The Cat Who Saved Books - Sosuke Natsukawa (Harpervia)
Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the secondhand bookstore he inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. Then, a talking cat appears with an unusual request. The feline asks for--or rather, demands--the teenager's help in saving books with him. The world is full of lonely books left unread and unloved, and the cat and Rintaro must liberate them from their neglectful owners.
Their mission sends this odd couple on an amazing journey, where they enter different mazes to set books free. Through their travels, the cat and Rintaro meet a man who leaves his books to perish on a bookshelf, an unwitting book torturer who cuts the pages of books into snippets to help people speed read, and a publishing drone who only wants to create bestsellers. Their adventures culminate in one final, unforgettable challenge--the last maze that awaits leads Rintaro down a realm only the bravest dare enter . . .
An enthralling tale of books, first love, fantasy, and an unusual friendship with a talking cat, The Cat Who Saved Books is a story for those for whom books are so much more than words on paper.
Translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai.
Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age - Dennis Duncan (W.W. Norton & Company)
Most of us give little thought to the back of the book--it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. Here, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past.
Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Duncan uncovers how it has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office, and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists' living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and--of course--indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart--and we have been for eight hundred years.
The Good Left Undone - Adriana Trigiani (Dutton)
" The Good Left Undone is deliciously told, with fully explored characters, mouthwatering descriptions of Italian food, and charming yet quirky towns. What's exceptional about the novel is how seamlessly she knits together different stories from many places and times, bringing it all together in one poignant and satisfying book. This is a gorgeously written story about intergenerational love and heartbreak, the futility of regret, and the power of a life well lived. It's also a love letter to Italy and its beautiful and painful history."
Why Architecture Matters - Paul Goldberger (Yale University Press)
"Architecture begins to matter," writes Paul Goldberger, "when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads." In Why Architecture Matters, he shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the vast, flowing Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Guggenheim Bilbao. He eloquently describes the Church of Sant'Ivo in Rome as a work that "embraces the deepest complexities of human imagination."
In his afterword to this new edition, Goldberger addresses the current climate in architectural history and takes a more nuanced look at projects such as Thomas Jefferson's academic village at the University of Virginia and figures including Philip Johnson, whose controversial status has been the topic of much recent discourse. He argues that the emotional impact of great architecture remains vital, even as he welcomes the shift in the field to an increased emphasis on social justice and sustainability.
Indie Next List - May 2023

The Secret Book of Flora Lea: A Novel
by Patti Callahan Henry (Atria Books)
Fiction

In the Lives of Puppets
by TJ Klune (Tor Books)
Fantasy

Chain-Gang All Stars: A Novel
by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon)
Fiction

No Two Persons
by Erica Bauermeister (St. Martin’s Press)
Fiction

The Postcard
by Anne Berest (Europe Editions)
Fiction

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
by J Ryan Stradal (Pamela Dorman Books)
Fiction

The Half Moon
by Mary Beth Keane (Scribner)
Fiction

Small Mercies
by Dennis Lehane (Harper)

The Covenant of Water
by Abraham Verghese (Grove Press)
Fiction

The True Love Experiment
by Christina Lauren (Gallery Books)
Romance

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath: The First Book of Nampeshiweist
by Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey)
Fantasy

The Fiancee Farce
by Alexandria Bellefleur (Avon)
Romance

If We’re Being Honest
by Cat Shook (Caldron Books)
Fiction

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
by David Grann (Doubleday)

Clytemnestra
by Costanza Casati (Sourcebooks Landmark)
Fiction

The Salt Grows Heavy
by Cassandra Khaw (Tor Nightfire)
Horror

Mastering the Art of French Murder (An American in Paris Mystery
by Colleen Cambridge (Kensington)
Mystery

Meet Me at the Lake
by Carley Fortune (Berkley)
Romance

You Are Here
by Karen Lin-Greenberg (Counterpoint)
Fiction

The Night Flowers
by Sara Herchenroether (Tin House Books)
Thriller

The East Indian
by Brinda Charry (Scribner)
Fiction

With My Little Eye
by Joshilyn Jackson (William Morrow)
Thriller

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma
by Claire Dederer (Knopf)
Literary Criticism
Cown & Sceptre - Tracy Borman (Grove Atlantic)
Since William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel in 1066 to defeat King Harold II and unite England’s various kingdoms, forty-one kings and queens have sat on Britain’s throne: “shining examples of royal power and majesty alongside a rogue’s gallery of weak, lazy, or evil monarchs,” as Tracy Borman evocatively describes them in her sparkling chronicle, Crown & Sceptre. Ironically, during very few of these 955 years has the throne’s occupant been unambiguously English—whether Norman French, the Welsh-born Tudors, the Scottish Stuarts, and the Hanoverians and their German successors to the present day.
Tracy Borman is England’s joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces and Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust. She is the author of many highly acclaimed books, including The Private Lives of the Tudors, Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant, Elizabeth’s Women, and a first work of fiction, The King’s Witch.
Groundskeeping - Lee Cole (Penguin Random House)
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Owen Callahan, an aspiring writer, moves back to Kentucky to live with his Trump-supporting uncle and grandfather. Eager to clean up his act after wasting time and potential in his early twenties, he takes a job as a groundskeeper at a small local college, in exchange for which he is permitted to take a writing course.
Here he meets Alma Hazdic, a writer in residence who seems to have everything that Owen lacks—a prestigious position, an Ivy League education, success as a writer. They begin a secret relationship, and as they grow closer, Alma—who comes from a liberal family of Bosnian immigrants—struggles to understand Owen’s fraught relationship with family and home.
Exquisitely written; expertly crafted; dazzling in its precision, restraint, and depth of feeling, Groundskeeping is a novel of haunting power and grace from a prodigiously gifted young writer.
The Paris Bookseller - Kerri Maher (Berkley Books)
"If you ever dreamed you could transport yourself to Paris in the twenties, to Sylvia Beach's famous bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, where Joyce, Hemingway, and Pound wandered the aisles, this story's for you. Maher's magical touch brings to life a woman whose struggles resonate in today's world, while also examining the intricacies of friendship, fortitude, and the love of the written word."
-- Fiona Davis, author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue
The Big House - George Howe Colt (Scribner Book Company)
This book is a true thing -- a careful opening into the rooms of origin, a meditation on loss and loving, a tender exploration of the mysteries of family. That George Howe Colt is a poet makes us especially lucky to be privy to his keen and generous company. In the fullness of a narrative fantastic with stories of his extraordinary ancestry, he honors what is precious without sentimentality, expresses intimacy without self-absorption, his wisdom rooted in humor and humility.
The Sweetness of Water - Nathan Harris (Back Bay Books)
"Harris's lucid prose and vivid characterization illustrate a community at war with itself, poisoned by pride and mired in racial and sexual bigotry. Prentiss and Landry are technically free, but they remain trapped by a lifetime of blighted hopes and broken promises. Reconstruction will prove to be yet another lie. Harris's first novel is an aching chronicle of loss, cruelty, and love in the wake of community devastation."