Quick Lit October 2021 Archives

Apples Never Fall

by Liane Moriarty

Moriarty's domestic drama features—to my great delight—a Sydney family of tennis superstars. I played competitively as a teen and relished the details of the Delaney family's world. In the early pages, the 69-year-old mother disappears, the father is the main suspect, and the children are scrambling to find better answers than the authorities can provide—which means all kinds of old skeletons are about to be dragged out of the closet. On the surface this looks like a murder mystery, but the layers beneath are equally important to the story: Moriarty smartly probes questions of how well we can ever know those we love, and how familial relationships shape us. These themes unite for a surprising and satisfying final reveal.

We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride, Jo Piazza

In this collaboration between Summer Reading Guide author Jo Piazza (The Knockoff) and veteran book editor and Cup of Jo columnist Christine Pride, a longtime friendship between a white woman and a Black Journalist is threatened by tragedy. While the inciting incident in this timely read is a police shooting, the real anchor of the story is the strong female friendship between two well-developed characters. Listen to this week's new episode of What Should I Read Next ("Books you can believe in") to hear Jo and Christine talk more about cowriting this book and their own reading lives.

This Must Be the Place

by Maggie O'Farrell

This is one of my favorite rereads. Family stories are commonplace in fiction, but I love this one for its intricate plotting, nuanced characters, true-to-life feel, and ultimate hopefulness. This is the story of an unlikely but successful marriage between a floundering American professor and a British film star who hated the limelight so much she faked her own death and disappeared ... until an unexpected bit of news, twenty years old but newly discovered, threatens to unravel everything they've built together.

White Smoke

by Tiffany D. Jackson

I’m a longtime fan of Jackson’s YA thrillers; this haunted house story is her foray into horror. It’s also at the upper limits of what this wimpy reader can handle—this book gets pretty scary in places! But it worked for me. Described as The Haunting of Hill House meets Get Out, Marigold is looking for a fresh start when her newly blended family moves to Cedarville. This move is supposed to give them a fresh start, but Mari can’t help but get the sense that they’re not wanted in Cedarville—and on top of that, her new home gives her the creeps. This book reminded me of Alyssa Cole's When No One Is Watching. I expect many wimps like me will enjoy this book—but if you have any kind of phobia involving bed bugs or dark basements, you may want to opt for a different title on this list.

When Ghosts Come Home

by Wiley Cash

J.D. Jackson's superb narration takes Cash's first procedural to the next level. The story unfolds over just four days; the setting is Oak Island NC, 1984. I was hooked from the first scene: when the local sheriff is jolted awake by a loud noise in the middle of the night, he heads to the small airport to investigate, where he discovers a crashed plane, stripped bare, and a dead body. The sheriff's ensuing probe uncovers old grievances and rawer, fresher crises in the small community. All these months later, I'm still thinking about the ending. (I highly recommend reading this in book club so you have readers to discuss it with!)

How the Word Is Passed

by Clint Smith

In his first full-length nonfiction work, poet and journalist Smith explores the legacy of slavery in the United States, and to do so he takes his readers on a tour of sorts, visiting nine physical monuments crucial to that history, like Jefferson's Monticello, the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, Angola Prison, New York City, and finally Senegal's Gorée Island. Each visit is packed with stories from both past and present, as Smith examines the site's history and explores what that means for us today. It's always dangerous to go into a book with sky-high expectations, as I did thanks to numerous rave reviews from trusted readers, but I needn't have feared: this is a stunner. I highly recommend the audiobook, narrated by the author.

Chirp

Goldenrod: Poems

by Maggie Smith

From the publisher: "A powerful collection of poems that look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory. Pulling objects from everyday life—a hallway mirror, a rock found in her son's pocket, a field of goldenrods at the side of the road—she reveals the magic of the present moment. Only Maggie Smith could turn an autocorrect mistake into a line of poetry, musing that her phone 'doesn’t observe / the high holidays, autocorrecting / shana tova to shaman tobacco, / Rosh Hashanah to rose has hands.'"

Quick Lit October 2021

Apples Never Fall

We Are Not Like Them

This Must Be the Place

White Smoke

When Ghosts Come Home

How the Word Is Passed

Goldenrod: Poems

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