The Books I'm Reading Now Last week I gave a Spring Book Talk about recently published titles I thought that group of women should check out, and my new-book-reading mania continues! This week I offer you London Falling, nonfiction by Patrick Radden Keefe (his books are always a sure bet for me), about the disappearance of a young London man, secret identities, lies, Russian oligarchs, and the city's dark underbelly; The Island Club, Nicola Harrison's historical fiction set i

Six Bossy Romance Favorites I've got a few more lists up my sleeve as I continue taking stock of my reading for the Bossy best of the best from the past year. If you've missed my prior lists, take a look on the blog! Some of the books in this post are written by the usual romance-standout suspects--and many of these authors have new romance titles out now or coming out soon, just in time for summer reading. Please keep an eye out for my upcoming reviews of those! If you want

Brown's dual-timeline debut novel concerns 16th-century prophecies and a modern-day murder mystery, linked through time by a historian, a hidden book, an illiterate young girl, the powerful men who aimed to manipulate her, and two brave women who tried to save her life. Historian Alison Sage recently made the discovery of a lifetime--she unearthed the fabled writings detailing the prophecies of a 16th-century nun, Elizabeth Barton, a slim book which had been thought to be los

The combined effort of V. E. Schwab and Cat Clarke is a locked-room mystery that's a takedown of the book publishing industry, with authors vying to finish a bestselling series in one weekend and earn immense riches at any cost. It was fun, but I was hoping for more intrigue and twists from this dual-author powerhouse team. Six authors, many who are strangers to each other, and each one part of the dreaded publishing "midlist"--they've never made it big enough for stardom--ar

This peek behind the scenes of a fictional 1960s sitcom is layered with the complex issues of the changing world at that time for women, people of color, gay people, and others. Niven doesn't make characters' paths to self-actualization too easy, but there's a sense that everything will turn out in some version of a happy ending. Del and Dinah Newman, along with their sons Guy and Shep, have been mainstays on the TV for years. Their wholesome, bighearted, clean-cut show has l

The Books I'm Reading Now This week I'm listening to a mystery about writers tasked with competing to finish a famous author's book, The Ending Writes Itself (by V. E. Schwab and Cat Clarke, published under the pseudonym Evelyn Clarke); I'm reading Jennifer Niven's story about the family stars of a long-running sitcom facing 1960s changing values and messages, Meet the Newmans; and I'm listening to Jennifer N. Brown's debut novel, historical fiction in dual timelines about m