Winter Gazette - 2019

“When Lillian and Madison first meet at a fancy boarding school, one is the wealthy heir of a department store fortune, the other a white trash scholarship kid. After an incident at the school breaks them apart, they don't see each other for many years until the magnetic Madison, now the wife and strategist for a powerful Tennessee politician, unexpectedly asks Lillian for a favor and offers her a job: become a nanny for her ten-year-old twin stepchildren. Stepchildren who have the politically inconvenient habit of literally bursting into flames. Lillian immediately finds herself caught again under Madison's spell, but as she begins to grow closer to the children, she increasingly finds that she's the only one on the childrens' side. And she also finds something she's always craved: a sense of family and belonging. Nothing to See Here is a hilarious and poignant comedy of manners and spontaneous combustion, and you'll find yourself rooting for Lillian and the kids like they're your favorite team playing in the World Series. This book falls in that perfect little sweet spot: well-written, moving, funny, and most difficult of all: not depressing.”

“I am in love with Jami Attenberg’s writing, and was gripped by All This Could Be Yours from the opening pages. Everything about the Tuchmans felt so true to me: Alex’s confusion and anger toward the family’s toxic, now-comatose patriarch, Victor; Barbra’s isolation in her later years after a long marriage to a brute; Twyla and Gary’s unwinding secret selves—all of it is so perfectly told and paced. Full of Attenberg’s trademark dry wit and precise, uncomfortable insight into the psychology of family love (and its close cousin, family hate), this novel had me laughing with genuine joy and crying in real sadness at the same time.”

“Susannah Cahalan, the bestselling author of Brain on Fire, is back with another riveting true story of madness and the mental health system. In the 1970s, Dr. David Rosenhan convinced seven sane people to join him in committing themselves to mental hospitals as patients and trying to get out on their own. What begins as an inspiring and daring story of experimentation darkens and twists as Cahalan closes in on a story shrouded in mystery—who were these seven ‘pseudopatients’ in Rosenhan’s groundbreaking study, and what really happened to them? The Great Pretender is not-to-be-missed narrative nonfiction.”

“In the Dream House is the intersection of so many things. It's the story of a poisonous relationship between two women. It creates an archive of abusive queer relationships that has been absent in the culture's conscious for far too long. It's a study of style and form. It's tactile. It's phantasmagoria. It's a completely unique reading experience. It accesses a subterranean level of unease that it belongs on the shelf next to Poe or Lovecraft. Machado has accomplished something extraordinary here, something that should be studied meticulously and relished in as it horrifies you to your very core.”

“This memoir by black and gay poet Saeed Jones is a visceral coming of age and coming out story. Growing up as an only child to his single mother in Texas and spending summers with his evangelical grandmother in Memphis, Jones struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, to come out of the closet, and to love himself. He wrestles with his fractured identity, learning what it means to be gay in the black community, to be black in the gay community, and to realize that either one on its own is enough to get you killed in a straight, white world. There are passages that will bruise and choke you, but ultimately both Jones and the reader come out of the book all the better for it.”

“Whether she’s telling a very short story about a mother and daughter discussing animal cruelty while on vacation or a longer story about a trio of celebrities on a road trip to escape New York, Grand Union shows that Zadie Smith is as adept with short fiction as she is with the novel. For a form of literature that always seems to enhance the faults of lesser writers, short stories, for Smith, seem only to make her shine brighter than ever.”

“Thanks to Libro.fm I just spent six hours with Patti Smith in my car. There is no better balm for getting unstuck than to listen to someone clearly enlivened by aging, loss, death and elections. Admittedly, Patti's global walkabout In The Year of the Monkey, a memoir of her life approaching the age of 70, often blurs dream and reality - and I've not worked out the meaning of the candy wrappers yet - but still. This book has got soul, and I've listened to it twice. Aside from learning that she likes beans and eggs for breakfast, Patti writes with a raw and compelling lucidity about being, writing, gratitude and truth. Listen to it twice.”

“Love, ghosts, libraries, presents, pasts, finding and losing, seeking and discovering, all intertwined in a puzzle-ring through which narrative lines twine and weave, until the reader's delight at knowing the characters and seeing the world bursts with glorious epiphany. Not since "Little, Big" have I read a book that so caught my fancy, nor since Gormenghast have I found such an all-absorbing and whimsical world, nor since Borges and Calvino have I touched such an intricate creation of story and meta-story. This is not just a book. It's a legend, and let me introduce you, reader, to the part you are to play....”

“Angie Cruz is a beautiful writer with a powerful voice, and readers of Julia Alvarez and Sandra Cisneros will greatly enjoy this book! Dominicana is a riveting story about family, womanhood, and what it means to be an immigrant. Ana Cancion, who’s only 15, leaves her home behind for a new life in New York City with her soon-to-be husband, Juan Ruiz. Big lights, tall buildings, and a bright future constitute the promise of a new beginning. However, upon Ana’s arrival, her fate untangles into something unexpected. It’ll be really hard to forget these characters and the realness in their heartache. Throughout these pages, I fell in and out of love, I laughed, I cried, and I was deeply moved.”

“Our undoing is also our becoming. We erode and we evolve. Weaving together the erosion of our planet & the rise of for profit politics while coping with the loss of her brother, Terry Tempest Williams offers us hope, resilience and courage in the face of surrounding heartbreak.”

“This was recommended to me as a funny political/social commentary read. How right they were. Lindy West is funny, on the point, and full of rational sense! So many things became clear, like why I no longer watch "funny" movies made by "funny" men. I highly recommend this to anybody who likes humor and non-fiction/memoir stuff. Particularly if you are in search of your next audiobook.”