership and responsibility. This was a really compelling mystery/thriller—with a smart underlying commentary about gun ownership, violence, and the factors complicating these issues, including societal malaise, ignorance often overpowering facts, and longstanding patterns of power and fear. I loved the balance of clues and revelations Pobi laid out; they didn’t make me feel manipulated or red-herringed to death. Lucas Page is a fantastic character (as are Whitaker, Kehoe, Erin, and Dingo). The elaborate climactic scene was creatively gruesome—and I felt realistic disgust as a result. I haven't yet read the second in this Lucas Page series, Under Pressure--and I didn't even realize this was a series until after the fact, this novel stands so well on its own. For my full review of this book, please see City of Windows. 06 Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich I love a small-town sheriff story, and Brian Panowich offers a nicely layered version in Bull Mountain. Clayton Burroughs is sheriff of a small town in North Georgia. But the rest of his family is a well-known, entrenched, powerful bunch of moonshiners (they operate in even darker avenues too) on and around Bull Mountain. Clayton's law enforcement career and the rest of the Burroughses' relentless lawbreaking make for difficult family dynamics and some impossible professional dilemmas. Panowich offers a story about a complicated family and sense of duty, with ruthless mountain gangsters, twists and turns, dark elements, interconnected stories, and quite an ending. I thought this was great. Panowich also wrote Like Lions and Hard Cash Valley, the next two books in this series. You might also like these Bossy small-town reads and novels that center around law enforcement officers.

Tales of Brave World War II Women Other titles I considered listing here were the Bossy five-star read All the Light We Cannot See; The Women in the Castle, which includes a complicated sort of bravery; and the fantastic book for young readers, The War That Saved My Life, as well as its wonderful sequel, The War I Finally Won. Are there any others you would include on a list of World War II heroines? You might also like the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Great Books about Brave Female Spies and Six More Books about Brave Female Spies. 01 The Skylark's Secret by Fiona Valpy The Skylark's Secret has a dual timeline; the story is set in rural Scotland during World War II and decades later in the same village. Valpy's detailed setting and character development are wonderful, and I was equally invested in and engaged by both of the interconnected timelines. There's a low-key mystery Lexie is set on unraveling (key players are keeping secrets about events from decades past), and she's making initially hesitant attempts to reclaim love, the joy of music, independence, community, and general fulfillment. Not everything turns out happily in both timelines, but Valpy leaves the reader with a reassuringly satisfying ending. Different types of women's courage are shown in the World War II-era story as well as in the more modern timeline of the tale. For my full review of The Skylark's Secret, please click here. 02 The Light After the War by Anita Abriel Author Anita Abriel has said that this story is so fully inspired by her grandmother's story that she didn't even change the main characters' names. Abriel's grandmother Vera lived with the author's family when Abriel was growing up, and she was immersed in her grandmother's tales of life in Caracas, of Edith, of heartbreak, and of hope. Abriel offers a vivid account of the fear and dread—intermixed with sparks of hope—that sustained Vera and Edith during the war; their wonderfully brave, practical, creative routes to survival as single young women along with jarring adjustments to post-war floods of food, fashion, and joy; the evolutions of their careers; and each of their attempts to find a second chapter of love. Vera and Edith are such a complementary partnership, and I loved spending time with these strong young women. They're living through wartime challenges but weren't wartime spies or deeply involved in war efforts. I was taken by how remarkable the story was of the women's lives during this time of turmoil. Please click here for my full review of The Light After the War. 03 The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman The world is unraveling on the cusp of World War II, and three strong women will be tested beyond anything they imagined before the end of the war. The World That We Knew features the strong, gruff Hanni with a heart of gold; young Ettie, who is idealistic, tough as nails, and capable of deep love; and a heartbreakingly loyal and satisfyingly powerful golem, Ava. This was a beautiful book. The golem and heron and other ethereal elements could have been distracting, but they worked to add a dreamlike layer--and intriguing depth--to Hoffman's unusual World War II-set story. I was most struck by the character-driven World War II sections, which were haunting and lovely. Hoffman made me feel anchored to the characters so that the emotions, concerns, and life-and-death decisions the women grappled with in 1941 felt immediate and relevant. For my full review of this book, please see The World That We Knew. 04 Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave After the war of course it will be like the start of spring, which is always so brilliantly sudden. The leaves will burst back onto the trees and close the gaps between the branches and we shall be startled--shan't we?--as we are startled at the end of every winter. We shall think: oh, I had quite forgotten.... In Everyone Brave Is Forgiven, Cleave tells the story of Mary, a young British socialite who shocks her family by volunteering for the war effort. She teaches the children evacuated from London, children society has rejected because of race, impairment, or other perceived faults. Tom is Mary's employer, and he's upset when his best friend Alastair enlists. The two men and Mary end up in a heartbreaking wartime love triangle. Set during the bleak years of 1939-1942 in London and on the strategic island of Malta, Everyone Brave Is Forgiven illustrates how everyday triumphs, failures, and concerns come together to shape lives, even during a momentous sequence of surrounding events such as World War II. The language and pacing is lovely, the World War II settings are exquisitely laid out, and the dialogue is darkly funny. I loved this! 05 Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum Most of us are drawn to this time period thinking it was a war of absolute good versus absolute evil—qualities rarely found in their purest form—and that’s true. But don’t forget that history isn’t just a study in black and white. Human behavior is comprised of ulterior motives, of gray shades. I was fascinated by the two points of view (mother and daughter) and the two time periods (World War II and the late 1990s) that Blum explores in Those Who Save Us. Blum's characters are far from perfect and are not all blameless and noble. In terms of illustrating women's bravery during the war, this book is unlike the others on this list. Anna is haunted by her wartime experiences and compromises, and she is fearful of Trudy's potential reaction to the heartbreaking truths of her mother's past. I was riveted by Those Who Save Us (and I love the multiple potential implications of the book's title). I had trouble with the convenience of the ending, but the story was so darn good, the weight of the ending mattered less to me than it otherwise might have. 06 The Ship of Brides by Jojo Moyes The multiple points of view and jumps backward in time felt choppy for a while, then Moyes laid the groundwork for a set of lives that evolve dramatically and intriguingly over the course of an ocean voyage, and I was hooked. Within the microcosm of a ship full of hundreds of women--and even more naval officers at the end of their wartime duty--Moyes captures end-of-war excitement and reflection; the women's limited options/roles/escapes from past mistakes; as well as male power; lack of free will for women; the tensions of the young men exhilarated to be alive; and the hesitant, excited, young brides living together in close quarters for weeks. There is some teasing manipulation that made me impatient, but I was fascinated by the factual basis for the story: the transport of over 600 brides from Australia to England in 1946, after World War II, to be reunified with their wartime husbands. Moyes's grandmother mentioned her own voyage on the HMS Victorious to the author, which inspired the framework for the book. I'd like to read more about the facts of that time and of voyages like this.

Bossy Short Story Love Some of you bookworms have told me in the past that you don't like or at least don't gravitate toward short stories, whether because you want to dig in more deeply over the course of a longer story and book, because you feel like situations in short stories sometimes feel unresolved, or because you feel like the stories can seem disjointed. Sometimes short stories tend toward exploring tragedy, as in many of the luminous collections here and their gorgeous heartbreaks. And the dipping-in-and-out without cleaning up the mess of everyday heartbreak might feel unsatisfying. But sometimes nothing does the reading trick like shorter works--especially when time is tight or when you might have trouble concentrating (for example, during a worldwide pandemic , when I read some of these collections). I especially love an interconnected set of stories that when taken collectively offer the richness of a longer, in-depth story or concepts to reflect upon. Have you read any of these collections? Do you have any favorite short story collections I should read? You might also want to chek out the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six More Short Story Collections I Loved . 01 Thunderstruck & Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken Whatever you have lost there are more of, just not yours. McCracken is a fantastic writer who highlights odd, strangely beautiful elements in small moments. Each of the nine stories in this collection builds from a loss of some kind. In what feels like careful, deliberate shaping by McCracken and her editor, the early stories felt more bleak to me and the later ones offered a little more hope, or at least acceptance. This was her flaw as a parent, she thought later: she had never truly gotten rid of a single maternal worry. They were all in the closet, with the minuscule footed pajamas and hand-knit baby hats, and every day Laura took them out, unfolded them, tried to put them to use. McCracken is also the author of novels like The Hero of this Book, The Giant's House , Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry , The Souvenir Museum , Niagara Falls All Over Again , and the beautiful, heart-wrenching An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination . 02 The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans The Office of Historical Corrections offers so much to unpack; Evans's story themes are often haunting, always powerful, and wonderfully nuanced. She thought the insistence on victims without wrongdoers was at the base of the whole American problem, the lie that supported all the others. In The Office of Historical Corrections , Evans offers short stories centering around themes of race, relationships, identity, the fallibility of those who shape historical "fact," as well as grief and loss. She beautifully and powerfully illustrates essential, deep truths by tracing moments in her characters' everyday lives. All of her adult life people have asked Rena why she goes to such dangerous places, and she has always wanted to ask them where the safe place is. The danger is in chemicals and airports and refugee camps and war zones and regions known for sex tourism. The danger also sometimes took the trash out for them. The danger came over for movie night and bought them a popcorn maker for Christmas. The danger hugged her mother and shook her father’s hand. The themes here are often haunting, always powerful, and wonderfully nuanced, even when the scenes (the artist's exhibition, the actual on-the-spot printed and posted corrections of "fact," and others) take metaphors to their limits. Click here for my full review of The Office of Historical Corrections . 03 Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy His heart felt dangerously full, for the first time in years. That dried-up battered organ, suddenly flush with love. It could kill him. In Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It , Maile Meloy keeps you on your toes as you consider what may lay in wait within the relationships she lays out, and you may not be able to anticipate who's going to have a life-changing revelation (or not), who is just who they say they are, and who isn't at all what they seem. A couple of the eleven stories in Meloy's collection left me wishing for more, but Meloy doesn't leave you hanging, instead drawing you in with the depth of each work. I was surprised by the poignancy in Meloy's stories. Meloy is also the author of Do Not Become Alarmed , Liars and Saints , and A Family Daughter as well as the story collection Half in Love. She also wrote the Apothecary trilogy for young readers. 04 Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash In Nothing Gold Can Stay , a collection by Ron Rash, the stories take place in different eras, but all are set in North Carolina and in heart-wrenching, tough, gorgeous, hardscrabble Appalachia. The state is as prominent as a character as Rash explores trapped despair, haunting choices, and the beauty of even bleak moments. Rash's writing here is, as always, exquisite, and within these 14 stories, he turns his attention to characters who yearn, regret, and desperately attempt to hide their fragility behind steely exteriors. Rash never relishes laying bare a dirty underbelly; he introduces unexpected depth and layers that inspire a reader to reconsider assumptions and leave room for wonder. North Carolina's Rash (he teaches at Western Carolina University) is also the author of other Appalachia-set books: Serena , The World Made Straight , Burning Bright , Above the Waterfall , The Risen , The Cove , and One Foot in Eden , and The Caretaker , among others. For more reads set in Appalachia, please take a look at the titles at this link . 05 Redeployment by Phil Klay There are two ways to tell the story. Funny or sad. Guys like it funny, with lots of gore and a grin on your face when you get to the end. Girls like it sad, with a thousand-yard stare out to the distance as you gaze upon the horrors of war they can’t quite see. Either way, it’s the same story. In Iraq Marine veteran and Dartmouth grad Phil Klay's National Book Award-winner Redeployment , the author shares short stories about war and the jarring entry into life afterward that read like autobiographical vignettes. This is, as you might expect, difficult subject matter--exploring powerful emotions, troops haunted by decisions and unforeseen dangers, painful adjustments to life after war, and injury and loss. But Klay draws you into his characters' situations too fully for you to want to turn away. For more books set in wartime, please check out the titles at this Bossy link . 06 Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout I love how Strout interlinks characters, backgrounds, and stories so gracefully, yet also allows them to stand on their own. As soon as I finished reading this short story collection from Elizabeth Strout, I wished I’d slowed down and taken notes or could start all over and read it again immediately. The stories feel immediate and real. Strout shines a light on turning points: small but powerful shifts of power or emotion, masterfully illustrating how a moment sends ripples through the day or the broader life of those involved in it—it’s fascinating. Elizabeth Strout is also the author of Olive Kitteridge , Olive, Again , My Name Is Lucy Barton , Lucy by the Sea , Tell Me Everything , and Oh William! For my full review, please see Anything Is Possible .

Bossy Historical Fiction Standouts Summer's oppressive heat and humidity feels like the perfect inspiration to immerse myself in another place and time. These varied historical fiction reads have been some of my favorites this summer. I omitted two other titles that likely deserve to appear here as well: I left off Calamity Club because I recently included it in my Is This the Perfect August Reading List? post, and I'm taking a while to get through Maggie Shipstead's wonderful book Land, so I can't share that review yet. Have you read a favorite historical fiction work (or a book in another genre) this summer? 01 Walk an Unusual Path: The Foursome by Christina Baker Kline Kline takes what might be a voyeuristic-feeling story of two North Carolina sisters (distant relations of hers) who married the world-famous conjoined twins from Siam, Chang and Eng, and builds a suitably complicated set of dynamics; a layered story of hope, emotion, and tragedy; and enough details of the time to bring it all to life. The Foursome paints a fascinating story of of the uncommon family structure and its logistics. The couples collectively had twenty-one children, and the novel delves into supposing the how-to of procreation and sex--including the participants' imagined mental tricks to creating distance in the mind to cope with complications around physical ability, emotional reactions, and lack of privacy. As with all relationships, things get complicated; here, the stakes are higher and the ability to create space or have one-on-one conversations is impossible. The relationships between the sisters, the brothers, and the four adults evolve and show cracks, are repaired, then threatened again. Kline puts forward plausible doubts, magnetism, conflict, seeming impossibilities, and outsiders' desire for salacious details in this sympathetic, layered story. She is skilled at building a story within a specific place and time, and the details made this story come alive. I received a prepublication version of this novel courtesy of NetGalley and Mariner Books. Christina Baker Kline is also the author of Exiles, which I liked, Orphan Train (which I really liked), and A Piece of the World (which I loved). For my full review of this book please see The Foursome. 02 Face Devastating Loss and Follow a Search for Forgiveness: A Far-Flung Life by M. L. Stedman Stedman takes a remote Australian sheep farm and drops our main protagonists into agonizing scenarios that threaten to break their spirits and ruin them forever. This was a beautifully written tale of anguish, penance, and redemption. A Far-Flung Life is an epic family story of generations carving out existence in remote Western Australia, ruled by secrets, hopes, and resignation. We meet the MacBride family in the 1950s, in the midst of a long family history of sheep farming on their million-acre station Meredith Downs. Stedman plunges the family into the depths of despair, throwing at them physical and mental damage, emotional angst, and painful shifts in family dynamics. As things seem to settle into a new rhythm, Stedman introduces a strictly taboo scenario--a devastating mistake that was tough to read and that was so disturbing for me, it made it difficult to continue with the story afterward. Aside from that enormous issue, the story offers so many elements I loved: the remote Australian setting, living off the land, reimagined family dynamics, characters who show depth and growth (including my favorite, Pete Peachy!), and an epic years-long tracking of the various players. I appreciated Stedman's optimistic-feeling final scenes and ending. Please click here for my full review of A Far-Flung Life. 03 Immerse Yourself in a Rich Culture at a Volatile Time: The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali Kamali's powerful story of enduring friendship spans decades and is shaped by years of political turmoil in Iran. The childhood best friends at the heart of the novel grow apart, then reunite in complicated circumstances. This is wonderful. Marjan Kamali's The Lion Women of Tehran is historical fiction that begins in 1950s Tehran, where young Ellie lives in opulence with her mother and father. But after her father's untimely death, daughter and mother quickly face the hard reality of women's inability to own property or assert rights. Ellie turns to Homa, a local girl, for companionship, and their deep, volatile friendship endures; as they grow up this friendship shapes the novel. With enormous shifts in Iran as catalysts for changes in their own lives, the friends dramatically diverge in their life goals--marriage for one, activism for the other--and life pushes and pulls them in different directions so that they are eventually both figuratively and literally a world apart. This was powerful, beautiful, and poignant. I loved this story. You might also want to check out these books featuring friends like family and these historical fiction Bossy favorites. For my full review, please check out The Lion Women of Tehran. 04 Be Inspired by a Female Doctor in a Man's World: All in Her Hands by Audrey Blake I love reading historical fiction about female physicians before they were common. Nora Gibson is a willful, clever woman fighting against prejudice in 1849 London and aiming for better healthcare for women--until cases of cholera emerge and all rules must be reimagined. Blake includes wonderful scientific detail and details of life in that time. I love how Blake shapes a story in which privileged education comes up against gritty, real-world life experience, and I love how she works in the gaps in knowledge as well as the leaps and bounds that were taking place in science in that era. Blake also weaves in issues around body autonomy, pregnancy challenges, and societal and professional issues for women who might become mothers. This is the third book in a series, but it works beautifully as a stand-alone read. I had no idea there were prior books until I finished; this is seamless and fascinating. I listened to All in Her Hands as an audiobook courtesy of Libro.fm and Recorded Books, Inc. For my full review, please see All in Her Hands. You might also like these novels that include female physicians. 05 Go Behind the Scenes of a Seemingly Perfect TV Family: Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven This peek behind the scenes of a fictional 1960s sitcom is layered with the complex issues of the changing world at that time for women, people of color, gay people, and others. Niven doesn't make characters' paths to self-actualization too easy, but there's a sense that everything will turn out in some version of a happy ending. Del and Dinah Newman, along with their sons Guy and Shep, have been mainstays on the TV for years. Their wholesome, bighearted, clean-cut show has long been easy viewing, with everything turning out all right each week and with the traditional Newmans happily settled by the end of each episode. When Del suffers an accident and is unable to run the show, Dinah, Guy, and Shep have new directions in mind to close out what might be the very end of Meet the Newmans. And if Del wakes up, he's going to be as shocked as the sponsors that the rest of the Newmans are pushing the envelope at last. I loved Niven's exploration of feminism and strong women, characters' rethinking of the dynamics of some longstanding relationships, and the behind-the-scenes peeks at a fictional television world. Dinah is the star of the novel, and I loved her zigzagging journey toward self-actualization. I also just love Niven's writing and the tone of her novels. I feel like I'm in good hands when I read them, and I'm in for all of her books. Jennifer Niven is also the author of All the Bright Places, a young adult novel I adored, Holding Up the Universe, Breathless, When We Were Monsters, and other books. For my full review, please check out this link. 6 Witness a Frenzy of Renaissance-Era Religious Visions and Manipulation: The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown Brown's dual-timeline debut novel concerns 16th-century prophecies and a modern-day murder mystery, linked through time by a historian, a hidden book, an illiterate young girl, the powerful men who aimed to manipulate her, and two brave women who tried to save her life. Historian Alison Sage recently made the discovery of a lifetime--she unearthed the fabled writings detailing the prophecies of a 16th-century nun, Elizabeth Barton, a slim book which had been thought to be lost forever. The discovery of the book leads to Alison's first ever invitation to the exclusive Codex Consortium, where select historians gather to discuss discoveries and ideas. But when a murder takes place on the grounds, everyone is a suspect. Clues to the murder--and, possibly, to vast riches from Barton's era--may lie in the story of Elizabeth Barton herself. Brown toggles back and forth in time, so that we see Alison's experiences in present day as well as Barton's rise to fame centuries earlier. An illiterate serving girl, Elizabeth initially has a true vision: she accurately predicts the death of a child in the household where she works. When powerful, religious and political figures get hold of Barton, they encourage her to speak about and "prophecy" in ways that benefit their causes, which the eager to please girl willingly does. We spend far more page time with Alison, her professional passion, and her interpersonal struggles. Brown lays out clues (I wouldn't have minded more twists or elements to wonder about) for Alison (and the reader) to follow to a fairly neat and tidy conclusion, albeit with significant casualties. For my full review, please click this link.

Bossy Favorites of the Month I've read a lot of books I've loved this month, in a range of genres. Here are my six favorites, although I had to deliberate a little bit before settling on this list. What are some of your favorite reads of August? 01 Heartwood by Amity Gaige Amity Gaige's Appalachian Trail-set novel offers several of my favorite elements: a Maine setting, a missing-person storyline, an unforgiving wilderness, and a strong woman succeeding in a male-dominated field. This mystery hit the spot for me. But the nonbeliever is in a bind, because without God, who forgives? Human beings are pretty unforgiving. The law certainly isn’t forgiving. Forgiveness needs a messenger. Amity Gaige's Heartwood  offers the story of Beverly, a dedicated Maine State Game Warden who has fought for years for an amount of respect to match her commitment and ability, and Valerie, an Appalachian Trail hiker who has gone missing 200 miles from her final destination. Wheelchair-bound Lena, who is following the search from afar, Valerie, and Bev are inexorably connected, and Valerie's survival depends upon the other two women's bravery and relentlessness. Meanwhile, the novel explores imperfect parenting, compounding mistakes by clinging to fear or regret, and against-the-odds second chances. Forgiveness is a concept that emerges again and again here. I love a Maine setting, a missing-persons story, and a tale of brave women thriving in a traditionally male career. This story is so intriguing, I had trouble putting it down. Amity Gaige is also the author of O My Darling , The Folded World , Schroder , and Sea Wife . Check out the titles at the links here for more missing person stories  and for more books set in Maine . For my full review of this book please see Heartwood . 02 A Family Matter by Claire Lynch Claire Lynch's novel shapes two timelines separated by decades into an engrossing, complicated family story of forbidden love, secrets, impending death, and second chances, against a backdrop of everyday minutiae. I read this in a day; I loved it. In A Family Matter , we track a British family along two timelines. In 1982, Dawn, a young mother in a fine but loveless marriage finds happiness in a socially unacceptable relationship, and the legal backlash causes her to lose custody of--and contact with--her beloved young daughter Maggie. In 2022, Heron, Maggie's father, has just received terrible news about his health, and he works to come to terms with it within his carefully prescribed daily routine and regular banal conversations with Maggie and family. It becomes clear that Maggie is unaware of the particular circumstances around her parents' divorce and the reason for her mother's subsequent disappearance--until a clean-out of her childhood home reveals long-held secrets. I read this engrossing family story in a day and can't wait to read future fiction by Claire Lynch. Claire Lynch is also the author of Irish Autobiography  and Small: On Motherhoods . For more family stories I've loved, check out the books at this link . For my full review of this book please see A Family Matter . 03 Trust by Hernan Diaz This story-within-a-story-within-a-story reveals a clever woman working within the 1920s confines of her sex to outsmart Wall Street while retaining a conscience while showcasing foolish, greedy men determined to manipulate the truth in order to paint themselves in a better light. I was intrigued by the structure and by the peeks behind the curtains of a wealthy family and one woman's financial acumen. In 1920s New York, Benjamin Rask is a ruthless, outrageously successful Wall Street tycoon, and his beloved wife Helen is the daughter of quirky intellectual aristocrats. They have exceeded any imaginable measure of success and wealth, and their elite financial position and power has in turn catapulted them to the peaks of social status. But dark secrets lie behind their intriguing success. Diaz's novel explores multiple versions of the couple's story through various points of view, which together present fascinating questions about the true story of two disparate personalities, their marriage, and their intertwined success. The structure of the novel is intriguing; through shifting perspectives and increasingly occluded reality, the reader must choose a narrative to believe. Characters come off as less realistic than their fictionalized versions (who are main protagonists of the story inside a story), and the ability of those with money and power to manipulate the truth into pure fiction is chilling--and chillingly familiar these days . Hernan Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for Trust . He is also the author of In the Distance . For my full review, please check out Trust . 04 Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart Gary Shteyngart's story of an uncommonly intelligent fifth-grader, Vera, allows for a precocious child's point of view and observations that are delightfully spot-on and insightful. This is zany, heartwarming, often funny, and just lovely. Through precocious fifth-grader Vera's point of view in Vera, or Faith , we get to know her family, the Bradford-Shmulkins, and its various dynamics. The family lives in New York City, and Vera's parents, Anne Mom (her stepmother, a stay-at-home-mom at times derogatorily called Trad Wife) and Daddy (a culturally Russian, self-aggrandizing magazine editor and sometimes-writer), struggle to cope with financial pressures and relationship issues, while young Vera tries to simply make a friend at school and find her biological mother--while avoiding her annoying little brother's roughhousing and meathead games. This was wryly funny, sometimes zany, and so very heartwarming. Gary Shteyngart is also the author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook , Absurdistan , Super Sad True Love Story , and other novels. I received a prepublication edition of this title, which was published July 8, courtesy of Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley. For my full review, please check out Vera, or Faith . 05 A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst Sophie Elmhirst's A Marriage at Sea  is the true story of a couple whose sailing trip to New Zealand becomes a fight for survival. This is nonfiction that seems too incredible to be true, and I was hooked on the details of their 118-day-long struggles on the ocean. Sophie Elmhirst revisits a decades-old true story that she crafts like fiction, skillfully using dry firsthand accounts and subsequent interviews to build a fascinating, fluid, compelling nonfiction book about a couple whose ambitious sailing trip from England to New Zealand was abruptly halted when a whale breached beneath their sailboat, capsizing it. Elmhirst manages to shape a suspenseful nonfiction work despite the Maralyn and Maurice's significant periods of isolation, struggle, and repetitive tasks. She delves into their inner lives, exploring the workings of their relationship and fleshing out an intriguing dynamic against the unforgiving backdrop of the endless-seeming expanse of ocean and 118 days of clawing for survival. The story's pacing doesn't flag, although the tale sets a slower tempo as Maurice and Maralyn settle into a daily pattern of fishing, gathering water, and struggling to keep their minds occupied--a measure that is largely driven by Maralyn. Maurice is frank about his deteriorating emotional state and his reliance upon Maralyn's unfailing determination. Click here   for my full review. If you love nonfiction books, you might like the titles on my Greedy Reading Lists Six Compelling Nonfiction Reads  , Six Favorite Nonfiction and Memoir Reads of the Year , Six Nonfiction and Memoir Reads I Loved , Six of My Favorite Nonfiction Reads , or these other nonfiction books I've reviewed . 06 The Knight and the Moth (Stonewater Kingdom #1) by Rachel Gillig The shadowy, eerie tone of the first title in Gillig's Stonewater Kingdom series gives way to heartwarming, sometimes funny moments as an unlikely pack of allies sets out on a journey of discovery, complete with battles, evolving loyalties, and an increasingly high-stakes quest. The romantic aspect is less essential than the fantasy elements, which I appreciated. The first book in Rachel Gillig's Stonewater Kingdom series, The Knight and the Moth , considers Sybil Delling ("Six") and a group of five other foundling girls who have given up ten years of their lives to serve as Diviners, dedicating themselves wholly to being submerged in magical waters and conveying their visions and dreams of Omens at her abbess's whim. But the shrouded girls, who have bonded over the years like family, begin to disappear, and Sybil doubts for the first time whether their collective purpose is holy and noble after all. She starts to question the motivations of those with influence, including the abbess who has tasked them with the violent drowning dreams and the Omens themselves. I don't love an overly swoony, melodramatic "romantasy" story in which characters' energy is spent on pining and obsessing, where dramatic declarations overshadow a novel's fantasy elements. The Knight and the Moth  is built on a spare yet satisfying fantasy world with a limited number of characters and an essential engaging romance aspect that is far more than a swoony distraction. I really, really liked this balance. I can't wait for the next books in this series. For my full review, please check out this link .

Book club love! My OG book club has been together in some form for almost twenty years, meeting monthly to talk about life and--particularly if we are split or generally dislike a title--talking about a book, and for a good while I've been lucky enough to (surprise!) be the Bossy Final Decider of the books on our annual book list. I ask for book suggestions from my fellow book clubbers, add my own ideas, make sure early reviews look solid enough for us, establish when an intriguing book is likely to be generally widely available from the library, vary our genres throughout the year--and adhere to our 400-page-ish page limit. We read an array of types of books--often lighter titles in the summer, a nonfiction doorstop in the winter, historical fiction always, and sometimes a mystery or contemporary fiction book. Oddly, there is only one World War II-set book and there are zero Alaska-set books on this list. (These are elements I used to try to shoehorn into every list, until my friends rightfully began to resist.) I thought I'd pick a point in time and highlight my favorite reads from that year--in this case, 2020, the year everything shut down and reading became even more essential for my own mental health and for many of my friends' as well. For more of my favorite book club reads from the past, please check out the Greedy Reading Lists centered around book club. Are you in a book club? What have been some of your favorite book club reads? 01 Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout Strout is truly a marvel in the way she crafts full, complicated lives through sharing small moments. I loved every bit of this and felt it was even stronger than the original novel that introduced Olive. Oh, Olive! In Olive, Again, she ambles through town and reflects on aging, on her life, and especially on memories of moments that shaped her life’s direction, her attitude, her viewpoint—and those of the people close to her. Because this is the bristly character of Olive from Olive Kitteridge, these are not saccharine snippets of wisdom from a warm, cozy grandmother. The moments are sometimes sour, sometimes regretful, sometimes heartbreaking, but often lovely in their rough honesty. I could spend days reading about Olive's introspection and her outward gruff and straightforward ways. I received an advance copy of this book from Random House through NetGalley. For my full review of this book, please see Olive, Again. Elizabeth Strout is also the author of The Things We Never Say, Tell Me Everything, Lucy by the Sea, Anything Is Possible, My Name Is Lucy Barton, and Oh William! as well as the prequel to this title, Olive Kitteridge. 02 The River by Peter Heller I loved the deep friendship; details of outdoorsy expertise and adventuring; and life-and-death moments that hinge on skill or luck or both. Low-key young men and best friends Jack and Wynn have taken many challenging outdoor expeditions together. They're skilled and joyful adventurers. But when a wildfire rages near where they're canoeing the Maskwa River in northern Canada, everything turns upside down. Oh, Peter Heller! The details of running the Canadian river, traveling and camping, and Jack and Wynn's friendship itself all hooked me completely. The final scenes were exquisitely painful and beautiful, and they hit me hard. Heller is also the author of Burn, The Last Ranger, The Guide, The River, and The Painter, as well as the stellar novel The Dog Stars. For my full review of this book, please see The River. 03 Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera Although the three interconnected women face sometimes staggeringly tragic challenges, Spera injects moments of joy and wonderful details of 1924 life in South Carolina. I worried during the first chapter that Gertrude was going to feel like a caricature of a backwoods Southern woman. But she and the other characters were developed fully. And despite the often devastating circumstances--believably reflecting real-life conditions at the time--Spera does manage to show joy--often related to the women's relationships to each other. You can see where one of the storylines is going before the character involved understands it, and it might make your blood boil to see the evil situation go on unchecked. I wasn’t sure I bought into the reasoning for a character’s drastic and sudden turnaround in thinking—it seemed that she’d had previous reminders of this reasoning without being inspired to shift course. But the details of cooking, surviving, race relations, and life in 1924 South Carolina were powerful, and I still think about this book although I read it some time ago. For my full review of this book, please see Call Your Daughter Home. 04 The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman Hoffman made me feel anchored to the characters and the emotions, concerns, and life-and-death decisions with which the three women grappled. The world is unraveling on the cusp of World War II, and three strong women will be tested beyond anything they imagined before the end of the war and the end of the book. The strong, gruff Hanni has a heart of gold; young Ettie is idealistic and grows to be tough as nails yet capable of deep love; and the heartbreakingly loyal golem Ava becomes satisfyingly powerful. This was a beautiful book. The golem and heron and other ethereal elements could have been distracting or take the book in a direction that made for a strange tone, but they worked. I was most struck by the character-driven WWII stories, which were haunting and lovely. Hoffman made me feel anchored to the characters and made their concerns in 1941 felt immediate and relevant. For my full review, please see The World That We Knew. Alice Hoffman is also the author of many other books, including The Invisible Hour. 05 Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come by Jessica Pan Pan is wonderfully honest, appealingly thoughtful, and often so so funny. I was happy spending time in her point of view throughout this book. I loved it. Jessica Pan was an introvert out of a job. Her closest friends had moved away, and she found herself lonely, living in another country, and feeling too reliant on her husband for her entire social life. Pan decided to deliberately put herself into extremely uncomfortable social situations for a year, and she fully commits. She does improv, approaches strangers on the Tube, goes on friend dates, attends networking events, takes a vacation alone (to a destination she doesn't learn until she's at the airport), and more. She regrets her one-year plan almost instantly but feels compelled to continue her terrifying exercises. Her interviews and experiences with others who mentor her journey in different ways could have felt disruptive or jarring but didn't; they added a layer to her story that I found interesting and often revelatory. I loved it and I'd read another book by her in a second. For my full review of this book, please see Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come. 6 Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano ​This story was so much more than I expected. Napolitano created an irresistible and true-feeling character in Edward. I loved this book. I kept thinking about it while I was doing other things, and I just wanted to get back to Edward to find out how things were going. Thankfully Napolitano didn’t rely solely on her book’s promising premise. She wrote the hell out of this and created an irresistible and true-feeling character in Edward. Edward tries on the mantle of taking responsibility for every life lost; he wallows in the despair of others and their hopes that he will pursue their loved ones’ lost dreams and right their wrongs; then he messily works out how to create his own lucky, unshackled, truest life. Nothing is too easy here, nor is it ever melodramatic in Napolitano’s hands. I was given an advance reader’s copy of this book by Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. For my full review, please see Dear Edward. Ann Napolitano is also the author of Hello Beautiful.

