#monthlypicks

C. P. Lesley

Dec 16, 2019
3 min

Books We Loved, Dec. 2019

Christopher Brown, Rule of Capture (Harper Voyager, 2019) Donny Kimoe, a wisecracking lawyer who used to work for the prosecution and has kept his security clearance, believes in the legal system. His work as a defense attorney will change all that. His clients are a new class of criminals—those who dare protest changes in the US government, including imposition of martial law in certain areas and the detainment of citizens without legal reasons. To protect his new client—Xel

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C. P. Lesley

Nov 15, 2019
4 min

Books We Loved, Nov. 2019

Here are three novels we particularly enjoyed this month. But don’t stop there. We also published two new books of our own this fall, so in addition to Joan Schweighardt’s Gifts for the Dead (Rivers 2) and these three wonderful novels, do make time in your schedule for our latest new release, Gabrielle Mathieu's Girl of Fire, hot off the presses as of November 3, 2019. You can find out more by clicking on their book titles, which will take you to their individual book pages

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C. P. Lesley

Oct 17, 2019
4 min

Books We Loved, Oct. 2019

And while you’re browsing all these wonderful books, don’t miss our latest release: Joan Schweighardt’s Gifts for the Dead, book 2 in her Rivers trilogy. Find out more by clicking her cover, below. Melissa Albert, The Hazel Wood (Flatiron Books, 2018) Melissa Albert‘s The Hazel Wood is a shivery delight, like a dazzling vintage ball gown of paisley silk, slithering over your head. Reading it is like drowning in musk rose petals and damson wine. It begins in an almost convent

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C. P. Lesley

Sep 14, 2019
4 min

Books We Loved, Sep. 2019

Angie Cruz, Dominicana (Flatiron Books, 2019) Police raids on a factory to round up undocumented immigrants; a brown-skinned immigrant arrested after being the victim of a street assault; a young woman on her way to the grocery store keeping her eyes down and speaking to no one in case they know that she is not a legal resident; a fifteen-year-old farm girl married against her will to a much older and unappealing man as part of a land deal; that girl hiding her meager earning

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C. P. Lesley

Aug 15, 2019
3 min

Books We Loved, Aug. 2019

Anna Burns, Milkman (Faber and Faber, 2018) “The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.” So opens Anna Burns’ darkly funny political novel, Milkman, set in 1970s Northern Ireland. An unnamed eighteen-year-old, known only as middle sister, inhabits several parallel worlds while being sexually harassed by an older, powerful militant she tries to evade through inaction and avoidance. This i

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C. P. Lesley

Jul 15, 2019
3 min

Books We Loved, Jul. 2019

Kate Braithwaite, The Girl Puzzle (Crooked Cat Books, 2019) In 1887 Elizabeth Cochrane—a young reporter from Pittsburgh desperate to land a job at New York City’s The World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer—agrees to impersonate a madwoman and investigate conditions at Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum from the inside. Twenty-three years old, Elizabeth spends ten agonizing days among women branded insane and treated as inhuman, who may be no more than burdens their families are all t

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C. P. Lesley

Jun 14, 2019
5 min

Books We Loved, Jun. 2019

Ana Johns, The Woman in the White Kimono (Park Row Books, 2019) Naoko Nakamura is only seventeen when she falls madly in love with an American navy man. It’s 1957, and the US occupation of Japan has ended just a few years before, leaving bitter memories in the local population. Even though Naoko’s beloved Hajime wants to marry her, her family will have nothing to do with him—in part because they have another husband picked out for her, but also because marriage to an American

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C. P. Lesley

May 15, 2019
3 min

Books We Loved, May 2019

Rachael Bloome, Puzzle Pieces (2019) Free download at author’s website Elle is an app developer whose claim to fame is Puzzle Pieces, an app which aims to find a person’s perfect match. Inspired by her parents’ storybook romance and still mourning their deaths years later, she is unnerved when she learns that her best friend from school, Graham, has returned to town for his brother’s wedding. There’s a history between them that unfolds bit by bit as the story progresses, and

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C. P. Lesley

Apr 14, 2019
4 min

Books We Loved, Apr. 2019

Yangsze Choo, The Night Tiger (Flatiron Books, 2019) The Night Tiger is much more than just a fantasy novel—it’s also a mystery, a historical novel, and a love story. Yangsze Choo accomplishes all this in one deft package. Set in Malaysia in the 1930s, in the state of Perak, The Night Tiger closely follows three narrators, mysteriously interlinked by their names. There is a clever orphan named Ren who works as a houseboy; a spunky and funny young beauty, Ji Lin; and a British

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C. P. Lesley

Mar 14, 2019
4 min

Books We Loved, Mar. 2019

C, J. Box, The Disappeared (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018) Even fantasy can become mundane if one reads too much of it. The Disappeared by crime writer C.J. Box offered a welcome break. I’ve been a fan of his for years. The series follows Joe Pickett, a regular Wyoming game warden who finds himself in a number of challenging situations. Joe is neither exceptionally smart nor emotionally complex. He’s a good man trying to do the right thing, devoted to his job, still in love with

