Ah, April showers have brought us May books. Wait, that’s not the right saying. I’ll get back to you on that.

Remember last month when I said I was going to show rigour? Well, that didn’t happen. With the larger intake base, I have 119 entries for consideration this month. Of which, I only said yes or maybe to 37 of them! I went from over 32% all the way down to 31%. Hmm…crickets. I hear crickets. But don’t worry, I’m going to fix that! Next month I’ll be weeding some clubs from the future list. That may not help as the ones I’ll be weeding are the ones that normally contribute to the denominator of book math, not the numerator. Sigh.

Total: 119 rows for May 2026. Poly mix: 12 YES, 25 MAYBE, 82 NO.

YES:

• Murder by Design, Lee Goldberg — I love Lee, follow him online, read all his stuff, and met him at Bouchercon this past September. Definitely on my automatic yes list.
• The Confession Artist, Christine Carbo — This one sounded interesting from Amazon First Reads, and I read it this month already. Quite good. Not 5 stars, but definitely 4 stars.
• Down the River Unto the Sea, Walter Mosley — I read this one back in 2020, and quite enjoyed it. The link is to my review where I gave it 4 stars.
• The Things We Never Say, Elizabeth Strout
• Mad Mabel, Sally Hepworth
• The Art of a Lie, Laura Shepherd-Robinson
• The Horse and His Boy, C.S. Lewis — I’ve read all of the Narnia series, but haven’t reviewed them yet.
• The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis
• The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis
• The Queens of Crime, Marie Benedict
• Start at the End, Emma Grey
• Value(s), Mark Carney

MAYBE:

• Two Lives with You, Lauren Ho
• The Magic of Us, Beth Merlin; Danielle Modafferi
• Almost Life, Kiran Millwood Hargrave
• The Last Contract of Isako, Fonda Lee
• Change of Plans, Sarah Dessen
• Homebound, Portia Elan
• The Sex Lives of Cannibals, J. Maarten Troost
• The Fourth Option, Jack Carr; M.P. Woodward
• This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, Ilona Andrews
• The Last Letters of Sally and Walter, Cammie McGovern
• Yellowface, R.F. Kuang
• 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
• This Inevitable Ruin, Matt Dinniman
• The Fine Art of Lying, Alexandra Andrews
• Joyful, Anyway, Kate Bowler
• Scattered Minds, Gabor Mate
• Planet Money, Alex Mayyasi
• The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins; Sawyer Robbins
• The Meaning of Your Life, Arthur C. Brooks
• The Bookshop, Evan Friss
• The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk
• Mutual Aid, Dean Spade
• The Mother-Daughter Book Club, Susan Patterson; James Patterson
• The Escape Game, Marissa Meyer; Tamara Moss
• The Way Things Work, David Macaulay