Bossy Favorites of the Month It's been a solid reading month for me. My favorite reads included several books from some of my very favorite authors: the next in a great historical fiction mystery series with a feminist heroine; a great lakeside summertime romance; a 1980s-set astronaut story with feminism and LGBTQ love; a Maine-set mystery solved by retired CIA operatives; an epic historical fiction fantasy told in several timelines featuring vampires; and historical fiction with a young woman passing as a boy to achieve more freedoms in Shakespeare's London. What are some of your favorite reads of July? 01 An Unexpected Peril by Deanna Raybourn While Veronica and Stoker stay close to home while entering into danger and solving the mysteries in book six of this series, Raybourn repeatedly evokes images of the fictional European country Alpenwald. Gruff Stoker conveys his adoration of Veronica in a poignant, lovely way. It's January 1889, and Veronica and her natural historian beau Stoker are working on a memorial exhibition showcasing the achievements of mountain climber Alice Baker-Greene. But evidence indicates to Veronica that Alice may have been murdered. And Princess Gisela of the Alpenwald, a dear friend of Alice's, goes missing just after Veronica shares her suspicion--requiring Veronica to pose as the princess in order to preserve a secret peace treaty that's being brokered. While Veronica and Stoker stick close to home for their adventures in this installment of the series, there's plenty of intrigue, and Raybourn evokes repeated images of mountain climbing in the Alpenwald, a fictional country sandwiched between Germany and France, as well as extensive forays into the country's traditions, political interests, and its royal family's interpersonal conflicts and loyalties. The LGBTQ+ love conveyed in the story is lovely, and Veronica's matter-of-fact approach to this relationship as well as cross-class romance is typical of her no-nonsense, pro-love (and, for her, anti-marriage) stance established in earlier books. The evolution of Stoker and Veronica's own relationship in this book is understated yet beautifully poignant; I teared up at one point when the gruff Stoker conveyed his feelings to Veronica. Raybourn is the author of A Curious Beginning , as well as the sequels A Perilous Undertaking , A Treacherous Curse , A Dangerous Collaboration , and A Murderous Relation . (There are currently nine books in the series, with a tenth scheduled for publication in 2026.) Raybourn is also the author of the wonderful title about retired middle-aged assassins, Killers of a Certain Age , and its sequel Kills Well with Others . For my full review of this book please see An Unexpected Peril . 02 One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune The main male protagonist was off-putting to me in his arrogance at first, but Carley Fortune is the best at developing a lakeside romance story with characters I root for and steamy, poignant, friendship-based relationships I love. This is a great summer read. Alice's career as a photographer really began the summer she spent with her grandmother Nan at family friends' lake house. Shy Alice watched more than she participated in lake life--and she took a photo of three smiling teenagers on a yellow boat, and it seemed to set everything else in motion. Now she's feeling disillusioned with the airbrushing and false scenes she's forced to create in her job rather than capturing something real. So when Nan falls and breaks her hip and needs a pick-me-up, Alice arranges for them to return to the cabin where she spent that pivotal summer. But handsome, mischievous Charlie Florek, one of the subjects of that long-ago photo, seems to be everywhere she turns--and she can't hide behind her lens anymore. Fortune drops some breadcrumbs regarding the Issue Sure to Keep Them Apart, which follows The Desire to Not Ruin the Friendship (a concern that seems heartbreakingly valid). The steamy scenes didn't invite involuntary squealing or cringing on my part--they couple is really drawn to each other, and there's a tantalizing teasing aspect to their slowing down the physical progression of the friends-with-benefits arrangement. I loved the eventual relationship between Charlie and Alice, and I loved their love. For my full review of this book please see One Golden Summer . Carley Fortune is also the author of Meet Me at the Lake  and Every Summer After   as well as This Summer Will Be Different. 03 Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid I love an astronaut story, and while Reid spent far more page time on relationships than on the astronaut or space aspects, there was plenty of each to go around in this novel that was the perfect book at the perfect time for me. I loved it. Joan has always been fascinated by the stars, and as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, she teaches her passion to college students. On the side, she shows her beloved young niece the sky and serves as a second parent alongside her sometimes-trying single-mother sister. When she sees an ad seeking for the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program, Joan becomes obsessed with being part of the 1980s training and with becoming one of the first women in space. The complicated interpersonal situations added wonderful depth to the complexities of astronauts' training, stresses, competition, and life-and-death goals of entering space. The women's fights to fully be part of a traditionally male-dominated field and the various ways in which they navigated this were particularly captivating to me. The carelessness that partially leads to the crisis in space felt unrealistic to me, and the high drama and gasping reveal regarding the pivotal space scene toward the end could have felt over the top, but as usual, I was putty in Taylor Jenkins Reid's hands, ready to embrace every bit of it. This was exactly the right story for me at the right time, and I hugged it to my chest when I finished, then immediately began telling everyone how much I loved it. Taylor Jenkins Reid is also the author of Carrie Soto Is Back , The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo , Malibu Rising , and Daisy Jones & the Six . You might also want to check out these other Bossy reviews of books about astronauts  and space . 04 The Summer Guests (Martini Club #2) by Tess Gerritsen In the second installment of the series, retired CIA agents build stronger bonds with each other in rural Maine while assisting (and sometimes running over) the local police chief to try to find a missing teen and untangle past unsolved mysteries. In book two of the Martini Club, the mystery at hand--a missing teen--draws in local citizens as well as the wealthy summer residents, their murky pasts (which are uncomfortably, distantly related to the aging former agents' own histories), and unsolved disappearances from decades earlier. Multiple suspects capture the attention of the police as well as the Martini Club, and the former agents' unorthodox investigations are both intriguing to witness and lead to some valuable discoveries. The progression of the meal-focused relationship between Jo and the Club is fun, as are Jo's growing respect for the Club's hunches (which keep things interesting, as they aren't always correct), her growing confidence in her own instincts, and her ability to attempt to corral the Club into an appropriate lane for assisting behind the scenes without crossing quite so may procedural lines. A growing affection between two members of the ex-CIA crowd is a secondary element but is sweet to see. I liked this installment even more than the first book in the series. It was a fast read that kept me guessing. Please click here  for my full review of The Summer Guests. This is the second book in Tess Gerritsen's Martini Club series. The first is The Spy Coast . If you're interested in stories set in Maine, you might like the titles on my Greedy Reading List Six Fascinating Books Set in Maine . 05 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab This wonderfully creepy lesbian vampire story is largely about female empowerment, but also about love, discovery, reinvention, and revenge. I loved each time period and the evolution of each strong female character. Schwab's vampire tale spans centuries, beginning in 1532 Santo Domingo de la Calzada as a young woman named Maria makes choices to shield her from being a man's pawn and vessel for children until her death--then enters into a future she never could have imagined. In 1827 London, naive young Charlotte lives a sheltered, lovely pastoral life, until an indiscretion results in her banishment to London society. There she encounters an intriguing widow with promises of freedom with deep repercussions. And in 2019 Boston, Alice is trying to break out of her shell at college, and a one-night stand feels like a daring start. But the evening leaves her forever changed, and she's bent on finding answers--and revenge. I enjoyed spending time in each time period. The storyline threading the three timelines together is deliciously intriguing, and a character that was initially a wilting flower finds her strength, her purpose, and her desire for vengeance, all of which is satisfying to witness. Click here   for my full review of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil . Schwab is also the author of The Fragile Threads of Power , Vengeful , and the wonderful Invisible Life of Addie LaRue , as well as the Shades of Magic series. (The first two books in that series are A Darker Shade of Magic  and A Gathering of Shadows , each of which I gave four Bossy stars. You can check out my review of book 3, A Conjuring of Light , here .) 06 Boy by Nicole Galland Galland offers a detailed peek into the London of Shakespeare's company and the life of starring "boy player" Alexander Cooke, his best girl Joan, who dresses as a boy to explore scientific pursuits, and the palace intrigue that occurs when their allies conflict with Queen Elizabeth. In Nicole Galland's historical fiction tale Boy , Alexander "Sander" Cooke is a famed, sought-after "boy player" in Shakespeare's company, and his roles skillfully playing lovely women have led highbrow ladies and gentlemen alike to seduce him with favors and attention. His apprenticeship is nearly over, and he has neither an assurance of steady work as a young man playing male roles with his company, nor a sponsor to support him. Joan Buckler is Sander's best friend. She's curious about everything and is the smartest person Sander knows. But her female sex holds her back from being able to find the knowledge she seeks, and she dresses as a boy to gain access to medical lectures and more. I wished for more behind-the-scenes peeks at Shakespeare's shows, and I was least interested in the political conflicts and drama, although they were essential to the conflict of the book. I loved the romantic connection between Joan and Sander, Joan's scientific pursuits--particularly the botany-related efforts she enters into with her eccentric friends, and how Galland deftly places the reader in the story's place and time with rich details. For my full review of Boy , please check out this link .

Great Rom-Com Reads I've been highlighting recently published romantic novels as well as those I've read in the past year, many of which are still highly in demand. If the library waitlists are feeling interminably long, you might want to check out these great novels published a little longer ago--so they'll be easier to check out. If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! Have you read any other rom-com or romantic novels that you loved? 01 Betting on You by Lynn Painter Lynn Painter delivers funny, charming banter and an opposites-attract tension in this heartwarming rom-com about divorce, trust, blended families, and vulnerability. In Lynn Painter's rom-com Betting on You, rule-following seventeen-year-old Bailey and sarcastic, joking Charlie meet at a fraught moment--they're both leaving Alaska and coping with their parents' divorces. They're polar opposites, and they drive each other crazy. Now they're living in the same hometown again, and, coincidentally, they're about to be working together at a bizarre hotel fun park. When Bailey and Charlie fake date in order to try to thwart the new relationship between Bailey's mom and her always-around boyfriend, Bailey realizes she's got feelings for Charlie. And Charlie's emotionally immature, but he's never let his guard down the way he does with Bailey. Painter delivers charming and funny banter, emotional growth, deep friendship, plausible missteps that keep the couple apart, heart-wrenching moments of vulnerability, and heartwarming looooove. Please click here for my full review of Betting on You. Lynn Painter is the author of another rom-com I adored, Better Than the Movies, as well as Nothing Like the Movies, Happily Never After, Accidentally Amy, Mr. Wrong Number, and other books I haven't yet read. 02 The Rule Book by Sarah Adams This love story about an emotionally sensitive NFL player and his quirky, irresistible female agent is a sweet second-chance romance perfect for light summer reading. Nora Mackenzie is a sports agent who's constantly fighting against misogyny and double standards as one of few women in the field. She's young and hungry--and thrilled that she's about to get her first really big client. But Nora and the client, NFL tight end Derek Pender, were college sweethearts, and Nora abruptly broke things off years ago. They haven't seen each other since. Derek is determined to make Nora so miserable, she'll quit her position as his agent, but Nora's never given up on anything in her life--except her youthful relationship with Derek. She's determined to look out for her career above all else. I love Nora's passion for her career and the single-mindedness that has led to her success. In concept, I also love her quirkiness and refusal to bend to societal pressures--whether by behaving in a more tough manner because she's a woman in a career where fewer women exist, or by using her femininity as a tool in that career. But her silly language and childlike manner grated on me, and I found it distractingly corny. I loved the fake marriage, the push and pull of career and love, and the second-chance romance. Click here for my full review of The Rule Book. 03 Gwen & Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher Lex Croucher's queer medieval rom-com--the author's debut young-adult novel--is an absolute gem; it's full of excellent banter and lots of heart. I smiled while reading this one. “Nobody else is ever going to care as much as you do about the things that you want, Gwendoline. So it's up to you --you can put them aside forever, if you can live with that, or you can put on your big-girl girdle and demand more for yourself.” It's hundreds of years after King Arthur's reign, and his descendant and namesake Arthur, a future lord and committed partier and social butterfly, has long been betrothed to the short-tempered princess Gwendoline. But Gwendoline and Arthur detest each other. And when they're forced to spend the summer together at Camelot to prepare for their upcoming nuptials, it doesn't take long for them to realize that Art has been kissing a boy and that Gwen has a crush on the only female knight in the kingdom. The premise of Lex Croucher's Gwen & Art Are Not in Love is irresistible, the pacing is great, and the banter is excellent--funny dialogue is a favorite element of mine. I adored the voices of the characters and witnessing their growth over the course of the story. Lex Croucher is also the author of Not for the Faint of Heart. For my full review, please see Gwen & Art Are Not in Love. 04 Love, Lists and Fancy Ships by Sarah Grunder Ruiz Sarah Grunder Ruiz serves up an irresistible rom-com with great banter and with interesting and difficult, complex issues of loss, grief, and responsibility at its heart. Jo Walker is a yacht stewardess. She fell into the job years ago while trying to find herself--after a youth in which her father died, her mother fell apart, her older sister Beth became pregnant by (and married) her beloved high school sweetheart--and after Jo moved in with the young married couple while she finished high school. But none of Jo's losses or disappointments or life experiences could have prepared her for the horrific, shocking loss of her young nephew Samson, Beth's youngest child (and Jo's birthday twin), in a biking accident. The tension that keeps apart Jo and Alex (a handsome, charming man new to town) feels plausible, and I accepted the difficulties each faces when considering a commitment to the other. I loved the best-friendship with Nina, the messy path of grief, and the imperfect characters all doing their best. I welcomed with open arms the happy ending served up by Sarah Grunder Ruiz. For my full review, please see Love, Lists and Fancy Ships. 05 I Hope This Doesn't Find You by Ann Liang Ann Liang's newest young adult rom-com pits high school nemeses against each other: one relentless perfectionist and people-pleaser and her effortlessly successful classmate. But neither is as perfect as they seem...except in being perfect for each other. In Ann Liang's I Hope This Doesn't Find You, Sadie Wren is perfect...on paper. She's valedictorian, school captain, and a model student. Sadie's one vice is writing scathing, no-holds-barred email drafts. She never sends them, but crafting the furious hypothetical replies to anyone who is frustrating her is helpfully cathartic. That is, until everyone--from her co-captain to her teachers to her classmates--knows how shockingly blunt the "real" Sadie is. And the only one who seems to embrace her accidental show of full honesty is her longtime nemesis, Julius. This young adult story is sweet and fun; the pacing often feels somewhat slapstick and frantic--as is the relentlessly ambitious, over-the-top super-pleaser Sadie herself. The feeling settles down when she finally begins to explore her feelings for Julius in a wonderfully sweet and romantic set of exchanges that feels all too brief. The vulnerability that Sadie and Julius allow each other to see at long last was lovely. Ann Liang is also the author of the wonderful fake-dating young adult novel This Time It's Real, as well as A Song to Drown Rivers and other titles. For my full review, check out I Hope This Doesn't Find You. 06 Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez Just for the Summer is another Jimenez story with wonderful banter and a romantic connection that's anchored in and shaped by incredibly complicated life circumstances. Abby Jimenez is wonderful at crafting a satisfying romance that's anchored in serious issues, and in Just for the Summer, she offers up an irresistible rom-com premise with weighty, messy, real-life-imperfect conflicts galore. Justin and Emma are strangers, but they both seem to have the same curse: after they break up with someone, the next person that person dates ends up being their soulmate. A Reddit thread and unlikely coincidences bring Justin and Emma into contact, and their initial spark is undeniable. The conflicts that repeatedly keep Emma and Justin from their happy-ever-after feel plausibly limiting, yet their affection and banter are adorable, and their inability to overcome the obstacles in their way is heartbreaking. I think Emma's best friend Maddy probably needs her own book (a la Christina Lauren's fantastic True Love Experiment spinoff for best friend Fizzy). I listened to Just for the Summer as an audiobook. Jimenez is also the author of The Night We Met, Part of Your World, Yours Truly, The Friend Zone, and The Happy-Ever-After Playlist. For my full review, please see Just for the Summer.

Six Favorite Nonfiction Reads These were my six favorite nonfiction reads from last year: a behind-the-scenes peek into the life of a paramedic; a horrifying look at a cluster of serial killers; the fascinating story of a couple shipwrecked and fighting for survival; a charming glimpse into the world of dog shows; a timely and illuminating book for young people (and those with limited knowledge on the subject, like me) about the Constitution; and a shockingly compelling and poignant title about tuberculosis and the world's interconnectedness from the brilliant John Green. If you like to read nonfiction, you might also like to check out some of my Bossy nonfiction reviews, or some of my Greedy Reading Lists of favorites (also accessible through that link). My roundup of nonfiction favorites from the year prior is here. If you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite nonfiction reads? 01 Frog: The Secret Diary of a Paramedic by Sally Gould Gould's memoir of her life as a paramedic is frank, captivating, often revolting, and disarmingly honest. She takes the reader on ride-alongs so vividly described, it's as though we're in the ambulance. She shares her pride in caring for patients, her deep frustrations, and she is open about her mental health struggles. Sally Gould's memoir is named after a darkly humorous term of affection for paramedics in Australia (frog, because everything a paramedic touches croaks). Gould grew up in Australia the daughter of a paramedic, and she follows in her father's footsteps, training to become a "frog" herself. In her memoir, Gould explores her early days of uncertainty, moments of panic, scenes of complete disgust, tragic endings, and inspiring moments in which her team's arrival saves a life. Gould takes the reader through the ups and downs of the job and is frank about her personal mental health challenges and how she coped with them as related to the difficulties of her career and lifestyle. This is a satisfyingly deep dive into Gould's behind-the-scenes experiences, including an often breakneck pace, trying emotions, extensive practical knowledge, interpersonal skills, ability to read the room, separation from emotion, and pride in a job capably done. This is Sally Gould's first book. I received a prepublication audiobook version of this title courtesy of Libro.fm and Simon & Schuster Australia. You might also be interested in Bossy reviews of books involving medical or health elements, or in Bossy memoirs I've loved. For my full review of this book please see Frog. 02 Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws that Affect Us Today by Cynthia and Sanford Levinson Cynthia and Sanford Levinson, a noted children's author and a constitutional scholar, have created a fascinating nonfiction book for young people--useful to readers of any age--that considers how the constitution was shaped, factors that continue to push its evolution, processes that guide our governance and laws, stumbling blocks toward progress, and how we can improve our guiding principles as our nation's needs continue to grow. Designed for young people, Fault Lines is illuminating for anyone looking to get up to speed on the Framers' considerations, why the Constitution was shaped the way it was, its evolution, the possibilities and barriers in place regarding changing it, our current, growing needs, and how all of this affects our day-to-day leadership, rights, and lives. Is a book for young people about the Constitution possibly the extent of the scope of my own current abilities to understand the ins and outs of all of this? Possibly, yes. Do the Levinsons' clear content along with the engaging book design (with graphics, examples from the past and present day, and plain language around challenges and opportunities) make for informative, entertaining, important reading? Yes. And does grasping the information contained in Fault Lines feel more relevant and essential than ever, as the current administration challenges and disregards the power of the Constitution and its impact on our lives in large-scale, destructive, and often terrifying ways? Definitely. Note that the newest edition of this title reflects relevant factors and events through early 2025. For my full review, please see Fault Lines in the Constitution. 03 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green Green's book is about tuberculosis, but it's also a view of our deep global interconnectedness, gross healthcare inequalities, the TB devastation that is still prevalent, and the possibility of both simple and comprehensive approaches that could eradicate the disease. In John Green's nonfiction book Everything Is Tuberculosis, he tells his story of befriending a young man, Henry, who was suffering from tuberculosis and living in a hospital in Sierra Leone. Green uses his tender eye and piercing analysis to explore the health care inequalities that allow the world's poorest citizens to disproportionately contract the incurable disease tuberculosis and to advocate for greater access to quality care and a search for a cure. John Green is also the author of the nonfiction collection of essays The Anthropocene Reviewed (which was one of my six favorite nonfiction reads the year I read it) as well as other novels. For my full review, please see Everything Is Tuberculosis. This title was one of My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads across all genres. 04 A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst Sophie Elmhirst's A Marriage at Sea is the true story of a couple whose sailing trip to New Zealand becomes a fight for survival. This is nonfiction that seems too incredible to be true, and I was hooked on the details of their 118-day-long struggles on the ocean. Sophie Elmhirst revisits a decades-old true story that she crafts like fiction, skillfully using dry firsthand accounts and subsequent interviews to build a fascinating, fluid, compelling nonfiction book about a couple whose ambitious sailing trip from England to New Zealand was abruptly halted when a whale breached beneath their sailboat, capsizing it. Elmhirst manages to shape a suspenseful nonfiction work despite the Maralyn and Maurice's significant periods of isolation, struggle, and repetitive tasks. She delves into their inner lives, exploring the workings of their relationship and fleshing out an intriguing dynamic against the unforgiving backdrop of the endless-seeming expanse of ocean and 118 days of clawing for survival. The story's pacing doesn't flag, although the tale sets a slower tempo as Maurice and Maralyn settle into a daily pattern of fishing, gathering water, and struggling to keep their minds occupied--a measure that is largely driven by Maralyn. Maurice is frank about his deteriorating emotional state and his reliance upon Maralyn's unfailing determination. The couple's evolving resourcefulness is incredible to witness, and it's fascinating to read about the renewed vigor with which particularly Maralyn faces each new, potentially deadly, challenge. For my full review, please check out A Marriage at Sea. 05 Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser I shuddered as I read (during daylight hours only) Caroline Fraser's painstaking accounts of the shockingly numerous serial killers who emerged from the Pacific Northwest and the proposal that extensive heavy metal industrial pollution in the region contributed to their flawed development, horrifying impulses, and killing sprees. File my reading of this nonfiction book under Why Didn't I Listen to My Inner Voice...and Not Read This? I was intrigued by the environmental factors Fraser tied to developmental disruptions and the emergence of a large number of eventual serial killers in heavily polluted portions of the Pacific Northwest. I was overly ambitious and thought I could handle any nonfiction book topic. I lied to myself about how much horrifying material I could stomach--and how much more disturbing I would find it because the content is all exhaustively researched and true. I forgot that getting frightened when I read at night disrupts my sleep. I didn't think about how I don't actually like to take in extensive information about murder and psychopaths. Anyhoo! In Murderland, Caroline Fraser puts forth a fascinating link (she's not the first to do so, but her painstakingly detailed account offers a cohesive, extensive argument) between the numerous mass-murderers who took shape in the 1970s and 1980s and grew up to terrorize the Pacific Northwest--and, in some cases, other areas of the country--and an era in which devastating amounts of toxic pollutants were pumped into the air, water, and soil there. I could have been satisfied with a long Atlantic-style article on these topics, but Fraser's writing is lovely and her turns of phrase are insightful and often poetic, which helped me continue reading the difficult material and atrocities here. For my full review, please check out Murderland. 06 Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show by Tommy Tomlinson Dogland explores what makes a show dog "best" and what happens behind the scenes of dog shows in this intriguing, good-natured, and heartwarming look at one promising champion and his caring handler as they strive to win Westminster Dog Show. Tommy Tomlinson's playful, intriguing nonfiction Dogland takes an engaging look at dogs--particularly show dogs, but also beloved pets as well as humans' connections to these onetime wild beasts. Reporter and SouthBound podcast host Tomlinson found himself watching the Westminster Dog Show and wondering, Are show dogs happy? What's life like for a dog whose life is all about grooming, standing still, and moving in an orderly fashion around a ring? And: How did these wild beasts end up here, anyway? In a fascinating, heartwarming, lovely account, Tomlinson spends three years traveling dog shows across the country, using backstage access to witness the hard work, discipline, obsession, and affection of "the Fancy." At times he good-naturedly highlights the absurdity of this world, at least for those looking in from the outside, and draws occasional correlations to the satiric comedy Best in Show--a movie that inspires mixed reactions from those in the competition scene. Dogland is often fun, intriguing in its peeks behind the scenes, and heartwarming in the deep dog-human connections that Tomlinson highlights. For my full review, please check out this link.

Thankful for Five-Star Bossy Favorites I'm always thankful for books and reading, so I wanted to reshare some of my five-star reads from the past in case you need a great long-weekend read or a book gift idea for the holidays. I always hope to love a book, but a five-star Bossy read is fairly rare. A book I rate five stars often makes me feel all the feelings, it's typically intriguing and makes me think, and it's usually tough for me to put down. You might also like the books on my past Greedy Reading Lists Thankful for Five-Star Bossy Reads and Six Five-Star Bossy Reads to Check Out . Or you can search the site for my Five-Star B ook Reviews . Which books have been standouts for you? Do you have all-time favorite reads that you steadily recommend to others? 01 The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin Cronin's debut novel explores mortality, vulnerability, surprising moments of joy and reflection, an irresistible young protagonist, and a wonderful array of friends who are like family. Lenni and Margot  was one of my top twelve reads the year I read it. Seventeen-year-old Lenni Pettersson lives in the terminal ward at the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital. Her life expectancy isn't long, but Lenni still has a lot she wants to do and be. In the hospital's arts and crafts class, she meets 83-year-old Margot, a spirited, rebellious new friend. Collectively they've been around 100 years, but this just doesn't feel like enough, and they each want to leave their mark on the world. With the help of Father Arthur, the hospital chaplain, and a kind palliative care nurse, the friends make a plan to create one hundred paintings, one to represent each of their years of life. This goal adds structure to the novel, but the story is far richer than the characters' mission to create art. I don’t usually read books again, but I could use a copy of my own to highlight upon rereading. The Sparrow took a little time to get going for me, but then I was blown away. If you're interested in books that explore mortality, you might want to check out Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality . Another novel I loved that involves a precocious, wise, reflective, tough young protagonist is This Is All He Asks of You . For my full review of this book, please see The One Hundred Years of Lennie and Margot . Marianne Cronin has a new book coming out in December 2024, Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love . 02 White Houses by Amy Bloom White Houses  is gorgeously written, exhaustingly researched historical fiction about Eleanor Roosevelt and her love, Lorena Hickock, and it was a five-star read for me. Oh, this book! Bloom’s writing is exquisite. The characters in White Houses  are funny, heartbreaking, and feel alive. I loved the behind-the-scenes peeks at the residential rooms of the Roosevelt White House (which, Bloom recounts in interviews, functioned more like a not-very-fancy boarding house at the time). The dialogue is incredible, and the faulted main players are irresistible. The final paragraphs of the book in "first friend" Lorena Hickock’s voice were so gorgeous, they made me want to weep. What a satisfyingly rich world and story. Bloom is also the author of the heartbreakingly beautiful In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss , Away , Lucky Us , Come to Me: Stories , and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories . Click here for my full review of White Houses . 03 The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason The Winter Soldier  is a World War I tale full of medical details and lovely, unlikely bonds. This is a five-star read from the author of North Woods . Lucius is a young medical student when World War I sweeps across Europe. With romantic notions in his head about noble work in a field hospital filled with brilliant surgeons, he enlists and heads to his post in the remote Carpathian Mountains. But there he finds one solitary nurse, Sister Margarite, bravely keeping together the makeshift clinic, which has been decimated by typhus. The other doctors have all left. Lucius is surrounded by grave injuries but has never even wielded a scalpel He'll learn more from Sister Margarite--who he's falling for--than he ever could have in his classes. She's been building an immense wealth of practical knowledge while trying to save the broken soldiers. This was wonderful. The details of World War I injuries and methods of treatment were fittingly grim and sometimes gruesome, but Mason's writing is beautiful and evocative, conveying the cold and brutal nature of war and loss, the chilling nature of acts done in coldhearted necessity, and the warm, promising hope of love. For my full review, please see The Winter Soldier . You might also be interested in other reads with World War I settings . 04 Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams Lucinda Williams offers a gritty, honest, captivating, spare yet fully developed memoir in which she explores her musical influences and influential high and low moments in her personal life. In Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You , songwriter, singer, and musician Lucinda Williams shares stories of her childhood, her musical influences, and pivotal moments in her career and personal life. Williams takes us along as she digs into her life's trajectory and the various conflicts, explorations, realizations, and challenges that have shaped her. Her insights into her mindset and her creativity are often offbeat, and they always feel thoughtful. She writes songs about "sex, love, and the state of the world," and in one instance describes musical freedom as feeling like everything is “uncorked." As she digs into the inspirations for her music she quotes her own lyrics--along with, occasionally, others' poems--and it all feels like truth-telling poetry--in her case, often set to music. Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You  was wonderful--spare yet fully developed, often surprising, and always intriguing. For my full review, please click here . You can also check out other memoirs I've read --and more musicians' memoirs . 05 Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister McAllister offers a smart, intriguing, twisty story that plays with time and offers second chances, revelations, betrayals, deep connections, and an unusual route to uncovering the truth. I loved it. Gillian McAllister's twisty mystery Wrong Place Wrong Time  plays with time, and I love books that play with time. The story begins with a mother awaiting her teenage son's return home late one night. She peers out the window to see him walking down the street--then she sees that he is armed, and to her horror, she sees him kill another man on the street. But when she awakens the next morning bracing to face the living nightmare her family has begun living in, she's relieved to find that her son hasn't killed anyone, he hasn't been arrested, and in fact, none of last night's events have happened after all. She must be losing her mind. But she knows that last night was real. Somehow she's reliving yesterday again. She really and truly is. She can't explain what's happened, but she quickly realizes that now she may be able to stop the murder before it occurs. Can she shift the future by changing the past? The story was fascinating and touching and chilling and sweet. I absolutely loved it. Please click here for my full review of Wrong Place, Wrong Time . And for more books I've reviewed that play with time, check out these titles . 06 You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld Sittenfeld shapes fully realized, fascinating characters that stuck with me in the ten stories of You Think It, I'll Say It . I loved it and rated the collection five stars. At the start of this collection I was concerned that this was going to be a short story collection about people making poor choices, and I have loooots of trouble and get verrrry nervous reading those situations. But Sittenfeld has a fascinating way of turning situations on their heads and making the reader sympathetic to absurd, heartbreaking, sometimes dramatic everyday situations, as she does here. The ten stories in You Think It, I'll Say It explore expectations related to gender and relationships while Sittenfeld builds characters whose lives are shaped by missed connections, coincidences--and the aforementioned faulty decision-making. After I finished reading, I kept thinking about the characters and their realizations, compromises, and sometimes their resignation in the face of imperfect circumstances. For my full review, please see You Think It, I'll Say It . You can click here for my review of Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy , here for my Bossy take on American Wife , and here  for Show Don't Tell: Stories . If you enjoy short story collections, you might like to check out Six Short Story Collections to Wow You  and Six More Short Story Collections I Loved .

