Why am I passionate about this?

I wrote a novel whose characters fight to survive depression, grief, loss, and abuse. Though it’s got a sense of humor, it gets dark. People ask, why read a book like that when real life is dark enough? Because we don’t just read to escape from the world—we read to understand it. Fiction can help explain the awful things we might witness or experience or hear about. It can also help us feel less alone in our own sadness and grief. Without darkness, light is meaningless. Without pain, we have no use for hope. Who wants to live in a world without hope? 


I wrote

Book cover of Small Animals Caught in Traps

What is my book about?

Washed-up boxer Lewis Yaw makes ends meet as a fishing guide in Disappointment, Oregon. Though he’s lived a life of…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Bear and His Daughter

C.B. Bernard Why did I love this book?

Robert Stone was very much a product of his generation, which he immortalized in A Flag for Sunrise, Dog Soldiers, and a half dozen other novels. A master of dialogue and emotional intensity, he had no betters and few equals, and saw with startling clarity the darkness and flaws that motivate not just individuals but entire societies. This richly imagined and painfully wrought collection of stories hit me like a dangerous narcotic, leaving me breathless, wounded, and desperate for more. 

By Robert Stone,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bear and His Daughter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The stories collected in Bear and His Daughter span nearly thirty years - 1969 to the present - and they explore, acutely and powerfully, the humanity that unites us. In "Miserere," a widowed librarian with an unspeakable secret undertakes an unusual and grisly role in the anti-abortion crusade. "Under the Pitons" is the harrowing story of a reluctant participant in a drug-running scheme and the grim and unexpected consequences of his involvement. The title story is a riveting account of the tangled lines that weave together the relationship of a father and his grown daughter.


Book cover of The Carhullan Army

C.B. Bernard Why did I love this book?

There’s so much of dystopian fiction written these days—and for good reason—but Hall led the pack with this 2007 book, which shares DNA with The Handmaid’s Tale and Children of Men. Read now, it feels not just more timely, somehow, but also more possible. The world is in disarray after “the collapse,” with food and power rationed for a populace that numbs itself with drugs between meaningless and oppressive factory shifts. The brutal Authority has seized control of women’s bodies, enforcing compulsory contraception and a pregnancy lottery. When the nameless narrator sets out to find a cadre of women—the army of the title—rumored to be living outside the reaches of the Authority, Hall nurtures our hope like a wounded bird even as she hurtles us inexorably toward disaster.  

By Sarah Hall,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Carhullan Army as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The world has changed. War rages in South America and China, and Britain - now entirely dependent on the US for food and energy - is run by an omnipresent dictatorship known simply as The Authority. Assets and weapons have been seized, every movement is monitored and women are compulsorily fitted with contraceptive devices. This is Sister's story of her attempt to escape the repressive regime. From the confines of her Lancaster prison cell she tells of her such for The Carhullan Army, a quasi-mythical commune of 'unofficial' women rumoured to be living in a remote part of Cumbria...


Book cover of The Narrow Road to the Deep North

C.B. Bernard Why did I love this book?

This isn’t just a book, it’s a magic trick—and I’m not sure how Flanagan pulls it off. Writing about the prisoners of war forced by Japanese soldiers to build the Thai-Burma Railway during World War II, he pulls no punches in his depictions of human cruelty, and readers will feel every single one. As he renders misery and starvation in relentless focus, the subject matter is pitch black… and yet, by bridging the story to the present, when the survivors and their captors are trying to live normal lives beneath the weight of their history and their actions, Flanagan turns this from a litany of human suffering into something far more complex and interesting. Black magic, maybe, but magic just the same.

By Richard Flanagan,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Narrow Road to the Deep North as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

***WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014***

Forever after, there were for them only two sorts of men: the men who were on the Line, and the rest of humanity, who were not.

In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.

This is a story about the many forms of love and death, of…


Book cover of The Great Offshore Grounds

C.B. Bernard Why did I love this book?