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Amazon First Reads	The Replacement, Liv Constantine	Hollywood icon befriends rising costar with secret agenda	NO
	Two Lives with You, Lauren Ho	A chance for a do-over to see life without partner	MAYBE
	Murder by Design, Lee Goldberg	Insurance investigator with TBI decodes crimes enabled by design	YES
	The Promise of Wonder, Katherine Webb	1889 Dorset tragedy reframed after 30 years	NO
	The Confession Artist, Christine Carbo	Serial killer’s sketch lookalikes have six days to confess publicly	YES
	The Magic of Us, Beth Merlin; Danielle Modafferi	Tarot spell rewrites love-skeptic radio host’s past with old fling	MAYBE
	The Girl in the Lake, Lauren Oliver	Rationalist psychologist investigates child’s past-life memory claim	NO
	Westerly, Susan Donovan Bernhard	Generational secrets unravel across postwar Germany Ireland and Maine	NO
	The Quitters Club, Jessica Strawser	Four forty-something friends help each other quit and start over	NO
Audacious	The Violence, Adriana E. Ramirez	Colombia’s la violencia traced through grandmother Esther’s family finca	NO
Barnes & Noble	Good Joy, Bad Joy, Mikki Brammer	Eighty-something Joy breaks rules with terminally-ill best friend Hazel	NO — REPEAT
BBC Radio 2	The Wreck, Lizzy Stewart	Two 1980s couples test commune dream in English countryside	NO
Belletrist	Almost Life, Kiran Millwood Hargrave	Brokeback Mountain, but with women in Paris	MAYBE
Black Men Read	Down the River Unto the Sea, Walter Mosley	NYPD-discredited PI investigates frame-up while solving cop killings	YES
Book of the Month	Good Joy, Bad Joy, Mikki Brammer	Eighty-something Joy breaks rules with terminally-ill best friend Hazel	NO — REPEAT
	Seek the Traitor’s Son, Veronica Roth	Enemy soldiers Elegy and Rava share prophecy of one’s victory	NO
	Dissection of a Murder, Jo Murray	Young barrister defends accused killer against prosecutor husband	NO
	Canon, Paige Lewis	Reluctant teen and ambitious prophet compete on quests appointed by God	NO
	The Last Contract of Isako, Fonda Lee	Aging samurai takes one last contract on corporate-ruled frozen planet	MAYBE
	The Burning Side, Sarah Damoff	Family saga from alternating views after devastating house fire	NO
Everyday Reading	The Unthinkable, Amanda Ripley	Survival psychology: who freezes when disasters strike and why	NO
Globe & Mail	A Woman’s Place, Danielle Steel	Titanic survivor inherits Manchester mill, breaks gender barriers in early 1900s	NO
	Hope Rises, David Baldacci	FBI informant becomes mercenary to take down global crime queen	NO
	Rites of the Starling, Devney Perry	Calandra’s five kingdoms face destruction as Starling magic awakens romance	NO
	Alchemised, SenLinYu	Captive resistance witch finds dark romance with necromancer captor post-war	NO
	Dire Bound, Sable Sorensen	Vengeful queen, bonded direwolf, dangerous Alpha in dark romantasy	NO
	When the Forest Breathes, Suzanne Simard	Forest ecologist on tree intelligence, renewal cycles, and ecosystem threats	NO
	The Hidden Hand, Warren Kinsella	Political strategist analyzes propaganda war fueling rising antisemitism in Canada	NO
	Joyful, Anyway, Kate Bowler	Cancer survivor’s wry, tender search for joy amid pain and longing	MAYBE
	Value(s), Mark Carney	Former central banker on misplaced market values and four global crises	YES
	When the Body Says No, Gabor Mate	Physician’s case for stress, trauma, and unsaid emotions causing chronic illness	NO
	Scattered Minds, Gabor Mate	Physician’s case for ADD as developmental impairment rather than genetic illness	MAYBE
Good Housekeeping	Take Me with You, Steven Rowley	College professor’s husband vanishes into Joshua Tree beam of light	NO
Good Morning America – Adult	Homebound, Portia Elan	Video game connects four characters across centuries from 1983 to space	MAYBE
Good Morning America – Young Adult	Change of Plans, Sarah Dessen	Teen summer at unknown family vacation home, romance, mother’s secrets	MAYBE
GoodReads Mystery	The Family Upstairs, Lisa Jewell	Chelsea mansion inheritance unlocks trauma and three corpses from 1990s	NO
	Don’t Let Him In, Lisa Jewell	Three women linked to charming serial con-man Nick across multiple identities	NO
I Care About Books	The Sex Lives of Cannibals, J. Maarten Troost	Two-year misadventure on remote Tarawa island, far from imagined paradise	MAYBE
Indie Bestsellers	American Fantasy, Emma Straub	Newly-divorced fiftysomething joins nostalgic 90s boy band fan cruise	NO
	Cherry Baby, Rainbow Rowell	Cherry rebuilds her identity after husband caricatures her in viral webcomic	NO
	Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter, Heather Fawcett	Cat shelter manager and disreputable wizard ally in 1920s Montreal	NO
	Everything Is Tuberculosis, John Green	History of tuberculosis told through friendship with a Sierra Leonean patient	NO
