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Books

Best fiction, nonfiction reads for your winter pleasure

11 picks sure to keep you riveted

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ā€˜Manhuntā€™ was one of the most memorable reads of 2022.

It happens every year.

The decorations come down. The last of the Christmas leftovers have been eaten. Errant bits of ripped wrapping are found and discarded. You have no more holiday candy or cookies, you look around at your empty hands, and you wonder now what?

Now it’s time to settle in and read for the rest of the winter season. For your pleasure, here are the Top Five Bookworm Picks for the Best of 2022.

Fiction

Lovers of fairy tales are in for a big surprise with The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean (Tor, $26.99). It’s a dark, dark legend filled with evil dragons that look like men, princesses that are worse than second-class citizens within their realms, and a chase that will chill you. Book lovers will adore this tale, especially if you don’t necessarily need a happily-ever-after.

Pick up a copy of Dot and Ralphie by Amy Hoffman (University of Wisconsin Press, $16.95) and it doesn’t look like much. But aren’t you glad you don’t judge a book by its cover?Ā  This is a sweet tale of two elderly women, partners in life and love, and aging. It’s sweet and grumpy and charming, somewhat like a lesbian Honeymooners episode, only better.

Readers who are familiar with the thrillers that James Lee Burke writes will absolutely be stunned by Every Cloak Rolled in Blood (Simon & Schuster, $27) because in this book, the thrill is secondary to the main plot. Here, retired detective Aaron Broussard has lost his beloved daughter and it’s cut him to the core. Fiery, glass-sharp grief doesn’t stop crime, though, and so he still has crime to solve ā€“ whether real, or imagined. Read this book with an open heart and tissues at hand. It may be Burke’s best.

Lovers of clever, clever stories will love Sign Here by Claudia Lux (Berkeley, $27). It’s the tale of Peyote Trip, whose job on the Fifth Floor of Hell is to recruit new souls for eternity. But Pey has a plan to get out of his purgatory, which turns this funny, sharp-witted story into a shady mystery that will make you laugh a lot and squirm even more.Ā 

Here’s a book that’s absolutely not for everyone: Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin (Macmillan Nightfire, $17.99) is a lesbian feminist dystopian thriller, which sounds like a lot and it is. A virus has hit every corner of the world, making men into wolf-like killing machines and sending the women into hiding. When two young women ā€“ one of them, trans ā€“ learns that a “healer” might be able to save her from the inevitable, they head out to find the woman but a makeshift band of warrior women get in their way. Again, this isn’t a book for everyone but if you’re looking for something very, very different, this is it.

BONUS: “Things Past Telling by Sheila Williams (Amistad, $25.99) is a novel of the memories of a 112-year-old former slave, who was also a pirate’s woman, a healer, and someone reaching for things her soul needed. It’s an adventurous book with the tiniest touch of fantasy and you shouldn’t miss it.Ā 

Non-Fiction

You have questions. And All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell (St. Martin’s Press, $29.99) has answers. When someone dies, what happens next? A wide variety of things, that’s what, and it’s someone else’s job to see that it’s done right. This book is careful not to be (too) gruesome but it is compellingly fascinating.

Charlie’s Good Tonightby Paul Sexton (Harper, $27.99) is on this list because it could be the biggest surprise of the year for readers. It’s the story of the late Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, a man who really never wanted fame and often actively shunned the limelight. If you think you know all about the debauchery of your favorite rock ā€˜n roll band, think again and be totally charmed by one man’s life.

There are two business books on this list because they don’t at all read like business books; in fact, Think Like a Horse by Grant Golliher (Putnam, $28) and Meet Me by the Fountain by Alexandra Lange (Bloomsbury, $28) both seem more like snuggle-up-in-front-of-the-fire kinds of books. Golliher’s book is pure cowboy ā€“ he was a rancher and worked extensively with horses ā€“ and there are western-novel tones in his book on getting the most out of people. Lange’s book is a trip to the mall throughout history, including a good look at stores you may have visited through the years. These books are both great for the business-minded reader, but could be enjoyed by anyone.

And finally, an obsession: To Walk About in Freedom by Carole Emberton (W.W. Norton, $28.95) is a jaw-dropping memoir that hides in a history book. In the earlier part of the last century, the government paid writers to interview people for a WPA project. One of the interviewees was a former slave woman who offers up not only her life, but a real-life account of the end of slavery and how it impacted everyday, average people. This is a book you’ll be talking about well into the new year.

If these 11 books don’t fit your mood, then be sure to check with your favorite bookseller or librarian. When it comes to books, (s)he is a superhero.

Happy reading!

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Books

Upcoming books offer something for every reader

From a history of the gay right to a look at queer womenā€™s spaces

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(Book cover images courtesy of the publishers)

Daylight Savings Time has arrived, giving you more sunlight in the evening and more time to read. So why not look for these great books this spring?

If your taste runs to historical novels, you’re in luck. When Yorick spots his name on the list of the missing after the Titanic sinks, he believes this to be an omen: nobody’s looking for him, so maybe this is his opportunity to move to Paris and open that bookstore he’s been dreaming about. In The Titanic Survivors Book Clubby Timothy Schaffert (Doubleday, $29.00) his decision leads to more than a bucolic little business. Out April 2.

