Archives of "The BookBrowse Review": Reviews, previews, back-stories, news

Dear BookBrowsers,

Welcome to our last issue of 2023, where we bring you the Top 20 Books of the Year as selected by our subscribers, along with our Award Winners across four categories. Among the featured Top 20 are two books we've reviewed especially for this issue due to a high number of write-in votes for both: Matthew Desmond's Poverty, by America, a brilliant and compassionate dissection of systemic inequality in the United States, and Shelley Read's Go as a River, a compelling story set in a Colorado peach orchard that follows a woman navigating adulthood from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Our Top Debut award this year goes to In Memoriam by Alice Winn, the poignant tale of a romance between two young British men set amid the horrors of World War I.

The winner of the Top Fiction award is Abraham Verghese's captivating The Covenant of Water, which unfolds alongside multiple generations of a family living in South India as they suffer from a strange affliction.

Our subscribers' pick for Top Nonfiction is David Grann's The Wager, an extraordinary account of the mutiny, fight for survival and eventual trial following the 18th-century wreck of a British warship, the HMS Wager.

And the winner of our Top YA award is Jacqueline Woodson's Remember Us, an evocative coming-of-age story set in Bushwick, New York, during a period of the 1970s when the neighborhood was plagued by relentless housefires.

The remainder of the Top 20 features impactful books by established authors, including Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward, The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. A notable debut making the list is Wendy Chin-Tanner's work of historical fiction King of the Armadillos, which focuses on Chinese American teenager Victor Chin as he receives treatment for Hansen's disease (leprosy) in a federal institute in 1950s Louisiana. Chin-Tanner's novel is just one of many books reviewed by our First Impressions readers this year, all of which you can browse in this issue.

Plus, unwind and test your literary knowledge with two quizzes: Our annual Big Holiday Wordplay, now a beloved tradition for 22 years; and a new quiz to see if you can match the Best of Year books to their opening lines!

Thank you for supporting BookBrowse as a member, and thank you to everyone who voted for the Top 20 this year!

Davina Morgan-Witts
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we bring you some riveting fiction debuts loaded with suspense to fill the long winter days ahead. Ritu Mukerji's historical mystery Murder by Degrees follows Lydia Weston, a 19th-century Philadelphia physician who fights to prove her capabilities as a doctor while investigating the death of a patient. Raul Palma's supernatural thriller A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens tells the story of Hugo Contreras, a Bolivian immigrant in Florida who helps people being haunted by ghosts for a living and must assist the man whose collection firm is harassing him over a debt. Emily Critchley's One Puzzling Afternoon focuses on Edie Green, a woman struggling with dementia who is determined to solve the case of her friend's disappearance from their small English village more than 60 years ago.

Those looking for something lighter and more futuristic can check out our coverage of A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, an irreverent but informative illustrated guide to what human colonization of space would involve. In an accompanying Beyond the Book article, we consider novels that offer a fictionalized depiction of life on Mars.

We also review North Woods, Daniel Mason's centuries-spanning story of a single patch of land in Western Massachusetts, in conjunction with our recent book club discussion. And we look at David Bowles' own historical epic The Prince and the Coyote, a work of young adult fiction about the life of the crown prince Acolmiztli in pre-Columbian Mexico.

We invite you to explore our many other reviews and articles, a new Wordplay, our list of the best novels for book clubs in 2024 and much more.

Thank you for being a BookBrowse member.

Davina Morgan-Witts
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review The House of Doors, in which Booker-listed author Tan Twan Eng evocatively imagines early-20th-century Penang, Malaysia and the time spent there by two real-life historical figures: English novelist W. Somerset Maugham and Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen.

Several other new works of fiction from acclaimed writers also paint a vivid sense of place. Tananarive Due's The Reformatory is a horrific tale of a reform school in the Jim Crow South with a supernatural twist. Jacqueline Woodson's latest young adult novel, Remember Us, places a resonant coming-of-age story in the historically fire-ravaged neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn. (These titles are based on true events that we explore further in Beyond the Book articles on the use of DNA to identify remains at the Dozier School for Boys and the fires that devastated New York City in the 1970s.) A new fiction collection from Jhumpa Lahiri, Roman Stories, offers an intriguing glance into modern Rome and its people. And Kij Johnson's The Privilege of the Happy Ending takes the reader through a series of fanciful locations and introduces a wide cast of unexpected characters, including talking animals and inhabitants of the realm of dreams.

Plus, we review Mustafa Suleyman's nonfiction book The Coming Wave, a deeply informative and clear-eyed look at the spread of AI technology and its implications for the future.

You can enjoy many other reviews and articles in this issue, along with a selection of the best author interviews of 2023, a new Wordplay and much more.

Thanks for being a BookBrowse member.

Davina Morgan-Witts
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review the first novel from Ayana Mathis since her debut The Twelve Tribes of Hattie garnered critical acclaim more than a decade ago. In The Unsettled, she weaves another nuanced family drama, this time the sensitive story of a mother-daughter rift.