Six Bossy Sci-Fi Favorites I'm still mining my reading for favorites from the past year, and this is my only science fiction roundup. If you've missed my prior lists, take a look on the blog! You can also explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from the past year. If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite science fiction reads, whether from the past year or beyond? 01 Murder by Memory (Dorothy Gentleman #1) by Olivia Waite The playful tone and clever main protagonist in Olivia Waite's science-fiction novella make for an appealing mystery and lay the groundwork for subsequent books. In Olivia Waite's slim science-fiction mystery, Dorothy wakes up...in a body that's not her own. It's uncomfortable but not unheard of. Still, Dorothy was supposed to be in stasis for years after suffering an emotional loss. Yet even more concerning than her situation is the spaceship HMS Fairweather's current state. An electrical storm has knocked systems offline, and even worse, it seems that someone has deliberately been sabotaging the Library, where the backup for each passenger on the ship is stored. In this outer-space-set mystery, Dorothy must figure out who's behind the destruction and how to save the ship's passengers from further danger. I'm somewhat in love with Dorothy's no-nonsense approach to the issues at hand, her striding manner, and her clever reading of a situation's nuances. She is often exasperated and very funny. The tone of this novella (it's 112 pages) is playful--it reminded me somewhat of Becky Chambers's science fiction--and it also addresses poignant, relevant aspects of the human condition while giving the (correct) impression that happy endings are at hand. I enjoyed this very much and wished it were a full-length novel. For my full review of this book please see Murder by Memory. 02 Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz This short novel explores an alternate-history, near-future, post-war San Francisco in which robots come online and create a noodle shop that bridges the gaps between themselves and humans. Newitz offers a cozy story of an unlikely safe haven for all. In a San Francisco of the near future, a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned kitchen after a war in which California split from the rest of the United States. Looking for a purpose, they begin to do what they do best: cook. The robots suffer from prejudice and bear the brunt of fear-mongering from much of society. But they manage to touch the lives of those in their neighborhood looking for reliable, high-quality food by producing the best (robot-) hand-pulled noodles around and offering a charming takeout storefront. When a series of vindictive, one-star reviews threaten their business, they must figure out who has it in for them and why. Being pushed to their limits calls for exceptional sleuthing, creativity, and efficiency. Without fear of ruin, each of them wouldn't so fully embrace their roles and abilities, bond as deeply--nor create the safe haven for humans and robots alike that is a gift to all. I love a science-fiction story in which elements of humanity are explored, I love an alternate-history tale, and I love a chosen-family element. Newitz provides all three in a cozy story that charmed me through both funny and poignant moments. This was sweet and strange, and I really liked it. I received a prepublication edition of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group. Please check out my full review of Automatic Noodle. 03 Volatile Memory (Volatile Memory #1) by Seth Haddon Seth Haddon's slim science fiction debut offers action and a risky space quest, revenge, and love, but it's also a poignant, lovely story about being seen for your true self, being vulnerable, and thinking beyond traditional standards. Wylla's ship has seen better days, and she's desperate for a break. When she catches wind of a valuable, mysterious piece of technology on another planet, she banks on her wiliness and speed to beat other treasure hunters to it. Wylla's own mask is outdated, and scavenging the cutting-edge mask would give her powers she couldn't have dreamed of. Masks bestow upon the wearers the instincts, abilities, and reaction times of the animals after which they're modeled. But the mask Wylla is after also turns out to be sentient, and if she's going to wear the mask, she'll need to work with the mask's creator and help it seek vengeance for past injustices. I love a ragtag crew on a quest (you can check out other titles with this theme that I've reviewed here), and Volatile Memory is action-packed entertainment, but more importantly it's poignant, exploring issues of bodily autonomy, transgender characters, characters without bodies but with sentient selves, duty and loyalty, revenge and ruthlessness, and mercy and grace. This slim science fiction novel packs a punch. I can't wait to read more of this immersive world and of Haddon's compelling story. For my full review of this novel, please check out this link. 04 Hum by Helen Phillips The dystopian future of Hum is haunting in its familiar elements, its plausible, terrible climate-change effects, the extreme reliance on technology, and the chilling power of the ubiquitous AI hums who are constantly manipulating the extensive information they gather. After years working to advance artificial intelligence in a near-future dystopian world decimated by climate change, May's own job becomes obsolete. Intelligent robots, "hums," have taken over much of the workforce, with their relentless advertisements and sales pitches, manipulative impressions of caring (also meant to promote sales of various items), and their extensive surveillance capabilities. May finds herself willing to surgically alter her facial features for a sum that might keep her family financially stable for a time. But when she dares to dream of a brief family escape to a nature-filled wonderland (molded on tales they've heard of a lush, past world), her lack of control over her family's fate is shown to be terrifyingly tenuous. The power of social media and the impact of resulting perceptions in the book are chilling--and chillingly familiar. For my full review, please check out Hum. 05 The Last Hour Between Worlds (Echo Archives #1) by Melissa Caruso I may not have followed all of the echoes in time, creatures convincingly impersonating other creatures, or protagonists' complex, evolving motivations, but I adored the characters, their connection, their banter, and the amount of heart in the story. Kembral Thorne, expert investigator, is on leave and bleary-eyed from single-parenting her newborn, and she's questioning why she agreed to come to a work New Year's Eve party in the first place. But when people start dropping dead around her, she realizes that someone is plunging the party down through layers of reality, through echoes of time in which strange events loosely repeat themselves--and seem to be building in intensity. In fact, the whole world seems to be in terrible danger. It looks like Kembral will have to work tonight after all--and, even worse, she'll need to cooperate with her nemesis Rika Nonesuch, the cat burglar, in order to try to save the world. I love Caruso's writing style, her character-building, and the way the characters relate to each other. The hard-fought connection between Rika and Kembral (and the rich past that's revealed) had me swooning, and their banter is sometimes grumpy, hesitantly vulnerable, and often darkly funny. I predict that I'll be reading all of Caruso's other books as well. For Bossy reviews of many other books that play with time--this is one of my favorite elements--you can check out the books and lists at this link. Click here for my full review of this novel. 06 All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall Nonie is the young protagonist of this stark climate-change dystopian future, in which her small community fights to survive and to preserve history--from the roof of the American Museum of Natural History--before a horrific storm sends them fleeing up the Hudson, encountering kindness and nefarious groups in their quest for a new home. In a dystopian future in which the glaciers have melted, Nonie, a young girl with a gift for feeling the water, coming storms, and weather, lives in a largely deserted New York City with her family. Their settlement is on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH, or "Amen), and they hunt and gather in Central Park. They must be careful, as packs of feral dogs--and packs of desperate humans, the Lost--will try to take what they can get to survive. Along with her parents' researcher friends, her family helps try to save and further the exhibits of human history and science. The climate-change novel is powerful, disturbing, and, starkly lovely in its stripped-away love and loyalty. The story keeps in the forefront the looming dangers, the fear of disease and ill intent, and the bone-weary fatigue involved in simply fighting to survive--and I couldn't ever forget that the enemy, the deadly monster here, is the human race that destroyed its planet. I received a prepublication edition of this title courtesy of St. Martin's Press and NetGalley. Land of Milk and Honey, The Great Transition, and The Light Pirate are three other climate-change novels that I found fascinating. For my full review please check out All the Water in the World.

Powerful Books about the Experiences of Immigrants We've had violent Border Patrol activity in our city this week, with people snatched from places of work and off the street because of the color of their skin. Many are suffering and afraid in the face of this discriminatory kidnaping, and tens of thousands of children have been absent from public school, too frightened to attend. So it feels like an opportune time to highlight just a few powerful stories about or by immigrants. These four fiction works and two nonfiction titles resonated deeply with me. Each offers glimpses into the challenges and triumphs of leaving one land and tackling another; striving to hold on to culture while navigating unfamiliar pitfalls; and facing the fears and joys of seeking a new life in a new place. 01 Pachinko by Min Jin Lee In the early 1900s, a teenager falls for a silver-tongued stranger on the coast of Korea. But when the relationship falters, she flees into a marriage with a sickly traveling minister and escapes to Japan, setting in motion the events that will shape the generations to come. Noa didn’t care about being Korean when he was with her; in fact, he didn’t care about being Korean or Japanese with anyone. He wanted to be, to be just himself, whatever that meant; he wanted to forget himself sometimes. Pachinko is a sweeping generational story of hardship, sacrifice, and fifty years of Korean-Japanese cultural conflict beginning in the early twentieth century, as seen through the experiences of one family. The many details of daily life (food, dress, tradition) in Korea and Japan made the almost-500-page story come alive for me. 02 The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya Wow. Wamariya writes beautifully and brutally honestly about her journey of fleeing from Rwanda and through six other African countries—with her tough, hustling older sister Claire—during and after the Rwandan genocide. In The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After , Wamariya recalls her experiences through her childlike point of view, which allows for a painfully pure set of painful memories, betrayals, horrors, and sometimes a steeled numbness. Wamariya shares her views of the world, her often jarring experiences in the US—with her sister and family on weekends in inner city Chicago and her weekday life and schooling in wealthy Kenilworth, then Hotchkiss and Yale and beyond—and her search to help other refugees’ stories be known and for her own peace. The author's tone and voice is like poetry at times, raw and spare and true. 03 In the Country We Love: My Family Divided by Diane Guerrero The heart of Diane Guerrero's story is powerful: a hardworking family is preyed upon by criminals' financially ruinous scams against undocumented workers; the family members experience years of constant fears of deportation; and then they must face the shocking potential reality of deportation itself. Guerrero's interest in drama and her later fame ultimately help buoy her up despite her personal agony and family heartbreak, and she ultimately becomes an activist for immigration reform. Meanwhile, Guerrero is young and often sounds like it as she flits from topic to topic in her account of her life and especially her experiences as an actress in Orange Is the New Black . The details of her immigrant family's challenges, struggles, and strength were the elements I found most affecting about In the Country We Love . 04 The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob When practical surgeon Thomas begins speaking aloud and at length to his long-dead Indian relatives, his daughter Amina is called home to try to soothe him and help her mother figure out what's going on. In The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing , Jacob alternates between the past and present, India and Seattle, shaping the stories of each of the family members Thomas is conversing with and ultimately telling the story of an extended family and its many ups and downs. The title may be a little self-conscious, but the book itself is darkly funny, with wonderfully paced dialogue and compelling characters' lives you can get lost in. The title may be a little self-conscious, but the book itself is darkly funny, with wonderfully paced dialogue and compelling characters' lives you can get lost in. Jacob writes beautiful meditations on allowing oneself to either be haunted by the past or embrace its everyday presence in your life; accepting fateful choices and their ongoing impact; carving out an identity that both encompasses and is separate from a family's immigration, ethnicity, and familial ties; and letting go. 05 Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli Because—how do you explain that it is never inspiration that drives you to tell a story, but rather a combination of anger and clarity? How do you say: No, we do not find inspiration here, but we find a country that is as beautiful as it is broken, and we are somehow now part of it, so we are also broken with it, and feel ashamed, confused, and sometimes hopeless, and are trying to figure out how to do something about all that. This is a long essay (but a short book) illustrating the complex behind-the-scenes challenges and tragedies surrounding the child migration crisis in the US. Luiselli structures Tell Me How It Ends around the forty questions interpreters ask of undocumented children during their intake interviews upon arrival in the country. She explores the contradictions between potential safety and a future for immigrants and a reality that is more brutal and uncertain than the children and their parents may have feared. ​ 6 A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum In A Woman Is No Man , Etaf Rum explores the often powerless and essentially voiceless statuses of her female characters within their conservative Arab culture, both in Palestine and as immigrants and first-generation Americans in New York. Much of this is dark. Yet there are bright points: some rare friendships emerge, sisters build intense loyalty to each other, girls and women find joy in secret reading and in books, women find strength and demand truth rather than secrecy, and there are occasional breaks to freedom. The details Rum provides as a thread throughout the book of the food, spices, and meals that create much of the structure of the women’s days are wonderful. A Woman Is No Man ultimately explores the superhuman drive and bravery required by Rum's female characters--but also many other real-life women in comparable situations--to write a new history, one in which they enjoy basic freedoms and a voice. For my full review of this book, please see A Woman Is No Man .

Six Great Australian Reads Fridays are for highlighting books I've loved, and I have a thing for books set in Australia (this is illustrated by my demonstrated Jane Harper obsession alone; two of her books are listed here and I stand by this wholeheartedly). Side note: Am I using "fair dinkum" correctly? I have a feeling someone will correct me if I'm wildly off base here. If you've read any of the books mentioned here, I'd love to hear what you think! Do you have any favorite reads set in Australia? 01 Exiles (Aaron Falk #3) by Jane Harper The third in Jane Harper's Aaron Falk series offers procedural detail, a lush Australian setting, and character development I found heartwarming and immensely satisfying. I love Aaron Falk stories and I loved the twisty interconnectedness of the characters in Exiles . Harper allows for Falk to develop more fully as a character--as a friend, a romantic interest, a father figure, and a detective. Yet she allows for new opportunities for him that felt real and possible, which I again loved. I wasn't ever sure who was responsible for the multiple tragedies at the heart of the story, and the resolutions make sense. Meanwhile Harper explores loyalty, procedural details related to the past and near past, beginnings and endings, and looooove. Jane Harper's The Dry (Aaron Falk #1) is set in small-town Australia with dark secrets and twists and turns, and she offers more of her excellent pacing in Force of Nature (Aaron Falk #2). I'm in for all Jane Harper and all Aaron Falk stories! Exiles was the right mystery at the right time for me. For my full review, check out Exiles . You can find my other Jane Harper reviews here . 02 The Wife and the Widow by Christian White White's twisty mystery is set against the backdrop of an unforgiving winter on an Australian island, with two women attempting to piece together their husbands' secrets and lies. Christian White's The Wife and the Widow offers two intersecting storylines centering around female protagonists, family secrets, shame, and hidden selves. The tone of the story is shaped by its setting: an unforgiving winter on an Australian island. The perspectives alternate by chapter: Kate is a widow who uncovers her dead husband's secret life and must come to terms with it, while Abby is an island local whose husband has hidden something significant, and she fears it is his guilt. Only when the two women's worlds intersect can they piece together the full stories of their husbands' lives and understand the impact of their lies. White offers cleverness with timelines that create an intriguing twist, and I didn’t predict the denouement. The amateur taxidermy was fascinating and horrifying. For my full review, check out The Wife and the Widow . 03 The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton Morton offers a Secret Garden -type tale for grown-ups, with twisty stories connected across time. Cassandra is devastated. Her beloved grandmother Nell has just died, and Cassandra's life has felt shaky since a terrible accident a decade earlier. When Cassandra learns that she has inherited a book of dark fairy tales from Eliza Makepeace—the Victorian authoress who disappeared mysteriously in the early twentieth century—she begins a quest to discover the truth about her history, her family, and everything she thought she knew about her life. The Forgotten Garden was over 500 pages and I was engrossed the whole way through. This was like a Secret Garden for grown-ups, with intertwined, mysterious stories from 1900, 1975, and 2005 and a vivid setting, interesting characters, and enough twists to keep you guessing. Morton is also the author of The House at Riverton, The Forgotten Garden, The Distant Hours, The Secret Keeper, The Lake House, The Clockmaker's Daughter , and Homecoming. 04 Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton The emotions and drives of the story feel real, but the tone is darkly playful. I loved spending time with main protagonist Eli as he navigated tough situations and emerged with hope. Eli Bell is a young man in a tough spot. His father's out of the picture, his mother's in jail, his stepfather is gone, and his best friend and most solid source of advice is a convicted felon and legendary prison escapee, Slim. Eli's beloved older brother August is brilliant, but he never speaks. Things are complicated. Oh, and there's a secret panel in the back of the wardrobe at Eli's house. Behind the panel is a tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel is a room. In the room is a red telephone, and the male voice on the line gives Eli advice. Who is the man? Can he be trusted? Is any of this even real? Eli lives in a bleak, distant suburb of Brisbane, Australia. He wants to grow up and become a journalist, but for now his main goal is trying not to attract too much attention or bring any trouble down on himself or his brother. Trent's debut novel sifts through everyday brutality, corruption, and the general neglect of people and possessions and reveals imperfect goodness and hope. Boy Swallows Universe has many larger-than-life characters, especially its villains. Despite the desperate behaviors of the adults in Eli's life (and the terrible consequences he suffers because of them), he emerges as a fantastic, oddball, singularly heroic character I loved spending time with. For my full review, check out Boy Swallows Universe . 05 Only Killers and Thieves by Paul Howarth This story was often brutal to read, but it was beautifully written, in a style that felt perfectly suited for the stark Australian outback setting. Only Killers and Thieves is set in the Australian outback at the end of the 19th century. It centers around one family’s conflicts with crooked and powerful neighbors; cruel and aggressive Native Police aiming to eradicate the aboriginal people; the killing drought; and each other. One poor judgment leads to another, foolish choices end in bloodshed, and one brother makes justifications for his actions and feels no remorse, while the other brother feels crushed by it all. Howarth explores questions such as: Can people really change? Is remorse useful, and does it make a person more redeemable? Can a person’s character or morality be decided in a moment, or in a series of defining moments? Toward the end of Only Killers and Thieves , we see messy second chances take shape, a little retribution, and an attempt at a changed existence—but the haunting memories of the past creep in relentlessly. For my full review, check out Only Killers and Thieves . 06 The Lost Man by Jane Harper Harper's mysteries read like twisty character-driven Westerns set in Australia, and things aren’t always what they seem. Nathan and Bub have always had their differences, but they come together to grieve the loss of their brother Cam. Cam had been bothered by something before he died unexpectedly in the Australian outback desert, but was his death really the out-of-character suicide it was meant to look like--or did someone kill him? Nathan is no detective, but he owes it to Cam not to give up until he figures out what happened. Harper skillfully builds the pool of potential culprits for Nathan to examine in this story of uncovering truths, family history, loyalty, stubbornness, and love. Her books read like Westerns to me, and her sometimes spare tone suits the setting, the stark situations in which she places her characters, and the straightforward characters themselves. Things aren’t what they seem in The Lost Man , but Harper isn’t manipulative or tricky, either. I thought this was great. For my full review, check out The Lost Man . You can find my other Jane Harper reviews here . I listed this book in the Greedy Reading List The Six Best Mysteries I Read Last Year .

Six Bossy Literary Fiction Favorites I'm still mining my reading for the Bossy best of the best from the past year. If you've missed my prior lists, take a look on the blog! You can explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from last year. If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite literary fiction reads, whether from the past year or beyond? 01 What We Can Know by Ian McEwan Ian McEwan's literary fiction looks back upon our present with a cutting 2119 eye. An enthused future academic and a contemporary poet's put-upon wife trade points of view to illuminate across two timelines a calculated rewriting of history, our brave and hubristic present-day existence, and fictional yet hauntingly plausible dangers. In What We Can Know, we're introduced to characters living in a 2119, post-global-warming, post-nuclear war existence in which the population has been cut by more than half, inland seas spread across the globe, and much of the world's variation, richness, and natural world no longer exist. Within this timeline, Tom Metcalfe, one of our main protagonists, is an academic fascinated by the past (the years surrounding our present day). In particular, he is obsessed with a famous poet named Blundy's ambitious 2014 poem, the single copy of which was read aloud for the (obtuse, grumpy, belligerent) poet's wife's birthday, then lost to time. Early on, I found the academic focus somewhat tedious, but then the story builds into unexpected, often dark layers. The tone of the book is quiet, shadowy, and reflective, but there are rich, sordid, often unexpected twists beneath the largely academic, intellectual exercises and discussions. Affairs, theft, lies, murder, negligence leading to death, drug-addled decision-making, and terrible mistakes are all essential components of the novel, yet the pacing does not charge along; this is a slow creep through the surface to often-wretched underbellies. Ian McEwan is also the author of Atonement, On Chesil Beach, Saturday, Amsterdam, and other books. You can click here for my full review of What We Can Know. 02 I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman Harpman's slim novel poses a mysterious situation without promising concrete explanations. Our main protagonist knows little about her situation or location, yet persists in her quest for answers and builds a rich inner life filled with wonder. Forty women (one is a young girl, our main protagonist) live year after year as prisoners in an underground cage. Male guards come and go, feeding the women minimal rations and never speaking. The women have no recollection of how they came to be in this place, and no information is forthcoming about why they are trapped there. They are not allowed to touch each other but may speak, and to bond and pass the time, they share stories of their past lives, bicker over infinitesimal variations in how they may prepare their food or sew their own clothing, and simply kill time until their almost certain death inside the cell. Then a blasting alarm sounds, the nearest guard drops his keys and flees, and the women scramble for an escape they never anticipated. But what awaits them on the other side of the bunker doors? The novel's tone doesn't assure a satisfying set of answers as to why the women were chosen for this imprisonment, insight into what its purpose might be, or details as to its location. Yet I was intrigued by the post-apocalyptic, puzzling situation and by the main protagonist's persistence and rich inner life, which exists in stark contrast to the physical barrenness that seems to surround her. For my full review, please see I Who Have Never Known Men. For more postapocalyptic and dystopian stories I've Bossily reviewed, please check out the titles here. 03 Clear by Carys Davies Davies's slim, luminous, heartbreaking novel sets a story of isolation and human connection against the brutal removal of impoverished citizens from the land in mid-19th century Scotland. Davies sets her stark, beautiful story Clear against the backdrop of the Scottish Clearances of the 19th century, in which impoverished citizens were driven off their land. John Ferguson, a minister in need of funds for his new church accepts the job (against the advice of his wife) of evicting Ivar, the sole inhabitant of a remote island off the northern coast of Scotland in 1843. A series of events leads from disaster to recovery, to connection and secrets, to a surprising set of revelations. The men develop a tender, heartwarming friendship separate from class, background, intellect, and societal expectations. John, at a distance from worries about his congregation and the future of Presbyterianism, as well as from his kind wife, sinks into Ivar's daily rhythm of working on the land, caring for animals, and finding wonder in nature. Time passes as though in a vacuum, and the men's need for human connection overshadows all else. By the time John's wife appears--fresh from a rough sea journey, inspired to travel by a sense that John was in danger--the resolution feels heartbreaking, heartwarming, and utterly surprising in its generosity and departure from societal norms. For my full review of this book please see Clear. 04 O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker O Caledonia is a modern classic, literary fiction that encompasses darkly funny passages and tragic consequences set against a gloomy Scottish landscape that serves as a key character, it's so essential to the tone of the novel. Barker's novel features Janet, a misunderstood, mocked, badly treated young woman coming of age in a family of obtuse, rigid, unkind members living in a gothic, ramshackle castle in Scotland. Janet's only ally is her eccentric old Aunt Lila, who is herself powerless and in danger of being thrust from the family. Boarding school leads to further ostracization and irritating demands upon Janet's time, when she'd prefer to lose herself in literature and avoid social interaction altogether. This is darkly funny, with a surprisingly startling and tragic setup for O Caledonia's immersive, atmospheric story. I found the bookends that set the stage for (and close the loop on) a character's demise distracting, but I was captivated by the story inside. Each attempt Janet makes to be her true self, delve into her interests, or behave naturally ends in a tragic reprimand or a disastrous set of consequences. She is punished for wanting, for knowing, and for achieving. Her family could be said to be paralyzed by societal norms if their imaginations weren't so lacking; no other routes appear to occur to them, so they plod cluelessly, and often cruelly, forward. The bleak, unforgiving setting is as present as another character, with its dead orchard stretching into the distance; whipping, unrelenting wind; and dark, cold days. For my full review, please see O Caledonia. 05 The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr Carr's newest novel is a captivating series of character studies within a tightly knit Irish seaside community in the late 1900s. While characters struggle to make ends meet, support each other, and avoid giving in to the least generous parts of themselves, tragedies and wonders shape their community in this lovely, heartbreaking and heart-wrenching tale. In a seaside Irish town in the 1970s, a baby is washed up on the shore. As the community wonders at his mysterious, whimsical appearance, they embrace Brendan, as he is ultimately named, as one of their own, yet hold him separate--and, for a time, credit him with the power of bestowing blessings upon them. But the world of the story is grounded in day-to-day stressors and challenges. The country is reeling from economic troubles; Brendan's older adoptive brother deeply resents his presence; and conflicts and complicated dynamics underscore friendships, family relationships, and the community as a whole. The story is a fascinating study of relationships, with heartwarming moments and heartbreaking developments alike. Brendan is not the main protagonist, despite the novel's title, yet he is central to the story in that his presence pushes others to determine what they're about. He remains steady in the face of external upheaval (and Declan's exceptionally poor treatment of him), until even Brendan begins to waver and to seem for a time unsure of who he is and what he is made of and made for. When Carr offers various measures of character growth and resolutions toward the end of the book, they are reassuring and lovely, sometimes heart-wrenching, and fittingly complicated. I listened to The Boy from the Sea as an audiobook. Click here for my full review of The Boy from the Sea. 06 Time of the Child by Niall Williams Time of the Child feels like poetry in prose form, and Williams richly shapes a small-town Irish community's everyday and extraordinary events in this poignant, gorgeous literary fiction novel. In 1962 in the small Irish town of Faha, it's Christmastime, and Dr. Jack Troy and his oldest daughter Ronnie are coping with complicated family dynamics in their drafty, rural Irish home when an unexpected discovery turns everything upside down. During the annual, chaotic community fair preceding this holidays, which this year is a rainy business full of haggling, disappointments, and triumphs, an infant is left by the church gates. Young Jude and Faha's grown twins, Tim and Tom, bring the baby girl to Dr. Troy and Ronnie, believing her dead but not sure what else to do. And she does seem to have passed on to another realm, until Dr. Troy is able to revive her. In an impulsive pact, the four men agree not to share the news of the baby with anyone. What really shines in Time of the Child is the power of the small-town Faha community--gossipy and desperate for dirt as its citizens may largely be. The miracle of unity brought about by a baby's presence is poignant without feeling too easy. This story is beautiful and powerful. Williams's writing feels like a poem in prose structure; no word is wasted, and I read this novel slowly in order to savor the world the author so gorgeously created. For my full review of this book please see Time of the Child. You might also like to read the Bossy review of the Niall Williams novel This Is Happiness.

Bossy Favorites of the Month In October I read a number of books that I liked but didn't love. Luckily, a few of my reads during the second half of the month were standouts. Here are my six favorite reads of October. What were some of your favorite reads this month? 01 Katabasis by R. F. Kuang I loved the dark--and often darkly funny--journey of Cambridge postgraduate magick students Alice and Peter to hell, a quest they undertake because their advisor has died and they really  need his recommendations. Also, they each fear they're the one who killed him. In Kuang's dark academia fantasy novel Katabasis , Alice Law is a postgraduate student in a ruthlessly competitive analytic magick program at Cambridge. She is intrigued by and also deeply irritated by her academic rival, Peter Murdoch, who seems to be showing her up at every turn in their relentless slog of blood, sweat, and tears. Luckily, recommendations from their selfish, brilliant advisor, Professor Grimes, should set them up for successful careers. But Grimes dies a grisly death while trying to enter the underworld, and Alice and Peter are separately, secretly convinced that they are each the one who killed him. What else is there to do but journey to hell together to try to get him back--and preserve their precious recommendations? This is a clever, strange, dark, and often darkly funny fantasy. The pacing flagged for me throughout the middle of the story, during the slog through various avenues of hell, and the worldbuilding felt slim and glossed over during some of the many courts of hell. I was, ultimately, here for the character development and redemption, which Kuang provides in satisfying fashion. The bendable, undefined rules of hell (which I didn't understand and which kept being sprung upon the reader) turned out to be quite convenient, and after Peter's disappearance, Alice shines as the sole problem solver, capable of sacrifice and dealmaking. R. F. Kuang is also the author of Yellowface , The Poppy War , Babel , The Burning God , and The Dragon Republic . Another book that involves an attempted escape from hell is Leigh Bardugo's Hell Bent . For my full review of this book please see Katabasis . 02 Frog: The Secret Diary of a Paramedic by Sally Gould Gould's memoir of her life as a paramedic is frank, captivating, often revolting, and disarmingly honest. She takes the reader on ride-alongs so vividly described, it's as though we're in the ambulance. She shares her pride in caring for patients, her deep frustrations, and she is open about her mental health struggles . Sally Gould's memoir is named after a darkly humorous term of affection for paramedics in Australia (frog, because everything a paramedic touches croaks). Gould grew up in Australia the daughter of a paramedic, and she follows in her father's footsteps, training to become a "frog" herself. In her memoir, Gould explores her early days of uncertainty, moments of panic, scenes of complete disgust, tragic endings, and inspiring moments in which her team's arrival saves a life. Gould takes the reader through the ups and downs of the job and is frank about her personal mental health challenges and how she coped with them as related to the difficulties of her career and lifestyle. This is a satisfyingly deep dive into Gould's behind-the-scenes experiences, including an often breakneck pace, trying emotions, extensive practical knowledge, interpersonal skills, ability to read the room, separation from emotion, and pride in a job capably done. This is Sally Gould's first book. I received a prepublication audiobook version of this title courtesy of Libro.fm and Simon & Schuster Australia. You might also be interested in Bossy reviews of books involving medical  or health  elements, or in Bossy memoirs I've loved . For my full review of this book please see Frog . 03 The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow The Everlasting  involves jaunts through multiple versions of the same story, as our fantastic main protagonists shift and change, bravely outsmart those who would control them, dare to hope for a future together, and fight dark forces until the bitter end. This is adventure-heavy, sometimes tender, and always intriguing. I loved it. Centuries after the death of the legendary Sir Una Everlasting , spindly, awkward, cowardly historian Owen Mallory unearths her story--and becomes inexorably intertwined with the events of Una's life as they occur in the past. Harrow's tale involves multiple do-overs and attempts to shift events and alter reality--while the unlikely couple of Una and Owen fall in love again and again. The Everlasting  is filled with rich adventure; twisty jaunts through time; tragedy and loss; dark turns, boundless hope; messy, happy discoveries; outsmarting those in power; and noble victories. It ticked a million boxes for me as a reader. This is the type of romantic fantasy I adore. No swooning, childish behavior, or foolishness, just hard-won connections, deep character development, bravely defying expectations, and absolutely lovely love. This broke my heart and mended it over and over, in the best ways possible. For my full review, please check out The Everlasting . 04 Care and Feeding: A Memoir by Laurie Woolever Woolever's experiences working for Mario Batali and Tony Bourdain are fascinating--and, in the case of Batali, often disturbing. The food-focused writing and restaurant workings are the highlights; the author also recounts the implosion of her personal life, addiction, and extramarital affairs as well as shaping a new normal for herself. Laurie Woolever is fresh from culinary school and realizing that she doesn't want to be a chef when she stumbles into a position as an assistant to Mario Batali at his revered restaurant Babbo. His personality is overbearing, and he is frequently sexist, verbally abusive, groping, petty, and prone to childish power plays. Yet his connections and opportunities allow "Wooly," as he immediately decides to calls her, to coauthor a cookbook with him and to meet various players in the food community, eat ridiculously wonderful food, and learn the workings of a busy kitchen. Woolever also recounts her time as assistant to the kind, passionate Tony Bourdain until the time of his death, and in between accounts of her wild work duties and schedule, she takes the reader through her unrelenting alcohol- and drug-induced hazes, hangovers, regrettable decision-making, extramarital affairs, and doubts about her mothering abilities . I was most interested in the travel, food-focused writing, eating accounts, and breakneck-speed, often outrageous assistant duties than I was in Woolever's snowballing personal missteps, lies, self-destruction, and, for most of the book, her inability to recognize how dangerous her lifestyle is. I listened to this memoir as an audiobook. You might also be interested in the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite . For my full review, please check out Care and Feeding . 05 The Correspondent by Virginia Evans This quiet, epistolary novel witnesses the creaky, sometimes difficult shifts and realizations that a septuagenarian achieves around her health, children, past secrets, friendship, romantic relationships, and previously unknown blood relatives near the end of her life. I feel like this book and I have been circling each other since early May, and I was so delighted as I finally dove into this charming novel. Sybil Van Antwerp has written letters her whole life--letters to dear friends and family, letters of complaint, letters of praise and wonder to authors of books she's loved, and more. She reflects, sorts out her thoughts and makes sense of the events of the world. Now Sybil is in her late 70s, she's set in her ways, she's sometimes out of step and old-fashioned, often grumpy--and she's facing immense changes. We find out early on that she faces the impending loss of her sight, that she is somewhat estranged from her daughter, that deep tragedy has shaped her life and closed off her heart, and that she may be stumbling into information about her biological parents. It's lovely to witness Sybil's slowly allowing herself to face the past, addressing difficult issues in the present, and allowing for surprising adventures in her life. The Correspondent  offers messy, imperfect characters in often difficult situations, and they find their way through having changed and grown. This was charming and I loved both reading this novel and listening to the audio version of this title. The Correspondent  was the right book at the right time for me. I received a prepublication version of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Crown Publishing. I do love a novel in letters. To find Bossy reviews of other books I've read, please check out the titles at this link . Click here   for my full review. 06 A Far Better Thing by H. G. Parry This faerie-centric reimagining of Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities  offered a compelling story of redemption and self-sacrifice with a significant fantasy undercurrent that is key to the plot. I felt bogged down by the explanations of the workings of the faerie system, its punishments, and its policies. H. G. Parry's novel A Far Better Thing  is a twist on Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities , and Parry introduces a rebellion against faerie powers that takes place against the mayhem of the French Revolution (which is also the backdrop of the Dickens story). In this historical fiction-fantasy, characters from Dickens's tale are plunged into a dark, powerful magical world. Sydney Carton's eventual self-sacrifice, which emerges as unlikely from the boozy, smart but lazy, bitter character, remains in place within this fan-fiction version of the tale. But in Parry's novel he must also reckon with his fantastical origin story. Here, Sydney Carton was abducted by faeries when he was a small child, and his doppelgänger Charles Darnay is a changeling. I don't recall reading A Tale of Two Cities , so the value of the allegories is lost on me. The story largely stands on its own, but I did get bogged down by the extensive explanations of the workings of the faerie world and what felt to me to be tedious sidebars about rules, punishments, power structures, and policies. This took me out of the story and killed the momentum for me as a reader. The ending is dramatic, noble, and heartwarming. For my full review, please check out this link .