	The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer	Indigenous scientist’s meditation on gift economies through the serviceberry tree	NO
	Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism, Stewart Reynolds	Humorist’s eleven cat-inspired strategies for resisting fascism	NO
	Planet Money, Alex Mayyasi	NPR podcast hosts on economics through real-world stories	MAYBE
	The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins; Sawyer Robbins	Two-word mantra for releasing your grip on others’ choices	MAYBE
	The Meaning of Your Life, Arthur C. Brooks	Harvard happiness expert on finding purpose in modern emptiness	MAYBE
	The Road to Tender Hearts, Annie Hartnett	Darkly comic cross-country road trip with widower, kids, death-predicting cat	NO
	Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar	Iranian-American poet addict’s existential quest through martyrdom and family secrets	NO
	Dear Debbie, Freida McFadden	Advice columnist’s life unravels into vigilante payback against deserving targets	NO
	Be Ready When the Luck Happens, Ina Garten	Barefoot Contessa’s path from D.C. bureaucrat to Food Network star	NO
	All About Love, bell hooks	bell hooks redefines love as ethical practice, not romantic feeling	NO
	The Bookshop, Evan Friss	Two-century history of American bookstores, from Franklin to Amazon	MAYBE
	The Wager, David Grann	1741 British shipwreck off Patagonia, mutiny, and London court-martial	NO
	The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk	Trauma’s effects on brain and body; somatic and innovative treatment approaches	MAYBE
	Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe	IRA disappearance investigation as window onto Northern Ireland’s Troubles	NO
	Mutual Aid, Dean Spade	Spade’s theory and practical guide to mutual aid as movement infrastructure	MAYBE
Jack Carr	The Fourth Option, Jack Carr; M.P. Woodward	Ex-SEAL pursues vigilante justice for fallen friend’s son lost to opioids	MAYBE
Jeselnik	Stoner, John Williams	Quiet bildungsroman of Missouri farm boy turned English professor	NO
Jewish Book Council – Fiction	Fagin the Thief, Allison Epstein	Dickensian London origin story for Oliver Twist’s Jewish villain Fagin	NO
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	The Prosecutor, Jack Fairweather	Jewish judge’s decade-long fight to prosecute Nazis in postwar Germany	NO
Katie Couric	The Things We Never Say, Elizabeth Strout	Massachusetts history teacher’s hidden isolation meets life-upending revelation	YES
Late Show	Ghost Town, Tom Perrotta	Eighth-grader’s grief-stricken summer 1974, Ouija board, dangerous older friends	NO
Main Street Reads – Banter	The Last Letters of Sally and Walter, Cammie McGovern	Retirement-home Scrabble romance between newcomer and intense champion	MAYBE
Main Street Reads – Fantasy	This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, Ilona Andrews	Reader trapped in fantasy novel as immortal heroine preventing kingdom’s war	MAYBE
Main Street Reads – Kids	Mystery on Macaw Mountain, Maria Jose Fitzgerald	Honduran cousins investigate theft of macaws from Mayan-ruins sanctuary	NO
Main Street Reads – Romance	West of Wicked, Nikki St. Crowe	Dark romantasy Wizard of Oz retelling, cursed Oz, mysterious mercenary love	NO
Main Street Reads – Thriller	All the Little Houses, May Cobb	Mid-1980s Texas: ruthless mom and golden-girl daughter face prairie-perfect rivals	NO
Mocha Girls Read	Yellowface, R.F. Kuang	White writer steals dead Chinese-American friend’s manuscript, publishes as her own	MAYBE
Natalie Portman	Famesick, Lena Dunham	Three-act memoir: Dunham’s fame from Girls, chronic illness, drugs, regrets	NO
NYT Bestsellers	Purple State, Dana Perino	Three NYC friends move to Wisconsin swing district in political rom-com	NO
	The Mother-Daughter Book Club, Susan Patterson; James Patterson	College friends and their daughters reunite at Lake Como after tragedy	MAYBE
	Paradox, Douglas Preston; Aletheia Preston	CBI agent and sheriff investigate murders tied to Fermi-paradox cult	NO
	When We See You Again, Rachel Goldberg-Polin; Jon Polin	Mother’s memoir of son Hersh’s hostage ordeal and execution in Gaza	NO
	The Future Is Peace, Aziz Abu Sarah; Maoz Inon	Palestinian and Israeli peace activists journey together across the Holy Land	NO
	This Vast Enterprise, Craig Fehrman	New multi-perspective history of the Lewis and Clark expedition	NO
	For the Love of the Grind, Sara Hall	Distance runner’s memoir of career, faith, marriage, and adoption	NO
	Release Me, Tahereh Mafi	Rosabelle seeks revenge against Ark Island’s surveillance state	NO
	The Escape Game, Marissa Meyer; Tamara Moss	Teens compete on escape-room game show while hunting a murderer	MAYBE
	The Thorn Queen, Sasha Peyton Smith	Queen Ivy plots against faerie husband while loving his brother Emmett	NO
	The Way Things Work, David Macaulay	Illustrated reference explaining how hundreds of machines and technologies work	MAYBE
