Weekend treks to Chinatown, to satisfy cravings for dim sum, roast duck, et al, are a ritual for those of us of non-Chinese descent with adventurous palates. But how many of us have considered the lives of the people who cook and serve us the food that we make the trek for? Jane Wong, a poet and creative writing professor, grew up as a "restaurant baby" in Jersey Shore's Chinatown in the U.S. A first generation American, a beneficiary of her immigrant family's struggle to assimilate and survive in America, her memoir is wise, tender, vulnerable, and poignant. The social issues facing new immigrants, from poverty and racism to lack of healthcare and affordable housing, that can make a creative work dense and depressing are revealed through Wong's meditations and recollections, nostalgic, poetic, joyful, and sorrowful. She holds nothing back in narrating her father's wrongheaded and failed attempts to capture…
"[Wong] paints her story with flourish."―The New York Times
"A love letter to Atlantic City and the Asian American working class."― The Los Angeles Times
"Blazing, lyrical."―The Boston Globe
"Joyful. . . . Wong’s memoir invites those who have been overlooked in America to hold up their verses, accolades and solidarity in a collective rejoinder to their detractors."―The Washington Post
An incandescent, exquisitely written memoir about family, food, girlhood, resistance, and growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore.
In the late 1980s on the Jersey shore, Jane Wong watches her mother shake…
Alexis Coe is a presidential historian and the New York Times bestselling author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington, which was also Audible’s best history book of 2020 and Barnes and Nobel's nonfiction Book of the Month. She was a producer and appeared in Doris Kearns Goodwin's Washington series on the History Channel.
Until Martha Saxton came along, Mary Ball Washington was much maligned by historians--but she’s no Mary Washington apologist. Saxton wrote the first comprehensive book on the first President’s mother with her eyes wide open and no one, not mother or son, gets away with anything.
The Widow Washington is the first life of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother, based on archival sources. Her son's biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her son. But the records tell a very different story. Mary Ball, the daughter of a wealthy planter and a formerly indentured servant, was orphaned very young and grew up in an atmosphere of work, frugality, and piety. She married the older planter Augustine Washington and had five children with him before his death eleven years later. As a widow deprived of…
My mother was one of the first women to do labor negotiations in the Steel Industry. My sisters and I were raised to believe we could do anything. I have one sister who does executive coaching, another who is a pilot, and I am a writer. I also have two girls of my own. One is an EMT and the other is getting her doctorate in Special Ed. They are both giving but strong-minded. I am proud of them both. I believe strongly that girls need role models in life to understand that with grit and hard work, they can make a world in which their dreams can be realized.
What do you do when you have seven brothers, are the only girl for miles, and are being told you need to act like a proper lady? You say no. May Amelia does not want to be harnessed like a darn mule. The Washington wilderness of 1899 lays before her in all its glory. Her brothers are off exploring. Why can’t she too? And if that means breaking a few rules, well May Amelia Jackson is just the girl to do it. May Amelia’s tenacity and bravery made me want to stand up and cheer. She is my kind of girl—one who has the will and the determination to make a life lived on her terms.
The beloved Newbery Honor book by the author of The Fourteenth Goldfish, about a spirited heroine growing up with trying circumstances, a sense of adventure, and tremendous heart.
It isn't easy being a pioneer in the state of Washington in 1899. It's particularly hard when you are the only girl ever born in the new settlement.
With seven older brothers and a love of adventure, May Amelia Jackson just can't seem to abide her family's insistence that she behave like a Proper Young Lady. She's sure she could do better if only there were at least one other girl living…
I’m intrigued by baseball. The passion and drama of the games and the way the sport is nearly always linked to a meaningful relationship with someone dear. That curiosity has only been fueled by the books I’ve read over the years and inspired me to write a baseball story of my own. The All-American is my ninth novel and I couldn’t feel more privileged to have been able to write it.
My college literature professor lent me a copy of this novel twenty-five years ago and I spent an entire summer savoring it while it made me fall in love with baseball.
This epic novel follows the lives of the Chance brothers as they come of age, leave home, and grapple with the changing world of the 1960s. And it’s about the passion and drama and absolutely relational nature of baseball.
I still have my professor’s copy of the book on my shelf. I tried to return it a few years ago, but George wouldn’t take it back. He, apparently, has a habit of keeping several copies on hand to give to students so they’ll fall in love with it as much as he did.
