An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good - Helene Tursten (Soho Crime)
Ever since her darling father’s untimely death when she was only eighteen, Maud has lived in the family’s spacious apartment in downtown Gothenburg rent-free, thanks to a minor clause in a hastily negotiated contract. That was how Maud learned that good things can come from tragedy. Now in her late eighties, Maud contents herself with traveling the world and surfing the net from the comfort of her father’s ancient armchair. It’s a solitary existence, and she likes it that way.
Over the course of her adventures–or misadventures–, this little bold lady will handle a crisis with a local celebrity who has her eyes on Maud’s apartment, foil the engagement of her long-ago lover, and dispose of some pesky neighbors. But when the local authorities are called to investigate a dead body found in Maud’s apartment, will Maud finally become a suspect?
Eternal - Lisa Scottoline (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
Unfolding over decades, Eternal is a tale of loyalty and loss, family and food, love and war–all set in one of the world’s most beautiful cities at its darkest moment. This moving novel will be forever etched in the hearts and minds of readers.
The Splendid and the Vile - Erik Larson (Crown Publishing Group)
Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports–some released only recently–Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle” to whom he turns in the most challenging moments.
The Walker - Matthew Beaumont (Verso)
There is no such thing as a false step. Every time we walk we are going somewhere. Especially if we are going nowhere. Moving around the modern city is not a way of getting from A to B, but of understanding who and where we are. In a series of riveting intellectual rambles, Matthew Beaumont retraces episodes in the history of the walker since the mid-nineteenth century
The Art of Solitude - Stephen Batchelor (Yale University Press)
When world-renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor turned sixty, he took a sabbatical from his teaching and turned his attention to solitude, a practice integral to the meditative traditions he has long studied and taught. He aimed to venture more deeply into solitude, discovering its full extent and depth.
In a hyperconnected world that is at the same time plagued by social isolation, this book shows how to enjoy the inescapable solitude that is at the heart of human life.
The Vanished Collection - Pauline Baer de Perignon (New Vessel Press)
It all started with a list of paintings. There, scribbled by a cousin she hadn't seen for years, were the names of the masters whose works once belonged to her great-grandfather, Jules Strauss: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Tiepolo, and more. Pauline Baer de Perignon knew little to nothing about Strauss, or about his vanished, precious art collection. But the list drove her on a frenzied trail of research in the archives of the Louvre and the Dresden museums, through Gestapo records, and to consult with Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. What happened in 1942? And what became of the collection after Nazis seized her great-grandparents' elegant Parisian apartment? The quest takes Pauline Baer de Perignon from the Occupation of France to the present day as she breaks the silence around the wrenching experiences her family never fully transmitted, and asks what art itself is capable of conveying over time.
The Widow Clicquot - Tilar Mazzeo (Harper)
The Widow Clicquot is a biography of the visionary young widow who built a champagne empire, became a legend in her tumultuous times, and showed the world how to live with style. Mazzeo brings to life the woman behind the label, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, in this utterly intoxicating book that is as much a fascinating journey through the process of making this temperamental wine as a biography of a uniquely tempered and fascinating woman.
Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World - Simon Winchester (Harper)
Land is central to our existence, whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing–and have done–with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World examines in depth how we acquire land, how we steward it, how and why we fight over it, and finally, how we can, and on occasion do come to share it. Ultimately, Winchester confronts the essential question: who actually owns the world’s land–and why does it matter?
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Scribner Book Company)
This masterfully written novel follows an array of characters across time and the world. Ultimately, when given the choice between paradise and home, what decision do we make?
- K.F.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt & Company)
An amazing story of rebellion with an almost mythical feel to the narrative. With a sprinkle of an enemies-to-lovers plotline, you won’t be able to put it down.
- C.B.