If you’re looking for something a little on the lighter side, discover Riley Weaver Needs a Date to the Gaybutante Ball by Jason June (HarperTeen, $19.99). Young adult books are perfect light reading for adults, and this one is full of high-school drama, romance, comedy, and more drama. What fun! Out May 23.

Can’t get enough of graphic novels? Then look for Escape from St. Hell: A Graphic Novel by Lewis Hancox (Graphix, $14.99). It’s the continuing story of Lew, who just wants to live his life as a guy, which he started doing in the last novel (“Welcome to St. Hell”) but you know what they say about one door closing, one door opening. In this new installment, Lew grapples with the changes he’s made and how his friends and family see things, too. This book is fresh and honest and great for someone who’s just transitioned. Out May 7.

For the mystery lover, you can’t go wrong with Clean Kill: A Nicky Sullivan Mystery by Anne Laughlin (Bold Strokes, $18.95). As the manager of a sober living home in Chicago, Nicky Sullivan has her hands full with 10 other residents of the home. But when one of them is murdered, Sullivan reaches back into her past as an investigator to find the killer by calling on her old partner. Fortunately, he’s still working. Also fortunately, he’s got a new partner and she catches Sullivan’s eye. Can love and murder mix? Out May 14.

Can’t get enough of politics? Then you’ll be happy to find Coming out Republican: A History of the Gay Right by Neil J. Young (University of Chicago Press, $30). In the fractious political atmosphere we have now, it’s essential to understand how gay conservatives have influenced politics through the decades. Find this book before November. It may be one of the most eye-opening books you’ll read. Out April 3.

The reader who loves her “space” will want to take A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women’s Culture by June Thomas (Seal Press, $30) there to read. It’s a book about historically safe places for queer women to be themselves ā€“ and some are surprisingly very public. Interviews with iconic feminists and lesbians round out a great look at the locales that queer women have claimed for their own. Out May 28.

And now the housekeeping: Release dates can change and titles can be altered at the last minute, so check with your favorite bookseller or librarian. They’ll also have more recommendations if you need them because there’s a lot of time for reading now.

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Books

Gay author takes us on his journey to fatherhood in ā€˜Safeā€™

One man’s truth about the frustrations and rewards of fostering

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(Book cover image courtesy of Atria Books)

ā€˜Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Familyā€™
By Mark Daley
c.2024, AtriaĀ Books
$28.99/304 pages

The closet is full of miniature hangers.

The mattress bumpers match the drapes and the rug beneath the tiny bed. There’s a rocker for late-night fusses, a tall giraffe in the corner, and wind-up elephants march in a circle over the crib. Now you just need someone to occupy that space and in the new book, “Safe” by Mark Daley, there’s more than one way to accomplish that dream.

Jason was a natural-born father.

Mark Daley knew that when they were dating, when he watched Jason with his nephew, with infants, and the look on Jason’s face when he had one in his arms. As a gay man, Daley never thought much having a family but he knew Jason did ā€“ and so, shortly after their wedding, they began exploring surrogacy and foster-to-adopt programs.

Daley knew how important it was to get the latter right: his mother had a less-than-optimal childhood, and she protected her own children fiercely for it. When Daley came out to her, and to his father, he was instantly supported and that’s what he wanted to give: support and loving comfort to a child in a hard situation.

Or children, as it happened. Just weeks after competing foster parenting classes and after telling the social worker they’d take siblings if there was a need, the prospective dads were offered two small brothers to foster.

It was love at first sight but euphoria was somewhat tempered by courts, laws, and rules. Their social worker warned several times that reunification of the boys with their parents was “Plan A,” but Daley couldn’t imagine it. The parents seemed unreliable; they rarely kept appointments, and they didn’t seem to want to learn better parenting skills. The mother all but ignored the baby, and the child noticed.

So did Daley, but the courts held all the power, and predicting an outcome was impossible.

“All we had was the present,” he said. “If I didn’t stay in it, I was going to lose everything I had.ā€ So was there a Happily-Ever-After?

Ah, you won’t find an answer to that question here. You’ll need to read “Safe” and wear your heart outside your chest for an hour or so, to find out. Bring tissues.

Bring a sense of humor, too, because author and founder of One Iowa Mark Daley takes readers along on his journey to being someone’s daddy, and he does it with the sweetest open-minded open-heartedness. He’s also Mama Bear here, too, which is just what you want to see, although there can sometimes be a lot of tiresome drama and over-fretting in that.

And yet, this isn’t just a sweet, but angst-riddled, tale of family. If you’re looking to foster, here’s one man’s truth about the frustrations, the stratospheric-highs, and the deep lows. Will your foster experiences be similar? Maybe, but reading this book about it is its own reward.

“Safe” soars and it dives. It plays with your emotions and it wallows in anxiety. If you’re a parent, though, you’ll hang on to every word.