PBS Books	This Is Not About Us, Allegra Goodman	A family convinced the problem is never them	NO
Poisoned Pen – British	Missing, E. A. Jackson	British detective investigates baby’s disappearance from hotel; past/present timelines	NO
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	The Primrose Murder Society, Stacy Hackney	Mother-daughter cold-case sleuthing in retirement building for $2M reward	NO
Poisoned Pen – Crime	Mad Mabel, Sally Hepworth	Old lady who murders was once a young lady who murdered.	YES
Poisoned Pen – Historical	The Art of a Lie, Laura Shepherd-Robinson	1749 Georgian London: widowed confectioner caught in con-artist game	YES
	The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton, Jennifer N. Brown	Dual-timeline Tudor mystery: academic uncovers prophecies of “Maid of Kent”	NO
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	City on Fire, Simon Elegant	Hong Kong detective investigates murder during 2020 protests, sister-protester	NO
Poisoned Pen – Noir	Wolvers, Taylor Brown	Ruined rancher torn between hunting and protecting wolves in Gila Wilderness	NO
Poisoned Pen – Romance	The Last Lady B, Eloisa James	Regency Bluebeard retelling: married heroine falls for Sir Godric Everly	NO
Read with Jenna	Caller Unknown, Gillian McAllister	Texas vacation kidnapping forces mother to commit crime to save daughter	NO
Reader’s Digest	Keeper of Lost Children, Sadeqa Johnson	Post-WWII Germany: three interconnected lives tied to real Brown Baby Plan	NO
Reddit – Discovery	Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng	Chinese-American family unravels after favorite daughter Lydia found dead in lake	NO
Reddit – Evergreen	Beloved, Toni Morrison	Escaped slave in Civil War-era Ohio haunted by murdered daughter’s spirit	NO
Reddit	Perfume, Patrick Suskind	Odorless 18th-century perfumer murders virgins to capture their scent	NO
	The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X; Alex Haley	Civil rights leader’s life from petty crime to Mecca pilgrimage and assassination	NO
	Morning Glory Milking Farm, C.M. Nascosta	Human-monster romance: indebted millennial works at minotaur milking farm	NO
	The City of Brass, S.A. Chakraborty	Cairo con artist summons djinn, discovers Daevabad heritage and court politics	NO
	The Ice, Ryan Cahill	Aeson treks icy Valacia to find dragon egg for the rebellion	NO
	Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert	Bene Gesserit defend Chapterhouse against invading Honored Matres after spice loss	NO
	The Horse and His Boy, C.S. Lewis	Calormen orphan and talking horse race to warn Narnia of invasion	YES
	The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis	London children with magic rings witness creation of Narnia by Aslan	YES
	The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis	False Aslan triggers final war and end of Narnian world	YES
	The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman	Adult Lyra investigates Magisterium rose trade conspiracy	NO
	This Inevitable Ruin, Matt Dinniman	Carl and Donut survive Faction Wars on the dungeon’s ninth floor	MAYBE
	Planet of Exile, Ursula K. Le Guin	Earth colonists on Werel ally with natives against approaching barbarians	NO
	Storm of Locusts, Rebecca Roanhorse	Indigenous monster-hunter Maggie chases a locust-summoning cult	NO
Reddit – SciFi	2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke	Astronauts and HAL the AI encounter alien monoliths on Jupiter mission	MAYBE
Reddit – World	Ali and Nino, Kurban Said	Cross-cultural Baku romance amid WWI between Muslim boy and Christian girl	NO
	Days in the Caucasus, Banine	Witty memoir of wealthy Azeri childhood in Baku amid Bolshevik revolution	NO
Reese	The Fine Art of Lying, Alexandra Andrews	NYC art-world wife’s affair tangles into murder and gallery duplicity	MAYBE
Secret Chapter Mystery	While Justice Sleeps, Stacey Abrams	Law clerk guardian to comatose Justice unravels chess-clue Washington conspiracy	NO
Service 95	So Late in the Day, Claire Keegan	Three Keegan stories on misogyny and gender dynamics in heterosexual relationships	NO
Stacks	Lonely Crowds, Stephanie Wambugu	Catholic-school outsiders’ decades-long friendship through NYC’s ’90s art world	NO
Sunnie Reads	That Which Feeds Us, Keala Kendall	Teen searches Hawaiian island resort for missing twin amid colonial horror	NO
Sunriver – Fiction	Table for Two, Amor Towles	Six NYC stories and an LA novella continuing Rules of Civility’s Evelyn	NO
Sunriver – Mystery	The Queens of Crime, Marie Benedict	Sayers, Christie, and three peers investigate a 1930 locked-room murder	YES
TeaTime	My Dear You, Rachel Khong	Ten imaginative stories on love, dating, marriage, afterlife, and being dead	NO
Zibby’s	Start at the End, Emma Grey	Audrey and Fraser’s sliding-doors romance with tragedy and unwritten endings	YES

