I have always been drawn to stories that include a touch of magic – whether it’s the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, or the fantasy-adjacent work of Alice Hoffman. To me, works that include an element of magic speak to something in the human experience that is transcendent. The experience of praying, of having a child trust you, of falling in love – all these have a tinge of magic, or an unexplainable element in them. I want my stories to be, in part, a celebration of the magic we experience every day.
Abilene is a coming-of-age story that features dark clouds, whispered spells, and a search for a father. But it’s also a love story that features 80s new wave club culture, occasional psychedelic trips, and Heideggerian philosophy.
Lenora (Len) Walker is a precocious twelve-year-old, who sometimes has blackouts that cause visions. When she gets it into her head that the up-and-coming country music star she saw interviewed on TV is her father, she convinces her mother to set off on a road trip to find him. The search not only leads to Len’s father, but also unearths deeply hidden family secrets along the way.
This is one of those books that I re-read periodically, and every time I do, I find something new to love.
I’m a sucker for well-crafted prose, and the language in this book is haunting and beautiful. The novel’s magic is centered in the titular character, who appears first as a ghost and then later as the quiet newcomer who gives her name as Beloved.
I love the way that Morrison’s poetic language and the hazy, dreamlike quality to the storytelling make the reader slow down, put aside the day-to-day “real” world, and accept plot developments like the ghost of a child who died long ago coming back to life years later.
'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heart-breaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times
Discover this beautiful gift edition of Toni Morrison's prize-winning contemporary classic Beloved
It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her…
This book is a great example of how a sense of place can essentially become one of the characters in a novel.
You can feel the heat of the South Carolina summer, where the young protagonist Lily escapes her father’s abusive home and, in searching for her mother’s past, finds a group of strong, independent, women who become her found family.
There is just a hint of magical realism in the writing – the world of the trio of black beekeepers seems sometimes fantastical, but it remains grounded by the setting amidst the racial powder keg of the mid-1960s south.
The multi-million bestselling novel about a young girl's journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the award-winning author of The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings
Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted Black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina-a town that holds the secret to her mother's…
In this novel, Laura Esquivel uses a technique of taking a typical experience and exaggerating it so much that it transcends the possible and ventures into the magical. The birth of the main character, Tita, involves “a great tide of tears” so vast that when the water has dried, there is “enough salt to fill a ten-pound sack.”
Tita is a gifted chef, and her emotions seep into the food she prepares which in turn affects the feelings of those who eat it. A meal she has cooked while feeling a passionate longing for the lover she cannot have, for example, leads to, well – you can imagine the result. It is wonderful, and funny, and sad, with a fairy tale quality to the writing.
THE INTOXICATING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ABOUT LOVE, COOKING AND MAGIC. PERFECT FOR FANS OF JOANNE HARRIS AND ISABEL ALLENDE.
'This magical, mythical, moving story of love, sacrifice and summering sensuality is something I will savour for a long time' MAUREEN LIPMAN
Like Water For Chocolate tells the captivating story of the De la Garza family. As the youngest daughter, Tita is forbidden by Mexican tradition to marry. Instead, she pours all of her emotions into her delicious recipes, which she shares with readers along the way.When Tita falls in love with Pedro, he is seduced by the magical food she cooks.…
This is the second book on my list in which food contains emotion, but in this novel, it is the narrator, Rose, who, on her ninth birthday, tastes the sadness and despair in the lemon cake her mother has baked for her. She learns that the same holds true for anything she eats – she can taste the emotions of whoever prepared it.
What I loved most about the magical element here was that it allowed the author to describe other characters’ feelings without having to show them another way, such as through action or dialogue. It brought an immediacy to the emotion and added a layer of complexity to Rose's character.
_______________________________ On the eve of her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the slice. All at once her cheerful, can-do mother tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes perilous. Anything can be revealed at any meal.
Rose's gift forces her to confront the truth behind her family's emotions - her mother's sadness, her father's detachment and her brother's clash with the world. But as Rose grows up, she learns that there are some…
This one is pushing the limits of my list in a couple of different ways – it is technically not a novel, but rather a memoir in verse.
It’s also a middle grade work rather than an adult novel. I’m including it here because I feel it’s one of those books for children that every adult should read. The prose is beautiful, and the author’s coming-of-age story is a tale of resilience, love, and family. The author invokes the ghosts of her ancestors in a way that lends a bit of magic to the work.
The compelling story of a young Black girl growing up in 1960-70s America - a multi-award winning New York Times bestseller and President Obama's 'O' Book Club pick.
Brown Girl Dreaming is the unforgettable story of Jacqueline Woodson's childhood, told in vivid and accessible blank verse. She shares what it was like to grow up as an African-American in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, never truly feeling at home, and discovering the first sparks of an incredible, lifelong gift for writing. It's packed with wonderful reflections on family and on place, in a way that will appeal to…
Reading was a childhood passion of mine. My mother was a librarian and got me interested in reading early in life. When John F. Kennedy was running for president and after his assassination, I became intensely interested in politics. In addition to reading history and political biographies, I consumed newspapers and television news. It is this background that I have drawn upon over the decades that has added value to my research.
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
Long before Trump, each of these phenomena grew in importance. The John Birch Society and McCarthyism became powerful forces; Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first “personal president” to rise above the party; and the development of what Harry Truman called “the big lie,” where outrageous falsehoods came to be believed. Trump follows a pattern that was long established within the Republican Party. This is an untold story that resonates powerfully in the present.
Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism
It didn't begin with Donald Trump. The unraveling of the Grand Old Party has been decades in the making. Since the time of FDR, the Republican Party has been home to conspiracy thinking, including a belief that lost elections were rigged. And when Republicans later won the White House, the party elevated their presidents to heroic status-a predisposition that eventually posed a threat to democracy. Building on his esteemed 2016 book, What Happened to the Republican Party?, John Kenneth White proposes to explain why this happened-not just the election of Trump but the authoritarian shift in the party as a…
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