Six Final Bossy Favorites If you follow this blog, you probably already know that historical fiction is one of my favorite reading genres, and this is the third of three historical-fiction favorite lists I'll have for you as I revisit my reading for the Bossy best of the best from the past year. For my first roundup, check out this link , and for my second, check out this one . You can explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from last year, or you can click to read about past Bossy historical favorites . If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite historical reads, whether from the past year or beyond? 01 The Jackal's Mistress by Chris Bohjalian The deep bond that builds between an injured Union soldier and the Virginia woman who secretly takes him in is touching and complicated, and Bohjalian doesn't make Libby's dangerous choices feel too easy. The author was inspired by a true story. Libby Steadman lives in Virginia on the edge of the Confederate-Union Civil War conflict. Her husband has been away fighting for the Confederacy since soon after they were married, and Libby is warden to her orphaned, strong-willed niece Jubilee. She's also living alongside a hired hand, Joseph, who became a freedman when Libby's husband's family reconsidered their stance on slavery, and his wife Sally. Together the family members work grueling hours milling grain for the Confederacy.  Then Libby finds a gravely injured Union officer in a neighbor’s abandoned home. Because she hopes that a Union woman would take pity on her husband in the same situation, she secretly cares for Weybridge's injuries, realizing that if Confederate soldiers were aware of his presence in her home, the family would be considered traitors. The decision to take in Weybridge is morally clear to Libby, but the realities of the potential harm it could bring aren't lost on her. Bohjalian never makes the decision-making too easy, and the ending was not the neatly tied-up bow of a resolution I had begun to anticipate. The story is based upon a real account of a Southern woman who helped a Union soldier during the Civil War. I received a prepublication edition of The Jackal's Mistress  courtesy of Doubleday Books and NetGalley. For my full review of this book please see The Jackal's Mistress . 02 Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine Erin Crosby Eckstine's richly detailed historical fiction explores the life of Junie, an enslaved young woman in rural Alabama haunted by her sister's speaking, demanding ghost while she dares to dream of love and maybe even a life of freedom. The Civil War is looming, and Junie is a sixteen-year-old who has spent her whole life enslaved on an Alabama plantation. She works alongside her family, caring for the plantation owners' daughter Violet, who is her own age, and gaining cursory exposure to Violet's studies of poetry and knowledge. But Junie wanders restlessly at night, haunted by her sister Minnie's sudden death not long ago and by Minnie's ghost, which is demanding that Junie complete dangerous tasks and face truths she never imagined . Erin Crosby Eckstine balances the horrors of living in an enslaved situation with the complex interpersonal relationships Junie forges. Without shying away from the often hopeless lack of autonomy, lack of power, and lack of say-so and constant fear of the enslaved, Eckstine builds a rich story of detail of life at the time. She also explores the complicated Violet-Junie dynamic, in which Junie is Violet's only company for many years, yet is at her mercy for all opportunities to learn, explore, and pause from backbreaking work. For my full review, please see Junie . 03 The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden Much of The Safekeep  feels claustrophobic, quiet, and hopeless, but unexpected shifts late in the story turn accepted histories on their heads, opening the door for newly imagined futures of the characters' dreams . It's the summer of 1961 in the rural Dutch province of Overijssel, and rigid Isabel is a spinster in self-prescribed rigidity, adhering to strict schedules and a quiet life in her late mother's home--where she resides at the whim of her brothers, who, as men, own the house (but do not live there). When her playboy brother Louis drops his gauche girlfriend Eva to stay--for at least a month! in their mother's old room!--Isabel is more than a little upset. Eva's curiosity, enthusiasm for the world, and embracing of new experiences begin to seep into Isabel's experience. Isabel is initially annoyed, then inexplicably drawn to Eva--and eventually a torrid love affair begins between the women. Yet most of their feelings and hopes and thoughts are unexpressed. Theirs is largely a halting, unsure, almost silent, sexually driven relationship. This felt almost gothic in its initial darkness and hopelessness, then took me by surprise by blooming into a story about coming into one's own and defying expectations to find healing and love. I listened to The Safekeep , which was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, as an audiobook. For my full review please check out The Safekeep . 04 The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap Dunlap's debut novel explores early Edinburgh surgical schools, questionable methods of obtaining study subjects, a main protagonist's surprisingly believable entrée into body snatching, a forbidden love, and serial killers, and I was in for it all. Dunlap's debut novel is dark, twisty, gothic, and it's set in 19th-century Scotland as fictionalized versions of real-life serial killers Burke and Hare are terrorizing Edinburgh. James Willoughby is a naïve young medical student whose family fortunes have taken a negative turn, leaving him with a passion for studying medicine but no resources to pursue schooling. He becomes drawn into the underworld of body snatching when he seeks paid work to fund his studies--and begins to understand (and assist with) the process of obtaining cadavers for his surgery study. Ultimately, terrifyingly, his activities lead him to run into the cadaver-producing killers Burke and Hare. Dunlap does a wonderful job of bringing a spooky, fascinating underworld of Edinburgh to life, while also exploring the burgeoning surgery and medical school experience, and, against all odds, building the somewhat-reasonable-feeling case for James's horror-turned-acceptance on the subject of mining graveyards for bodies to study. I love Dunlap's writing and the way the author crafted this story. I'm definitely in for reading this author's future books! Please click here  for my full review of The Resurrectionist . 05 The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead Whitehead, inspired by a real-life reform school that abused and terrorized boys for over a century, shares a tale of racial injustice, abuse and horrors, terrible fear, and the very real threat of death at the hands of openly, willfully cruel white men. We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness. Elwood Curtis is a promising young man in 1960s Tallahassee. But when he hitchhikes with the wrong guy to his first day of scholarship university classes, he's unfairly sent to a boys' reform school, The Nickel Academy. The "Nickel Boys" endure endless injustices, abuse, and horrors, including the looming threat of being "disappeared" out back, never to be heard from again. But as naive as it may be, Elwood persists in pursuing justice and clinging to the moral high road just like his idol Martin Luther King, Jr., and he is unwavering in his ideals regardless of the dangers. His best friend Turner is more savvy, careful, and jaded, while loyal to Elwood. The Nickel Academy is based on a real-life reform school that, horrifyingly, abused boys for 111 years. The Nickel Boys  doesn't shy away from infuriating, relentless, insidious, damaging, often deadly racial injustice and cruelties. I felt a little manipulated regarding the "twist" Whitehead introduces late in the book, but the living out of an identity and living into an envisioned future is a powerful element. For my full review of this book please see The Nickel Boys . For other titles that center around race, please check out the books at this link . For more nonfiction titles that focus on race, please click here . 06 Buckeye by Patrick Ryan Patrick Ryan's literary fiction traces decades of the messy, poignant lives of two families shaped by uncompromising societal expectations who work to connect across secrets, upended traditional roles, shocking loss, and unanticipated love. In Patrick Ryan's literary fiction title Buckeye , which begins before World War II and spans to the end of the twentieth century, we begin with the story of a young couple in Bonhomie, Ohio, as they meet, fall in love, build a family, and struggle to stay connected. Relationships shift, unlikely ties grow stronger, characters grow apart and find their way back together, and what seemed like indelible relationships fall away as Buckeye  stretches across decades of life, choices, and loss. The unexpected, unorthodox, secret-based links between two families shape the story (with a supporting cast made up of an older generation steeped in habit and old-fashioned values yet poignantly capable of change and growth). The found-family messiness was a highlight of the novel; the caring that emerges due to and among heartbreaking splits is particularly powerful. Patrick Ryan is also the author of The Dream Life of Astronauts , Send Me , and young adult novels. For more family stories you might like, please check out the Bossy reviews at this link . For my full review, please check out Buckeye .

Who likes a little rock with their reading? Since I first made this list, I've read even more great books that have music at their hearts, and it always strikes me how uniquely difficult a task it must be for an author to convey the power of fictitious music. Here are six of my favorite fiction works that have to do with rock and roll, writing songs, performing, and the musician and band dynamics that keep it all wonderfully unpredictable and complicated and weird. For this edition of the list, I traded out one title for a more recent favorite (number 3) that I liked even more. What other rockin' books should I add to my to-read list? 01 Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell In Utopia Avenue, Mitchell takes us through the twists and turns of a fictional psychedelic British '60s band on its rocky rise to popularity, particularly through exploring its members' crises, joys, fears, and triumphs. It could have felt a little too abstract to read about the inspiration for made-up lyrics and melody, instrument technique, and imagined musical highlights on stage. (The fictional band focus reminded me, in a good way, of Daisy Jones & the Six, mentioned below.) But Mitchell handles all of this deftly and made me care about a singer connecting with an audience, the cathartic heartbreak-writing of songs, and the magic spark of a performance. Utopia Avenue contains endless imagined cameos, fictional adventures, and gems of wisdom from real-life musicians, authors, and artists--not to mention wild parties, betrayals, leaps of faith, breakups, and tragedy. Mitchell expertly builds the four band members into rich characters you're rooting for through their individual ups and downs as well as through the triumphs and setbacks of the band. If you like Mitchell's beautiful, offbeat, sometimes meandering and tough-to-pin-down stories, you'll likely love this almost 600-page book. He doesn't provide too easy or neat of an ending, but it feels fitting and left me satisfied. This was a really captivating story that kept me intrigued throughout. For my full review of Utopia Avenue, click here. 02 The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez On the surface, the main players in this light fiction story by Abby Jimenez are too outrageously beautiful, obscenely masculine or exquisitely feminine, with inordinately glamorous careers. One of them donated bone marrow to a stranger before becoming a burgeoning rock star. The other is a shockingly talented artist who abandoned the creation of new work after an incredibly painful loss. I worried that they would be insufferable martyrs I wouldn't believe in. But Jimenez offers an excellent setup for a romantic comedy with enough heartache that your teeth don't hurt from the sweetness. Jiminez provides the drama and angst and romance for picture-perfect escapism with a sexy center. I expected her to simply summarize the sexy parts, but no, she did not. Each chapter begins with a song title, and if you like the music, you can listen to the mix on Spotify. The author’s note about her inspiration for the book’s initial setup is heartwarming. For my full review of this book, see The Happy Ever After Playlist. 03 The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits by Jennifer Weiner Jennifer Weiner's newest novel offers a behind-the-scenes peek at the music business, songwriting, and the pressures of fame, layered with complications from clashing sisters, devastating tragedy, and a messy path toward reconciliation. Cassie and Zoe Greenberg are sisters who have always been opposites. Cassie, a musical prodigy, loved losing herself in and expressing herself through playing and singing, but avoided the limelight. Zoe dreamed of stardom since she was a child and was driven more by fame than the music itself. But Zoe realizes that Cassie is key to any musical future, and she convinces Cassie to join her on stage, beginning their meteoric climb to stardom. For one year when they're young adults, the sisters reach mindboggling heights of fame as the pop duo The Griffin Sisters--featured in Rolling Stone, performing on Saturday Night Live, and making videos for MTV. Then their run abruptly ended, and for the public, the reasons for their breakup were a mystery. Twenty years later, Zoe is a housewife and Cassie is a recluse who hasn't spoken to her sister at all. But when Zoe's headstrong daughter Cherry becomes determined to become a star, she digs into the past and forces a confrontation between the estranged sisters at last. This is a great behind-the-scenes look at the music business, musical creativity and songwriting processes, and body-image pressures on women earning a living by being in the limelight. Griffin Sisters also takes on deep familial conflicts, coping with loss and a devastating blow for future plans, lies and betrayals, and, finally, a messy but hopeful chance for reconciliation. For my full review, please check out The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits. 04 Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid “You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them.... You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.” In Daisy Jones & the Six, Reid offers a fictionalized account (written as fictional interviews) of the meteoric rise of a 1970s band, their mesmerizing lead singer Daisy, the group's complicated interpersonal conflicts, and the band's mysterious breakup, which broke hearts around the world. I thought the interview format might possibly get tiresome, but Reid skillfully builds the story, the complex relationships, and the pushes and pulls of the characters’ lives. The structure allowed for fascinating point of view shifts, subtleties, and humor. Daisy Jones and the Six explores multiple layers of love and heartbreak, all against a fantastic backdrop of rock and roll and the bonds and stresses of a band and a relentlessly grueling tour life. I adored Camila and her love and faith and outlook on life, and I loved this book. Taylor Jenkins Reid is also the author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Maybe In Another Life, After I Do, and other books. 05 Thank You, Goodnight by Andy Abramowitz There is danger in pining for people, in pining for things, in confusing who you are with what you want. You lose yourself in it. You lose yourself. In Thank You, Goodnight, Teddy Tremble, a likable, formerly famous musician meanders into an entertaining and unlikely career resurgence. "It Feels Like a Lie" was Tremble's big 1990s hit, and he never had another success. He's almost 40, he works at a law firm, and he's given up his old dreams. But when an old friend calls, he's faced with the classic "getting the band back together" temptation. Could he really be getting a second chance at stardom? Teddy's path isn't pat or too easy, Abramowitz's dialogue is sharp and funny, and watching Tremble finally grow into himself is satisfying. Abramowitz includes fun music references and nicely written scenes of the characters playing music. I imagine those could be tough to write in an engaging way when the reader obviously can't hear any of what the author is imagining. But he had me hooked. I really had fun reading this. 06 This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales “Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all.” In Leila Sales's young adult book This Song Could Save Your Life, main protagonist Elise doesn't fit in at her high school, she can't quite figure out social conventions, and she constantly feels at a loss. But when she stumbles into a warehouse party full of misfits embracing their otherness, Elise begins to see that the world outside of her claustrophobic high school is enormous, strange, and possibly even wonderful. With the help of a new friend in a band, a disc jockey, a handful of free spirits, and her own newly discovered love of music, she begins to find her way. The first half of this book started off so perfectly and wonderfully that I considered abandoning all commitments in order to hide away and read it straight through. Some too-easy moments marred a little of the book's perfection for me, but I absolutely adore this author's voice and vision and am hereby willing to read anything else she writes.

After the World Falls Apart I have a fascination with postapocalyptic and dystopian books, and I think it's for the same reason I'm captivated by wartime stories: the books are about characters being pushed to their limits by an incredibly challenging situation, and in coping with that situation, they discover and demonstrate their true selves and abilities. I hope you'll also check out the books on my first Greedy Reading List of Six Fantastic Dystopian and Postapocalyptic Novels. Which dystopian or postapocalyptic books have fascinated you? 01 Goddess in the Machine by Lora Beth Johnson Robots, time travel, teen angst, and this gorgeous cover. Yes to all of this. I didn't anticipate the twists Johnson provides, and I was delighted by each of them. Goddess in the Machine is more than just a gorgeous cover. Lora Beth Johnson had me hooked immediately by the premise and Andra's voice. Teenage Andra finally wakes up after being cryogenically preserved for a century-long journey to a new planet. She's a little creaky and sore, sure, but she's ready to be reunited with the team, which includes her mother and the rest of her family, plus many others involved in the complex project. They'll begin the work of bravely populating and building a new life on this planet. Except...Andra soon realizes she wasn't sleeping for 100 years. She was asleep for 1,000. The people, terrain, and language are not what she studied for or expected, everyone she once knew has already lived and died--oh, and the general population, whoever they are, thinks she's a goddess, and they've been waiting excitedly for her to wake up and save them. I didn't anticipate the twist/double twist here, and I loved being surprised again and again. For my full review, please see Goddess in the Machine. 02 Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir Gideon’s speech is modern and biting, there are darkly funny moments, and the friendships and loyalty resonate in a lovely way. The tone of Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth was unlike any fantasy novel I’ve read, and the friendships and loyalty that develop seem impossible, yet resonate in a lovely way. It’s really a fascinating book. I read this during Pandemic Times, which slowed me down and also, I believe, made it tougher than it should’ve been for me to differentiate between some of the secondary characters. (They’re also each called by multiple titles and names, which became slightly jumbled in my mind at times.) The settings are so stark and unique and clearly built that I think the general sense of this book is going to haunt me for a long time. And the ending—! This is the first in Muir's Locked Tomb series. For my full review, check out Gideon the Ninth, and you can also find my review of the second in this series, Harrow the Ninth. I haven't yet read the third book in this series, Nona the Ninth, or the fourth, Alecto the Ninth. 03 Machinehood by S.B. Divya Space! Robots! Artificial intelligence! Divya has crafted strong female main protagonists who navigate the sometimes dark, always complicated pressures of life in 2095--as they try to save the world. In her debut novel, Divya sets the scene in the world of 2095. Humanity around the world is reliant on homemade and commercially manufactured pills--for health, for work focus, for managing bots, for healing, for sleep, and for transitioning between all of the above. I wished for more page time spent on everyday tasks and activities (cooking, shifting household modules, travel, and communicating), which were all carried out in Jetsons-level, fascinating, futuristic ways. But Divya is too busy crafting strong female main protagonists (complete with working mother guilt, which exists in the future too). The management of many large-scale issues and their side effects are shown in shades of gray rather than black-and-white, including the meaning and value of personhood; the definitions of health, autonomy, and freedom; sometimes-necessary compromises; and the promise for the future of the world. For my full review, check out Machinehood. 04 Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves by Meg Long I was hooked by Meg Long's debut young adult science fiction novel about tough young Sena, her skittish fighting wolf Iska, and their desperate journey across the ice. ​In the young adult science fiction novel Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves, young Sena has lost both of her mothers to the brutal sled races on her frozen planet. Since then she's had to be scrappy, creative, and above all, tough. When she angers a local warlord and becomes eager to escape her world, she's relieved to secure promises of transport out--but those who would help her have one condition: she must help them take part in the planet's most infamous sled race. In Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves, Long offers an intriguing story of brutal conditions, determined survival, hard-earned loyalty, grudging friendship, and a stubborn overcoming of various vivid dangers. I was hooked by Long's world-building, her evocative, immersive descriptions of the cold climate, and by tough, grumpy Sena, who has a big heart and a soft spot for Iska, her personality counterpart in wolf form. To see my full review, check out Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves. This book's sequel is Swift the Storm, Fierce the Flame. 05 How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu Nagamatsu's science fiction centers around a resurgence of an ancient Arctic plague. These interconnected stories are odd, fascinating, and sometimes panic-inducing, yet they offer glimmers of hope. I was intrigued by all of it. ​It's 2030, and an archaeologist in the Arctic Circle discovers a body perfectly preserved in the permafrost. His personal situation is complicated by his grief for his recently deceased daughter, and he aims to continue the research work she began. The interconnected stories here are made up of strange, affecting situations. In one circumstance, referred to in the book's title, there is a captivating, dark, in-between world of floating, nebulous memories that highlights humans’ struggles to connect to each other. How High We Go in the Dark combines linked elements that wind through the book. Characters appear in the backgrounds of others’ stories; a necklace disappears from one story in the Arctic and reappears in a casual mention around the neck of another character across the world in another time; and we see varied points of view regarding aspects of the same stories. For my full review, please see How High We Go in the Dark. 06 The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James Romy's soaring hopes, her vulnerability and then her growing doubts, her self-reliance and quick thinking, and the shifts and twists of the book all kept me hooked for this quick read. I loved this. ​Can you fall in love with someone you’ve never met, never even spoken to--someone who is light years away? This young adult science fiction story has an irresistible premise: teenaged Romy is the sole survivor on her spaceship, which is en route to establishing an outpost on a new planet. She's on her own out there in space, and as lonely as any human could imagine being. There's no hope of seeing another human again anytime soon. Her sole communication outlet is with her NASA contact, Molly, who sends her audio messages (and occasionally forwards along episodes of Romy's favorite TV show). But then Romy gets word that another ship has launched from earth, with a young man called J as the pilot. Romy is on her own in space, haunted by the events that led to her solo venture. Her self-reliance, romanticized ideas, quick thinking, and strength of character, along with the shifts and twists of the book, all kept me hooked. For my full review, please see The Loneliest Girl in the Universe.

Finding Your Next Great Read Librarians are amazing. They welcome everyone who comes through the door, they shepherd visitors through issues and opportunities with technology, suggest community resources for those who might benefit, run story times for littles, host book clubs, maintain pristine stacks (adhering, for now, to the satisfyingly arcane Dewey Decimal System developed in the late 1900s for the nonfiction titles), and, of course, guide patrons in book searches. And that's just scratching the surface of their abilities and the services they provide. Although my to-read list is interminably long, having an endless To Be Read list brings me cozy, safe feelings because I know I will never be paralyzed with worry regarding what I could possibly want to read next. That's why I greedily and continually search for books to add to the list, and the most exciting prospective reads jump the line to must-read-now status. During the early months of the pandemic, I was in the mood for a solid dystopian, postapocalyptic read--although in hindsight that was an interesting impulse for mentally escaping that particular situation. Anyway, I wanted new, fresh ideas for titles in that vein that I might like. And I wanted a trusted recommendation. Then someone, somewhere online (who and where were you, wonderful stranger?) mentioned library programs in which librarians tailor book recommendations to patrons, and I was hooked on the idea. It was going to be magical! Books chosen just for me me me! Programs like my local Charlotte Mecklenburg Library's Find Your Next Read involve answering a few questions about your tolerance for violence, rough language, and adult content; any desired time period for your book; a few titles or authors you've read and liked; a few titles or authors you've read and disliked ; preferred setting (domestic or foreign); and a few other matters. After a few days you receive multiple personalized reading recommendations in an email. Voila! (Note that there is also a Find Your Next Read request form for Young Readers and Teens.) I found this whole process incredibly satisfying. In fact, after remembering how fun it was the last time, I just submitted another request. If you're a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library member--or if your local library system offers a similar feature of personalized recommendations--I hope you'll give it a try! Through Find Your Next Read, a librarian recommended the following books: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers #1) by Becky Chambers, which I later read and reviewed (it was a winner for me) . Three other titles suggested to me as promising adult and young adult science fiction, fantasy, and dystopian reads were some I had already read and enjoyed, so the recommendations were spot-on: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab, The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey (which I mentioned in the Greedy Reading List Six Fantastic Dystopian and Postapocalyptic Novels ), and Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. The final two recommendations I (still) haven't yet read but plan to: The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1) by John Scalzi and Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman (which I've thought about reading for years but somehow still have not). Have you taken part in a program like this? What did you think? And have you read any of my Book Recommendations from Smarty Librarians? For other science fiction and fantasy books I've read and reviewed, please check out the titles at this link .

Do you enjoy a character-driven Western? I appreciate an unflinching reflection of our nation's complex history--which includes the atrocities visited upon the indigenous peoples of our continent because white people explored and settled in the West. I'm also fascinated by the optimistic explorer spirit--and I love reading about strong female characters in a time when the world around them didn't typically support women's strength and determination. One of these books is narrative nonfiction, but I Bossily included it in this list. If you're interested in books like those listed here, you might also like the titles on my Greedy Reading List Six Great Historical Fiction Stories Set in the American West. And for great historical fiction of all types, look at these historical fiction greedy reading lists. Happy reading, bookworms! 01 Inland by Téa Obreht Much of Téa Obreht's Inland is centered around Nora, an impulsive, hot-tempered, strong woman fighting for a hardscrabble life for her family in a remote town during a devastating drought. The other plotline concerns Lurie, a man who has adventures and challenges with his surprising, loyal, exotic companion. The two disparate stories intersect in an unlikely way in 1890s Arizona Territory, and fantastical elements throughout make even the most jaded characters believe in the odd and implausible in this remarkable book. I read this story as an e-book and was therefore robbed of gazing at this gorgeous cover. I adore it. Random House Publishing Group provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. For my full review of Inland, please click here. 02 Whiskey When We're Dry by John Larison In 1885, Jessilyn Harney finds herself orphaned and alone on the homestead. Seventeen-year-old girls aren't safe on their own, so Jess cuts her hair, binds her chest, and saddles up for a trip across the mountains in search of her lawless brother Noah. Jess is such a good shot, she ends up working for the mean-as-a-snake governor of the territory--and finds that the governor's armed forces are hunting for Noah and intend to capture him, dead or alive. “What started the war, Pa?" His eyes settled on me. "Stories, Jessilyn. We tell ourselves the wrong stories.” I love love love a character-driven western. Jess's voice was fantastic. She grapples with the stories she's been told as compared to the reality she experiences as she makes her way. Whiskey When We're Dry is a rough, heart-wrenching, wonderful story from John Larison. 03 A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird Isabella Bird's nonfiction account of her 1873 travels through the rugged, wondrous American West is full of her irresistible determination to discover; offers fascinating details of flora, fauna, and the people she encountered; and showcases her sparkling personality. British Isabella Bird explored the wild, rugged western United States in the late 1800s, and she journeyed the challenging terrain in shocking solo fashion. Through the vividly recounted adventures in this lively narrative nonfiction, Bird shares her many discoveries, difficulties, and wonders. The book is built from letters Bird wrote to her sister (with some key notes added after the fact), which paint an unflinching account of her own occasionally dangerous missteps, her soaring hopes and deep connection to the stark mountains, and a sometimes-scathing social commentary related to Indians, class, ecological irresponsibility, and the dramatic inspiration she finds in nature. Bird was an understated trailblazer with irresistible determination and feistiness. Her wonder-filled fascination with the flora, fauna, and characters she encounters in the west combined with her mix of no-nonsense practicality and ambitious traveling goals and incredible fortitude make for a captivating read. For my full review of this book, please see A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. 04 Doc by Mary Doria Russell Surprise! Doc is nonfiction, but it reads like historical fiction (as opposed to a heavier nonfiction title like Tom Clavin's Tombstone, which also includes lots of Doc Holliday information), so I'm Bossily including it. I love Mary Doria Russell’s character-driven books, and this Western, set in Dodge City, Kansas, in the late nineteenth century, is a slow build rather than a dramatic, gun-slinging action story. Doc doesn’t focus on the Tombstone shootout, but instead on Doc Holliday’s life, his brotherlike friendship with the Earps, and his longtime relationship with a Hungarian noblewoman-turned-prostitute, Kate. Mary Doria Russell also interestingly explores Holliday's career as a dentist (at a time when the dental profession was tainted by traveling butchers and thieves), and his gallant, grumpy, well-read, mischievous, and generous-to-a-fault personality. The author also wrote The Sparrow, which I adored and gave five stars. She's such a gorgeous writer, I'd read anything she tried her hand at writing. 05 Into the Savage Country by Shannon Burke Into the Savage Country is a serenely told story of a band of fur traders--some wild, some considered gentlemen, some one of these but striving to be the other--striking out into the West in the first half of the 1800s. The writing style involves a lot of telling, which seemingly intentionally slows the pacing--and which I usually don't love, but here it gives a fittingly old-fashioned quality to the writing that feels as though it suits the time, the main protagonist, and the tale itself. The group encounters friendly and hostile Native Americans; copes with antagonized and antagonistic British trappers; is threatened with imprisonment; experiences cruel and potentially fatal betrayal by one of their own; faces the wild and its many dangers; suffers grave wounds; and saves each other's skin countless times--including after foolish situations (which seem as though they would have been easily avoided) such as literally waking a sleeping bear and baiting an injured bull. Yet because of the pacing, I didn't necessarily feel on the edge of my seat while I read about all of it. There is a deeper, quiet, surprisingly affecting story beneath the Western adventure, which is about trust, loyalty, sometimes begrudging but deeply felt affection, discovery of self-worth, celebrating differences, and love. And it's the pacing and tone of the story that allows for all of those elements to feel real. 06 News of the World by Paulette Jiles Captain Kidd has fought in three wars, and after the Civil War's end, he serves as a traveling news reader, providing eager listeners along his route with news from the world. Kidd somewhat reluctantly ends up agreeing to transport a young, recently rescued Kiowa captive 400 miles to her extended family. They'll have to pass through lawless lands to get to San Antonio, and Johanna isn't a willing participant in this venture, having become more culturally Kiowa over the years than white and unfamiliar with her remaining blood relatives. Not all of the members of my book club felt as strongly about this one as I did, but I adored every bit of this--Captain Kidd's reluctant but gentlemanly involvement and his voice, the character of Johanna, the Texas setting, the fits and starts of adventure, the noble heart of the story, the humor, and the heartbreak. I loved loved loved it. Jiles also wrote Simon the Fiddler and the glorious The Color of Lightning. Click here for my full review of The News of the World.

Six Bossy Favorite Historical Fiction Reads from Last Year Historical fiction is one of my favorite reading genres, and this is the first of three historical-fiction favorite lists I'll have for you as I revisit my reading for the Bossy best of the best from the past year. You can explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from last year, or you can click to read about past Bossy historical favorites . If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite historical reads, whether from the past year or beyond? 01 Boy by Nicole Galland Galland offers a detailed peek into the London of Shakespeare's company and the life of starring "boy player" Alexander Cooke, his best girl Joan, who dresses as a boy to explore scientific pursuits, and the palace intrigue that occurs when their allies conflict with Queen Elizabeth. In Nicole Galland's historical fiction tale Boy , Alexander "Sander" Cooke is a famed, sought-after "boy player" in Shakespeare's company, and his roles skillfully playing lovely women have led highbrow ladies and gentlemen alike to seduce him with favors and attention. His apprenticeship is nearly over, and he has neither an assurance of steady work as a young man playing male roles with his company, nor a sponsor to support him. Joan Buckler is Sander's best friend. She's curious about everything and is the smartest person Sander knows. But her female sex holds her back from being able to find the knowledge she seeks, and she dresses as a boy to gain access to medical lectures and more. I wished for more behind-the-scenes peeks at Shakespeare's shows, and I was least interested in the political conflicts and drama, although they were essential to the conflict of the book. I loved the romantic connection between Joan and Sander, Joan's scientific pursuits--particularly the botany-related efforts she enters into with her eccentric friends, and how Galland deftly places the reader in the story's place and time with rich details. For my full review of Boy , please check out this link . 02 An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6) by Deanna Raybourn While Veronica and Stoker stay close to home while entering into danger and solving the mysteries in book six of this series, Raybourn repeatedly evokes images of the fictional European country Alpenwald. Gruff Stoker conveys his adoration of Veronica in a poignant, lovely way. It's January 1889, and Veronica and her natural historian beau Stoker are working on a memorial exhibition showcasing the achievements of mountain climber Alice Baker-Greene. But evidence indicates to Veronica that Alice may have been murdered. And Princess Gisela of the Alpenwald, a dear friend of Alice's, goes missing just after Veronica shares her suspicion--requiring Veronica to pose as the princess in order to preserve a secret peace treaty that's being brokered. While Veronica and Stoker stick close to home for their adventures in this installment of the series, there's plenty of intrigue, and Raybourn evokes repeated images of mountain climbing in the Alpenwald, a fictional country sandwiched between Germany and France, as well as extensive forays into the country's traditions, political interests, and its royal family's interpersonal conflicts and loyalties. The LGBTQ+ love conveyed in the story is lovely, and Veronica's matter-of-fact approach to this relationship as well as cross-class romance is typical of her no-nonsense, pro-love (and, for her, anti-marriage) stance established in earlier books. The evolution of Stoker and Veronica's own relationship in this book is understated yet beautifully poignant; I teared up at one point when the gruff Stoker conveyed his feelings to Veronica. Raybourn is the author of A Curious Beginning , as well as the sequels A Perilous Undertaking , A Treacherous Curse , A Dangerous Collaboration , and A Murderous Relation . (There are currently nine books in the series, with a tenth scheduled for publication in 2026.) Raybourn is also the author of the wonderful title about retired middle-aged assassins, Killers of a Certain Age , and its sequel Kills Well with Others . For my full review of this book please see An Unexpected Peril . 03 I'll Be Right Here by Amy Bloom I'm a huge Amy Bloom fan, and I appreciated the strong main female character here and the World War II-era crises. At times the story felt somewhat disjointed and flagged in pacing as it addressed various events of the characters' later years . Gazala must be crafty, humble, and alert to get by as a Jew while World War II envelops Paris. When she emigrates to New York City, she is befriended by two strong young sisters, Anne and Alma, and Gazala's adopted brother Samir joins them in Manhattan. I'll Be Right Here  tracks decades in their lives, including victories, pain, unorthodox choices, and love. I was invested in Gazala's young life; the concessions, cleverness, and compromises necessary during desperate times; and particularly her ability to navigate a potentially deadly and complex wartime crisis with sometimes ruthless focus. I appreciated the highlighting of various shapes of relationships. I had significant difficulty getting past the fact that an adoptive sibling pair fell in love, while appreciating that the unprecedented trauma of World War II and the importance of human connection were essential factors in this. I received a prepublication edition of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group. For my full review please check out I'll Be Right Here . Bloom is also the author of White Houses , which I gave 5 Bossy stars, the heartbreakingly beautiful In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss , Away , Lucky Us , Come to Me: Stories , and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories .) 04 Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall In Hall's Broken Country , characters do their duties, find wondrous love, feel heartbreak, suffer tragedies, sometimes act impulsively, and reel from the consequences of all of the above. A mystery surrounds a deadly moment, and the book ends with a hopeful, imperfect, heartbreaking way forward. Beth and her kind husband Frank live and farm outside the small English village where they grew up. They love each other, but they are able to stay married only because they push down the memories of tragedies that could haunt them, and because secrets from the past stay buried. But when Frank's brother shoots a dog going after the family's sheep, the gunshot sets into motion events that will change everything. The dog belonged to Gabriel Wolfe, Beth's childhood love, and his return to town brings back long-suppressed complications around jealousies, love, choices, and the weighty consequences of the past. Broken Country  is a study of an extreme, life-and-death-stakes fallout after heartbreaking tragedy, but it's also a story of young love blossoming, then shriveling under the first pressures of the outside world; it's a mystery in which duty overpowers the difficult truth; and it's a hopeful view of how an imperfect set of characters can find their clumsy, sometimes beautiful, way forward. I read this immersive story in a flash. For my full review of this book please see Broken Country . 05 Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid I love an astronaut story, and while Reid spent far more page time on relationships than on the astronaut or space aspects, there was plenty of each to go around in this novel that was the perfect book at the perfect time for me. I loved it--and I listed this book as one of My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads . Joan has always been fascinated by the stars, and as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, she teaches her passion to college students. On the side, she shows her beloved young niece the sky and serves as a second parent alongside her sometimes-trying single-mother sister. When she sees an ad seeking for the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program, Joan becomes obsessed with being part of the 1980s training and with becoming one of the first women in space. The complicated interpersonal situations added wonderful depth to the complexities of astronauts' training, stresses, competition, and life-and-death goals of entering space. The women's fights to fully be part of a traditionally male-dominated field and the various ways in which they navigated this were particularly captivating to me. The carelessness that partially leads to the crisis in space felt unrealistic to me, and the high drama and gasping reveal regarding the pivotal space scene toward the end could have felt over the top, but as usual, I was putty in Taylor Jenkins Reid's hands, ready to embrace every bit of it. This was exactly the right story for me at the right time, and I hugged it to my chest when I finished, then immediately began telling everyone how much I loved it. Taylor Jenkins Reid is also the author of Carrie Soto Is Back , The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo , Malibu Rising , and Daisy Jones & the Six . You might also want to check out these other Bossy reviews of books about astronauts  and space . 06 All the Broken Places by John Boyne All the Broken Places is a novel that is linked to Boyne's novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas . The exploration of gray areas between good and evil was the most intriguing aspect to me as our elderly protagonist faced a difficult past. Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby is living out her days in a posh flat in London. She's friends with her younger across-the-hall neighbor Helen, who is coping with dementia, and Gretel's three-times-married-and-divorced grown son lives in the city, but otherwise Gretel keeps to herself. When a couple and young son move into the flat below her, Gretel begins to worry that the man of the house is harming his wife and child, and her hesitant involvement leads him to discover elements about Gretel's youth in Berlin during World War II that she never wanted to face again . The present-day "bad guy" is a gleefully rotten, abusive, sinister character who is easy to detest. Gretel's unwanted bond with the young boy downstairs brings memories flooding back from her own childhood, and her resistance to his bond and then her deep loyalty to him lead to a ending that is centered around revenge, consequences, and justice. John Boyne is the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas , and this novel is linked to that one. I found that book somewhat frustrating in the suspension of disbelief necessary for the plot to work, but the premise was also horrifyingly fascinating. Click here   for my full review.