April showers may bring May flowers (I knew that I knew the right phrase), but January to April brought way too many clubs. They’re sprouting up like weeds! I could just dump all the maybes. 🙂 If, of course, I had any rigour. Which I didn’t. I wonder if any of the non-fiction books next month will offer me ways to be more rigorous in my curation.

I mentioned earlier that I have a list of 40+ book clubs that I’m monitoring for “new to me” books to consider for my To Be Read (TBR) pile. I went through all of 2025, made a list of ones that interested me, and posted it. But it wasn’t the best of lists. I didn’t do a great job curating; I didn’t even check every club that I ended up including later, and I wanted a complete “database” of all the options. So, since I decided to build the Excel sheet with the help of Claude AI, I might as well share the list of books and results for 2025 that I missed the first time around. These are just the ones that I didn’t say yes to the first time — either I said NO but didn’t mention it, or I hadn’t rated them yet. Previous posts and my Reading Challenge have the other 2025 books I said yes to before.

2025: The 324 books that slipped off my lilypad

Total: 324 rows across 12 months with 29 YES, 62 MAYBE, 233 NO. I’m sure no one will snicker at me because I am quietly adding 91 books to my TBR pile without fanfare. #HoardingFrog

YES:

• The White Octopus Hotel, Alexandra Bell
• The Motherload, Sarah Hoover
• Searches, Vauhini Vara
• Lightbreakers, Aja Gabel
• Immaculate Conception, Ling Ling Huang
• Sisters in the Wind, Angeline Boulley
• The Women, Kristin Hannah x 3
• The Brotherhood of the Rose, David Morrell
• The Fraternity of the Stone, David Morrell
• The League of Night and Fog, David Morrell
• Point of Impact, Stephen Hunter
• Exit Strategy, Lee Child; Andrew Child
• Chutzpah Girls, Julie Silverstein; Tami Schlossberg Pruwer
• Firekeeper’s Daughter, Angeline Boulley
• Turtle Island, Sean Sherman
• Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
• The Girl Next Door, Rachel Meredith
• Only Way Out, Tod Goldberg
• The Gun Man Jackson Swagger, Stephen Hunter
• Murder Takes a Vacation, Laura Lippman
• Witches of Dubious Origin, Jenn McKinlay
• Crooks, Lou Berney
• The Librarians, Sherry Thomas
• A Forty Year Kiss, Nickolas Butler
• The Phoenix Pencil Company, Allison King
• Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

MAYBE:

• Twist, Colum McCann
• Under the Same Stars, Libba Bray
• There’s Always Next Year, George M. Johnson; Leah Johnson
• An Inside Job, Daniel Silva
• The Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown
• The Tin Men, Alex DeMille; Nelson DeMille
• Saving Five, Amanda Nguyen
• A Different Kind of Power, Jacinda Ardern
• The Bone Thief, Vanessa Lillie
• A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
• The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong
• Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson
• Good Dirt, Charmaine Wilkerson
• The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman
• The Launch Date, Annabelle Slator
• Courtroom Drama, Neely Tubati Alexander
• Last Night Was Fun, Holly Michelle
• Friends to Lovers, Sally Blakely
• And Then There Was the One, Martha Waters
• The Marriage Method, Mimi Matthews
• Saint of the Narrows Street, William Boyle
• Hang On St Christopher, Adrian McKinty
• The Get Off, Christa Faust
• The Night in the City, Michael McGarrity
• The Medusa Protocol, Rob Hart
• The Gorgon of Los Feliz, Nolan Knight
• The Red Scare Murders, Con Lehane
• The Stolen Queen, Fiona Davis
• The Four Queens of Crime, Rosanne Limoncelli
• With a Vengeance, Riley Sager
• The Secret Sharers, Xiaolong Qiu
• Famous Last Words, Gillian McAllister x 2
• Murder at Gulls Nest, Jess Kidd
• The Dentist, Tim Sullivan
• Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife, Martin Edwards
• Cover Art, Vanessa Westermann
• An Amateur Sleuth’s Guide to Murder, Lynn Cahoon
• Saltwater, Katy Hays
• You Belong Here, Megan Miranda
• Dead Money, Jakob Kerr
• This is Not a Game, Kelly Mullen
• The Library of Lost Dollhouses, Elise Hooper
• The English Masterpiece, Katherine Reay
• The Witch’s Orchard, Archer Sullivan
• The Harvey Girls, Juliette Fay
• The Confessions, Paul Bradley Carr
• Holy Island, L.J. Ross
• The Names, Florence Knapp
• A Family Matter, Claire Lynch
• The Irish Goodbye, Heather Aimee O’Neill
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• Before I Forget, Tory Henwood Hoen
• Isola, Allegra Goodman
• You Are Here, David Nicholls
• Dead Simple, Peter James
• Don’t Believe a Word, Susan Lewis
• Marble Hall Murders, Anthony Horowitz
• The Satsuma Complex, Bob Mortimer
• The Shortlist, Andrew Raymond
• The Lucky Winners, K.L. Slater
• Thirst Trap, Grainne O’Hare