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C. P. Lesley

Feb 14, 2019
4 min

Books We Loved, Feb. 2019

Terry Gamble, The Eulogist (William Morrow, 2019) When Olivia Givens and her family leave Ireland in 1819, the crops are failing and the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars has led to the loss of their family property. Soon fifteen-year-old Olivia is standing on the shores of the Ohio River with the rest of her Ulster Protestant family. The city of Cincinnati has just come into being, and that, combined with the illness of the family’s youngest child, convince the Givens to end

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C. P. Lesley

Jan 15, 2019
3 min

Books We Loved, Jan. 2019

P. K. Adams, The Greenest Branch (Iron Knight Press, 2018) Hildegard of Bingen was long one of the forgotten women of history. Consigned from birth to the Catholic Church, she overcame her mentor’s extreme asceticism and defied traditional views of what women could do to emerge as a respected physician and mystic, only to be forgotten until feminist historians rediscovered her in the late twentieth century. In this well-written debut novel, we meet Hildegard as an inquisitive

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C. P. Lesley

Dec 14, 2018
4 min

Books We Loved, Dec. 2018

Just in time for holiday shopping and reading, we have a bunch of Christmas and winter books to recommend. Treat yourself, treat your friends and family, and don't forget to check out our own selections for literary journeys on our Books page. They also make great gifts! Sam Hooker, The Winter Riddle (Black Spot Books, 2018) If you are a moody young woman who likes to wear black, you might well be a witch. Or aspire to be a witch. If you need a tongue-in-cheek guide on how to

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C. P. Lesley

Nov 16, 2018
3 min

Books We Loved, Nov. 2018

Kate Morton, The Clockmaker’s Daughter (Atria Books, 2018) It’s not often that I encounter a novel so densely and intricately plotted that it’s almost impossible to describe without giving away major elements of the story, but The Clockmaker’s Daughter is such a novel. It opens at a mid-nineteenth-century house party, held at the sprawling rural home of an upcoming and innovative artist, that ends in tragedy. More than 150 years later, an archivist in London uncovers an old s

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C. P. Lesley

Oct 14, 2018
4 min

Books We Loved, Oct. 2018

John Bude, The Cornish Coast Murder (British Library Edition, 2014 [1935]) Ernest Carpenter Elmore (1901–1957), writing as John Bude, was a lesser-known contemporary of Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie and debuted his thirty crime novels with this endearing first. Two amateurs, a vicar and a doctor, compete with a professional detective to solve a murder. Naturally, I sided with the amateurs, and though I was unable to guess “who did it,” the process was engaging to the

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C. P. Lesley

Sep 14, 2018
4 min

Books We Loved, Sep. 2018

In addition to our own Joan Schweighardt’s Before We Died (Rivers, Book 1), due out any day, here are a few suggestions for those soon-to-arrive autumn days, as well as one for those of us not yet prepared to let go of summer! Fredrik Backman, Beartown (Washington Square Press, 2016) Beartown, by the Swedish novelist Frederik Backman, differs in scope from the more intimate A Man Called Ove (my Books We Loved pick for April 2018), yet central to both novels is the relationshi

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C. P. Lesley

Aug 15, 2018
4 min

Books We Loved, Aug. 2018

Amy Mason Doan, The Summer List (Graydon House, 2018) Everyone’s always trying to find the perfect summer read. The summer after I graduated high school I read Summer Sisters by Judy Blume, and every year since I’ve eagerly scoured bookstore shelves for something that would match it. I always came up short—until now. The Summer List by Amy Mason Doan is exactly the book I’ve been trying to find. I’m not the first to compare it to Summer Sisters, and indeed it gives off that v

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C. P. Lesley

Jul 21, 2018
5 min

Books We Loved, Jul. 2018

Lots of activity this month, especially in reference to C. P. Lesley’s Legends of the Five Directions series, now officially drawing to a close. In addition to a revised edition of the first book, The Golden Lynx, and the appearance of the last—The Shattered Drum—Lesley has made minor changes to the three other novels and combined them in box sets. Alas, the economics of small-press publishing mean that we can release the box sets only for Kindle, but if you have an e-reader

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C. P. Lesley

Jun 15, 2018
4 min

Books We Loved, Jun. 2018

And don't miss the conclusion to Gabrielle Mathieu’s wonderful Falcon Trilogy, The Falcon Soars, released just this month! After causing the death of her lover and bringing the wrath of the IRA down on her family, Peppa Mueller is determined to redeem herself, even if it means suppressing her falcon totem. But past enemies are looking for her. Her promising neurosurgery career is interrupted by an assassination attempt. Then the one friend she’s always counted on is called

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C. P. Lesley

May 16, 2018
3 min

Books We Loved, May 2018

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) In these times of racial strife, when our divided nation sees Kanye West draw widespread condemnation for his controversial views, Kendrick Lamar win the Pulitzer Prize for music, and Trayvon Martin become a household name, this book is a must-read. Much as Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance tore open the curtain on a “culture in crisis” and clarified to me and educated me on the concerns and values of a group of p

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