Quick Lit September 2025

From the publisher: "Reeling from the cancellation of her hit TV show, June Wood has nothing left to lose when a mysterious email lures her back to the New York City brownstone she once called home before she moved to Los Angeles. Thanks to a clause in the former owner’s will, she and her old roommate, Adam Harper, now own the multimillion-dollar property—or at least they will in a month, once all the paperwork is signed. Four weeks, then June can return to her life in LA and forget about New York City and everything she left behind. Sure, the fact that June and Adam are estranged and haven’t even spoken in five years, and that their friendship didn’t exactly end on good terms might complicate matters, but this is an opportunity of a lifetime. As the autumn leaves fall around them, through shared meals and late-night conversations, old wounds and long-buried sparks resurface, and it becomes strikingly clear: June and Adam have unfinished business. Confronted with the consequences of their choices years before, they must now navigate the minefield of their past the best way they know how: together. Second chances are always a risk, but maybe, if they get it right and are finally honest with each other and with themselves, it could be different this time."
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This truth-is-stranger-than-fiction true story follows Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, an eccentric couple who set sail from their native England for New Zealand in 1972, but whose voyage took a near-fatal turn when they were shipwrecked after a year at sea. It turned out a sperm whale had tried to surface beneath their vessel, and the impact cracked their ship clean in two. Their flares turned out to be duds, they were poorly prepared to survive on their life raft, they feared rescue would never come—but four months later they were spotted and saved by a Korean fishing vessel. The maritime episodes read like an adventure yarn, but Elmhirst's story begins prior to their voyage and ends well after, making this truly a story of a challenging marriage and not just one about their ill-fated sailing escapades and aftermath.
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I've heard raves about Graff's 9/11 oral history since it was published in 2019, but the truth is, I was scared of it. I was flying from Europe to New York on 9/11, and knew these pages contained both the details of what I already knew and plenty I didn't yet know. But this book reemerged on my radar and for reasons I cannot articulate, I felt like it was time. This is an oral history of 9/11, beginning with observations about the "severe clear" of the September blue sky and ending in the weeks following the attacks. Graff and his team conducted more than 500 interviews for this project, and they've been assembled to narrate the events of that day across the United States and especially at the attack sites as it was experienced in real time. This was not an easy read, but I'm so glad I finally read it. Breathtaking, important, sobering, profound—all the superlatives apply.
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