January 2025

22 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Audacious	Private Rites, Julia Armfield	Three sisters navigate inheritance and identity in a flooded Britain.	NO
Belletrist	The Motherload, Sarah Hoover	Honest motherhood memoir exposing the myth of immediate maternal joy	YES
Jack Carr	The Brotherhood of the Rose, David Morrell	Two orphans raised by a CIA handler as elite assassins, betrayed by their own	YES
	The Fraternity of the Stone, David Morrell	Black-ops assassin in monastic hiding for 6 years pulled back into the field	YES
	The League of Night and Fog, David Morrell	Elderly former Nazis disappearing — Saul and Drew investigate a buried WWII conspiracy	YES
Jewish Book Council – Fiction	The Trade Off, Samantha Greene Woodruff	Brilliant Jewish twin secretly drives her brother’s 1920s Wall Street career	NO
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	Not From Here, Leah Lax	Librettist gathers immigrant stories, interweaves them with her Jewish family’s past	NO
Library Science	Set My Heart on Fire, Izumi Suzuki	Semi-autobiographical novel of 1970s Tokyo’s underground music scene	NO
Mocha Girls Read	You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, Akwaeke Emezi	Grieving widow falls for off-limits man during tropical-island summer	NO
Natalie Portman	Saving Time, Jenny Odell	Philosophical cultural critique of productivity culture and clock time	NO
Native American	Firekeeper’s Daughter, Angeline Boulley	Biracial Ojibwe teen goes undercover for FBI after witnessing murder	YES
Oprah 2.0	A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle	Spiritual guide on transcending ego for personal and global awakening	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – British	Beautiful Ugly, Alice Feeney	Bestselling author seeks answers on remote Scottish island after wife vanishes	NO
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	The Case of the Missing Maid, Rob Osler	Queer female detective investigates a missing maid case in 1898 Chicago	NO
Poisoned Pen – Crime	Head Cases, John McMahon	FBI cold-case unit pursues serial killer linked to its lead agent’s past	NO
Poisoned Pen – Historical	The Stolen Queen, Fiona Davis	Met curator’s Egypt past resurfaces after Met Gala artifact theft	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	Sweet Fury, Sash Bischoff	Actress preparing feminist Tender Is the Night adaptation unravels in therapy	NO
	The Good Liars, Anita Frank	Housekeeper at 1920s English manor confronts missing-boy mystery and supernatural secrets	NO
Poisoned Pen – Noir	Karma Doll, Jonathan Ames	Buddhist detective on a Mexican beach gets framed for murder	NO
Poisoned Pen – Romance	Shattering Dawn, Jayne Ann Krentz	Stalker mystery and psychic abilities draw together two suspicious investigators	NO
Reader’s Digest	The Lotus Shoes, Jane Yang	Foot-bound slave and her aristocratic mistress in 1800s Qing-dynasty China	NO
TeaTime	Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke	Rilke’s letters of advice to a young aspiring poet	NO