Once in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer. And in The Brothers K he tells a story both striking and in its originality and poignant in its universality.
This touching, uplifting novel spans decades of loyalty, anger, regret, and love in the lives of the Chance family. A father whose dreams of glory on a baseball field are shattered…
Dogs make great supporting characters, adding drama or humor or pathos, and revealing so much about the humans in the story. I discovered this in writing my first novel: The narrator’s dog keeps her grounded when things go wrong and makes it possible for her to keep going through difficult times. For the reader, he provides levity and depth without turning it into a book about a dog. I had a great model – I used my own dog Boris, even appropriating his name. I think of the fictional Boris as real-life Boris’s best self.
What Comes After is a heart-rending story of a boy who is brutally murdered.
A school friend commits suicide shortly after, leaving a note confessing to the murder, but there are unanswered questions.
Meanwhile, a destitute and pregnant teenager shows up in town with worries and questions of her own. Rufus the dogs brings the dad and the girl together, then rides along with both of them as their intertwining stories unfold.
He doesn’t solve crimes or save lives, but he does what rescued dogs so often do – rescue their people.
This book is tagged as a murder mystery and a thriller, and it is both those things.
But essentially it is the first-person narrative of an aching father, the people around him, and the dog who shares his grief.
Named a top beach read of summer by Oprah Daily, Good Housekeeping, The Wall Street Journal, and more
“Nail-biting wallop of a debut . . . a thoughtful, unexpectedly optimistic tale.” —The New York Times
“If you enjoyed The Searcher by Tana French, read What Comes After by JoAnne Tompkins. . . . a mystery—and a gritty meditation on loss and redemption, drenched in stillness and grief.” —The Washington Post
After the shocking death of two teenage boys tears apart a community in the Pacific Northwest, a mysterious pregnant girl emerges out of…
I’ve always admired epistolary novels—stories told in the form of diaries, letters, or other mass media. They seem so real and so much more believable than plain narratives. When dealing with fantastic subjects, like paranormal phenomena, any technique that can draw the weird back into the real world helps me become more invested as a reader. It’s a quality I’ve also tried to capture as a horror writer. Moreover, the epistolary format pairs well with unreliable narrators, often filtering stories so as to make them more ambiguous and disturbing. From the many epistolary works I’ve read over the years, here are my picks for the most compelling—and creepy.
I know the concept of a sasquatch attack on a remote commune sounds silly on the surface, but Brooks crafts it into a realistic, serious story. As a believer in the possibility of Bigfoot, I was fascinated to see how disastrously an encounter between humans and cryptids could conceivably go.
The naivete of the settlers in the wilderness is even more distressing than the hostility of the animals. Unsettling news reports (of which the characters remain unaware) interspersed with diary entries underscore their desperation and peril. I thought the situation was completely credible. Really, we ought to have more sasquatch horror books.
'TRUE TERROR' Guardian 'NAIL CHOMPING SUSPENSE' Total Film ______________________________________ As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier's eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined . . . until now.
But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town's bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing - and too earth-shattering in its implications - to be forgotten.
In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate's extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into…
By training, I’m a lawyer; by trade, I’m a storyteller. For the first decade of my literary career, I wrote novels. I wove together narrative tapestries that, while fictional, were adapted from the real world. Now, in my first work of nonfiction, Wastelands, I’ve flipped the script, taking a true story and telling it with all the page-turning plotting and rich characterization of the best fiction. I’ve seen the literary world from both sides of the divide, both as a writer and as a reader, and I’m happiest in the borderlands. So, it seems, are authors like Jonathan Harr, Michael Lewis, and Erik Larson.
I’ve always had a fascination with America’s political capital, Washington, D.C.—the way it brings together some of the most brilliant and bombastic people in the universe, the way it serves as a petri dish of high-minded principles and low-brow appetites, the juxtaposition of glittering surface and seamy underside that made the early seasons of House of Cards so binge-able. In This Town, Mark Leibovich brings D.C. to life in a story that is at once stomach-churning, rage-inducing, and laugh-out-loud funny. If you’ve ever wondered what Washington is really like behind all the flag-waving and politicking, the talking points, and stage lights, this is the book for you.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times
Washington D.C. might be loathed from every corner of the nation, yet these are fun and busy days at this nexus of big politics, big money, big media, and big vanity. There are no Democrats and Republicans anymore in the nation's capital, just millionaires. Through the eyes of Leibovich we discover how the funeral for a beloved newsman becomes the social event of the year; how political reporters are fetishized for their ability to get their names into the…
Before I’m a writer, I’m a reader and I need the realness when it comes to military service. I started as an Army journalist so the details matter to me. When I pick up a book to relax and the main character draws me with a story I can get all the five senses of it, I’m in! On the other hand, I'm usually turned off by books that use veterans as props or either heroes or villains with nothing in between. That’s not who I served with. Where was the gray of the human existence in veteran characters? Gimme books that bring more depth to characters that round out personal experience.