Six More Favorite Fantasy Reads This is the second of three fantasy-favorite lists I'll have for you as I mine my reading for the Bossy best of the best from the past year. You can find my first list of favorites from the past year here . You can explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from last year, or you can read about past Bossy fantasy favorites here . If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite fantasy reads, whether from the past year or beyond? 01 A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna Mandanna's is a fun magical story featuring an oddball cast of characters, satisfying justice, love, chosen family, funny dialogue, and heartwarming moments . Sera Swan was one of Britain's most powerful young witches. She showed so much promise, her skill threatened to overtake that of her belittling, greedy mentor. But she uses a forbidden spell to save the beloved aunt who raised her, and she is exiled from the magical Guild. Sera returns home to her magically enhanced inn, run by her treasured aunt. Sera's former mentor is out in the world wreaking havoc, grasping at ever-increasing power, and frightening other witches into doing his bidding. Meanwhile, Sera realizes that a very old spell exists that could restore her powers. Then Luke Larsen, a handsome, grumpy magical historian, comes to stay at Jasmine and Sera's inn along with his neurodivergent young sister, and suddenly Sera and her messy, oddball chosen family are forced to reconsider their collective futures. I loved Sera's discovery of her inner strength and her willingness to rewrite her future. This is heartwarming and shies away from being too cute yet is consistently charming. The dialogue is lovely, and the oddball set of characters is nicely developed. For my full review, please check out A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping . 02 Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1) by Gail Carriger The first in the author's young adult steampunk Finishing School series offers wonderful, typically strong Carriger women with unique talents, clever minds, a nose for mystery, and next-level bantering capabilities . Fourteen-year-old Sophronia Temminnick constantly tests her mother's patience, as she's more apt to occupy herself by dismantling a clock or to arrive to tea disheveled, having climbed a nearby tree to ponder life's mysteries, than she is to master the proper curtsy or perfect her needlework, as is becoming to a Victorian-era young lady. So she is horrified to learn that she's been enrolled in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. But Sophronia soon realizes that the students at Mademoiselle Geraldine's aren't simply learning to dance and dress, but to use household items as weapons, use their feminine wiles to distract, and use diminishing assumptions about young women to craftily spy on unsuspecting victims. Sophronia is an immensely likable, clever, quick study who defies societal expectations. I loved the steampunk aspects--the airship transport, steam-powered mechanical animals, and the mechanical robot servants within the alternate Victorian England setting. For my full review, please check out Etiquette & Espionage . I loved the first book in Gail Carriger's five-book (plus a prequel short) Parasol Protectorate series, Soulless  and its sequel, Changeless . 03 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab This wonderfully creepy lesbian vampire story is largely about female empowerment, but also about love, discovery, reinvention, and revenge. I loved each time period and the evolution of each strong female character . Schwab's lesbian vampire tale spans centuries, beginning in 1532 Santo Domingo de la Calzada as a young woman named Maria makes choices to shield her from being a man's pawn and vessel for children until her death--then enters into a future she never could have imagined. In 1827 London, naive young Charlotte lives a sheltered, lovely pastoral life, until an indiscretion results in her banishment to London society. There she encounters an intriguing widow with promises of freedom with deep repercussions. And in 2019 Boston, Alice is trying to break out of her shell at college, and a one-night stand feels like a daring start. But the evening leaves her forever changed, and she's bent on finding answers--and revenge. I loved that the women of each time insist upon creating situations in which they have autonomy and agency. The storyline threading the three timelines together is deliciously intriguing, and a character that was initially a wilting flower finds her strength, her purpose, and her desire for vengeance, all of which is satisfying to witness. For my full review please check out Bury My Bones in the Midnight Soil . Schwab is also the author of The Fragile Threads of Power , Vengeful , and the wonderful Invisible Life of Addie LaRue , as well as the Shades of Magic series. (The first two books in that series are A Darker Shade of Magic  and A Gathering of Shadows , each of which I gave four Bossy stars. You can check out my review of book 3, A Conjuring of Light , here .) 04 Silver Elite by Dani Francis While I should probably stop reading "romantasy" because I prefer my fantasy and romance to remain separate, I was taken with the double-edged quest, elite training, magical abilities, and complex conflicts between classes in the first in this dystopian series. In Dani Francis's dystopian novel, Wren Darlington is a Mod who has lived under the radar for her twentysomething years. A select few fellow members of the rebel Uprising are aware that she is psychic, but no one but her adoptive uncle is aware that she can, dangerously and inconsistently, incite--forcing others to do her bidding. But one careless, heroic move by Wren draws the attention of the enemy, and the military forces her to enlist in a training program for Silver Block. Wren attempts to sabotage her own success, but in order to aid the resistance she must excel and earn her way into Silver Elite, a small unit sure to access more sensitive information that could assist the rebels . Francis explores issues of class and race through her characters' strongly held assumptions and prejudices surrounding Mods and Primes, and Wren's fierce loyalty to her kind is complicated by the secrets she's keeping about abilities that would make her even more feared, a deeper outcast, and a terrifyingly unknown quantity to both types of person in her world. This is the first in a series and I'm really looking forward to reading the next installment. For my full review please check out Silver Elite . 05 The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty I loved the worldbuilding and the headstrong, powerful loose cannon of Nahri, as well as the Middle Eastern fantasy setting. I found myself yearning for the expert pacing, intrigue setup, and rich character development of my beloved Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi  by the same author . Nahri makes a living on the streets of eighteenth-century Cairo, skillfully thieving and honing her skills as a con artist. The only thing that isn't a lie is her mysterious ability to instinctually, instantaneously heal others and herself. During a con she accidentally summons a djinn warrior, Dara, and the two must flee across the desert to Daevabad, a magical city whose most powerful citizens rely on fire. But the city is split between two groups, those holding the throne and palace and those eking out a living on the streets. Centuries-old resentments and conflicts threaten to bubble up into war--and Nahri and Dara's arrival only serves to feed the flames of conflict. I loved the headstrong, powerful but untrained main character Nahri, the complex cultural backgrounds clashing in the book, and the Middle Eastern-based, fantastical worldbuilding. Chakraborty is also the author of the wonderful novel The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi , the first in the series of the same name; she published that book under the name Shannon Chakraborty. I listed Amina in the Greedy Reading List Six Four-Star (and Up) Science Fiction and Fantasy Reads I Loved in the Past Year . Click here   for my full review of The City of Brass . 06 The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman Grossman's reimagined Arthurian legend gives center stage to a ragtag band of misfits, celebrates diversity, and builds a patchwork of adventures, discovery, and widened horizons culminating in a satisfying new, reimagined path forward. Collum is an instinctually gifted, strong knight who has literally fought for sword training as a lowly ward; his family has little use for him; and his heart is set upon joining King Arthur's court. But when he finally makes his way to the Round Table, only elderly, impaired, has-been knights are left, and he learns that Arthur was killed weeks earlier. But Collum refuses to believe that a life as a knight is no longer possible for him. Along with Merlin's apprentice, Nimue, he becomes determined to usher in a new age, where Excalibur will be reclaimed, Camelot will be secure from would-be usurpers, and the kingdom will be inspired again by bravery and might . I appreciated the epic length of the book (688 pages), in which each remaining knight gets page time and a recounting of key adventures. But the many points of view and meandering stories also felt a little broad at times, and I wished for more focus on Collum, while understanding that his early-days position didn't warrant the majority of the storytelling. Grossman addresses issues of diversity in satisfying fashion; a transgender knight, a Muslim knight, and a gay knight are all represented. The full roster of knights--and the women who hold important roles in the tale--are all misfits who don't inspire great confidence, but collectively, they fight to find a path forward in a world that is changing around them. I listened to The Bright Sword  as an audiobook (it was twenty-three hours long). Click here   for my full review.

Just a Few of My Many Historical Fiction Favorites These were just a few of my favorite historical fiction reads during Bossy Bookworm's first year in existence. I gave five of these books four stars and rated one of them five stars. But I love historical fiction, and since 2020 I've shared many other lists of historical fiction favorites; you can check them out here . Do you have any all-time (or recent) historical fiction favorites that I should add to my outrageously unmanageable to-read list? 01 Apeirogon: A Novel by Colum McCann Apeirogon builds to show how individuals on opposite sides of the Israel-Palestine wall are at heart the same. The first part of the story felt a little slow for me, but I'm so very glad I stuck with this beautiful, powerful, illuminating, and heart-wrenching book. Apeirogon is structured into 1,001 short segments (this sounds overwhelming, but the book doesn't feel that way) in varied points of view surrounding a Palestinian and an Israeli family on two especially fateful days in their lives. Through the scenes here, we see that those on opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and opposite sides of the wall) are at heart the same in their pain, their desires, and their love. The story is 480 pages, and ultimately that felt like an appropriate length for settling into the points of view and experiences that are built over a lifetime. The subject matter is weighty and emotional, and McCann manages to make the story both personal and political, which perfectly suits the subject matter. This is a wonderful book, and I love McCann's thoughtful writing. For my full review of this book, please see Apeirogon . McCann is also the author of Thirteen Ways of Looking, Let the Great World Spin , and other books. 02 The Light After the War by Anita Abriel Vera and Edith are such a complementary WWII partnership, and I loved spending time with these strong young friends. I’m dying to know how closely Anita Abriel’s book traces the inspiring events from her mother’s incredible experiences before, during, and after World War II. The author offers a vivid account of the fear and dread—intermixed with sparks of hope—that sustained Vera and Edith in Hungary and Germany during the war; in Naples as they adjusted to post-war floods of food, fashion, and joy; as they found themselves in more settled situations; and during the evolutions of their careers and love lives. Abriel introduces an enormous shift that shakes things up enormously for both young women before the book’s end. I was completely engrossed. For my full review, please see The Light After the War . 03 The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd This story imagines a wife for Jesus, questions gender roles, and offers adventure. This was a fascinating story from the point of view of an imagined wife for Jesus, including an exploration of gender roles, a reimagined faith, the frustrations of societal expectations for women, great adventure, strong female loyalty and friendship, love, and lots of fantastic details of life at the time. Much of the fever pitch of support and hatred for Jesus occurs when the main character of Ana is off having other experiences (and often-dangerous adventures). This is an intriguing structure for the story: Jesus as a supporting cast member. Jesus's role in Ana's story is as a faithful man who disagrees with the politics of the faith at the time. He primarily serves as a character who cares for, understands, and supports the woman he loves. For my full review of this book, please see The Book of Longings . 04 Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland The backdrop for the story of a few summer months in the life of an extended family is Atlantic City just before WWII, with its giant hotels, piers, and general hubbub. This lovely debut from Rachel Beanland starts off with some rough events, and frankly I had a little bit of a time coping with them because I’d already become attached to the characters. There’s an undercurrent of concern about Hitler and his increasingly punitive behavior toward Jewish families’ businesses and emigration in Germany in Florence Adler Swims Forever . I loved watching the book’s events unfold—even if I could predict some of them. Anything that was wrapped up a little too neatly didn’t bother me at all; I was all in and satisfied. Beanland based some of the basic events of her debut novel on her ancestors’ experiences. I found that aspect particularly fascinating. For my full review of this book, please see Florence Adler Swims Forever . 05 Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera Although the three interconnected women faced sometimes staggeringly tragic challenges, Spera injects moments of joy and wonderful details of 1924 life in South Carolina. I worried during the first chapter that Gertrude was going to feel like a caricature of a backwoods Southern woman. But she and the other characters were developed fully. Their sparks of joy are often related to their relationships to each other. You can see where one of the storylines is going before the character involved understands it, and it might make your blood boil to see the evil situation go on unchecked. But the details of cooking, strong women's determination to survive, race relations, and life in 1924 South Carolina were wonderful, and I still think about this book although I read it almost a year ago (technically, at the end of last year). For my full review, please see Call Your Daughter Home . 06 The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue Donoghue immersed me so fully in this world that everything else fell away for me. Years after I first read this book, I still think of it often and fondly. Set in Ireland in 1918, The Pull of the Stars follows a nurse, Julia; a doctor, Kathleen; and a young volunteer, Bridie, over the course of three tumultuous days as the fiery, complex, capable women work desperately to help the patients at their understaffed hospital who are about to give birth while suffering from the devastating new influenza. I was hooked by the moment-by-moment health and emotional crises; the women's determined, sometimes desperately creative attempts to preserve lives; and their occasional triumphs. The rest of the world fell away for me as I was reading, and I couldn't wait to get back to this book. The author of the disturbing, fascinating story Room knows how to craft a tale of survival and of finding hope in the most dire situations. For my full review, please see The Pull of the Stars .

Six Favorite Fantasy Reads This is the first of three fantasy-favorite lists I'll have for you as I mine my reading for the best of the best from the past year. You can explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from last year, or you can read about past Bossy fantasy favorites here . If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite fantasy reads, whether from the past year or beyond? 01 The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow The Everlasting  involves jaunts through multiple versions of the same story, as our fantastic main protagonists shift and change, bravely outsmart those who would control them, dare to hope for a future together, and fight dark forces until the bitter end. This is adventure-heavy, sometimes tender, and always intriguing. I loved it. Centuries after the death of the legendary Sir Una Everlasting , spindly, awkward, cowardly historian Owen Mallory unearths her story--and becomes inexorably intertwined with the events of Una's life as they occur in the past. Harrow's tale involves multiple do-overs and attempts to shift events and alter reality--while the unlikely couple of Una and Owen fall in love again and again. The Everlasting  is filled with rich adventure; twisty jaunts through time; tragedy and loss; dark turns, boundless hope; messy, happy discoveries; outsmarting those in power; and noble victories. It ticked a million boxes for me as a reader. This is the type of romantic fantasy I adore. No swooning, childish behavior, or foolishness, just hard-won connections, deep character development, bravely defying expectations, and absolutely lovely love. This broke my heart and mended it over and over, in the best ways possible. For my full review, please check out The Everlasting . The Everlasting was one of my favorite reads across all genres in 2025. You can check out my full list of favorites here . 02 The Book of Love by Kelly Link In Kelly Link's wonderfully oddball debut novel The Book of Love , she uses every bit of the book's 640 pages to build realities, possibilities, magical developments, quirky fun, deep connection, and second chances you'll be cheering for. Teenagers Mo, Daniel, and Laura have tragically disappeared from their hometown of Lovesend, Massachusetts, and have been presumed dead. One year later, they find themselves sitting in a fluorescent-lit classroom in their seaside town with Mr. Anabin, their high school music teacher, before them. They soon realize that Mr. Anabin is capable of powerful magic, that he knows where the teens have been trapped for the past year and why, and he's advising them on what to do next. Along with a quirky, sassy magical being whose intentions are unclear, Mr. Anabin offers them a chance to compete in magical tasks in order to reclaim their lives. I wasn't completely satisfied with the ending, but I also appreciate that Link didn't take an easy way out in which the teens and their allies fix everything, voila! Some aspects are resolved, while others are left in a limbo that feels appropriate in its uncertainties and dark shadows. This is twisty and odd, quirky and fun, and has lots of heart. At almost 650 pages long, there's enough page time for Link to build various realities, tear them down, and reimagine new ones while the reader scrambles to keep up. The Book of Love  explores reality, connections, loyalty, possibilities, and second chances. I was hooked. I received a prepublication edition of this book (which was published the year prior, oops!) courtesy of NetGalley and Random House. For my full review, please check out this link . 03 Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1) by Sebastien de Castell Kellen begins as a principled, headstrong young man lacking in the magic crucial for power, familial stability and social standing in his world. By the end of the book he is satisfyingly resolved, stronger, and accepting of his complicated fate. “I’m a woman, kid. You probably haven’t met one before, coming as you do from this backward place, but it’s like a man only smarter and with bigger balls.” Kellen is struggling in his mage's trials aimed at earning him a name among his privileged people, the Jan'Tep. And the struggle feels even worse because his younger sister is living up to the family's powerful name by demonstrating more powerful magic than any student in their school. But Kellen's magic hasn't come in--and he fears that it never will. But as he uses his smarts, his unlikely allies, and his loyalty to get by, he finds himself discovering uncomfortable truths about his family and his community--and questioning everything he thought he knew. I loved the characters' dynamics, the outsider Ferius Pargosi who becomes a mentor and deeply loyal friend, the quest, the uprising of the downtrodden, and the setup to book two, Shadowblack , which I definitely want to read. I also appreciated witnessing Kellen's tough road to self-acceptance--particularly in light of his discovery that his parents have hidden, tamped down, and diminished his particular type of magic, deeming it destructive to Kellen and to the family's status. I can't wait to see him come into his own in book two. For my full review please check out Spellslinger . 04 Hemlock & SIlver by T. Kingfisher Based on my two Bossy reads so far, T. Kingfisher writes my favorite kind of fantasy novel: a wonderfully oddball main protagonist, a strange adventure, a mystery to be solved, and simmering romance with No Swooning or Annoying Drama whatsoever. I loved this story about an expert in poisons, with banter and clever deduction in an imagined world. In Hemlock & Silver , Anja is a healer who since her young cousin's preventable death has obsessively focused on learning about, combating, and teaching others about poisons. To determine antidotes and treatments, she must regularly ingest deadly substances, but duty calls. She's somewhat of a loner, part of a beloved family, and a merchant's daughter, but she's plainly dressed, tall, work-driven, and uninterested in social niceties, so she spends her time exhaustively researching and trying to help those who have ingested a potentially harmful substance. But when the king personally arrives at her workshop, desperate for help with his sole surviving daughter, who he suspects is being poisoned, Anja must not only navigate the ins and outs of royal customs, adjust her practical wardrobe, and leave her personal research behind to travel to the king's distant palace. I am allllll in on Kingfisher's novels. Everyone who recommended this author's work to me was correct, and I have no one to blame but myself for the delay in diving in. Kingfisher imagines richly imagined fantasy worlds, and within them she slots fantastically imperfect and wondrous main protagonists whose thoughts, dialogue, motivations, and actions have me completely hooked. Romantic undercurrents are wonderful, and there is No Swooning or Ridiculousness. This is my fantasy sweet spot. For my full review of this book please see Hemlock & Silver .   05 The Raven Scholar (Eternal Path #1) by Antonia Hodgson The first book in Hodgson's trilogy is smart, mysterious, charming, and layered. I loved the dark academia setting; the brilliant, socially awkward, unlikely heroine Neema; and the strange elements, such as talking, opinionated, sensitive ravens that are not only linked to Neema but a part of her . Neema Kraa has been keeping busy as High Scholar in the land of Orrun, and her focus hasn't been on making friends. The imperious genius is eager to preserve the peace that has reigned for twenty-four years--but forces that she doesn't yet understand are tearing apart the kingdom. A representative from each of the seven regions must compete to replace their ruler, who is about to step down. The ruthless young competitors are warriors and strategists who have been cultivating the skills and cunning for this their whole lives. And after a series of unlikely, unfortunate events, bookworm Neema becomes one of them--the least threatening, as she is clearly doomed to fail the dangerous challenges and battles and probably won't survive the ordeal. The Raven Scholar  is smart, charming, and wonderfully weird. I love the headstrong, unyielding, unlikely-heroine Neema and the dark-academia elements. There is a romantic element, but this is, happily for me, a richly built fantasy and not a romantasy. The romance is lovely, poignant, and just enough. Click here   for my full review of The Raven Scholar . 06 Shield of Sparrows (Shield of Sparrows #1) by Devney Perry This first installment in the series sets up an overlooked princess who becomes a heroine; deadly monsters who may be being treated unfairly; an enemies-to-lovers romance; and shifting loyalties. The dialogue is often dramaaaatic, but I'm in for the next book. Odessa is the oldest daughter of a king, but she has always felt like a placeholder; her father has always focused on vigorously teaching and training her younger sister May as his heir. You might predict that Odessa will be the unlikely heroine of this story when you find out that she has red hair . This character is not going to go along with the plans set out for her, everyone! Dear reader, she is going to end up being brave, and finding love, and and Doing the Right Thing. I knew all of this was coming, but I didn't mind it. I did, however, grow weary of Dess's repeated rhetorical questions and revisiting of the same issues over and over, neither of which felt like it moved the plot forward. The dialogue is sometimes dramaaaaatic, but generally the pacing rolled right along in this one. This first romantasy in Perry's planned trilogy offers monsters, royalty, secrets, hidden identities, battle training, some oddly modern-seeming profanity, and, abruptly, some steamy scenes. The swearing felt modern, but the setting felt more medieval. I listened to this as a TWENTY-HOUR audiobook. For my full review of this book please see Shield of Sparrows .

Six More Favorite Contemporary Fiction Reads This is the third of three contemporary fiction lists I've put together as I've mined my recent-past reading for my favorite reads of the past year--you can find my first list of contemporary fiction favorite reads from last year here and my second list here . And you can explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from last year, or you can read about past Bossy contemporary fiction favorites here . If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite contemporary fiction reads, whether from the past year or beyond? 01 The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai Desai's first novel in decades is a 688-page tale that meanders through India, New York, family and romantic relationships, and career false starts, with missteps, mysterious, powerful magical realism elements, and an undercurrent of darkness and despair. The messy resolutions felt appropriately hard-fought after the characters' extended struggles. Sonia is living away from her Indian family while she studies writing in Vermont, and after growing up used to having multiple family members around, feeding and speaking to her constantly, Sonia is still adjusting to the quiet of college, only having one housemate, and the cold and snow. Sunny is a journalist in New York City, eager to escape his overbearing family home in India. This is not a straightforward novel. Desai offers an ambitiously meandering tale in which many issues stretch out, increasingly twisted and unresolved, for much (sometimes all) of the book, often with little sense of progress for our characters. Desai weaves darkness, powerful superstition, and magical realism through a wide-ranging story about family, tradition, fear, missteps, danger, and obtuse elements whose significance only in the end become clear(er) to our main protagonists. The situations around relationships and life choices are often messy, complex, mystifying, and frustrating. Current-day conflicts link to generational trauma, storytelling, and mysterious power. Kiran Desai is also the author of The Inheritance of Loss . I listened to the 688-page The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny  as a 25.5-hour audiobook. You can read my full review by clicking this link . 02 Bunny (Bunny #1) by Mona Awad Bunny begins with an outcast main protagonist in a MFA program who's infuriated by her twee fellow seminar students. It builds into an increasingly unhinged, intriguing phantasmagoria, equal parts dark nightmare and outrageously silly absurdity. Samantha is a scholarship MFA student at the progressive Warren University in New England. An outsider, a solitary type immersed in her own sometimes dark writing, she is disgusted by the rest of her cohort--childish women who call each other "Bunny," dress in twee outfits, speak in high voices, and, aside from their hilariously outrageous creations, seem to be of one unimaginative mind and to operate in a mindless echo chamber of nonsense. But then the Bunnies invite Samantha to their "Smut Salon" and into their hive mind of dottiness. She becomes oddly entrenched in their circle, then increasingly unsure of herself and vulnerable. She ditches her few true friends, also outsiders, and feels at a loss to determine the line between reality and richly imagined dark, seemingly impossible developments. Just as the novel felt as though it were lasting too long for me and began to teeter toward the tedious; just as I wondered if I could stand to listen to the Bunnies' perfectly horrible, put-on baby voices for another couple of hours (narrator Sophie Amoss deftly handles the voices in this novel to great effect), the story went in a truly unhinged direction that intrigued me. It's difficult to describe how bonkers this story is. I was surprised by how hooked I became on it. This is not a book I would universally recommend, but for an audience that appreciates cutting satire and a bananas story, this one will fit the bill. For my full review of this book please see Bunny .   03 The Names by Florence Knapp Knapp's novel explores three life paths for a set of characters, all set into motion by the naming of the youngest child--whimsical, Mom's choice, or named for his cruel father. The trauma was difficult to read, but the various timelines were fascinating, as were the intersections of events and characters among them. Florence Knapp's novel The Names  explores three paths in a life--determined by three different names given to a baby upon his birth. In one timeline, an abused wife makes a stand for a whimsical name suggested by her daughter Maia, Bear; in a second, she makes a less aggressive but unsanctioned name choice that's her favorite, Julian; in a third, she registers her baby's name as "junior" to her brutal husband Gordon. In this sliding-doors story, the three paths diverge dramatically, and the whole family's destiny is shaped in different ways for each option. Each timeline produces a vastly different boy, a significantly shaped sister Maia, drastically different paths for mother Cora, and altered futures for father Gordon. Supporting characters make Easter-egg appearances in other timelines. None of the paths are too easy or perfect, but each offers varied satisfaction and challenge in the form of justice, tragedy, self-realization, fulfillment, confidence, and hope. The epilogue surprised me; I wasn't sure it was necessary or that I bought into the point of view and the version of a reckoning that it offered, but it was an interesting way to set up slight closure to the story. I found this novel fascinating. Please click here  for my full review of The Names. 04 The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits by Jennifer Weiner Jennifer Weiner's newest novel offers a behind-the-scenes peek at the music business, songwriting, and the pressures of fame, layered with complications from clashing sisters, devastating tragedy, and a messy path toward reconciliation. Cassie and Zoe Greenberg are sisters who have always been opposites. Cassie, a musical prodigy, loved losing herself in and expressing herself through playing and singing, but avoided the limelight. Zoe dreamed of stardom since she was a child and was driven more by fame than the music itself. But Zoe realizes that Cassie is key to any musical future, and she convinces Cassie to join her on stage, beginning their meteoric climb to stardom. For one year when they're young adults, the sisters reach mindboggling heights of fame as the pop duo The Griffin Sisters--featured in Rolling Stone , performing on Saturday Night Live , and making videos for MTV. Then their run abruptly ended, and for the public, the reasons for their breakup were a mystery. Twenty years later, Zoe is a housewife and Cassie is a recluse who hasn't spoken to her sister at all. But when Zoe's headstrong daughter Cherry becomes determined to become a star, she digs into the past and forces a confrontation between the estranged sisters at last. This is a great behind-the-scenes look at the music business, musical creativity and songwriting processes, and body-image pressures on women earning a living by being in the limelight. Griffin Sisters  also takes on deep familial conflicts, coping with loss and a devastating blow for future plans, lies and betrayals, and, finally, a messy but hopeful chance for reconciliation. If you like to read fiction about music, you might also like the titles I included in the Greedy Reading List Six Rockin' Stories about Bands and Music . Click here   for my full review. 05 The Sideways Life of Denny Voss by Holly Kennedy This bighearted novel holds a mystery, but its main focus is  neurodivergent main protagonist Denny and his dogged persistence, ambitious acts, decisiveness, wisdom, and loving kindness as he gets into increasing trouble, touches lives, faces loss, and establishes just who he is and wants to be. Denny lives a quiet life in small-town Minnesota, caring for his elderly mother with the companionship of his blind and deaf Saint Bernard, George. A developmental delay--caused by an accident at his birth--means that his options are limited, but Denny seems to keep finding himself in grave trouble. There was the time he kidnapped a neighbor's pet goose, the time he accidentally aided and abetted a bank robbery, and now he's under arrest for the murder of a candidate for mayor. As Denny's big personality, kindness, and discerning views become clear, the story tracks the lead-up to the recent death in the community and how Denny became a murder suspect. We see how he touches strangers' lives, frustrates neighbors, is ambitious in addressing societal wrongs, and we (and he) begin to understand previously unknown elements of his origin story--which he refuses to allow to define him. The Author's Note details how Kennedy's main character and some of the story's side plotlines were built from relatives and loved ones in her own life. The Sideways Life of Denny Voss  is a bighearted novel with an irresistible main protagonist and surrounding players, and the mystery keeps the story humming along. I loved this story. For my full review, please check out this link . 06 The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett In this heartwarming story of wonderfully faulted characters who face tragedy and often make a mess of things, loyalty and steadfastness overcome all and allow a makeshift family to heal, find adventure, discover their individual strengths, and realize that they're meant to be together forever. PJ Halliday is 63 and won the million-dollar lottery. Now he's about to set off on a cross-country road trip to track down his high-school sweetheart following the death of his former nemesis and rival. But not everything in his life has been luck and adventure. PJ has weathered terrible tragedies in his life.  Before he can set out for Arizona to try to win back his young love, his estranged brother dies, and PJ becomes the guardian for his brother's grandchildren. So he packs them into the car, enlists his grumbling grown daughter to help him, and hits the road. Tough situations are real but are surrounded by lighthearted, zany circumstances; characters are faulted and make missteps but learn to forgive themselves and those around them; loyalty and steadfastness serve as bridges to love and caring; and animals work with magical realism to shift and affect outcomes. While the characters in The Road to Tender Hearts  face sometimes devastating turns of events, the tone of the story is such that you won't wonder whether a happy ending is coming. Past hurts aren't erased, but love overcomes, and the ending is sweet sweet sweet. Annie Hartnett is also the author of the wonderful novel Unlikely Animals , which was one of my  Bossy Favorite Fiction Reads of the Year  when I read it. Click here   for my full review of The Road to Tender Hearts .