February 2025

35 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Barnes & Noble	This Is a Love Story, Jessica Soffer	Fifty-year New York marriage recalled as artist wife is dying	NO
BBC Radio 2	Human, Animal, Seth Insua	Dairy farmer’s family unravels when activists target their farm	NO
	Nesting, Roisin O’Donnell	Dublin mother flees coercive husband into Ireland’s housing crisis	NO
Belletrist	The Mystery Guest, Gregoire Bouillier	French autofiction: ex-lover calls with a birthday party invitation	NO
Black Men Read	Neighbors and Other Stories, Diane Oliver	Posthumous debut: 1960s Black American lives under Jim Crow	NO
Good Housekeeping	Confessions, Catherine Airey	Three generations of Irish women, NYC to Donegal, family secrets	NO
Good Morning America – Adult	Junie, Erin Crosby Eckstine	Enslaved teen on Alabama plantation awakens her sister’s ghost as Civil War looms	NO
Good Morning America – Young Adult	Under the Same Stars, Libba Bray	Three timelines connected by a German oak tree, Nazi era to today	MAYBE
Jack Carr	The JFK Conspiracy, Brad Meltzer; Josh Mensch	1960 assassination plot against President-elect Kennedy and the Secret Service agent who foiled it	NO
Jewish Book Council – Fiction	The Last Dekrepitzer, Howard Langer	Hasidic Holocaust survivor’s journey from Poland to Mississippi to Harlem	NO
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	The In-Betweens, Davon Loeb	Essay memoir of growing up biracial in a Jewish-Protestant family	NO
Library Science	The Wickedest, Caleb Femi	One-night poetry sequence at a London house party	NO
Mindy’s Book Studio	The Rules of Fortune, Danielle Prescod	Daughter investigates her billionaire father’s empire after his death	NO
Mocha Girls Read	Seven Days in June, Tia Williams	Black writers reunite after fifteen years for one Brooklyn week	NO
Natalie Portman	The Coin, Yasmin Zaher	Palestinian woman in NYC unravels through Birkin scams and obsessive purity	NO
Oprah 2.0	Dream State, Eric Puchner	Love-triangle aftershocks span fifty years against a warming Montana backdrop	NO
PBS Books	Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson	Estranged siblings learn mother’s hidden Caribbean murder-suspect past via recorded inheritance	MAYBE
	Good Dirt, Charmaine Wilkerson	Jilted Black heiress flees to France after a tragedy tied to family heirloom	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – British	The Wolf Tree, Laura McCluskey	Detectives investigate a suspicious death on a hostile Scottish island	NO
Poisoned Pen – Crime	The Oligarch’s Daughter, Joseph Finder	Ex-Wall Streeter flees Russian operatives after marrying an oligarch’s daughter	NO
Poisoned Pen – Historical	Fagin the Thief, Allison Epstein	Dickensian London origin story for Oliver Twist’s Jewish villain Fagin	NO
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	Dead Money, Jakob Kerr	Silicon Valley fixer joins FBI investigation of tech CEO’s murder	MAYBE
	A Forty Year Kiss, Nickolas Butler	Two Wisconsin ex-spouses reconnect forty years after their early breakup	YES
	Delayed Rays of a Star, Amanda Lee Koe	Three twentieth-century film legends’ lives traced from a 1928 Berlin photograph	NO
Poisoned Pen – Noir	Saint of the Narrows Street, William Boyle	Italian American sisters bury a body, hide the secret eighteen years	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Romance	The Launch Date, Annabelle Slator	Rival coworkers test a new IRL dating app together	MAYBE
Read with Jenna	This Is a Love Story, Jessica Soffer	Fifty-year New York marriage recalled as artist wife is dying	NO
Reader’s Digest	Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love, Marianne Cronin	Never-kissed 90-year-old Eddie searches for first love through a charity shop’s donations	NO
Reese	Isola, Allegra Goodman	Sixteenth-century French noblewoman marooned on a Gulf of St. Lawrence island after forbidden shipboard romance	MAYBE
Richard & Judy	The Women, Kristin Hannah	Idealistic young nurse serves in Vietnam War, returns home to indifference	YES
	First Wife’s Shadow, Adele Parks	Domestic-noir twist: rich woman, widower husband, his perfect dead first wife	NO
	My Favourite Mistake, Marian Keyes	Walsh sister Anna returns to Ireland: perimenopause, retreat job, family chaos	NO
	One of the Good Guys, Araminta Hall	Self-described ‘good guy’ suspect when women’s-rights activists disappear in coastal town	NO
	Redemption, Jack Jordan	Mother plans revenge on the hit-and-run driver who killed her son	NO
TeaTime	The Lamb, Lucy Rose	Folk horror; cannibal mother and daughter in Cumbrian woods	NO

March 2025

26 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Barnes & Noble	Broken Country, Clare Leslie Hall	First love returns to 1960s Dorset farm with fatal consequences	NO
BBC Radio 2	Fundamentally, Nussaibah Younis	British academic deradicalizes ISIS women in Iraq, mirrors herself	NO
Belletrist	The Strange Case of Jane O., Karen Thompson Walker	New mother’s amnesia and hallucinations spiral into psychiatric mystery	NO
Jack Carr	Fearless, Eric Blehm	Biography of Navy SEAL Team Six operator Adam Brown — addiction, faith, sacrifice	NO
Jewish Book Council – Fiction	We Would Never, Tova Mirvis	Mother becomes prime suspect in ex-husband’s murder amid bitter divorce	NO
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	10/7, Lee Yaron	100 firsthand stories of October 7 Hamas attack on Israel	NO
Library Science	Early Thirties, Josh Duboff	Two thirtysomething best friends grow apart in New York	NO
Mocha Girls Read	Finding Me, Viola Davis	Davis’s memoir: poverty in Rhode Island to Oscar in Hollywood	NO
Natalie Portman	Saving Five, Amanda Nguyen	Sexual assault survivor’s fight to pass the Survivors’ Bill of Rights	MAYBE
Native American	Sisters of the Lost Nation, Nick Medina	Indigenous teen hunts for missing girls amid horror and violence	NO
Oprah 2.0	The Tell, Amy Griffin	Founder’s memoir of recovering repressed childhood abuse through psychedelic therapy	NO
PBS Books	The Women, Kristin Hannah	Idealistic young nurse serves in Vietnam War, returns home to indifference	YES
Poisoned Pen – British	Famous Last Words, Gillian McAllister	New mom learns her husband is the gunman in a London hostage siege	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	The Big Fix, Holly James	Bookish professor flees henchmen after a murder at an estate sale	NO
Poisoned Pen – Crime	Saltwater, Katy Hays	Daughter investigates her mother’s mysterious Capri cliff death thirty years later	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Historical	The Four Queens of Crime, Rosanne Limoncelli	Real Golden Age crime writers solve a real-life 1938 country house murder	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	Broken Country, Clare Leslie Hall	First love returns to 1960s Dorset farm with fatal consequences	NO
	Glamorous Notions, Megan Chance	Costume designer hides past Roman entanglements while reinventing herself in Hollywood	NO
Poisoned Pen – Noir	Hang On St Christopher, Adrian McKinty	1992 Belfast detective probes carjacking that killed an IRA assassin	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Romance	The Lady Sparks a Flame, Elizabeth Everett	Complicated heroine with a traumatic past finds redemptive Victorian romance	NO
Reese	Broken Country, Clare Leslie Hall	First love returns to 1960s Dorset farm with fatal consequences	NO
Richard & Judy	Precipice, Robert Harris	PM Asquith’s WWI-eve love letters to Venetia Stanley jeopardize state secrets	NO
	The Missing Family, Tim Weaver	Three vanish in seconds from a Dartmoor lake boat; investigator hunts truth	NO
	What Have You Done?, Shari Lapena	Vermont teen murdered in a hayfield: sleepy small town, many suspects	NO
Service 95	There There, Tommy Orange	Twelve Native lives converge at the Big Oakland Powwow	NO
TeaTime	Loca, Alejandro Heredia	Two Afro-Dominican best friends remake their lives in 1990s NYC	NO

