BOOKLOVES

Paula McLain has built her reputation on illuminating women’s stories that history nearly forgot. From Hadley Hemingway in The Paris Wife to Beryl Markham in Circling the Sun, she excavates lives that deserve remembering. With Skylark by Paula McLain, she ventures into her most ambitious narrative structure yet—a dual timeline spanning nearly three centuries, connected […]

A writing book that makes compassion a craft and agency a practice “You are worthy of writing your story simply because you exist.” As a poet grappling with my own nasty inner voice, paralyzing perfectionism, and fear of vulnerability, The Compassionate Writer seemed to arrive at just the right time. Writing is often framed as […]

A touching examination of life-changing loss and the long road toward something like closure In a moving triptych of loss and recovery, Fredricka R. Maister chronicles the three significant losses that have shaped her life. She frames them with a final series of reflections that acknowledge how far she’s come in facing the deaths of […]

A deeply human story about courage, solidarity, and what it takes to thrive in a world that isn’t fair Samantha dares to dream of a meaningful career despite the absence of encouragement in her childhood. Her two friends, Inga and Josephine, confront their own personal and societal struggles and claim the lives they believe they […]

Ann Patchett has built a distinguished career crafting novels that excavate the quiet devastations and unexpected grace notes of ordinary lives. Her latest work continues this tradition while venturing into more experimental territory. Whistler by Ann Patchett is a slim, contemplative novel that unfolds like a carefully preserved memory—luminous in places, shadow-filled in others, and […]

An intricate story of quiet threats and the families who endure them Helen Montague Foster’s Tidal Overlook, sequel to Lost Graces, opens with a jolt of realism that sets your teeth on edge. A winter drive to a family cabin turns unexpectedly tense when Nancy Thomas, a psychiatrist, discovers an injured man in a field […]

A moving portrait of a patriotic, ethnically Polish family in Germany during the long twentieth century and of a young woman who found herself at the center of WWII’s Warsaw Uprising “As citizens of the Reich, we were not allowed to take money abroad or have any income there. If there was any, it had […]