The Time-Travel Books I love a time-travel book in any genre. Time-travel and time shifts allow a story to go places it otherwise never could, allowing for unusual perspective, second chances, and realizations. Books that play with time almost always go straight on my to-read list. If you're intrigued by time-travel stories, you might also like the books on these Greedy Reading Lists: Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories Six More Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore , and Six More Time-Travel Stories to Dive Into . What are your favorite time-travel books?   01 Recursion by Blake Crouch In Blake Crouch's Recursion , Barry Sutton is a NYC cop looking into a suicide. Helena Smith is a neuroscientist creating technology to preserve memories and allow people to relive them. People like the victim Sutton is investigating are told that their vivid recollections of their life’s memories are not real, and that they’re actually mentally ill, suffering from False Memory Syndrome. When they encounter loved ones from their memories who are now living alternate lives, in many cases they are unable to cope with their conflicting realities. While Sutton begins digging into what’s real and what’s a lie, Smith works feverishly to preserve memories and reality. Together, they have to identify and confront dark forces that might be manipulating—and destroying—the minds and the framework of society as we know it. I cared so much about Sutton and Smith and their mission. Blake Crouch writes character-driven science fiction that I love. This was sooooo good, unexpected, sweeping, and compelling. For my full review, please check out Recursion . You can find my review of Blake Crouch's Upgrade here , my review of Dark Matter  here , and of his novel Pines here . 02 Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen Kin Stewart was a time-traveling secret agent in 2142. He was stranded in the 1990s when a mission went wrong. Now he lives life as a regular guy; he works in IT, he’s happily married, and he has a beloved daughter. They have no idea about his past, which is just how he wants it. When he begins to have memory loss and other odd symptoms, he realizes it’s linked to his past time travel. Then a rescue mission arrives decades too late, to bring him to 2142 and back to another life with another family. Stewart would have to break all the rules of time travel to attempt the impossible: preserve the existence of his daughter in his current reality without destroying everything else. In Here and Now and Then Mike Chen masterfully explores: Is the past set in stone or is it malleable? Which half of Kin’s dual life is most true or immediate or valued? How much physical turmoil can one body take before giving in? What does a hero do when honesty requires putting his life at risk, yet is also essential to save it? I loooved this. Chen writes a deeply felt warring of emotions and conflicting responsibility and duty. I adore a character-driven science-fiction tale. Also, time travel! This totally hit the spot. For my full review, please check out Here and Now and Then . 03 In Five Years by Rebecca Serle Dannie is on the path to achieving her five-year goals in spectacularly efficient fashion. She goes to sleep satisfied, but wakes up in another life: a strange apartment, a different boyfriend, and an alternate set of choices behind and before her. And perhaps most confusingly of all, in this second life she's lost some of her original, lifelong, rigid plans for her future, yet she's happy. Very very happy. She returns to her original reality, but Dannie can’t shake the possibilities and uncertainty created by what felt like an actual, temporary shift in her existence. What happened? But more importantly: What does that vastly different set of circumstances and her satisfaction within it mean about how she can and should live her life? Serle's In Five Years totally hit the spot for me, and it also wasn’t exactly what I expected. The setup seems like the story is a romance, but it’s actually a story about loyalty and devoted friendship without easy or saw-it-coming resolutions, and not everything is as it seems. I loved it. For my full review, please check out In Five Years . Rebecca Serle is also the author of One Italian Summer and other novels. 04 The Ten Thousand Doors    of January by Alix E. Harrow January has lived with Mr. Locke as his ward since her beloved, offbeat father disappeared during a trip to acquire artifacts for the wealthy man’s collections. Her father has since been presumed dead, and Locke keeps her safe and cared for, if without affection. But she is growing older and is looking for answers about her father’s disappearance. When she finds a mysterious book her father had acquired, it shows January unlikely possibilities about her existence and the world at large that it’s difficult to process. When she uncovers unwelcome truths about Locke and her circumstances, she has no choice but to forge into the frightening unknown. Alix E. Harrow has crafted a lovely adventure through different wonderfully imagined worlds (including the early 1900s home base). The Ten Thousand Doors of January also explores the wondrous bravery but sometimes dark and destructive forces surrounding the explorers and collectors venturing through worlds and the wanderers desperately searching for home. For my full review, please check out The Ten Thousand Doors of January . Alix E. Harrow is also the author of the wonderful The Once and Future Witches , Starling House , and other books. 05 The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell You only value something if you know it’ll end. Teenager Holly Sykes is suddenly drawn into the world of “the radio people,” people whose voices she heard as a child. She disappears from her family and leaves behind a tragic mystery, while in her forays through new worlds she attracts dangerous powers to her. David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks is a set of six intriguing tracks through time that are full of surprises and interconnected through Holly and her various threads of reality . There are links to other Mitchell books and characters if you're paying attention, but the book can stand alone. I can say with certainty that I've never read a book quite like this before. A full genre shift around page 400 would normally make me want to throw a book through the window. But here it works somehow. This was strange and compelling. For my full review, please check out The Bone Clocks . David Mitchell is also the author of Utopia Avenue , Cloud Atlas , The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet , and more books. 06 All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai There are flying cars in the alternate reality of this book. Flying cars. I think you should know that going in, because it’s not the only awesome thing, but it is one of the awesome things in Elan Mastai's All Our Wrong Todays . Our main protagonist Tom makes a decision that strands him in our version of the world, which feels like a dystopia to him. He encounters alternate versions of his loved ones and universe, which are jarring but grow on him. He strikes out to explore time and place in an effort to figure out which reality to preserve. Mastai provides a fascinating story with time travel, alternate realities, love, loss, humor, bravery, and moments that made me laugh out loud. I didn't always follow the logic as laid out in the book--the supposed development of time travel itself and how time travelers affect realities--but I loved suspending my disbelief to be part of it. I loved this! For my full review, please see All Our Wrong Todays .

My Favorite Bossy Reads I've read about 70 books so far this year, and these are my six favorites. They vary in genre, in tone, in plot, and in style, but they all delighted me, made me want to keep reading, took me inside another place and time, and made me feel invested in what happened to the characters and their situations. I love to look back and take stock of my reading, and I'm always curious about whether my year-end overall favorites will include the titles on my favorites list from halfway through the calendar year. Only time will tell! But for now, I hope you'll check out these great books if you haven't already. If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! What are your favorite reads so far this year? 01 Wolvers by Taylor Brown Taylor Brown offers up a suspenseful, adventure-filled story in Wolvers. Trace is an angry young man who sets out on an ill-advised, illegal revenge journey, but he's not the only wolf tracker in the New Mexico forest. He's starting to rethink his mission and be headed toward a fresh start--if he can survive that long. Trace Temple is a disillusioned, angry young man whose family lost its ranch after hard times. Then Trace, a gifted tracker who knows the woods better than almost anyone around, is hired by a shadowy, powerful militia group to take out One-Eleven, the female leader of the most famous wolf pack in New Mexico, the Dark Canyons. But One-Eleven is uncannily gifted in eluding human pursuit, and Trace is far from the only outdoorsman in these woods. And the longer Trace tracks One-Eleven, the more he begins to second-guess everything about his life. This is an outdoor adventure story that explores tensions between the preservation of nature and development, and between power and vulnerability. But it’s also layered with elements of redemption, love, unlikely loyalties, and character growth. I'm a huge Taylor Brown fan. Check out my Bossy reviews of his novels Rednecks, Wingwalkers, The Gods of Howl Mountain, and Fallen Land, a title I loved and included in the Greedy Reading List Six Great Historical Fiction Stories about the Civil War. Click here for my full review of Wolvers. 02 The Once and Future Queen (Lives of Guinevere #1) by Paula Lafferty A medieval setting, time travel, a quest, and intriguing complications--did Paula Lafferty write this book especially for me? She wrapped some of my favorite elements in funny banter, poignant (non-swooning) romance, and enough plot complexity to keep the whole thing chugging along and keep me riveted. I loved this. Twenty-two-year-old Vera is feeling generally aimless and unseen. Then a strange man comes to town, telling Vera an unbelievable story of her true origins and her destiny. He says that she is actually from Camelot, in King Arthur's time, and that he himself is Merlin. Oh, and that her full name is Guinevere, as in "Queen." He says that she was placed in her current time to grow up in safety into the woman she needed to be. The existence of the kingdom and magic itself are reliant upon Vera's time-travel back to Arthur's world, and only she can save them. Upon her arrival, she must figure out how to help the kingdom. Meanwhile, she finds that the traditional thinking about a Guinevere-Lancelot romance is off base, but Vera builds a friendship for the ages with Lancelot. This funny, poignant, powerful connection is one of my favorite aspects of the novel. I liked the injection of just enough modern feminism into a medieval setting (running! speaking her mind! wearing that modern underwear! jousting!). A newly imagined relationship with Arthur is hard-won and lovely. For my full review, please see The Once and Future Queen. 03 Whistler by Ann Patchett This may be my favorite Ann Patchett novel. It's a story of chosen family, a chance reunion, illuminating and poignant revelations about the past, and unexpected, reimagined relationships and treasured paths forward. In Ann Patchett's newest novel, Daphne and her husband are visiting the Met Museum when they notice an older gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, Daphne's long-lost stepfather, the second of her mother's three husbands and a beloved figure from Daphne's childhood--whom she never saw nor heard from after a car accident that occurred when she was a young girl and Eddie and Daphne's mother divorced. Their deep connection is immediately evident once again, and, at times with Daphne's sister Leda and Daphne's husband Jonathan, but most often alone, Eddie and Daphne revisit old memories, compare notes, and treasure their time together as a gift. The structure of the story is wonderful, tracking back in time to Daphne's childhood and the pivotal events that led up to her cherished stepfather's departure, with revised memories and varied accounts revealing truths that change the tenor of the life-changing occurrences that follow. This is lovely, poignant, and unexpected--and it's possibly my favorite Ann Patchett novel ever, certainly since The Magician's Assistant. I received an audiobook version of this novel courtesy of Libro.fm and Harper. Ann Patchett is also the author of Tom Lake, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, State of Wonder, Run, Bel Canto, The Dutch House, The Magician's Assistant, These Precious Days, and other books. For my full review, please check out Whistler. 04 When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén Ridzén's beautiful, poignant novel centers around Bo, an elderly Swedish man living out his last days in his woodland cabin as the past becomes more vivid to him than his present. This is lovely, heartbreaking, and practical while offering hope. Bo is an elderly Swedish man living in the woodland cabin where he grew up. He exists in somewhat of a haze between naps, frequent carer visits, calls and check-ins from his son Hans, short walks with his beloved elkhound Sixten, and vivid memories of his life--which sometimes feel more real than his reality. His wife, who suffers from dementia, is in a care center, and his memories of her pop up in painful, poignant vibrancy. When the Cranes Fly South is a beautiful, tragic, hopeful examination of end-of-life issues for an aging person as well as the loved ones who are trying their best to support their elderly person, keep them safe, and promote autonomy within a framework of care. In Ridzén's novel, while the past and Bo's many memories begin to become more vivid and realistic to Bo than the present-day or near-past, we watch Bo letting go, and from a distance we witness his son, grandson, best friend, dog, and carers as they see him slipping away. I loved this lovely novel and the hope and practicality that overcomes heartbreak. Ridzén places us deeply in Bo's point of view, which was valuable to understanding his perspective on matters related to his own body and his pending death. Click here for my full review of When the Cranes Fly South. 05 This Is Happiness by Niall Williams This is gorgeous Niall Williams literary fiction, centering around an Irish country village, a young man searching for his path, and his unofficial mentor, zigzagging his way through life, embracing adventure, and bridging the gap between the old ways and modernity. Quiet connections and reflections make the story, with understated poignancy, humor, and heartbreaking moments that bring the book's world to life. In the rural Irish village of Faha, in County Clare, the years-long rain (whether sprinkling, torrential, misting, steady dripping) is stopping, and electricity seems poised to finally move from "the notional" to "the actual," as Father Coffey proclaims. Young Noe (short for "Noel") has abandoned the seminary but is unsure of his next steps, and he takes refuge at his beloved grandparents' cottage in the village. A stranger, Christy, arrives to begin coordinating the installation of electricity in the area, and he boards with Noe at Ganga and Doady's home. He is older, kind, capable, yet somewhat lost, and he's bent on making amends for past mistakes. He and Noe become fast friends and in the span of a few months go through weighty moments with each other. This Is Happiness explores the small moments that make up a life worth living as well as explorations of the meaning of existence, religion, spirituality, reconciliation, commitment, and facing death. I adore this novel and its countless gorgeous passages, its understated, poignant, heartbreaking elements, and its unexpected moments of connection and beauty. When I was almost finished reading my (overdue) library copy, I bought a copy for a friend's birthday gift and ordered another for myself so I could finish reading it at my leisure and keep it forever. For my full review of this book please see This Is Happiness. For my review of Niall Williams's lovely Time of the Child, please click this link. 06 Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser This loose retelling of the Cinderella folk story offers the perspective of the "evil" stepmother, who is here actually a savvy, strong woman determined to provide for her household after being widowed in a patriarchal, 1700s-feeling society. I loved Hochhauser's turning the traditional tale on its head, the details, and the twists. This is my favorite read of the spring so far. Lady Tremaine is a loose retelling of the damsel-in-distress Cinderella folk tale, here from the perspective of the "evil" stepmother--who is shown to actually be a strong, determined, clever widow stuck in an era where men hold all of the property, power, and freedom. Lady Tremaine is single-minded about protecting her daughters and trying to secure futures for them in a world where the safety and security of unmarried women is shaky. A royal ball opens up the opportunity for Lady Tremaine to use the respectability of her deceased husband's title to secure invitations for her daughters (who are not, after all, shallow and greedy horrors of young women, as in the Disney story) and her standoffish but beautiful stepdaughter Elin. Elin is this novel’s version of Cinderella, and here she is a mostly insufferable girl, gloriously and willfully obtuse, dedicated to needlework and pious prayers while the rest of the househould is scrambling, hustling, and exhausting themselves to make ends meet. There’s some gritty business, there are difficult choices, and there's a surprising shift of loyalties I loved. I adored the details of the late-1700s-feeling setting; the exploration of women’s struggles to carve out lives for themselves in a patriarchal society; and the creativity, strength, and resolve necessary to survive. The story would have stood on its own for me, but the references to the Cinderella story were a fun added bonus. I received a prepublication edition of Lady Tremaine courtesy of NetGalley and St. Martin's Press. Click here for my full review of Lady Tremaine. You might also be interested in Bossy reviews of other retellings.

Six Favorite Memoir Reads These were my six favorite memoir reads from last year. If you like to read memoirs, you might also like to check out some of my Bossy memoir reviews, or some of my Greedy Reading Lists of favorites: Six Fascinating Memoirs to Explore Six More Fascinating Memoirs to Explore Six Musicians' Memoirs that Sing Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality Six of My Favorite Memoir Reads Last Year If you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite memoir reads? 01 Cher: The Memoir, Part One by Cher Cher's lack of agency in her relationship with Sonny Bono came through in passive, reactive behavior, but as she grew older, she found her voice, rode a roller coaster of personal and professional adventures, overcame difficulties, and set her sights on an even bigger, more fulfilling life than ever. I'm alllll in for book two. Early on, the memoir felt like more of a factual account of what occurred in her life than it felt like illuminating self-examination. I was curious to find out if Cher would provide more reflection around events as she grew older and more emotionally mature within her own story. Her relationship with Sonny Bono (eleven years older) began when she was a teenager, and his control over her professional and personal life grew stronger and stronger without Cher's recognizing her limitations, her lack of knowledge about finances and business, and her squashed self-esteem about her performance ability. As she recounts the ups and downs of her early relationships and rides the roller coaster of success and failure, Cher begins to want to express her own voice and to become assertive, and this is when she starts to show more vulnerability and growth--and when I felt drawn into her story. This is part one of two, and toward the end of this installment she has made her way through the nurturing link with David Geffen, her complicated relationship with Gregg Allman, as well as her connection to her children, her career, and her creativity. She has her eye on diving into becoming a serious actress. And I am hooked. Please click here for my full review of Cher: The Memoir. 02 Sociopath by Patric Gagne Gagne never experienced emotions the way other kids did, and when she grew older, while acting out, lying, stealing, and fighting violent impulses, she self-diagnosed herself as a sociopath. This is a fascinating peek at her motivations, impulses, discoveries, and self-discovered coping mechanisms--which she now uses as a therapist for others with sociopathy. I don’t care what other people think. I’m not interested in morals. I’m not interested, period. Rules do not factor into my decision-making. I’m capable of almost anything. Patric Gagne always knew she didn't experience emotions the way other people did. She wasn't concerned with consequences, danger, or other people's feelings. When she was a girl, she adhered to her mother's rule of always telling her the truth--but the truth seemingly made her mother (and everyone else) upset. So she began to keep secrets--because she was stealing loved ones' treasured possessions, breaking into homes, lying, and frequently fighting the urge to inflict violent harm on others. I was fascinated by the author's in-depth explorations of her motivations, triggers, abilities, needs, and fight for control. Her self-examination leads her to shape her life's work toward helping those who share her experiences and struggles. The memoir is structured with the engaging pacing of a novel--danger, discovery, redemption, and hope. I was intrigued by her one-woman trial and error method of determining her triggers, impulses, and coping mechanisms. The epilogue offers additional context for her current-day life and adds to my curiosity about her husband, who has lived beside her and within this whirlwind for many years as she has acted out, lied, and entered into danger, and who is now parenting along with Gagne. For my full review, please see Sociopath. 03 Awake by Jen Hatmaker Jen Hatmaker's memoir explores her shock, grief, then growth after the end of her marriage, which she tells in her signature bold, frank, lionhearted manner while always displaying her deep love for her family and friends. Jen Hatmaker, who was married before she could legally have a drink and who built her identity as a woman dedicated to her family, her religion, and her community, found her world turned upside down when she discovered in 2020 that her husband of over 25 years, the father of their five children, was having an affair. Hatmaker's frank, sassy, conversational tone and her focus on authenticity, joy, and enthusiastic growth are evident here. She doesn't shy away from exploring heartbreak, betrayal, and shock, nor does she mine those experiences for drama or sit in them for a gratuitously long time. She protects her children's privacy. While sharing what she learns was her husband's extended infidelity and her world-stopping surprise at discovering it, she doesn't excoriate him, and she acknowledges the weaknesses in their marriage that existed prior to their split. I love reading the stories of lives lived, so I frequently read memoirs. If you're interested in the stories of famous or little-known people's lives, you might want to check out these Bossy reviews of memoirs. For my full review, please check out Awake. 04 Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks Memorial Days is Geraldine Brooks's memoir of sudden loss, delayed grief, and a delving into sorrow so she can move forward with her life. Brooks's husband Tony Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and acclaimed author, father to her two sons, and her best friend, was on a book tour when he collapsed on a D.C. street in 2019 and died at age 60. Brooks and Horwitz himself had believed him to be in good health, and Brooks was beyond shocked at the news. But an endless logistical to-do list following his death kept her busy and delayed her grieving. Three years after his death, she traveled to a remote Australian island--where she had once considered settling down--to sit with Tony's journals, dive into her memories, rage against what she's lost, and give in to sorrow. This is poignant and heartbreakingly lovely; Brooks brings the reader through the joy of not suspecting tragedy lies around the corner, to shock and endless logistics, to anger, sadness, confusion, and desperation, then, in her journey and in her deliberate way of taking time, to a more peaceful acceptance accompanying her deep loss. I listened to Brooks's lovely Australian accent by reading this as an audiobook. For my full review, please check out Memorial Days. Geraldine Brooks is also the author of the novels People of the Book, Horse, Year of Wonders, and others. If you're interested in books about mortality and loss, check out the titles here. 05 What in the World?! by Leanne Morgan Comedian Leanne Morgan's memoir traces her path from an attention-seeking, beloved young girl to a young adult facing missteps and disappointment, through her unlikely journey to stand-up, to the embracing of her Southern mama persona and her wild success. Leanne Morgan hit it big as a middle-aged comic from rural Tennessee talking about her kids' T-ball, her adoration of her grandchildren, and her big, comfortable panties. Her voice is a striking, uniquely nasal Southern drawl, and her Netflix special "I'm Every Woman" features Morgan's signature plaintive looks at the audience, accompanying stories that sometimes end in such mock-despair that she says she just "wanted to take to the bed." (She also steals the show in a supporting role in the recent movie starring Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, You're Cordially Invited.) What in the World?! offers current-day takes on her life that will feel familiar to fans--I'd already seen online video clips of stand-up versions of a few of the anecdotes shared here. But her memoir also traces her youth (when she imagined that she would find fame in some way), her first, brief marriage, her emotional growth, her grit, and, ultimately, her second, steady relationship and marriage to her current husband, the birth and joy of her kids, her rocky start in entertainment--and the world-rocking entrance of her grandbabies. I was particularly intrigued by the fits and starts of Morgan's younger years, her struggles to find her way, and her unlikely path to fame. I love to hear people's stories, and I found all of this endearing. I listened to What in the World?! as an audiobook. 06 This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir by Zarna Garg Comedian Zarna Garg lived several lives before falling into comedy in midlife and realizing it was where she'd belonged all along. Her memoir is candid, poignant, funny, and always entertaining. I loved this peek into her fascinating life. Zarna Garg fled her comfortable lifestyle and her widower father to avoid an unwanted arranged marriage at age 14. She begged places to stay from friends and acquaintances in Mumbai, homeless. Desperate for food and shelter and tired of overstaying her welcome and never having security, she was returning home and on the verge of agreeing to be married off, until her long-hoped-for visa to the US came through. Instead of becoming a child bride, she ran from home and began a dramatically different new life in Akron, Ohio. In midlife, she reimagined her future again and became a hard-working comedian who opened for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and then warranted her own headliner spots. Garg offers an honest, funny account of overcoming sobering challenges and determining her own destiny after years of struggles and constant worries about being a burden on those who might help her. Her intense push to achieve is accompanied by doubt, periods of low self-esteem, and feelings of unworthiness that stem from her childhood. At the very beginning the pacing felt a little uneven to me, but then Garg hit her stride. I laughed out loud repeatedly while I was reading this charming memoir by this strong, funny woman. Please click here for my full review of This American Woman.

A Varied List of Maine Books I was recently visiting my old stomping grounds in Maine for a whirlwind trip to see family, and I started thinking about Maine books. I felt as though each of the titles here made pretty good use of a Maine setting, which, after all, is too wonderful to be squandered. Sometimes I did wish for more of a Maine presence in these reads, but I hereby present to you A Varied List of Maine Books. The list includes: literary fiction that's part of an interconnected series; a romantic story about starting over; a memoir focused on the 1960s; historical fiction about a midwife that's based on a real historical figure; the first in a mystery series centered around former CIA agents; and literary fiction/historical fiction based upon disturbing events on a real-life, racially integrated island off the coast of Maine. Have you read any of these books? Which other books would you include on this Maine list? 01 Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout In Lucy by the Sea , familiar Strout characters Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William flee New York City for rural Maine during the Covid-19 pandemic. The novel offers introspection, vulnerability, and new beginnings. But despite her insecurities and what sometimes feels like fragility, Lucy is often able to see the difficult truth in situations and face them with stolid resolve. She alludes to her difficult childhood circumstances (which are more fully explored in My Name Is Lucy Barton ), and we see that her lifelong ability to cope with despair and grim events serve her well in her current circumstances. The nearby ocean is a haunting presence but also a steady, everchanging comfort to Lucy. To her surprise, she begins to notice and respond to the wonders of the light, the weather, the air, and the changing scenery of her daily walks in beautiful and immersive passages in the book. Strout takes us into the heart of a stressful, unusual pandemic situation in which Lucy and William, longtime friends and ex-spouses, live in intimate solitude together, wondering about and worrying about their daughters, each other, themselves, and the world. In order to feel the full weight of this book, I think it's important to first read Strout's My Name Is Lucy Barton . Lucy's creation of an imaginary, supportive mother and her loving responses to and comfort for Lucy in this book absolutely broke my heart. Oh William!  is another Strout book linked to this story, but I didn't respond to that one as much as Lucy Barton  or Lucy by the Sea . For my full review, please check out Lucy by the Sea . 02 Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes Evvie Drake Starts Over , by the author of Flying Solo , is sweet, with funny dialogue, surprises, best-friendship, and a Maine setting I loved. Evvie Drake has become something of a recluse in her quiet seaside Maine town ever since her husband's death in a car crash a year earlier. Her best friend Andy is doing his best to support her. while it seems Evvie is doing her best to bury her grief. Andy's childhood best friend Dean is a former Major League pitcher--but he has the "yips" and can't throw straight anymore. Dean's escape from media scrutiny leads him to rent Evvie's apartment for a time. And as the two become friends, they make a rule: Dean won't ask about Evvie's late husband, and Evvie won't ask about baseball. But having a listening ear in Dean, who is completely separate from Evvie's "before" life, means she might finally be ready to open up about what her relationship was like before she became a widow. And Evvie's ignorance about baseball means Dean can safely vent and maybe even figure out what's holding him back. They may be able to help the other find some version of peace, just by being there. Oh, this book! Linda Holmes's Evvie Drake Starts Over  is sweet and funny and lovely. I listened to it as an audiobook while I gardened, and it was a perfect summer story. I loved Holmes’s writing and Evvie’s voice. For my full review, please check out Evvie Drake Starts Over . 03 When We Were the Kennedys by Monica Wood Wood's memoir is captivating and lovely, poignant, sweet without being overly sentimental, and just all-around wonderful. In 1963 the Woods were a typical Catholic immigrant family in Mexico, Maine. But when Monica's father dies suddenly, Monica and her three sisters begin to drift, and the family seems in danger of feeling unmoored forever. When We Were the Kennedys  is a memoir about grieving deeply, leaning on family and community in a crisis and in common suffering, and figuring out the impossible: how to move on after devastating tragedy. Wood gorgeously evokes the many characters and unfathomable events that changed her family's existence--as well as that of her community and the entire country--in 1963. I loved this fantastic memoir! Wood's memoir is heartwarming and funny and tragic and vivid. I ate it up in a single day. For my full review, please see When We Were the Kennedys . 04 The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon I loved the 1700s wintry Maine setting and the convictions of the historical fiction novel's strong midwife character, based upon a real-life figure and her diaries. Historical fiction? Check. Maine setting? Check. Female character in the medical profession during a time when this wasn't the norm? Check. Cold setting? Check! The Frozen River  ticks so many Bossy boxes, I knew this one had to zip to the top of my to-read list. Lawhon's novel is based upon the real-life figure of Martha Ballard, an 18th-century midwife who defied tradition and convention--and, in Lawhon's historical fiction story, the law. It's 1789, and in a  rural Maine community, a local man turns up dead--frozen face up in the Kennebec River. Many who knew him aren't sad to find that he is no longer a belligerent threat in town. But he had been one of two men charged with the rape of one of Martha's best friends, and now the sole living accused man is one of the town's most respected figures--as well as its judge. The mystery of what happened to the man is a subplot that winds through the story. I loved the details of life in the time period, as well as the unassuming women who show their true strength and conviction when it counts. Martha's position as midwife means she's privy to all sorts of secrets and truths in town. I love a story about a woman in the medical profession during an era when this was not the norm, and the details of her care for new mothers and babies was one of my favorite aspects of The Frozen River . In Lawhon's story, Martha is also a strong-willed feminist who is set on fighting for the rights of the largely powerless women in her orbit. There are no Maine accents in evidence in the audiobook, nor terminology that felt Maine-specific. The bulk of the Maine setting is established by the cold and by the mentions of the Kennebec River flowing through the town of Hallowell (which is near Augusta). For my full review of this book, please check out The Frozen River . 05 The Spy Coast (The Martini Club #1) by Tess Gerritsen A former CIA operative retires to small-town Maine--along with other former agents--to live out a quiet existence, until figures from the past roar in to turn everything on its head. Maggie Bird is a retired CIA operative who has made a simple home for herself in rural Maine. She's tried not to make emotional connections and she keeps to herself--old habits from her former life. Then Maggie is visited by someone with knowledge of her past--just before a dead body shows up in her driveway and someone tries to kill Maggie. All  of the upheaval seems connected to an operation from years earlier, "Malta"--and Maggie's perceived betrayal of key players in it. Maggie just can't figure out who's still alive and who would suddenly be after revenge. She also suspects that she can't trust the Agency after a data breach revealed the names of the Malta operatives involved. Unbeknownst to the other citizens in Purity, Maine, the town has drawn multiple  former intelligence agents (they make up the "martini club" in the series title). They didn't all work together in their former lives, but they are friends--despite habitual emotional distance--with commonalities in their backgrounds. Now they operate as a team to try to determine who is after Maggie and why. For my full review of this book, please check out The Spy Club . 06 This Other Eden by Paul Harding Harding bases his slim historical fiction novel This Other Eden  on a real-life, racially integrated island off the coast of Maine, tipping his eccentric characters farther and farther toward tragedy as mainland men motivated by greed aim to destroy the community. Back in 1792, a formerly enslaved man Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife found a safe haven on an island off the coast of Maine. A century later, the Honeys' descendants and their diverse neighbors--some have escaped from trouble, while others are seeking peace and a simple life--make up a hardscrabble community that must scratch and claw to subsist. Yet they remain on their island, safe from the judgment and danger of the mainland. When a schoolteacher-turned-missionary arrives to educate the island's children, he draws the attention of eugenics-focused authorities, who set out to forcibly evacuate the island. The secluded community in the book is like a large family, dependent on only each other, and they are focused on nature and on subsisting independently. The story is inspired by the real-life, formerly integrated Malaga Island off the coast of Maine (in the book it is called Apple Island). The story tips its island characters farther and farther toward tragedy, then plunges headfirst into the various heartbreaking consequences of mainland strangers' decisions, cold cruelties, and greedy motivations, culminating in the forceful removal of the peaceful Apple Island inhabitants. Harding's language is beautiful as it evokes the harsh landscape and the characters' connection to the weather, the terrain, and the natural world. For my full review of this novel, please check out This Other Eden .

