What's on Your TBR List This Year?

Check out the latest TBR recommendations from Beaverdale Books staff, including from Alice Meyer, owner of the store. These eight books will keep you reading long past this weekend’s DSM Book Festival on Saturday, March 26.

Alice Meyer

“The Latecomer” by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Celadon Books – May 21, 2022 

“I read “The Plot” mainly because it was about writers and writing, never anticipating the wild ride in store. When I received an advance copy of her new novel “The Latecomers” (to be released in May), it immediately went to my TBR (to be read) mountain.?I also have a weak spot for books based in New York City, my place of birth.?Looking forward to this one!”

From the Publisher

“The Latecomer”?follows the story of the wealthy New York City–based Oppenheimer family, from the first meeting of parents Salo and Johanna, under tragic circumstances, to their triplets born during the early days of IVF. As children, the three siblings — Harrison, Lewyn and Sally — feel no strong familial bond and cannot wait to go their separate ways, even as their father becomes more distant and their mother more desperate. When the triplets leave for college, Johanna, faced with being truly alone, makes the decision to add a fourth child to the family. What role will the “latecomer” play in this fractured family?

Hunter Gillum

“Erasure” by Percival Everett
Grey Wolf Press – October 25, 2011

“I have read the three most recent books by Percival Everett, and I have loved each of them. I believe he should be much more widely read. He has written a number of books, and ever since I finished “So Much Blue” as an advanced copy, I have wanted to go back and read more of his older books”.

From the Publisher

Thelonious “Monk” Ellison’s writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been “critically acclaimed.” He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto,” a first novel by a woman who once visited “some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days.” Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies — his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer’s — and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father’s suicide seven years before.

Caitlin Troutman

“The Swimmers” by Julie Otsuka
Penguin Random House – February 21, 2022

“I’ve heard excellent things about “The Swimmers.” I read the description and immediately added it to my list, because it sounds so much like my own experience at the lap pool at the beginning of the pandemic.”

From the Publisher

From the best-selling, award-winning author of “The Buddha in the Attic” and “When the Emperor Was Divine” comes a novel about what happens to a group of obsessed recreational swimmers when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool. This searing, intimate story of mothers and daughters — and the sorrows of implacable loss — is the most commanding and unforgettable work yet from a modern master.

Jan Danielson Kaiser

The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
Celadon Books, October 19, 2021

“During these challenging times, we can all use more hope. I remember seeing Jane Goodall speak at the Bucksbaum Lecture years ago. Now in her nineties, Goodall’s fascinating work and incredible spirit continue to inspire me.”

From the Publisher

In this urgent book, Jane Goodall, the world's most famous living naturalist, and Douglas Abrams, the internationally bestselling co-author of The Book of Joy, explore through intimate and thought-provoking dialogue one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. In “The Book of Hope,” Jane focuses on her Four Reasons for Hope: The Amazing Human Intellect, The Resilience of Nature, The Power of Young People and The Indomitable Human Spirit.

Drawing on decades of work that has helped expand our understanding of what it means to be human and what we all need to do to help build a better world, “The Book of Hope” touches on vital questions, including: How do we stay hopeful when everything seems hopeless? How do we cultivate hope in our children? What is the relationship between hope and action? Filled with moving and inspirational stories and photographs from Goodall’s remarkable career, The “Book of Hope” is a deeply personal conversation with one of the most beloved figures in the world today.

Julie Goodrich

“Spear” by Nicola Griffith
Tordotcom - April 19, 2022

“I didn’t think I needed another Arthurian retelling, but I loved Nicola Griffith’s “Hild” so much, this was an instant addition to my stack. Sure to be subversive and masterfully written, I always need more books like this.”

From the Publisher

She left all she knew to find who she could be …

She grows up in the wild wood, in a cave with her mother, but visions of a faraway lake drift to her on the spring breeze, scented with promise. And when she hears a traveler speak of Artos, king of Caer Leon, she decides her future lies at his court. So, brimming with magic and eager to test her strength, she breaks her covenant with her mother and sets out on her bony gelding for Caer Leon.

With her stolen hunting spear and mended armor, she is an unlikely hero, not a chosen one, but one who forges her own bright path. Aflame with determination, she begins a journey of magic and mystery, love, lust and fights to death. On her adventures, she will steal the hearts of beautiful women, fight warriors and sorcerers, and make a place to call home.

Shirley Shiffler

“The Copenhagen Trilogy” by Tove Ditlevsen
Farrar, Straus and Giroux - January 26, 2021

“I was drawn to this memoir because of my Danish roots, plus she is an author with whom I was not familiar. At first glance, the book seems rather bleak, but I’m looking forward to this poet’s voice and how she will tell her stories.”

From the Publisher

Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and?“The Copenhagen Trilogy”?(1969–71) is her acknowledged masterpiece. “Childhood”?tells the story of a misfit child’s single-minded determination to become a poet; “Youth”?describes her early experiences of sex, work, and independence.?“Dependency”?picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent into drug addiction, enabled by her sinister, gaslighting doctor-husband.

Harriet Leitch

“Autopsy” by Patricia Cornwell
William Morrow – November 30, 2021

“I’m excited to read a new Kay Scarpetta novel by Patricia Cornwell! She presents forensic science detective stories without excessive gore and uses a consistent cast of characters. It’s like meeting an old friend.”

From the Publisher

In this 25th in the electrifying, landmark #1 bestselling thriller series chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta hunts an ingenious killer who has mastered cutting-edge science for the most nefarious ends. Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner.

Finding herself the new girl in town once again after being away for many years, she’s inherited an overbearing secretary and a legacy of neglect and possible corruption. She and her husband Benton Wesley, now a forensic psychologist with the U.S. Secret Service, have relocated to Old Town Alexandria where she’s headquartered five miles from the Pentagon in a post-pandemic world that’s been torn by civil and political unrest. Just weeks on the job, she’s called to a scene by railroad tracks where a woman’s body has been shockingly displayed, her throat cut down to the spine, and as Scarpetta begins to follow the trail, it leads unnervingly close to her own historic neighborhood.

Sally Wisdom

“Groundskeeping” by Lee Cole
Knopf - 2022

"This book, the timely story of family relationships frayed by the current ideological divide, caught my eye when I saw it on the New Book display. The glowing recommendation by one of my very favorite authors, Ann Patchett, compels me to make it my next read. I made it a project during the first year of the pandemic to read every book of hers I had missed and was sorry to get to the end of the list. When she describes a book as "an extraordinary debut" I can be sure, in advance, I won’t be disappointed.”

From the Publisher

An indelible love story about two very different people navigating the entanglements of class and identity and coming of age in an America coming apart at the seams — this is “an extraordinary debut about the ties that bind families together and tear them apart across generations” (Ann Patchett, best-selling author of?“The Dutch House”).

In the run-up to the 2016 election, Owen Callahan, an aspiring writer, moves back to Kentucky to live with his Trump-supporting uncle and grandfather. Eager to clean up his act after wasting time and potential in his early twenties, he takes a job as a groundskeeper at a small local college, in exchange for which he is permitted to take a writing course.

Here he meets Alma Hazdic, a writer in residence who seems to have everything that Owen lacks — a prestigious position, an Ivy League education, success as a writer. They begin a secret relationship, and as they grow closer, Alma — who comes from a liberal family of Bosnian immigrants — struggles to understand Owen’s fraught relationship with family and home.

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