The most recommended new books

During the last gasps of summer, I was blessed with a copy of this book. I'd get my lunch, bring it to a bench in a park in my rural Midwest town, and read stories about guys struggling to make ends meet by lawn mowing, a wife and husband hiding out with neighbors in a barn while a flood tears through the thumb of Michigan and a guy who keeps vigil on a bridge in a dying town trying to keep his community safe.

The stories here talk about working class and rural America, with a kind of hope that you don't expect in our moment. I’d finish a story, look up in the trees, smell the farms in the air, and feel like I could tackle the rest of the day, even though I usually read too long and was late getting back to work. 

There's one story… show more.

I first read this remarkable, surreal tale many years ago. Recently, a new translation by Douglas Weatherford came out and, to my astonishment, proved revelatory. In it, a man searches for his dead father. Time is not linear. It’s hard to tell the living from the dead. In this haunting tale, the living haunt the dead as much or more than the other way around.

The book originally deepened my understanding of what novels can do. This translation expanded the remarkable, dream-like experience.

Addie Ramirez, the main character of Tumble, is the kind of girl who takes charge of her situation—whether it’s searching for her father or meeting new people or speaking her mind about wrestling.

I felt such a personal connection to Addie; she loves her stepdad, but she still wonders about her father and embarks on a journey to find him and get to know him. And along the way, she meets her wrestling family and learns firsthand how powerful women wrestlers can be.

I loved that readers get to see powerful women in a sport traditionally dominated by men!

I was transported into an entirely new world in this book.

Yunxian is raised to be an educated women’s doctor in 15th-century China yet is shackled by the constraints of an arranged marriage and the beliefs of the culture at the time. Her friendship with Meiling is powerful – connected and challenging in many ways, and the development of both as they move through this world is at times shocking and heartwarming.

Despite the cultural differences, I could deeply relate to Yunxian through her relationship with her daughters, her universal need to belong, and her desire to use her skills and wisdom to help expectant and new mothers and their babies. This story is beautifully written and told.

In this issue of the extremely funny series Pizza and Taco, they team up with two more friends, Hotdog and Hamburger to make a rock band. Lots of jokes are peppered in with the struggles of writing songs and learning to work together! This is a great series for kids in the 1st and 2nd grade reading level.

The art is fun and the graphic novel has simple layouts that makes it easy for kids to follow the action. There are some really cute band jokes right in the beginning that may go over children’s heads like “Food Fighters” and “Jam Jett”, but are still funny names.

What’s great about comics like this is that it gets kids reading and caters to an ADHD brain. Short sentences and a fast-moving plot are a great device to engage young children.

Ramsey Campbell deserves to be as well known to any horror reader – any reader of any genre really – as Stephen King and yet for some reason he isn’t. If you are coming to this without having read any of his impressive back catalogue, don’t worry because there are many, many treats in store for you. The Lonely Lands is most assuredly one of them and is a great place to start.

This story has echoes of Richard Matheson (in Where Dreams May Come) in its premise. The main character is dealing with the loss of his dearly loved wife and must endure the horrors of the other world. There the similarity ends as The Lonely Lands takes very different twists and turns, transporting the reader along with it in true Campbell style.

Expect the unexpected in among the scares and darkness, along with poignancy and themes that… show more.

This is the sequel to one of my favourite books, The Miseducation of Evie Epworth, a funny but moving coming-of-age story with an irrepressible heroine.

In All about Evie, she’s grown up and making her way in the London of the 1970s, grappling with the world of work, and with first love. As someone who grew up in the 70s, it was brilliantly nostalgic, and meeting Evie again was like catching up with an old friend.

Just as in the first book, Matson Taylor conjures up a colourful but always utterly believable cast of characters, who I was sad to say goodbye to when I turned the last page.

Unbetrothed was released around the same time as Encanto and if you love the Disney movie you’ll love this book. In a vibrant Latin-inspired world where princesses are expected to be magically gifted, Princess Beatriz is not. With her kingdom, life, and betrothal to her best friend and love, Prince Lux, on the line, she’ll do whatever it takes to obtain magic, including making a deadly oath to go on a quest to Valle de Los Fantasmas, a valley where no one comes out alive.

Yamnitz tackles themes of love, family, and worth in a gorgeous world accompanied by a swoony love interest and plot twists galore, leaving the reader cheering on Princess Beatriz in both her quest across kingdoms and her inner journey to become the princess she's destined to be.

As a narrative inquiry researcher, I study stories of people who have experienced a shared phenomenon, such as workplace bullying, sexual assault, or a natural disaster. Almost without exception, the initial plotlines are ones of devastation.

Over the years, I have attempted to come to a deeper understanding of where the hurt resides. Cohen answers that question, documenting for the reader how our desire to be a contributing member of a community is at the center of our striving, and how the surest way to wound another is by pushing them outside the inner circle. The cruelest of all acts is to revoke someone’s belonging to their community, and more tragically, themselves.

In Cohen’s masterful book, he shares stories and details the research on why our need to belong is an essential ingredient of being human and offers the reader fruitful ways to form more meaningful connections. 

Although I was familiar with Harvard Business School professor George Serafeim’s research and work on impact weighted accounting before I read this book, I still found it informative and inspiring.

The first half of this book is a primer on ESG and sustainability highlighting societal shifts and why purpose and impact have moved to the forefront. And the second half details how impact and outcomes can be achieved. 

This book is an excellent introduction for people new to purpose – or questioning its real value financially – as well as for those of us who have long been in this space.

Drawing extensively on his research and that of colleagues, Serafeim emphasizes how doing good creates competitive advantage.