Six Bossy Romance Favorites I've got a few more lists up my sleeve as I continue taking stock of my reading for the Bossy best of the best from the past year. If you've missed my prior lists, take a look on the blog! Some of the books in this post are written by the usual romance-standout suspects--and many of these authors have new romance titles out now or coming out soon, just in time for summer reading. Please keep an eye out for my upcoming reviews of those! If you want to check out past favorites, check out the books on these Greedy Reading Lists: Six Romantic Novels Perfect for Savoring Summer's Last Gasp Six Rom-Coms Perfect for Summer Reading Six More Great Rom-Coms Perfect for Summer Reading Six of My Favorite Light Fictions Reads of the Past Year Six More of My Favorite Light Fiction Reads of the Past Year Six Great Light Fiction Stories Perfect for Summer Reading Six More Great Light Fiction Stories Six of My Favorite Rom-Com Reads of the Year, and Six More of My Favorite Rom-Com Reads of the Year You can also explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from the past year. If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! What are some of your favorite romance reads, whether from the past year or beyond? 01 One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune The main male protagonist was off-putting to me in his arrogance at first, but Carley Fortune is the best at developing a lakeside romance story with characters I root for and steamy, poignant, friendship-based relationships I love. This is a great summer read. Alice's career as a photographer really began the summer she spent with her grandmother Nan at family friends' lake house. Shy Alice watched more than she participated in lake life--and she took a photo of three smiling teenagers on a yellow boat, and it seemed to set everything else in motion. Now she's feeling disillusioned with the airbrushing and false scenes she's forced to create in her job rather than capturing something real. So when Nan falls and breaks her hip and needs a pick-me-up, Alice arranges for them to return to the cabin where she spent that pivotal summer. But handsome, mischievous Charlie Florek, one of the subjects of that long-ago photo, seems to be everywhere she turns--and she can't hide behind her lens anymore. Fortune drops some breadcrumbs regarding the Issue Sure to Keep Them Apart, which follows The Desire to Not Ruin the Friendship (a concern that seems heartbreakingly valid). The steamy scenes didn't invite involuntary squealing or cringing on my part--they couple is really drawn to each other, and there's a tantalizing teasing aspect to their slowing down the physical progression of the friends-with-benefits arrangement. I loved the eventual relationship between Charlie and Alice, and I loved their love. For my full review of this book please see One Golden Summer. Carley Fortune is also the author of Meet Me at the Lake and Every Summer After as well as This Summer Will Be Different. 02 The Love Haters by Katherine Center Katherine Center's sweet rom-com about a video producer and her reluctant hero of a subject is set against the colorful backdrop of Key West. The appealingly playful love story incorporates issues of body image, job insecurity, and past tragedy in a lighthearted and charming novel. Katie Vaughn has been single for a year, since her former fiancé, an up-and-coming musician, hit it big and then very publicly cheated on her with a pop star. She's a mid-level video producer on the verge of a layoff--unless she accepts a job in which she documents the life of Coast Guard rescue swimmer Hutch Hutcheson, an everyday hero who rose to fame when he happened to save Jennifer Aniston's golden retriever. And he's not interested in being filmed. The banter made me laugh at times, and I bought the attraction between Katie and Hutch, as well as the "reasons" (all solvable, folks!) that they must not be together. Katie's evolution in considering and coping with body image issues felt valuable and compelling. Supporting characters are great, colorful, and add nice layers of interconnectedness to the story. The crisis that forms toward the end felt over the top and drawn out, with a rom-com-easy resolution, but by that point I was ready for anything Center was throwing my way. This is not a racy book, and the attraction and relationship are focused on emotions and wanting to be together without being swoony or angsty. Please check out my full review of The Love Haters. Katherine Center is also the author of The Rom-Commers, Hello Stranger, What You Wish For, Things You Save in a Fire, The Bodyguard, and other books. 03 Say You'll Remember Me (Say You'll Remember Me #2) by Abby Jimenez Abby Jimenez layers tough situations and messy complications into her rom-coms, and here, her main protagonists must face and overcome past and present difficulties in order to banter their way through the story and build a sweet life together. Samantha creates zippy social media posts for a local mustard company (I kept feeling surprise, but also joy, that this job seemed to provide a sustainable salary)--and she doesn't take any attitude from anyone. Xavier is a young veterinarian who feels grumpy, exhausted, and as though he may be losing faith in humanity--but he loves the animals he cares for. After one disastrous encounter involving a rescued kitten with a serious congenital disorder, then one magical, extended date, the two are falling for each other. But Xavier's painful past and Samantha's challenging present might make a future for the two impossible. Jimenez never shies away from including heavy themes and tough situations in her rom-coms. Here, childhood abuse, animal abuse, and dementia are all part of Xavier and Samantha's past and present stories, so nothing is too easy on their path to togetherness. Jimenez writes irresistible characters, and I loved the weight of the difficulties behind this sweet story of love. I received a prepublication audiobook edition of Say You'll Remember Me courtesy of Hachette Audio and Libro.fm. For my full review of Say You'll Remember Me, please check out this link. Jimenez is also the author of Just for the Summer (one of my Favorite Rom-Coms of the Year last year), Part of Your World, Yours Truly, The Friend Zone, and The Happy-Ever-After Playlist. 04 Dungeons and Drama by Kristy Boyce In Kristy Boyce's young-adult charmer, high schoolers Riley and Nathan, coworkers who have nothing in common, end up in a fake-dating drama as they try to win over their love interests. High schooler Riley has a grand plan to become a Broadway director. But the always-epic school musical has been canceled because the school thinks there isn't enough support for it. So first she wants to get the spring musical set, then she'll mastermind her future. But when she borrows her mom's car without permission (to go see Waitress out of town with her best friend, so: worth it) and gets grounded, she suddenly has to spend afternoons working at her father's game store instead. Determined not to give up on the musical, Riley sneaks and works on a master plan for a performance--and talks her unfriendly teen coworker, Nathan, into making his gamer crush jealous by doing some convincing flirting with him. Meanwhile, she agrees to take part in some nerdy game play. But role-playing in Nathan's Dungeons & Dragons game turns out to be...fun. And liking Nathan is starting to feel like less of an act than simply a reality. I love a fake-dating premise, and the Nathan-Riley setup is irresistible. I was hooked on their ups and downs--and the reasons for their "downs" are plausible enough that I loved rolling with them. The supporting characters and their side plots are funny and oddball and cute. This was a sweet world that I loved spending time in, and the fact that absolutely everything works out is immensely satisfying. For my full review of Dungeons and Drama, please check out this link. 05 My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan My Oxford Year takes a light, romantic tone and within it, explores weighty issues like serious illness, loss, grief, vulnerability, and offers a suitably complicated ending that doesn't wrap up life's messy loose ends in an unrealistically neat bow. American Ella Durran has had a plan for her education and career sine she was 13: to study at Oxford. Now she's 24, she's just as driven, and she's finally at Oxford. In addition to branching out into studying literature across the pond, Ella has agreed to be an education policy consultant for a potential presidential candidate back home, which means she's on call at all hours. Her phone is always at hand, and if her bosses call, she drops everything to pick up and be a sounding board or a problem-solver. Her propensity for remaining emotionally closed off free up a lot of time. She's never been in a serious relationship and has no interest in one--she doesn't have time for frivolity when she's chasing so many goals. The eventual happy ending that the tone of the novel seems to be assuring readers of at the beginning morphs into a far more complex version of a resolved story by the end, with significant pain and yet glimmers of hope that transcend the immediate situation. I loved the facing of mortality in the story--as well as the focus on literature and its power. Click here for my full review of My Oxford Year. 06 Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry Henry's story-within-a-story adds a historical fiction element to her signature big-hearted, banter-driven, steamy, intriguingly complicated interpersonal dynamic exploration in Great Big Beautiful Life. This is an excellent rom-com with enough weighty themes to offer appealing depth. Alice Scott is a celebrity feature writer for The Scratch in LA. She's got a sunny disposition, wears bright, cheery colors, and is hoping for her first big writing break. Hayden Anderson, from New York, has won a Pulitzer Prize and is humorless, highly scheduled, and work-obsessed. They're both currently on Georgia's tiny Little Crescent Island, vying to become the memoir author for the reclusive former tabloid darling Margaret Ives, whose whereabouts have long been unknown to the general public. Their strict NDAs mean Alice and Hayden can't talk about their work, and they're developing more questions than answers. Why is Margaret willing to share her personal tale now? What is she hiding? And what on earth is her purpose in stringing along Hayden and Alice for a month--if she even intends to follow through with this project, which they're each beginning to doubt? But the writers can't deny that opposites are attracting in inconvenient fashion in their case. They're drawn to each other and discover unexpected joy, emotional intimacy, steaminess, and maybe even a promise of something real together. Henry brings her signature warmth, great banter, and sultry romance to this story within a story. I loved the historical fiction aspect of Margaret's recounting of her history. This is an excellent rom-com with weighty themes that make it all feel anchored in something real. I got a little teary during some of the characters' vulnerability at the end, and I laughed out loud at times too. For my full review please check out Great Big Beautiful Life. Henry's Beach Read was one of my favorite books the year I read it, and it also made it onto the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism. People We Meet on Vacation was another great Henry story; you can check out my review here, and you might like to check it out on the Greedy Reading List Six More Great Light Fiction Stories. Emily Henry is also the author of Funny Story (one of my Favorite Reads of the Year), Happy Place, and Book Lovers.

Soaking Up Summer with the Perfect Reads I present to you: a little of this, a little of that, and a list that may collectively be the perfect array of books to get you through the end of the summer: a practically perfect rom-com; the immersive memoir you didn't know you needed; weird, funny, wonderful nonfiction; a doorstop of a book all your friends are talking about; a lovely, quiet story with depth--and a 2026 Booker Prize nominee; and a perfect summer read about strong women, friendship, and bonding through tennis on a California island in the 1950s. What makes a perfect summer read for you? Are there any books you'd like to read before fall? 01 A Practically Perfect Rom-Com: Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan This nearly perfect rom-com hit all the right notes for me. Monaghan's tone was spot-on, and her fake-dating story and characters had me abandoning real-life duties to get back to reading this delightful, banter-filled, layered, lovely novel. Single mom Dolly Brick (her mother was a country music fan) returns to her seaside Rhode Island hometown of Whitfield for the summer to help her hardworking dad with his fish shop, support her brother, who has schizophrenia following a traumatic brain injury, and repair the family home following a fire. When she runs into handsome Stewart, the son of the local millionaire Whitfield family, who has a flat tire and no clue how to change it, capable Dolly helps him out. One thing leads to another, and Stewart proposes a fake-dating scenario that should allow him to save face after a humiliating and public breakup--and more importantly, prove to his family that he can lead a balanced lifestyle outside of work. Monaghan's tone is spot-on, so I eagerly ate up all of her characters' romance scenarios, interpersonal challenges, heartfelt moments, heartbreak, and resolutions. The banter, the hesitant steps forward, the experiences that built the relationship--yes to all of this. I received a prepublication version of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Putnam. For my full review of this book, please see Dolly All the Time. Annabel Monaghan is also the author of books including Nora Goes Off Script, Same Time Next Summer, Summer Romance, and It's a Love Story. 02 The Memoir You Didn't Know You Needed: Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher Cher's lack of agency in her relationship with Sonny Bono came through in passive, reactive behavior, but as she grew older, she found her voice, rode a roller coaster of personal and professional adventures, overcame difficulties, and set her sights on an even bigger, more fulfilling life than ever. I'm alllll in for book two. Early on, the memoir felt like more of a factual account of what occurred in her life than it felt like illuminating self-examination. I was curious to find out if Cher would provide more reflection around events as she grew older and more emotionally mature within her own story. Her relationship with Sonny Bono (eleven years older) began when she was a teenager, and his control over her professional and personal life grew stronger and stronger without Cher's recognizing her limitations, her lack of knowledge about finances and business, and her squashed self-esteem about her performance ability. As she recounts the ups and downs of her early relationships and rides the roller coaster of success and failure, Cher begins to want to express her own voice and to become assertive, and this is when she starts to show more vulnerability and growth--and when I felt drawn into her story. This is part one of two, and toward the end of this installment she has made her way through the nurturing link with David Geffen, her complicated relationship with Gregg Allman, her connection to her children, her career, and her creativity. She has her eye on diving into becoming a serious actress. And I am hooked. Please click here for my full review of Cher: The Memoir. 03 Weird, Funny, Wonderful Nonfiction: The Land And Its People: Essays by David Sedaris Sedaris's first collection of essays in four years offers his delightfully jarring observations and rejection of social niceties, including a hilarious emotional reliance on Duolingo, various entertaining and nerve-racking encounters, and powerfully poignant reflections on his decades-long friendship with his best friend. In David Sedaris's latest book of essays, The Land and Its People, his first in four years, he brings his offbeat humor, acerbic observations, and surprising heart to recounting stories about travel, adventures, mishaps, shortcomings, true friendship, love, families, loss, aging, and the complicated, fascinating, sometimes disappointing nature of human beings. As always, Sedaris delivers enough edge to keep me feeling slightly, delightedly nervous about what's to come, yet much of the time he manages to end essays on a thoughtful or surprisingly heartwarming note. Some of the poignancy in his essays shows up when you read between the lines, which feels only fitting for his sharp observations and his often-barbed voice. The final lines of the essays felt at times a little bit sentimental or cute, but he does have to wrap these up, after all. David Sedaris is also the author of Happy-Go-Lucky, The Best of Me, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Santaland Diaries, and other books. You might also like these Bossy reviews of other collections of essays. For my full review, please check out The Land and Its People. 04 A Doorstop of a Book All Your Friends are Talking About: The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett The Help author's 656-page Depression-set historical fiction tackles issues of poverty, body autonomy, women's rights, race, and more within two timelines featuring spirited, determined, underestimated females who prove how strong they are. In Kathryn Stockett's newest novel--her first since her debut 17 years ago--we dive into dual, linked storylines. It's 1933, the peak of the Great Depression, and in Mississippi, everyone is struggling. We meet two main protagonists: independent young adult Birdie, who travels from her rural hometown to Oxford to beg her socialite, newly married sister for financial assistance for the family; and young Meg, who suffers cruelty in an orphanage after the disappearance and abandonment of her beloved mother. Both are spirited, smart, sassy, and full of personality. The story is long enough to meander at times; we drift in and out of Birdie's and Meg's lives without hurry, spending some days in which little occurs but scene-setting and a building of the story's tone, all of which I enjoyed. But by the time key matters are resolved, after so much page time, the resolutions feel somewhat abrupt. I received a prepublication version of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Spiegel & Grau. For my full review of this book please see The Calamity Club. 05 A Lovely, Quiet Story with Depth--and a 2026 Booker Prize Nominee: The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout In Strout's newest novel, we meet an irresistible new character in high school history teacher Artie Dam. Only the reader understands Artie's deep loneliness, only we live through his discovery of a shattering secret, and only we witness the life-altering power of his kindness and connections with other characters. This is lovely. Artie Dam is a high school history teacher, father to a grown son, longtime husband to his wife, and friend to all. The thoughtful, kind former teacher of the year loves sailing, connects with his students, and is a calming force in all of his circles. Artie is friendly and kind, but private. As readers, we are privy to Artie's closely held ups and downs, his annoyances and triumphs, his secret joys and his devastating disappointments. Only we fully realize that Artie is feeling desperately lonely, disillusioned, and depressed. His connections with his students are wonderful and, sometimes unbeknownst to him, powerful. When Artie discovers a deep secret about his life, he's unsure how to cope. This enormously impactful unearthing of information profoundly shakes him. But in typical Artie fashion, he doesn't burn everything down as a result; he is circumspect, even when restraint feels impossible, and thus he protects others. Elizabeth Strout's signature voice comes through--in this case, it actually felt as though multiple characters took on similar speech patterns to each other and to those in other Strout books. This cross-character speech pattern is not something I'd noticed in other Strout novels, and I'd be curious to know if it was present in other works or not. This is beautiful, poignant, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. I loved reading about Artie's life and being allowed into his inner world. Elizabeth Strout is also the author of Tell Me Everything, Lucy by the Sea, Anything Is Possible, Olive, Again, My Name Is Lucy Barton, and Oh William! Elizabeth Strout is also the author of Olive Kitteridge. For my full review, please check out this link. 6 A Perfect Summer Read: Strong Women, Friendship, and Tennis on a California Island in the 1950s: The Island Club ​In this perfect summer read, Harrison explores 1950s life for three women facing complicated personal challenges. Tennis brings them together, and they use their inner strength and smarts to fight through troubles as they rely on each other. Nicola Harrison's The Island Club is set on Balboa Island off the coast of California, where tennis ultimately brings together three women, formerly strangers to each other. Their lives intersect in their small community, and they reluctantly become vulnerable with each other, sharing secrets, challenges, and devastating problems they wouldn't tell anyone else. Harrison raises some weighty issues, and there are some dark periods within the story, but the tone of The Island Club is that of a summer book. The Island Club delivers full-on 1950s immersion while exploring LGBTQ issues, privilege, sacrifice, second chances, and redemption. As I was reading, I had faith that all would work out, but that the resolutions would be just tricky enough to make it feel satisfying. The author spoke here this spring, and she talked about her inspirations, her writing process, and her life. I loved being there. For my full review, please check out The Island Club.

Brutality and Bravery in the American West These books explore the brutality of pioneer times, when indigenous peoples were killed and abused at the hands of white people who explored and settled in the West, while also offering characters of all stripes who show bravery and unbreakable spirit. Historical fiction set in the West also lends itself to stories of strong female characters in a time when the world around them didn't support women's abilities, independent thinking, or determination. You might also be interested in the titles on Greedy Reading Lists including: Six More Great Historical Fiction Stories Set in the American West, Six Historical Fiction Mysteries to Intrigue You, Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved in the Past Year, and Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved This Year. 01 Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman I loved this young adult Western, and not just because of its amazing cover. Kate is a tough young woman posing as a male cowboy. She's got revenge on her mind, and she and her unlikely band of allies aren't afraid to shoot first and ask questions later. But Kate also slowly, reluctantly finds a little bit of love to soften her hardened heart. In Vengeance Road, Erin Bowman offers up great action along with what I thought were perfect amounts of self-actualization and character development, without ever being heavy-handed and with wonderful pacing. Vengeance Road is a rough and tumble story with enough suspense that I wasn't ever confident that the main characters would emerge alive. I wished a little more care had been taken with the resolutions at the end, and I would have liked some more justification for characters' decisions late in the book, but I loved this. The cowboy dialect didn't distract, although it was notably distinct throughout. Vengeance Road is the first book in Bowman's Vengeance Road duology; Retribution Rails is the second. 02 These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 by Nancy E. Turner My advice is to ignore the title on this one. The syntax seems to indicate something altogether different than the beautifully written "grown-up Little House on the Prairie" (as my friend Kirstan called it) that I adored. Turner's story is inspired by her family's memoirs, and her Sarah Prine is a strong woman living on the unforgiving frontier of the Arizona Territories near the turn of the twentieth century. The details Turner provides of life at that time and in that place bring to life Sarah's stories of growing up, struggling, finding love, and persevering. Sarah's voice is just wonderful. There are additional books in the Sarah Agnes Prine series: Sarah's Quilt, The Star Garden, and Light Changes Everything. Turner has also written a couple of other historical fiction books that look promising. 03 West by Carys Davies ​This isn't strictly a Western, but the main protagonist does travel west, and the feeling of it is in line with the genre, so I'm Bossily including it on this list. Cy is a widower in a small Pennsylvania town who is drawn in by a newspaper article about enormous ancient bones found in a swamp. He feels unshakably compelled to travel west to find out if the mammoth animals he's heard described are still roaming the area. So Cy leaves his ten-year-old daughter Bess with his sister, Bess's short-tempered aunt, although he expects to be away on his irrational, foolish travels for two years. (Two years!) Bess, stuck at home, traces Cy's optimistic travel route on a map (and, disturbingly, struggles multiple times with being preyed upon by a man--I needed her aunt to tune in to this horrifying situation, stat). Cy isn't a sympathetic character (Bess is the one I was feeling for here), but his ill-fated journey is full of misplaced hope, then mistakes and regret, but over all of it, a compulsion to continue toward an end. It's compelling, and Bess's faith in her faulted father is heart-wrenching. West is a quick read with an important case of implausibly (but satisfyingly) impeccable timing that saves the day, twice. The ending is beautifully wrought. Davies includes fantastic details of amateur Western exploration that I adored. 04 One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker Oh, I loved this book! In Olivia Hawker's One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow, it's 1870 in Wyoming. The Bemis and Webber families have no other neighbors for miles, so they're not only inextricably interconnected to the land, they're connected to each other. When a sudden upheaval results in both husbands' absences and a crisis point for supplies, neglected farm work, and animals' and humans' desperate need for food and safety, the wives must face their hard feelings toward each other and forge an unlikely alliance if they and their families are to survive the brutal winter. This was a slow build and a beautiful story, satisfying and often sweet, complete with young love. Hawker includes rich details of farming and rural life. I loved the explorations of the spirits of various creatures and the characters’ awareness of the spirals and cycles of nature and of life. I adored the character of the fiercely unique Beulah. I received an advance copy of this book from Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Hawker is also the author of The Ragged Edge of Night. 05 The Widow Nash by Jamie Harrison Dulcy has traveled all over with her beloved, quirky father Walton. He's wealthy beyond all reason, fascinated with natural disasters, obsessed with wandering the globe--and determined to identify an as-yet-undiscovered cure for his syphilis. His mind seems to be failing him just as the proceeds from his gold mines go missing, and Dulcy is suspected. She must decipher his enigmatic notebooks and codes to clear her name. Or could she simply disappear, be presumed dead, and escape unwarranted attention--and avoid the clutches of unwanted matrimony? In a small Montana town Dulcy reinvents herself as Mrs. Nash, a wealthy young widow. If she's lucky, she can build a new life and shed the limitations of her real identity. The before and after of certain pivotal events almost felt like two separate books, but I was hooked on all of it--the early twentieth-century settings (Seattle, New York City, Montana, various clinic sites); Dulcy's deranged but maddeningly intriguing syphilitic mining magnate of a father; the layers of smart dialogue; the undercurrent of fear beneath the soothing comfort of the details of everyday life. I loved this. 06 Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson Gold is in my blood, in my breath, even in the flecks in my eyes. Walk on Earth a Stranger tells the story of Lee, a young woman with a powerful secret: an ability to sense gold. Her gold sense has kept her family fed and sheltered, but it's dangerous too. If others knew of it, they'd likely use it--and Lee--to their own advantage. When Lee's power is discovered, she has to run, and she runs toward the gold. I thought this was great: an adventure story of a teenaged girl fleeing from Georgia to California during the gold rush. This was really nicely paced with gripping details of the trek and of Lee's life on the road. This is the first book in Rae Carson's young adult Gold Seer trilogy set in Gold Rush-era America; the second is Like a River Glorious, which I gave 3.5 stars, and the third is Into the Bright Unknown, which was a great final book and satisfying-revenge wrap-up. Carson is also the author of the Fire and Thorns series, which is made up of four young adult fantasy books plus related novellas and a prequel.

I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie When I was compiling this list and double-checking page counts, I kept surprising myself with my own disconnect--some of the books I was sure were epic were only sort of long, and I didn't initially realize that some of the books on this list were quite so lengthy. As I greedily peer toward fall and cooler weather, I love the idea of settling in with some longer books. All but one of these wonderful titles ( Demon Copperhead , at 560) comes in at over 600 pages, so they're perfect reads to cozy up with for an extended reading session. What are some of your favorite long novels?   01 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver Kingsolver offers an epic story of a faulted, unlikely hero in danger of being crushed by exceptionally difficult circumstances. His golden heart and grit allow him to keep fighting through brokenness, pain, and disappointment in rural Virginia. Demon Copperhead , a sort of Appalachian David Copperfield , is epic . It's 560 pages and driven by the unique voice and gritty, heartbreakingly hopeful, broken voice of Demon (born Damon, and ultimately a redhead, hence the "Copperhead"). Charles Dickens's experience with extreme poverty in Victorian England inspired him to highlight its cruel impacts on children in his story David Copperfield . That book inspired Demon Copperhead , in which Kingsolver showcases the invisibility of the rural poor in Appalachia as well as a tragic cycle of poverty, drug dependence, and death--with signature Kingsolver characters who have unique voices and are complex, flawed, and irresistible. The downward spiral of the story kept going and going, and its grimness took my breath away. Yet Kingsolver keeps Demon's voice strong even as he falters and as everything he has counted on seems swept away. His rock-bottom--it isn't a moment; it feels as though he drags the bottom for years--sets up a situation in which he seems washed clean for some version of a new beginning. The prospects for Demon's future seem far from neat and perfect, but by the end of the book there are glimmers of hope for our faulted hero. Click here for my full review of Demon Copperhead . This was one of my favorite books of the year when I read it. 02 The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell This gem from Mitchell is a set of six intriguing tracks through time that are full of surprises. You only value something if you know it’ll end. Teenager Holly Sykes is suddenly drawn into the world of “the radio people,” whose voices she heard as a child. She disappears from her family and leaves behind a tragic mystery, while in her forays through new worlds she attracts dangerous powers to her. David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks  is a set of six intriguing tracks through time that are full of surprises and interconnected through Holly and her various threads of reality. There are links to other Mitchell books and characters if you're paying attention, but the book can stand alone. I've never read a book quite like this before. A full genre shift around page 400 would normally make me want to throw a book through the window. But here it works somehow. This was strange and compelling. Mitchell is one of a kind, and I love it. Another book I loved of his was Utopia Avenue , and it was completely different in tone but also wonderfully David Mitchell-level intriguing. This book is part of my Greedy Reading List Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore . For my full review, please check out The Bone Clocks . 03 The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati I loved digging into this 750-page historical fiction wonder. It ticked many of my boxes: a woman in a conventionally male role, richly wrought characters, and a vivid setting. In The Gilded Hour , Sara Donati shapes a historical fiction story about an eccentric family and a broad surrounding cast of characters--and it's all centered around independent women with unconventional women's roles in society in nineteenth century New York City. The Gilded Hour  explores how these women's abilities and constraints intersect with women's rights of the time period, social responsibility, and conventions, all in an immensely readable book rich in period detail, with great dialogue and satisfying elements of love, mystery, and searches for justice. I felt that a couple of important underlying plot lines remained oddly unresolved at the end--even keeping in mind that there's a second book in Donati's Waverly Place series, Where the Light Enters . However, I just loved this story and Donati's storytelling too much to let it cloud my gleeful reading experience. For my full review, please check out The Gilded Hour . The Gilded Hour is part of the Greedy Reading List Thankful for Five-Star Bossy Reads . 04 The Rose Code by Kate Quinn Kate Quinn makes the urgency of World War II code breaking come alive through the stories of three young women and their interconnected destinies in The Rose Code . The Rose Code  is a wonderfully spun historical fiction story of three very different women who answer the wartime call to England's top-secret Bletchley Park in order to break the military codes of the Axis powers. I love a World War II story about strong women making a difference, but I admit that I was curious about how even a historical fiction storytelling master like Kate Quinn could craft a compelling novel around the potential tedium at the heart of code breaking. Quinn offers plenty of interpersonal conflict, romance, suspected double-crossing, and details of life within both timelines, and in her hands, the descriptions of code-breaking mechanisms and the detailed, complicated, elusive process of figuring out messages were captivating.       For my full review, check out The Rose Code . This title is part of the Greedy Reading List Six More Books about Brave Female Spies . Kate Quinn is also the author of The Diamond Eye , The Huntress , The Rose Code , The Alice Network , and, with Janie Chang, The Phoenix Crown . 05 Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land  was a complex, heartbreaking, hope-filled, surprising, fascinating read. Young Anna lives in fifteenth-century Constantinople with her sickly sister, frustrated with endlessly stitching priests' robes--and secretly learning to read stories from the past. In twentieth-century Idaho, Zeno has lived a long life filled with yearning, war, and unexpected late-in-life academic satisfaction. He is directing a precious group of children in a farcical, heartbreaking play based on the stories Anna read five centuries earlier. And far in the future, Konstance is in a vault on the spaceship Argos , destined for a distant planet. She largely lives in a vivid virtual world but leaves to scribble scraps of information about the same ancient stories that touched the lives of Anna and Zeno. The stories in Cloud Cuckoo Land  (which is the name of the book-within-a-book) connect these characters across space and time. Cloud Cuckoo Land  was consistently beautiful, always interesting, and sometimes heartbreaking. Check out my full review of Cloud Cuckoo Land   here . 06 Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead Shipstead has created two independent, defiant, appealingly strong young women split by time. I was hooked on both story lines and loved this. Great Circle  spans the wilds of Prohibition-era Montana, the blustery Pacific Northwest, the unforgiving chill of Alaska, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and the movie-making business, and the stark, brutal dangers of Antarctica, from the early twentieth century to modern day. Great Circle  traces events starting with a sinking ocean liner in 1914 and the introduction of Marian and James, twin babies rescued from that tragedy; it follows the paths of the twins' lives as they grow up; the story tracks young Marian's ignited passion for aviation and her adventures; and the book injects a modern-day story line in which a famous young actress takes on the role of Marian for a film. In interconnected stories--which felt equally compelling to me--Shipstead brings to life these disparate places and times and focuses on various colorful characters within them. Shipstead is a wonderful writer, and I loved every word of this. Both of the timelines had me hooked. For my full review, please see Great Circle .

Sleuths of a Certain Age I'm a fan of reading mysteries in the fall--I guess this is my version of spooky seasonal reads? Recently I've been enjoying mysteries featuring complex, delightfully seasoned characters. (We could also refer to these as the Black, White, Red, and Navy Blue Covers.) Many of these protagonists are underestimated and overlooked, and they're therefore able to dig into mysteries without attracting as much notice as in their younger years. I took the liberty of including two Deanna Raybourn titles from the same series here; if you haven't read these yet, trust me, you should, and if you have read them, you understand why I had to list both. The Thursday Murder Club and The Martini Club are two other series that fit the bill here, and I listed the first installment in each although I also enjoyed reading the second in each series. And Vera Wong is a series, but I have only read the first book in it--which is included here. You might also like these other Greedy Reading Lists of Bossy mystery favorites. I'd love to hear about your favorite mystery reads! 01 Killers of a Certain Age #1 by Deanna Raybourn This fun, darkly funny, feminist story about a retiring female team of elite assassins was the right book at the right time for me: entertainment in the perfect combination of action and suspense, loyal friendship, clever plotting, and the promise of love. The Museum is an organization that operates outside of governmental control, relying on various trained elite killing forces. Originally formed in order to hunt down and rid the world of lingering Nazis, the Museum's mission has evolved to focus on taking out carefully chosen bad guys of all stripes--drug dealers, human traffickers, arms dealers, and the like. But when four aging Museum friends are sent on an all-expenses-paid vacation to mark their retirement, a Museum associate attempts to do them in. The women realize they may know too much about where the bodies are buried--literally--to be allowed to drift away into the world without a fight. In Killers of a Certain Age, Raybourn has crafted an irresistibly fun, clever, feminist caper that had me hooked the whole way through. I loved the women's complicated bonds, their crafty planning, their fights for justice, and their ability to remain flexible and reinvent themselves. I love a spy/assassin book and a book that treats dark subjects playfully without being silly. For my full review, check out Killers of a Certain Age. Check out the final book in this list to learn more about the second title in this series. 02 Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth I loved the octogenarian main protagonist of Elsie and the darkly funny start to the book. Her heartbreaking history surprised me, as did the revelations at the end of the novel. This was my first Sally Hepworth read but won't be my last. Elsie is an 81-year-old living in a Melbourne suburb, grumbling and mainly keeping to herself, aside from her best friend since childhood, a persistent 7-year-old girl who's determined to befriend her, and Peter, a kind young man across the street who she doesn't mind running into. Delving into Elsie's childhood is heartbreaking. She experienced staggering loss, disappointment, glimmers of hope, and a few key loved ones who anchored her. Her coping mechanisms, which we come to understand, are wrapped in shocking truths. My heart ached for the child she was and all that she endured. Some of the modern-day denouements were surprising, and those, along with the friends-like-family elements, made for an ending I didn't wholly expect. Sally Hepworth is also the author of The Good Sister, Darling Girls, The Mother-in-Law, The Family Next Door, and other books. For more Bossy reads featuring elderly protagonists, check out this link. And for more mysteries, please check out these Bossy titles. For my full review, please see Mad Mabel. 03 Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto Sutanto's Vera Wong is playful, brusque, bossy, and connects an unlikely cast of characters, all murder suspects, into a heartwarming friendship that feels like family. Vera Wong is running a largely unvisited tea house, lamenting her grown son's lack of time for her, and grumbling about the new "French" bakery that's just opened down the street in Chinatown. When a dead body shows up in her tea house, Vera takes charge of the investigation of what only she is certain is a murder. Marshall, the deceased, was a petty, obnoxious, verbally abusive, selfish, belittling jackass. As the truth comes out about Marshall's activities and his final evening, it becomes clear that each character has a possible motivation for having offed Marshall, so to Vera, each is a potential killer. She throws dinner parties and facilitates get-together to study her subjects. And along the way, Vera's brusque truth-telling inspires an unlikely group of friends to form a special bond that's more like that of a family. This was absolutely my favorite part of the book. This was a fast read (listen), and while the denouement didn't completely hold together for me and the loose ends were tied up with extreeeeeemely tidy bows, the story was really about the relationships and Vera's coming into her own, and I adored these aspects. Click here for my full review of Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers. 04 The Spy Coast (The Martini Club #1) by Tess Gerritsen A former CIA operative retires to small-town Maine--along with other former agents--to live out a quiet existence, until figures from the past roar in to turn everything on its head. Maggie Bird is a retired CIA operative who has made a simple home for herself in rural Maine. She's tried not to make emotional connections and she keeps to herself--old habits from her former life. Then Maggie is visited by someone with knowledge of her past--just before a dead body shows up in her driveway and someone tries to kill Maggie. Unbeknownst to the other citizens in Purity, Maine, the town has drawn multiple former intelligence agents (they make up the "martini club" in the series title). They didn't all work together in their former lives, but they are friends--despite habitual emotional distance--with commonalities in their backgrounds. Now they operate as a team to try to determine who is after Maggie and why. The dogged local acting sheriff, Jo Thibodeau (a great and legit Maine last name), is complicating things, pushing for answers and determined to figure out what's going on. For my full review of this book, please see The Spy Coast. The second book in the series is The Summer Guests. 05 The Thursday Murder Club #1 by Richard Osman I was delighted by the poignancy, humor, and layers in the first installment of this series of stories about sharp, disparate septuagenarians who meet to resolve cold cases--then aim to solve the mysteries of murders occurring in their own community. In this first installment in Osman's mystery series (the second one also appears on this list), the story begins in medias res, as the reader witnesses our key characters--four septuagenarian--coming together for a weekly discussion of unsolved murders. Joyce is their newest member, and the four put their wits to the test to try to resolve cold cases. (They reserve their room as "Jigsaw Club" to discourage others' interest and interruption.) But when a slick local developer associated with their own retirement community is murdered, and other deaths follow, this sharp, funny, grumpy, big-hearted, underestimated group of friends becomes determined to solve the case. Then an event from decades earlier grows in importance and shapes the Club's search for answers. Justice isn't black and white, and motivations matter; the Club isn't set on following the letter of the law, as they appreciate how complicated life can be. I was surprised by how charming, intriguing, layered, and lovely this story was. For my full review, please check out this link. Book two in the series is The Man Who Died Twice. 06 Kills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age #2) by Deanna Raybourn Killers of a Certain Age was darkly funny, action-packed, feminist, and friend-focused. I love the second installment's return to my favorite aging assassins and their quick-thinking, spry, deadly answers to those who have broken moral codes--and who have our protagonists in their sights. Kills Well with Others picks up when our main characters, having laid low and lived their own lives for a year, are contacted by the Museum, the elite assassin organization they used to work for. An Eastern European gangster has obtained the names of agents who have stood in his way over the years, and our aging assassins seem likely to be next on his hit list. They must figure out who's turned traitor on the Museum and shared this information--and stay alive long enough to bring them to justice. Kills Well with Others sometimes feels a little bit as though Raybourn is gamely giving her readers what they want (more Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, Natalie--and Tanner!) rather than writing a book she felt compelled to put out into the world. But I'm one of those who are eager for more time with these clever, sometimes grumpy, often spontaneous, satisfyingly quick-thinking assassins who are loyal to each other above all. For my full review, please see Kills Well with Others.

