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Galley Talk: 'The Wednesday Daughter' by Meg Waite Clayton
In Meg Waite Clayton’s The Wednesday Daughters (Ballantine, July), Anna Page, Hope, and Julie are lifelong friends who are the daughters of lifelong friends.
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Galley Talk: 'The World’s Strongest Librarian,' by Josh Hanagarne
In his brave and funny memoir, The World’s Strongest Librarian (Gotham, June), Josh Hanagarne uses the Dewey decimal system to guide us through the ups and downs of battling Tourette’s.
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Galley Talk: 'The Boys in the Boat' by Daniel James Brown
I’m not built to be a world-class rower, but I was certainly capable of thoroughly enjoying Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat (Viking, June), a splendid account of the 1936 Olympic quest of this rowing crew from the University of Washington.
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Galley Talk: Joanna Hershon's 'A Dual Inheritance'
Joanna Hershon’s A Dual Inheritance (Ballantine, May 7) gets my vote for best book of the year, hands down.
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Galley Talk: 'Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library'
Emily Grossenbacher of Lemuria Books in Jackson, Miss., is looking forward to introducing kids to Chris Grabenstein's Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library.
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Galley Talk: 'Amity and Sorrow' by Peggy Riley
In Peggy Riley’s magnificent debut, Amity and Sorrow (Little, Brown, Apr.), you’ll discover a world that’s assured and stunningly confident, a world populated with exquisitely flawed characters whose story bolts out of the reader’s hand and hurtles towards its conclusion—a conclusion that’s horrific, unavoidable, and magnificent all at once.
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Galley Talk: Stephan Talty’s 'Black Irish'
How did I miss Stephan Talty’s nonfiction? It clearly prepared him to unleash a powerful arsenal of prose and plot into his first novel.
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Galley Talk: 'The Rithmatist'
Megan O'Sullivan, the owner of Main Street Books in Cedar City, Utah, has high hopes for The Rithmatist, Brandon Sanderson's first novel for teens.
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Galley Talk: 'The Memory of Love' by Linda Olsson
It’s no surprise that Linda Olsson’s The Memory of Love (Penguin, Feb.) jumped to the top of my “must-read” list—this terrific author has written two of my favorite books, Astrid & Veronika and Sonata for Miriam.
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Galley Talk: 'Raising Cubby,' by John Elder Robison
It’s not often that you read a memoir in which the hero is an educational method.
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Galley Talk: 'Schroder,' by Amity Gaige
Amity Gaige’s deeply layered Schroder (Twelve, Feb.) drew me in with the intense beauty of the language and the doomed journey of its unreliable narrator.
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Galley Talk: 'Eleanor & Park'
Hannah Moushabeck, children's department director at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Mass., shares her impressions of Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell.
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Galley Talk: 'The Death of Bees,' by Lisa O'Donnell
Told in a powerful rotating first-person style, the narrators in Lisa O’Donnell’s The Death of Bees (Harper, Jan.) circle in on this story like prey, drawing in the reader.
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Galley Talk: 'A Thousand Morons,' by Quim Monzo
The stories in Quim Monzo’s A Thousand Morons (Open Letter, Dec.) are charged with humor, heart, and a playful sense of irony, as each story toes the fine line between absurdity and realism.
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Galley Talk: 'Just One Day'
Lauren Mayer, children's book buyer for University Book Store in Seattle, has high hopes for Gayle Forman's Just One Day.
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Galley Talk: Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World, by Matthew Goodman
When I was young, I couldn’t get enough of Nellie Bly’s muckraking exposés and refusal to be held back because she was a woman.
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Galley Talk: 'The Good House,' by Ann Leary
The Good House by Ann Leary (St. Martin’s, Jan.) absorbs through your skin.
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Galley Talk: 'We Sinners,' by Hanna Pylväinen
From the first sentence, I absolutely could not put down We Sinners (Holt, Aug.) until I turned the last page. The saga of a dysfunctional family is not a new subject: numerous authors have tackled it to much critical acclaim, but what separates We Sinners from those novels is distance. It’s easy to hide behind cynicism, satire, and disdain, but Hanna Pylväinen is understated, honest, and, most of all, full of compassion. In the mundane specifics of the Rovaniemis, there are the grand universals of all families: the mistakes, the misunderstandings, the betrayals, and—coloring it all—the inescapable love. Characters who could be painted in grand strokes as villains or angels are small, fragile, and very human. We Sinners brilliantly, unforgettably reconfigures Tolstoy’s adage about happy and unhappy families: “happy and unhappy, every family is.”
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Galley Talk: Cascade, by Maryanne O’Hara
Maryanne O’Hara’s Cascade (Viking, Aug.) is a tightly woven story about the choices a young woman makes and the far-reaching consequences of those decisions. The story begins in Cascade, a small Massachusetts town that’s being considered as the site for a reservoir, necessitated by Boston’s need for water. The year is 1935 and across America the Depression retains a hold on its citizenry. These issues coupled with a young woman coming-of-age form the plot’s triangle. Desdemona Hart Spaulding is an aspiring artist whose story, like the postcards she paints and the Shakespearean plays her father loved, is complicated. The swirling eddy of human feeling—humor, sadness, betrayal, infidelity, love, ambition, and duplicity—are all well represented and compel the reader to understand and not judge as Dez follows her heart and her art. With an artist’s eye, O’Hara has vividly captured the conflicting emotions that churn behind the human face.
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Galley Talk: 'Flat Water Tuesday' by Ron Irwin
Ron Irwin’s powerful debut, Flat Water Tuesday (St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne, June), is making the kind of waves a scull isn’t supposed to.
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