Authors are some of the best-read people you’ll ever meet. I like to ask them for book recommendations because they often mention titles that aren’t on my radar. So I queried some authors for their book recommendations this fall, and they were happy to oblige.
Lynn Cullen
Author of “The Woman with the Cure” (Berkley, February 2023)
We’re not the first to live through a pandemic. Before COVID, there was polio. For nearly 40 summers, parents had to impose shutdowns when polio broke out in their towns. Children were kept from others, away from pools, playgrounds and theaters. Isolation and fear of contagion were just the half of it. During the last decade of the polio pandemic, tens of thousands of children and young adults were paralyzed each summer. Thousands died.
Today, unless you were one of the millions to get a polio vaccine in a sugar-cube at school — and those of us who got them do distinctly remember — or had a family member with polio, the disease tends to mean little. One of the reasons I wrote “The Woman with the Cure” was to understand how polio scarred the psyche of mid-century America. How did we respond on a day-to-day level to that existential threat?
And now we have Elizabeth Strout, writing about our pandemic in “Lucy by the Sea” (Penguin Random House, $28). Who better than Strout to hold our hand as she gently plumbs the scary proposition that is life, let alone COVID? We have a lot of unpacking to do as we emerge from the time of COVID. In “Lucy by the Sea,” Strout gives us characters that we have come to love — Lucy, William, even Bob Burgess and Olive herself — to guide us.
When future generations wonder what it was like to live through COVID, they will have “Lucy by the Sea” to shine the light. Let them marvel, through Strout’s flawed, dear characters, at what we somehow survived.
Zoe Fishman
Author of “The Fun Widow’s Book Tour” (William Morrow, March 2023)
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” (Penguin Random House, $28) by Gabrielle Zevin because apparently this book is as good as everyone says it is, and “The Hero of This Book” (HarperCollins, $26.99) by Elizabeth McCracken because I love her writing and the jacket copy made me cry.
Ayana Gray
Author of “Beasts of Prey” (G.P Putnam’s, out now)
“Ring Shout” by P. Djèlí Clark (MacMillan, $19.99). This dark historical fantasy novella is an alternate history of 1920s Macon and follows Maryse Boudreaux on her quest to hunt and destroy the demons summoned by the Ku Klux Klan known as “Ku Kluxes.” She is joined by fellow demon hunters Sadie Watkins and Cordelia Lawrence.
I thought this was such a fresh and interesting premise as soon as I read it. Clark’s writing immediately pulls you in; it’s whip-smart and clever and visceral all at once. Of course, as a Black woman from Georgia with a very keen awareness of the state’s history with the Klan, I’ve found so many of the themes within “Ring Shout” to be thoughtful and intriguing.
Christopher Swann
Author of “Never Go Home” (Crooked Lane Books, out now)
Earlier this year I read Jordan Harper’s “She Rides Shotgun” and was gobsmacked. That was a sleep-deprivation book — I couldn’t stop turning the pages. Harper is now a must-read for me, and I can’t wait to get ahold of his newest, “The Last King of California” (Simon & Schuster, $14.10). As S. A. Cosby puts it, “No one is thinking deeper about what crime fiction is than Jordan Harper.”
In a completely different vein, Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet” about undid me. A fictional account of William Shakespeare’s marriage, the life and death of his only son and the genesis of perhaps his best-known play, “Hamnet” is a glorious work of art. O’Farrell’s next novel, “The Marriage Portrait” (Penguin Random House, $28) is another work of fiction about a real-life historical person, in this instance Lucrezia de Medici of Renaissance Italy. O’Farrell is a magician with language who can transport readers into the minds of long-dead characters, evoking not only their era but also their hopes and fears and dreams, all wrapped in a compelling dramatic tale.
Kevin Wilson
Author of “Now is Not the Time to Panic” (Ecco, Nov. 8)
I recommend Blair Braverman’s “Small Game” (Ecco, $27.99). Braverman’s debut memoir, “Welcome to the Goddamned Ice Cube,” was one of the most unique and brilliant books I’ve ever read, an unflinching examination of surviving in a world that can be inhospitable, and her forthcoming novel “Small Game” expands upon those elements within the form of a thrilling, propulsive satire of modern-day media. Braverman, a long-distance dogsledder, knows the beauty and danger of the natural world and writes about it with unflinching clarity.
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Contact her at svanatten@ajc.com, and follow her on Twitter at @svanatten.