We also bring you a pair of historical novels that take place amid the fallout of battle: Paulette Jiles' vividly written post-Civil War revenge western Chenneville, and Ron Rash's The Caretaker, focusing on a young man who is injured in the Korean War and his parents' attempts to sabotage his marriage.

Our reviews of Jesmyn Ward's hotly anticipated Let Us Descend, the lyrical story of an enslaved woman haunted by a spirit, and Flee North, Scott Shane's nonfiction account of the founders of the Underground Railroad, are accompanied by Beyond the Book articles that explore the history of free people of color and their roles in the American slave trade, and enslavement in Canada, respectively.

In addition to many other articles and reviews, we have a new Wordplay, a reading list of books reflecting on mid-life and a giveaway of Lauren Grodstein's World War II-era novel We Must Not Think of Ourselves.

Thank you, as always, for being a BookBrowse member.

Davina Morgan-Witts
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we share some fabulous fiction titles newly available this fall, including Ann Patchett's Tom Lake. This captivating story portrays main character Lara recounting to her daughters experiences of her youth, such as starring in a production of Thornton Wilder's famous play Our Town, which we look at further in a connected Beyond the Book article.

Where There Was Fire, the harrowing but triumphant debut from John Manuel Arias, gradually reveals the insidious effects of an American corporation on multiple generations of Costa Rican women. In another domestic drama with elements of mystery, Angie Kim's Happiness Falls, a father goes missing and a family's flaws are laid bare. C Pam Zhang's Land of Milk and Honey creates suspense in a future setting, following a chef who seeks pleasure in food as Earth's plants and animals are vanishing, while Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel's Dayswork revels in pleasures of the mind, centering on one woman's obsession with Herman Melville. Check out our accompanying list of author homes to visit in Massachusetts — after all, autumn is the perfect time for a New England road trip!

Nathan Hill's Wellness, the tale of an unhappy married couple, will keep you entertained with its lively critique of modern pseudoscience and internet theories. Meanwhile, Fair Rosaline by Natasha Solomons (see our current book club discussion along with the review), a retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and Jessica Knoll's Bright Young Women, a fictionalization of Ted Bundy's crimes that spotlights his victims, use storytelling as cultural criticism by framing old narratives with contemporary insight.

We bring you many additional articles and reviews, previews of other noteworthy fall titles, a new Wordplay and more.

Thank you for being a BookBrowse member. We couldn't do this without you, and I am grateful to every one of you.

Davina Morgan-Witts
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we bring you the long-anticipated latest work of fiction from Zadie Smith, The Fraud, a rich story of social and political intricacies that showcases Victorian London at the time of the "Tichbourne Case," when a man controversially claimed to be Sir Roger Tichbourne, the heir to a substantial fortune who was believed to be dead.

Another major historical novel, International Booker-winning novelist David Diop's Beyond the Door of No Return (translated from the French by Sam Taylor), follows a botanist's journey through 18th-century Senegal as he searches for a woman rumored to have escaped slavery there.

Two works of nonfiction we feature explore fascinating and vital environmental themes. Hannah Stowe's memoir Move Like Water examines marine life and ecology through her lifelong love for the sea. Ben Goldfarb's Crossings considers the damage roads have done to the natural world and how humans can build societies that better co-exist with other species in the future.

We also cover Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt, a vivid and complex short novel about a woman who rescues her granddaughter from an unstable home. Our accompanying Beyond the Book article focuses on New York Review Books, the publisher of this paperback original and also of the iconic NYRB Classics.

You can enjoy many other reviews and articles, enter our latest giveaway for a chance to win a copy of David McCloskey's Moscow X, check out previews of upcoming books and much more.

Thank you for being a BookBrowse member.

Davina Morgan-Witts
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review two inventive reimaginings of classic narratives: Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher's surprising, captivating take on the story of Sleeping Beauty, and Every Rising Sun, a unique spin on The Arabian Nights by Jamila Ahmed that focuses not just on the famed tales themselves but on their teller, Shaherazade.

James McBride's much-anticipated latest novel, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, gives readers a glimpse of powerful community bonds between Black and Jewish families in 1930s Pennsylvania. Another exciting historical fiction release drawn from approximately the same period is Lucy Ashe's The Dance of the Dolls, which follows twin sisters pursuing their dancing ambitions in London's pre-war ballet scene.

Reaching further back in time, Elizabeth Fremantle's Disobedient vividly depicts the personal experiences and artistic accomplishments of Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Our accompanying Beyond the Book article examines two different versions of her stunning masterpiece Judith Slaying Holofernes. Like Fremantle's novel, award-winning poet Shane McCrae's memoir Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, about his kidnapping by his white supremacist grandparents as a child, offers fodder for reflection on how painful events in an artist's early life may shape and inform their work later on.

Plus, you can explore many other reviews and articles, a new Wordplay, previews of upcoming fall releases and much more.

Thanks for being a BookBrowse member.

Davina Morgan-Witts
BookBrowse Publisher

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