The Summer Favorites These titles aren't classic, light "summer reads," but they were my favorite reads from a summer past, and they all stand the test of time. In case you missed them the first time around, I'm reposting them as this summer begins so you can add to your to-read list at will. If you've read any of these, I'd love to hear what you think! For classic light fiction and rom-com titles that are also great for summer reading, check out these titles and Bossy reviews . 01 The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett Bennett explores the complicated implications of perception as reality when it comes to race and its meaning. In The Vanishing Half , Bennett follows the history of the fictional Vignes twins, Desiree and Stella, as they grow up in a town made up of those who identify as light-skinned black people. As teenagers they run from a prescribed future as maids in the small town, where tragedy in the form of evil white men took their father from them and left their mother scrambling to provide for them. Upon reaching freedom, their paths diverge. One twin secretly passes at work for white, then vanishes into a life based upon this premise. The other twin marries a dark-skinned black man and lives as a black woman. The book explores the complicated implications of perception as reality when it comes to race and its meaning; the subjectivity of and intense power within race labels; and the tension of living under false pretenses. For my full review, see The Vanishing Half . 02 Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland Atlantic City just before WWII, with its giant hotels, piers, and general hubbub, is the backdrop for the story of a few summer months in the life of an extended family. I loved watching the story's events unfold in this lovely debut from Rachel Beanland. Florence Adler Swims Forever , the story of a few summer months in the life of an extended family--including a stolid patriarch and matriarch, a free-spirited daughter, a spunky and fantastic granddaughter Gussie, a daughter with another grandchild on the way, a deadbeat son-in-law, and family friends to round out the group. There’s an undercurrent of concern about Hitler and his increasingly punitive behavior toward Jewish families’ businesses and emigration in Germany. I loved watching the book’s events unfold—even if I could predict some of them. Anything that was wrapped up a little too neatly didn’t bother me at all; I was all in and satisfied. Beanland based some of the basic events of her debut novel on her ancestors’ experiences, which I thought was fascinating but didn't realize until the end. Click here for my full review of Florence Adler Swims Forever . 03 Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby This is a fantastic blend of realistic complications, mistakes, adjustments, and spunk. It's action-packed yet character driven. Bug is a respectable business owner nowadays with a family. But some old acquaintances show up with an idea that might offer some financial breathing room--if the others on the job can keep their heads on straight, and that's looking like a big if . Blacktop Wasteland took a little while to get going for me, but just shy of halfway through, the setup is complete and the action starts singing along. I'm not inherently interested in the preparation and modification of vehicles or in skillful evasive driving, but I was all in for S.A. Cosby's writing about all of it. Bug is a wonderfully faulted character. who when not in crisis takes stock of himself and aims to be a better person. He's forced to consider what loyalty means, and to face how dark the path ahead might become when the bad guys are truly evil, very powerful, and the stakes couldn't be much higher. The ending of Blacktop Wasteland is a little abrupt and opaque, but not without hope. See my full review of Blacktop Wasteland here . 04 Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell In Utopia Avenue , Mitchell takes us through the twists and turns of a fictional psychedelic British sixties band on its rocky rise to popularity. Utopia Avenue explores the band members' crises, joys, fears, and triumphs. Mitchell made me care about a singer connecting with an audience, the cathartic heartbreak-writing of songs, and the magic spark of a performance. The book contains endless imagined cameos, fictional adventures, and gems of wisdom from real-life musicians like David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Jerry Garcia, and members of the Rolling Stones--not to mention wild parties, betrayals, leaps of faith, breakups, and tragedy. But Mitchell expertly builds the band members into rich characters you're rooting for through their individual ups and downs as well as through the triumphs and setbacks of the band Utopia Avenue. Mitchell doesn't provide too easy or neat of an ending to this weird and wonderful book, but it felt fitting and left me satisfied. This was a really captivating story that kept me intrigued throughout. For my full review of Utopia Avenue , please click here . 05 When These Mountains Burn by David Joy Joy offers an often dark work of Southern literary fiction through which bubbles of hope emerge. Ray has outlived his beloved wife in the mountains of North Carolina. He has a precious old girl of a dog, a fascination with (and healthy fear of) coyotes, a love of reading, and a no-nonsense manner that makes clear he doesn't brook fools. He has almost resigned himself to the heartbreaking idea that his addict son is too lost to be saved. There's an undercover cop nearby who's trying to help take down a robust drug ring, and then there's Ray, who uses old-fashioned methods and his knowledge of mountain terrain to address injustices in a straightforward way. When These Mountains Burn isn't always easy to read, but it isn't over the top, and Joy's characters are fascinatingly faulted and keep you humming right along. I read this in 24 hours while wishing I were making it last longer. For my full review of When These Mountains Burn , click here . 06 This Is All He Asks of You by Anne Egseth Luna has a unique and lovely voice and is an irresistibly odd bird of a twelve-year-old girl. I read this book years ago and still think of it fondly. I just loved This Is All He Asks of You. Luna stumbles into encounters that shape her life dramatically, in unorthodox and heartbreakingly meaningful ways. She is facing her mother’s decline in health and exploring her own identity and meaning in her life, and she shapes her sometimes practical but often mystical thoughts and reflections through writing letters to her father, who she has never met, in the conversational tone of a pen pal writing to someone who will love her and her words unconditionally. I simultaneously wanted to scoop up Luna and take care of her and to follow the lead of this wise-beyond-her-years, intensely spiritual young person. She has a unique and lovely voice and is an irresistibly odd bird of a twelve-year-old girl. For my full review of This Is All He Asks of You , click here .

My very favorite Bossy July reads! I did a lot of traveling and some great reading last month, but I didn't do a lot of reviewing. My Bossy takes on more great reads are to come--but I do have some fantastic July favorites to share with you here. If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think! And I'd also love to hear: what are some of your recent favorite reads? 01 Sandwich by Catherine Newman Sandwich is beautifully wrought story of complications and familial adoration from Catherine Newman, with the unapologetically contradictory and menopausal Rocky at the heart of the messy, wonderful extended family. Rocky's family has been vacationing in Cape Cod for twenty years. She's built years of happy memories in their low-key beach house rental. This year, she's sandwiched between her half-grown children and her aging parents. And the carefree vacations of the past feel light years away, because Rocky's menopausal rage threatens to undo any joy she might gain from spending time in her favorite place. To save their treasured family time together, Rocky may have to share secrets she never intended to reveal. Sandwich made me laugh, twisted my heart, and kept me interested throughout. I just adored all of the heart and humor in Sandwich . Catherine Newman is also the author of other books I love: We All Want Impossible Things , Waiting for Birdy , and How to Be a Person: 65 Hugely Useful, Super-Important Skills to Learn Before You're Grown Up. For my full review of this book, please see Sandwich . 02 All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker Whitaker offers several interconnected storylines, and while each one individually appealed to me, I felt a growing lack of connection to the characters as the tales melded into another: young friendship, serial killer, outlaw search, small-town intrigue, and longtime mysteries revealed. Chris Whitaker's novel All the Colors of the Dark  builds a story of a deep friendship between two young outcasts in small-town Monta Clare, Missouri: Patch, a pirate-playing young man missing one eye, whose mother is unreliable and a substance abuser; and Saint, a tomboy raised by her fearless grandmother. A kidnaper and serial killer intrudes on the quiet community and directly impacts Patch and Saint. The horrifying crimes seems to be motivated by religious fanaticism, and both Patch and Saint's futures are shaped by their ties to the darkly disturbing events. I adored the early building of the deep connection and affection between Saint and Patch. And I was intrigued by the disparate-seeming story that soon emerges, beginning with the premise of a serial killer whose actions haunt our main characters and whose horrifying spectre looms over them. But the storytelling frequently felt scattered to me, with overly dramatic moments, abrupt statements that are seemingly meant to add impact, and what felt like self-conscious attempts to be offbeat. Characters frequently offer grand speeches to each other about how the world works, and these didn't feel genuine or likely to me. Yet the cast of characters is colorful, and I enjoyed the time I spent with them. Click here for my full review of All the Colors of the Dark . Chris Whitaker is also the author of We Begin at the End , a novel I adored. 03 Grey Dog by Elliott Gish Grey Dog  begins as an immersive historical fiction story of a young teacher with a shocking past in 1900s rural England, but it becomes a haunting feminist, magical realism story about taking back power and letting go of restrictive expectations. It's 1901, and Ada Byrd has accepted a teaching position in a rural community following a scandal and abrupt departure from her last post. Her cruel, controlling father is high up in the school board, so while he lords over her this "favor" of allowing her to serve a new role, he also forces her to be a teacher in the first place. Ada boards with a staid, kind, slightly boring couple and also befriends the minister's wife. She's determined not to make any waves. But a young, half-feral female student and a shockingly unorthodox widow both seem to hold mysterious secrets--and both intrigue Ada. Ada begins to learn delicate secrets of those in the community even as she protects her own scandalous past. A haunting power seems to swirl through the small village, both disturbing and intriguing Ada. And the more often she encounters it, the more difficult it becomes for Ada to check her temper, her opinions, her yearning for freedom, and her desire to speak her mind. This is a feminist historical fiction story in which women--long kept quiet and still, supervised to prevent their freedom, and dismissed and condescended to--strike back, lash out, and reject the constraints put on them. Magical realism allows the force that haunts, challenges, and pushes them to take the form of a beast, whose presence only the bravest women embrace and accept. I loved the setting and detail of the historical fiction story, but I became fully hooked as the tale morphed into something wonderfully eerie and unusual. I couldn't wait to find out how it ended. Click here for my full review of Grey Dog . If this book sounds appealing to you, you might also be interested in my Bossy reviews of other historical fiction books set in the 1900s or my Bossy reviews of Gothic stories . 04 Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles Amor Towles revisits a character from the wonderful Rules of Civility  and also offers multiple New York-set tales. Towles's evocative stories drew me in, sometimes made me uncomfortable, and illuminated characters' true natures. In Table for Two: Fictions , Amor Towles offers six short stories set in New York City and a novella featuring a beloved Towles character that's set in the Golden Age of Hollywood. In the novella Eve in Hollywood , Towles imagines the events following Rules of Civility , which ends with Evelyn Ross's departure from New York in 1938 and the train journey she extends to Los Angeles. The six New York-set stories all take place around the year 2000, and they consider the impacts of chance encounters, the complications of modern marriages, and more. Towles's writing is so lovely, I'm willing to follow his stories and his characters anywhere. This one took me a while to finish, but I savored each word. Amor Towles is also the author of The Lincoln Highway , A Gentleman in Moscow ,  a book I really liked, and Rules of Civility ,  which I was even more taken with--the old NYC setting was so vivid, it felt like its own character. Please click here for my full review of Table for Two . 05 The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr Lisa Barr's World War II-set historical fiction follows a Jewish resistance fighter and spy through the Warsaw Ghetto to her second act as a Hollywood movie star, linking the story's two timelines and revealing long-held secrets and mysteries. In Lisa Barr's newest historical fiction, The Goddess of Warsaw , the author tells a story in two timelines. In 1943 Warsaw, socialite Bina Blonski is imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto with her husband and thousands of her fellow Jewish citizens. She becomes a spy and begins to resist against the Nazis--but when she falls for another resistance fighter (her brother-in-law), things get even more complicated. In 2005 Los Angeles, Sienna Hayes is a Hollywood actress looking to direct. When she meets Golden Age movie star Lena Browning, she becomes determined to make a documentary about Lena's life. But Lena is actually Bina--and her life has been far more complex than almost anyone knows. Some moments felt overly dramatic--as with Bina's frequently explored obsession with her brother-in-law Aleksander (and her unwise diary entries concerning her passion for him), as well as when Bina immediately inserts herself into the resistance as a key player--but the issue of these elements, which distracted me, paled against the intrigue of the story. The details of World War II and of resistance to the Nazis are heartstopping, and I was hooked on each of the two timelines in this interconnected story. I loved that brave women that drive the novel in both timelines. Lisa Barr is also the author of Woman on Fire , The Unbreakables , and Fugitive Colors . For my full review, check out The Goddess of Warsaw . 06 In Memoriam by Alice Winn Alice Winn's account of the unrelenting slog of World War I and the beautiful young men set against each other in the trenches serves as a backdrop for a tentatively begun, deep love story born in a British boarding school and blossoming amid the cruelties and horrors of battle. Alice Winn's gorgeous, brutal, captivating historical fiction In Memoriam  is set during World War I. Henry Gaunt, Sydney Ellwood, and their classmates came as young boys to their sometimes claustrophobic, cruel, and lonely English boarding school; now that they're close to the end of their schooling, they are playful, treasuring each other's friendships. But by 1914, World War I is drawing most of these young boys into a swirl of wartime horrors. They trade their hesitant confidences and youthful search for comfort and affection within an unforgiving school environment for the cruelties of battle. Characters struggle with vulnerability and to allow feelings to grow, and all is shaped by the constancy of life-and-death danger and the deep-seated fear of destroying a friendship that both young men cling to more deeply than living itself. In Memoriam is beautiful, frequently painful, and offers a layered, complicated version of happy ever after. I loved this. I listened to In Memoriam  as an audiobook. For my full review, please see In Memoriam . You might also be interested in these Bossy reviews of books set during World War I .

Tough women, secrets and smarts, and sneaky spying! I love a peek at a secret world and books about spies specifically. My first Greedy Reading List on this topic was Six Books about Brave Female Spies . If you like stories about brave women during wartime, you might also like the titles I listed on the recent Greedy Reading List Six Great Stories about Brave Women During World War II . 01 Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook by Celia Rees Rees does an excellent job of taking us through Edith's amateur spy struggle and provides fascinating details of life in Germany at the end of World War II. It's 1945, and Edith Graham is a small-town British schoolteacher who is thrilled to sign on with the British Control Commission to help get schools back up and running for the children in war-torn Germany. Edith has a degree in German (and, more importantly and unbeknownst to her, an old connection to a hunted war criminal), and she's recruited by the Office of Strategic Services. She'll keep her cover by assisting with schools while actually trying to help locate Nazis. The details Rees provides of this confused time in the world are wonderful: the complicated workings of different groups' postwar efforts; the bombed--or jarringly lush and untouched--settings; the creative, sometimes alarming dietary options; and the clothes and fashion. It's clear that she thoroughly researched all of these aspects. I found the author's note about her inspiration for the book's hook and story line really interesting. For my full review, check out Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook . 02 Our Woman in Moscow by Beatriz Williams Williams's historical fiction mystery--based on real-life double agents in the Cambridge Spy Ring--is vividly set in Europe and Russia and was a rare five-star read for me. In Beatriz Williams's historical fiction novel Our Woman in Moscow , it's 1948, and Iris Digby, her American diplomat husband Sasha, and their two children have disappeared overnight. Those who knew and worked with them are shocked. Were the Digbys abducted by Soviet agents...or did they make their way by choice behind the Iron Curtain with a suitcase of American secrets to trade? In Williams's historical fiction mystery, which skips back and forth in time, four years later, Iris's twin sister Ruth finally receives a postcard from her estranged sister. Ruth is soon on her way to Russia to try to extricate Iris from danger--but the truth about Iris's marriage and past is more complicated and fraught than Ruth could have imagined. I loved this. Every heart-stopping moment; every exquisite detail; the characters' growth, emotional distance, and unforeseen connections to each other; the trick of teasing out what was actually happening; the characterization; the machinations--all of it. For my full review of this book, please see Our Woman in Moscow . 03 A Murder by Any Name by Suzanne M. Wolfe ​Wolfe's book was a fun, quick read with wonderful Elizabethan-era detail. Many of the characters in A Murder by Any Name were lovely, faulted, and interesting, and the dialogue was great. The character of the brothel madam with a heart of gold has probably been overdone in literature. In this case, Kat wasn’t fully developed as a character so she felt more like a concept than a real person. But Wolfe's book was a fun, quick read that kept me engaged the whole way through. I also enjoyed the second book in this series, A Course of All Treasons . I looove a historical fiction mystery. If you do too, you might want to check out the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Historical Fiction Mysteries to Intrigue You . For my full review of this title, please see A Murder by Any Name . 04 The Invisible Woman by Erika Robuck Robuck shaped the real-life figure of Virginia Hall into a courageous, idealistic, determined, and imperfect heroine I was intrigued by. The Invisible Woman is historical fiction about the real-life World War II-era spy Virginia Hall. Erika Robuck makes Hall appealingly realistic, with faults, desires, idealism, and an astounding baseline level of bravery that leads to realistically messy, sometimes tragic situations--and occasionally glorious victories. Hall, an American working for the UK, was a trainer of the French Resistance despite the physical limitations caused by her prosthetic leg (which she gained following a shooting accident). She's entrenched in enemy territory sending coded messages and drumming up supporters for the cause for longer than most agents manage to survive, so she has a persistent feeling of being on borrowed time. I found the number of typos here distracting, but I really enjoyed Robuck's writing style, the details of the time, the pacing of the book's events, and the rich cast of secondary characters she brought to life. For my full review of this book, check out The Invisible Woman . 05 The Rose Code by Kate Quinn Kate Quinn makes the urgency of World War II code breaking come alive through the stories of three young women and their interconnected destinies in The Rose Code . The Rose Code is a wonderfully spun historical fiction story of three very different women who answer the wartime call to England's top-secret Bletchley Park in order to break the military codes of the Axis powers. The book jumps between 1940, the beginning of the women's forays into their secret duties and responsibilities, and 1947, as the royal wedding of Prince Philip (the former beau of one of our Bletchley ladies) and Princess Elizabeth approaches--a period when one of the Bletchley sisterhood is tucked away in an asylum following a terrible betrayal. Quinn offers plenty of interpersonal conflict, romance, suspected double-crossing, and details of life within both timelines, and in her hands, the descriptions of code-breaking mechanisms and the detailed, complicated, elusive process of figuring out messages were captivating. For my full review of this title, please see The Rose Code . Kate Quinn is the author of The Diamond Eye , The Huntress , The Rose Code , The Briar Club , and The Alice Network , as well as The Phoenix Crown , which she wrote with Janie Chang. 06 Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy by Ben McIntyre ​ Ursula Burton, an unassuming mother and wife, was a legendary real-life spy who evaded capture by China, the Nazis, MI6, and the FBI. She was known by the code name Sonya. ​ The nonfiction Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy is made up of vividly recounted behind-the-scenes peeks at real-life Cold War intrigue from the talented author Ben Macintyre. Ursula Burton lived a quiet life with her children and husband in a small English village. She spoke with a slight accent and kept largely to herself. But Ursula was actually a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer sending and receiving secret wireless signals, managing a network of agents across Europe, and maintaining her rabidly dedicated Communist views. The unassuming-seeming mother and wife was actually a legendary spy who evaded capture by China, the Nazis, MI6, and the FBI. She was known by the code name Sonya. The book explores clashes of ideology; the challenges of a woman pursuing spy work; and general, often brutal sacrifice for the cause. Ursula's husband, portrayed as somewhat of a fool, suffers terribly in a foreign prison for his too-obvious support of the Communist cause. For my full review of this book, please see Agent Sonya . Macintyre also wrote the fantastic Spy and the Traitor , which was one of my Six Favorite Nonfiction Books of the Year the year I read it and which I also listed on the Greedy Reading List Six Compelling Nonfiction Books that Read Like Fiction .

Tough women, secrets and smarts, and sneaky spying! I love a peek at a secret world, and each of these books (all but one are fiction) offers that very thing: a look behind the scenes at spies, deception, danger, and uncovering the truth. I also have another list of titles in this category, and all of the titles on that list but one are fiction as well, although multiple books listed are based on real figures from history: Six More Great Books about Brave Female Spies . If you like stories about brave women during wartime, you might also like the books I listed on the Greedy Reading List Six Great Stories about Brave Women During World War II . I'd love to hear: What are your favorite (fiction or nonfiction) books about tough lady spies? 01 The Unexpected Spy: From the CIA to the FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists by Tracy Walder with Jessica Anya Blau I love a peek at a secret world, and in the nonfiction work The Unexpected Spy , Tracy Walder offers fascinating glimpses of her life as a CIA and an FBI agent. This is the only nonfiction book on this list. Tracy Walder offers details of her life as a CIA and an FBI agent, including training details, political machinations, and significant and rankling discrimination against her because she was a woman. Walder explores her own glowing pride in doing her job well and protecting others from danger. Her evolution into her present-day self and current profession was satisfying to witness. I really liked this book, and I would’ve liked it to be twice as long with even more more more detail about all things spy-related. For my full Bossy review of this book, please see The Unexpected Spy . Co-author Jessica Anya Blau is also the author of Mary Jane , Shopgirls , and other books. 02 The Huntress by Kate Quinn The character-driven post-WWII story was wonderful, with compelling and lush detail and a gutsy female pilot determined to help take down the Nazis. This is the first of two Kate Quinn books on this list. With the Nazis an increasing problem for the Soviet Union, Nina Markova joins the Night Witches, an all-female regiment of night bombers. But Nina's resolve and training are tested when she becomes stuck in enemy territory. Quinn's character-driven post-World War II story was wonderful, with compelling and lush detail about tough female pilots; life in the Siberian wild; Boston; antiques and photography; and the patient, persistent, creative detective work carried out by the characters of Ian, Tony, and Nina. You can see events unfolding while the characters involved remain unaware, but watching the pieces shift and click into place is immensely satisfying. I'm in for all of the World War II-set books with tough, brave female protagonists, and especially female pilots, and I loved this book. For my full review, see The Huntress . Kate Quinn is also the author of The Diamond Eye , The Huntress , The Rose Code , and The Alice Network as well as The Phoenix Crown and The Briar Club. 03 Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can't believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant. But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old. In Elizabeth Wein's young adult historical fiction novel, it's 1943, and a British spy plane has crashed in Nazi-occupied France. The plane's young pilot and its passenger are best friends, but only one of the girls survives. "Verity," the survivor, is a secret agent who is captured by the Gestapo. Her Nazi interrogators offer her a way out: reveal her mission and confess her crimes, or be put to death--and it won't be fast and painless. Verity writes her extended confession, revealing her past, her friendship with the pilot Maddie, and various secrets she's gathered while being a spy. Is she laying groundwork for her release, or spinning webs more complicated than her captors imagine? This World War II-era story of female pilots and spies is written in two points of view. At first I found the structure of Verity's letters somewhat distracting, but it grew on me. And while the second section wasn't a complete surprise, I found it really satisfying. Elizabeth Wein is also the author of many other novels, including additional novels in the Code Name Verity series. 04 The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are. Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale is set during World War II. The novel is about a family stretched to its limits in the face of the horrors of Nazi-occupied France. Hannah's books and I don't always (or often) get along. I find myself distracted by small moments that don't seem to follow with the story she's laying out, and I can't dive into the tale. But this book and I got along like BFFs. The Nightingale offers moments of bravery, scenes of terror, and acts of pure love. I found some moments melodramatic, even considering the naturally fraught wartime setting, but nevertheless I found Hannah's story really engaging. I felt somewhat manipulated at the end of The Nightingale because of circumstances surrounding the modern-day point of view, but I was okay with it. If you missed this book when it came out, it's one that's worth a slot on your to-read list. Kristin Hannah is also the author of many other novels, including The Women . 05 Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin There would be no dressing up as a maid. No cyanide slipped into his crystal glass of mineral water. The Fuhrer’s death was to be a loud, screaming thing. A broadcast of blood over the Reichssender. Wolf by Wolf is the first book in Graudin's young adult duology (the second, Blood by Blood , is also great). The premise hooked me, but I loved Graudin's execution of the story even more. In an alternate reality it's 1956, and Hitler and the Axis powers are taking over the world. Yael, a tough young woman who escaped from a concentration camp, has been training as a spy for years, while cultivating her hatred of the Nazis. Yael's goal: to win a ruthless, exclusive annual motorbike race through Axis-controlled lands. The victor of The Axis Tour will be granted an audience with Adolf Hitler at the celebratory Victor's Ball. At that ball, Yael plans to get close enough to the Fuhrer to kill him. Oh, aaaand Yael has the power to skinshift so that she looks exactly like other people. Buckle up for this one--it's unusual and fast-paced. Graudin also wrote The Walled City. 06 The Alice Network by Kate Quinn The idea made her sick and scared, but so what? Why did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done anyway? In this second book on the list by Kate Quinn, the stories of two women—an imagined World War I spy from the Alice Network (which actually existed) in France, and an American socialite looking for her cousin in 1947—are brought together across the decades . I loved the strong female protagonists and seeing their fire and grit and growth. Both of the more modern-day storylines were wrapped up neatly as with a bow. I would have been in favor of having the romantic element being tied up without the Eve aspect, or having neither of them tied up at all, but the “end of movie”-type closure for both felt too convenient, and even a little dismissive of the complexities of the time and the specific difficulties of the characters' situations. But I was fascinated by the World War I focus and in many cases the spy details’ basis in reality. I wished I’d known the information from the author’s note as I read the novel because of how much of the stories of the women’s lives was pulled from first-person records.

Do you love witchy books? I love a good witch-focused book. Magic, intrigue, strong women, defiance of societal rules; yes to all of this. Here are the six titles that made up my very first Greedy Reading List on this theme. You might also like the witchy books on these lists: Six More Wonderfully Witchy Stories to Charm You Another Six Wonderfully Witchy Stories to Charm You And if you like books about magic, here are two other Bossy Bookworm Greedy Reading Lists you might enjoy: Six Royally Magical Young Adult Series and Six Magical Fairy Tales Grown-Ups Will Love , plus you can check out magic in all kinds of Bossy reads by taking a look at these Bossy reviews . Which witchy books are your favorites? 01 The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow I was especially taken with the sisters' complicated relationships and with the link Harrow draws between witching and the women's suffrage movement. In The Once and Future Witches , Harrow writes about three bitter and broken sisters who learned powerful ways and words at the knee of their witchy grandmother Mags, then were separated by tragedy. These days there's no more witching and no more will for spells and change in the world. Or so most people believe. When the long-lost sisters do unexpectedly cross each other's paths again at last, the world's seams split, offering a glimpse into another land, a buffeting wind, and a burst of terrible power. I adored how Harrow intermingled the women's suffrage movement with the reemergence of witching and women's efforts to reclaim power in matters large and small. While at a few points I felt like the dramatic situations or dialogue distracted me from what felt like the heart of the story (the Eastwoods' helping other women advance their everyday struggles to gain more control over their lives), I was willing to suspend my disbelief in order to dive into the witchy wonder here. For my full review of this book, please see The Once and Future Witches . 02 The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden This is the third and final book in Katherine Arden's strong, fanciful, often wonderfully dark Winternight trilogy. The Winter of the Witch is set in fourteenth century Russia, complete with rich folklore, conflicts between those who follow the old gods and those who follow the new, and Vasya's gloriously persistent bravery, which she displays even when anyone with any sense would be tempted to give up altogether. The weight of the world is on Vasya's shoulders in this book as she attempts to survive while saving the magical Morozko, her beloved horse, and Russia itself. Katherine Arden finishes out the trilogy in typical mesmerizing fashion, with her usual masterful balance of magic, religion, love, passion, family duty, adventure, and search for meaning—and all with a main protagonist who’s your basic badass young Russian witch finding herself and Handling It all over the damn empire. I listened to the audiobook, narrated perfectly by Kathleen Gati. For my full review of this book, please see The Winter of the Witch . This book also appears on the Greedy Reading List Six Magical Fairy Tales Grown-Ups Will Love . 03 Wicked by Gregory Maguire In case you missed this multimillion-copy bestselling book (or the Tony award-winning Broadway musical based upon it, or the fantastic soundtrack to that musical, or the twenty-five-year anniversary of the book's publication, or the blockbuster movie version of the story)--well, maybe you should take a look-see at this one. Or maybe it's time to read this modern witchy classic again. I delighted in reading the Wicked Witch of the West story turned on its head as Maguire traced the origins of Elphaba, a strong-willed, green-skinned young girl; explored the social pressures of Munchkinland; offered a complex back story for the traditional villain character from The Wizard of Oz; and poked holes in the beatific reputation of Glinda the Good Witch. Characters and situations here aren't black-and-white. Maguire shatters the reader's preconceived notions while crafting a richly imagined world--one which goes beyond L. Frank Baum's details from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and emerges as a multilayered and often unexpected creation all its own. I loved that Maguire was able to shift readers' feelings about characters we've long thought we've known and loved--or believed we despised--toward considering more complicated and interesting possibilities. I'll go ahead and unapologetically be a traitor to all "the book is better than the movie" readers by professing that the musical made me cry, and the movie (part one!) was epic. In both cases, the music and songs added depth to the story and made it even more rich. 04 Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin The first book in Mahurin's young adult fantasy trilogy was unabashedly dramatic and angsty, and I was smiling at all of it in delight. Serpent & Dove is Shelby Mahurin's first book in the young adult trilogy of the same name. Louise is a thief who keeps the company of prostitutes and lawbreakers. She's a witch who has sworn off magic; she fled her powerful mother and coven, but they didn't want to let her go. Reid is a straitlaced young man for whom things are black-and-white, clearly right and wrong. He doesn't break rules, and in fact he works for the Church as a Chasseur, hunting down witches for destruction. Things quickly get complicated, and there's a twist: circumstances demand that instinctual nemeses and diametrically opposed characters Lou and Reid...get married . It's a love that must not be--yet they must bind themselves together! From enemies to husband and wife, and major secrets persist--the drama is great. Meanwhile, all is not what it seems. There are instances of trickery related to lineage and other similar surprises. Whenever characters believe other people are unequivocally good or evil, just know: they're about to get their heads wrecked. Serpent & Dove was soooo unabashedly dramatic and angsty, and I was smiling at all of it in delight. I listened to this as an audiobook. For my full review of this book, see Serpent & Dove . 05 A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness This book--! (Have you watched the TV show based on the books? I am all in for the angsty drama and for Matthew Goode in this role.) I'll admit that when I began reading this book, I found myself stifling some giggles and texting my friend Leah who'd just read it to discuss bits of dialogue or minor plot moments. There is a lot more sexy yoga here than I could have dreamed of, plenty of romance, so very much wine appreciation, and copious older-man-guides-the-young-ingenue scenes. But once I settled in, I gleefully tore through what felt like a mix of the detail and romance of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books and the angst, emotions, and forbidden love of the Twilight series. I could've done with even more more more magic and witchiness. I think the second book in the All Souls series ( Shadow of Night ) is even stronger, as it delves more deeply into magical processes and digs into significantly more detail. There are four books in this series from Harkness, and I found the others even more magical than this first installment. 06 Circe by Madeline Miller To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love. Circe, daughter of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, is an odd child. She's not striking and in fact, she's seemingly without power. But she grows into her glorious witchy wonder, and her abilities to transform her foes are revealed--along with her dangerous potential to threaten the gods. When Zeus, fearful of what she might be capable of, banishes her to a deserted island, Circe perfects her witchy powers, tames beasts, considers the world and her place in it, simmers and plans, and entertains well-known figures from mythology, including Icarus, the Minotaur, Medea, and Odysseus. We are sorry, we are sorry. Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong. Circe is a wonderfully faulted, curious, powerful witch. I was in for this book hook, line, and sinker.