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Books

A travel memoir with a queer, Black sensibility

Nonbinary author Shayla Lawson is the Joan Didion of our time

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ā€˜How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoirā€™
By Shayla Lawson
c.2024, Tiny Reparations Books
$29/320 pages

Joan Didion, one of the greatest writers and journalists of the 20th century and 2000s, wrote superbly crafted essays ā€“ telling engaging stories about the places she traveled to. Reading her, you sensed Didion reacting personally to her travels, and, as a writer, clocking it. To write in stories for her readers. 

Shayla Lawson, a nonbinary, Black, disabled poet and journalist, is the Joan Didion of our time.

Their new work, ā€œHow to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir,ā€ is a provocative, impeccably crafted, hard-to-put down, travel memoir in essays. (Lawson uses they/them pronouns.)

Lawson is author of ā€œThis is Major,ā€ which was a finalist for the National Book Criticsā€™ Circle and the LAMBDA Literary Award, and the author of two poetry collections, ā€œA Special Education in Human Beingā€ and ā€œI Think Iā€™m Ready to See Frank Ocean.ā€  They have written for New York Magazine, Salon, ESPN and Paper, and earned fellowships from the Yaddo and the MacDowell Artist Colony.

Yet, despite this impressive track record, Lawson, who grew up in Kentucky, and has lived and traveled everywhere from the Netherlands to Brazil to Los Angeles to Kyoto, Japan to Mexico to Shanghai, had to wait nine years before a publisher would wrap their head around releasing a travel memoir in essays.

Thankfully, Lawson had the  chutzpah to persist in seeking a home for her memoir. Kudos to Tiny Reparations Books for valuing Lawsonā€™s writing and publishing ā€˜How to Live Free in a Dangerous World.ā€

From the get-go of their memoir, Lawson draws us in. Weā€™re with them on the plane. Right away, weā€™re with Lawson ā€“ a writer whoā€™s clocking it  ā€“ telling their story ā€“ while theyā€™re on the plane. At the same time, weā€™re reading the story that Lawsonā€™s writing. 

In a few nano-secs, we get that Lawsonā€™s stories have a queer, Black sensibility.

ā€œOur story starts in an airplane,ā€ Lawson writes in the opening of the memoir, ā€œwith the sound of long acrylic nails tapping on laptop keys, the sound of black femme poetics…ā€

ā€œOnly connect,ā€ writes queer writer E.M. Forster in his 1910 novel ā€œHowards End.ā€

Lawsonā€™s daring memoir is a dazzling mosaic of connections between race, class, gender, sexuality, death, queerness, love, disability, grief and beauty.

Lawson met Kees, their ex-husband, a white man from the Netherlands, when he was in Harlem during a layover on a flight to Brazil for a six-month back-packing trip through South America, Lawson recalls. They meet cute over pizza, fall in love, and marry.

In the Netherlands, Lawson has to learn a new language and is stuck living in a beautiful, but boring village. They volunteer at a refugee village, that Lawson discovered had been an ā€œinsane asylum.ā€ That village, Lawson thought, wasnā€™t  beautiful.

Lawson discovers beauty and sexuality when she meets up with a hunky gondolier in Venice.

In post-dictatorship Zimbabwe, they experience what itā€™s like to hang out with other Black people, where everyone is Black. 

In one of the memoirā€™s most compelling chapters, Lawson visits artist Frida Kahloā€™s house in Mexico City. Kahlo was disabled. She had spina bifida.

At age 39, Lawson was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. They have chronic pain from the disability.

A doctor (with the bedside manner of Attila the Hun) told Lawson that they would die. ā€œItā€™s a strong presentation,ā€ Lawson remembers the doc said to her.

Often, disability is left out of storytelling. If included, itā€™s put in a box ā€“ separated, disconnected, from other intersections of the narrative (gender, sexuality, race, class, sexual orientation, etc.).

One out of five Americans is disabled, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and Lawson writes, post-COVID that 60 percent of Americans have been diagnosed as chronically ill.

Lawson brings ableism out of the shadows.

Iā€™m white, cisgender, queer and legally blind. Iā€™m one of the many for whom Lawsonā€™s experience of ableism will ring true.

Theyā€™ve ā€œcalled me a bitch,ā€ for moving slower, Lawson writes.

The last time Lawson traveled when ā€œI didnā€™t return in a wheelchair,ā€ was 2019, they write.

But that wonā€™t stop them from traveling, Lawson writes.

ā€œHow do I want to live,ā€ Lawson asks, ā€œin such a way that someone will be honored by how I die.ā€

ā€œHow to Live Free in a Dangerous Worldā€ is exhilarating, but sometimes discomforting reading. Lawson makes you think. If youā€™re white and, using all the right pronouns, for instance, you can still be clueless about racism or being entitled.

But Lawsonā€™s memoir isnā€™t a hectoring sermon. Itā€™s a frisson of freedom, liberation and hope.

ā€œNo matter where you are, may you always be certain who you are,ā€ Lawson writes, ā€œAnd when you are, get everything you deserve.ā€

Check it out. You wonā€™t be able to get it out of your head.

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