I could recommend this book for the writing, which is remarkable—layered and incisive and beautiful—or for the plotting, which is dense and chaotic in all the best ways, even as Veselka displays the patience of a confident master. Or for the multitude of richly drawn, intriguing characters and how they move around the country and one another. As they wander from Alaska to Seattle to New England in search of a family secret—and in search of themselves—Veselka brings readers along on their quest as she slowly reveals the mystery of a dysfunctional family dynamic and the systems that create so many others like it.  

By Vanessa Veselka,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Great Offshore Grounds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE • A wildly original, cross-country novel that subverts a long tradition of family narratives and casts new light on the mythologies—national, individual, and collective—that drive and define us.

On the day of their estranged father’s wedding, half sisters Cheyenne and Livy set off to claim their inheritance. It’s been years since the two have seen each other. Cheyenne is newly back in Seattle, crashing with Livy after a failed marriage and a series of personal and professional dead ends. Livy works refinishing boats, her resentment against her freeloading sister growing as she tamps down dreams of…


Book cover of Whiskey

C.B. Bernard Why did I love this book?

Like Holbert’s other novels, Lonesome Animals and The Hour of Lead, this one is populated by unusual characters, teems with senseless violence, and is rendered in a voice as compelling as it is unique. Set near the Grand Coulee Dam, Whiskey is about two part-Native American brothers, Andre and Smoker, who set out to find Smoker’s daughter, Bird, when she’s taken by a religious zealot. But the madcap plot is just one-third of a bigger story about the brothers and their destructive parents, Peg and Pork, and their collective collisions with alcoholism, marriage, the law, and one another. Though Whiskey belongs on the top shelf, expect it to burn going down. I wish I’d written it.

By Bruce Holbert,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Whiskey as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Whiskey burns pleasantly as it goes down, but has a lasting, powerful effect.

Brothers Andre and Smoker were raised in a cauldron of their parents’ failed marriage and appetite for destruction, and find themselves in the same straits as adults—navigating not only their own marriages, but also their parents’ frequent collision with the law and one another. The family lives in Electric City, Washington, just a few miles south of the Colville Indian Reservation. Fiercely loyal and just plain fierce, they’re bound by a series of darkly comedic and hauntingly violent events: domestic trouble; religious fanaticism; benders punctuated with pauses…


Explore my book 😀

Book cover of Small Animals Caught in Traps

What is my book about?

Washed-up boxer Lewis Yaw makes ends meet as a fishing guide in Disappointment, Oregon. Though he’s lived a life of violence, he doesn’t understand real strength until he meets Janey, who can see good in even the most damaged things—including him. When she gives birth to their daughter, Grayling, Lewis worries he’ll mess her up as badly as his father did him. But he also sees a chance to right the wrongs of the past.

By high school, Gray has become his apprentice guide, sparring partner, and pride and joy—Lewis is as close to happiness as he ever thought possible. When tragedy strikes, he can’t break free of his past, leaving Gray to fight to save the only thing she has left: herself.

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Brighter Than Her Fears

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Book cover of Brighter Than Her Fears

Lisa Ard Author Of Brighter Than Her Fears

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Avid reader History nut Golfer Bike tour guide

Lisa's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

The 19th century women's rights movement and the rise of public education intertwine with one woman's story of struggle, perseverance, and love.

Alice Harris is pressed to marry a Civil War veteran twice her age when her family’s inn fails in 1882 in western North Carolina. She remakes herself by learning to farm tobacco, campaigning for the city’s first public schools, and immersing herself in the large and divisive Carter family. But marriage offers a tenuous promise of security. When tragedy strikes, Alice turns to the courts to fight for her independence and discovers an unexpected love.

Lisa Ard's debut…

Brighter Than Her Fears

By Lisa Ard,

What is this book about?

The 19th century women's rights movement and the rise of public education intertwine with one woman's story of struggle, perseverance, and love.

When her father dies and the family inn falls to ruin in 1882, western North Carolina, thirty-year-old Alice Harris is compelled to marry Jasper Carter, a Civil War veteran twice her age. Far from home and a stranger in a new family, Alice remakes herself. She learns to farm tobacco, mothers her stepson, and comes to love her husband.

However, Alice uncovers pending trouble with the family's land holdings, which threatens their livelihood on the farm. The growth…


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