Finally, a competent female veteran character, Camille who is struggling with what it means to be home as a mother set against a backdrop of murder she finds familiar. This was the exact type of book I recommend to everyone because Camille is doing all the things, but she is also not fitting into any characterization of being a mom. And it’s a mystery, thoroughly crafted by a female veteran author in her debut, Elizabeth Lewes.
She tried to forget the horrors of war--but her quiet hometown conceals a litany of new evils.
Sergeant Camille Waresch did everything she could to forget Iraq. She went home to Eastern Washington and got a quiet job. She connected with her daughter, Sophie, whom she had left as a baby. She got sober. But the ghosts of her past were never far behind.
While conducting a routine property tax inspection on an isolated ranch, Camille discovers a teenager's tortured corpse hanging in a dilapidated outbuilding. In a flash, her combat-related PTSD resurges--and in her dreams, the hanging boy merges…
Loyalty and betrayal—and spies—are at the heart of some of the greatest stories ever told. Some years ago, I wrote a book about treason in the early United States, and that’s how I found what little is known about the secret mission to capture Arnold. My background as a historian gave me the tools to fill in the missing pieces. I read everything there is about Arnold and espionage during the Revolution, from 250-year-old journals to the latest scholarship, and retraced Arnold’s footsteps in cities, towns, and battlefields. Only then could I imagine how the history really felt, and I put it all together into my book.
Nathaniel Philbrick is one of our most talented historical storytellers. I admire this book because of the sophisticated narrative he crafts, exploring the tensions of the Revolution through the relationship between George Washington and Benedict Arnold.
Washington was a central player in Arnold’s military life. He recognized the value of his spirited general and sought to protect his reputation against political rivalries. And yet, had Arnold’s treason at West Point succeeded, it is possible that Washington himself might have been captured there by the British. Philbrick demonstrates how, paradoxically, as the public’s commitment to the war began to waver, Arnold’s betrayal may have reignited the rage militaire—the passion for arms—that carried the Americans to victory. It’s a compelling argument and a heck of a good story.
A New York Times Bestseller Winner of the George Washington Prize
A surprising account of the middle years of the American Revolution and the tragic relationship between George Washington and Benedict Arnold, from the New York Times bestselling author of In The Heart of the Sea, Mayflower, and In the Hurricane's Eye.
"May be one of the greatest what-if books of the age-a volume that turns one of America's best-known narratives on its head."-Boston Globe
"Clear and insightful, [Valiant Ambition] consolidates Philbrick's reputation as one of America's foremost practitioners of narrative nonfiction."-Wall Street Journal
I want to tackle the profound challenges some new mothers face. Who’s read a funny book about postpartum depression? Probably no one! My novel fills the gap. I suffered from postpartum in silence, afraid of the stigma it might bring. I hope this relatable story normalizes postpartum, sparks conversations, and drives change. I also wanted to write something with a Latina in the starring role. People of Latino descent suffer from many hurtful and inaccurate stereotypes. Increasing positively portrayed Latinos in fiction is personal for me. I’m exceedingly proud of my Latino roots and hope it comes through in my writing.
Bernadette can be difficult to like, but that's partly why I love her character. She's unapologetically authentic with sharp edges and a serious dislike of Seattle. Rather than grimace at her put-downs of my hometown, I laughed because she included inside jokes only Seattlites would understand, and there was a granule of truth in all of it.
I'm intensely interested in the challenges and rewards of motherhood. Portraying it as something emotionally draining and frustrating, utterly consuming and ultimately wonderful, Maria Semple captured what many of us experience using Bernadette as her medium.
A misanthropic matriarch leaves her eccentric family in crisis when she mysteriously disappears in this "whip-smart and divinely funny" novel that inspired the movie starring Cate Blanchett (New York Times).
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect; and to 15-year-old Bee, she is her best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette vanishes. It all began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle --…