April 2025

27 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
BBC Radio 2	Ordinary Saints, Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin	Queer Irish woman confronts brother’s potential canonization as Catholic saint	NO
	Who Wants to Live Forever, Hanna Thomas Uose	Couple split when miracle drug offers indefinite human lifespan	NO
Belletrist	Searches, Vauhini Vara	Pulitzer finalist’s memoir-essays on AI, tech capitalism, and sister’s death	YES
Good Morning America – Adult	The Sirens, Emilia Hart	Sisters across two centuries bound by the sea and strange transformations	NO
Good Morning America – Young Adult	Watch Me, Tahereh Mafi	James Anderson infiltrates Ark Island, the last refuge of The Reestablishment, ten years after its fall	NO
Jack Carr	The Unvanquished, Patrick K. O’Donnell	Civil War shadow war: Lincoln’s Jessie Scouts hunt Confederate Mosby’s Rangers	NO
Jewish Book Council – Fiction	Sons and Daughters, Chaim Grade	1930s Polish shtetl rabbi’s family confronts modernity and impending Holocaust	NO
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	How to Share an Egg, Bonny Reichert	Food memoir tracing intergenerational Holocaust trauma through Polish cooking	NO
Mocha Girls Read	Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor	Disabled Nigerian-American writer pens sci-fi epic that transforms her life	NO
Natalie Portman	Autocracy, Inc., Anne Applebaum	Networks of modern autocrats: kleptocracy, surveillance, propaganda across borders	NO
Native American	Washing My Mother’s Body, Joy Harjo	Illustrated standalone of Harjo’s elegy on washing her mother’s body	NO
Oprah 2.0	Matriarch, Tina Knowles	Beyoncé’s mother on her Galveston roots, Knowles marriage, and self-reinvention	NO
PBS Books	Miss Austen, Gill Hornby	Cassandra Austen in 1840 protects sister Jane’s literary legacy from posthumous exposure	NO
Poisoned Pen – British	Murder at Gulls Nest, Jess Kidd	Former nun investigates missing pen pal’s disappearance at a 1950s boardinghouse	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	The Maid’s Secret, Nita Prose	Hotel maid investigates an art heist connected to her grandmother’s hidden past	NO
Poisoned Pen – Crime	The Museum Detective, Maha Khan Phillips	Karachi archaeologist authenticates a mysterious mummy while seeking her missing niece	NO
Poisoned Pen – Historical	The Girl from Greenwich Street, Lauren Willig	Hamilton and Burr defend an accused in America’s first murder trial	NO
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	The Story She Left Behind, Patti Callahan Henry	Daughter crosses Atlantic in 1952 chasing her vanished author-mother’s lost invented language	NO
	This is Not a Game, Kelly Mullen	Grandmother and game-designer granddaughter sleuth locked-room mansion murders during storm	MAYBE
	The Indigo Girl, Natasha Boyd	1740s teen pioneers indigo cultivation on father’s South Carolina plantation	NO
Poisoned Pen – Noir	The Get Off, Christa Faust	Ex-pornstar fugitive flees pregnant onto rodeo circuit after botched revenge hit	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Romance	Gold Coast Adventure, Nana Malone	Ghanaian American heiress torn between arranged marriage and earlier love	NO
Read with Jenna	Heartwood, Amity Gaige	Missing Appalachian Trail hiker; three women’s perspectives on a desperate Maine search	NO
Reader’s Digest	The Story She Left Behind, Patti Callahan Henry	Daughter crosses Atlantic in 1952 chasing her vanished author-mother’s lost invented language	NO
Reese	All That Life Can Afford, Emily Everett	American grad student in London hides her working-class roots while drawn into a wealthy family’s Saint-Tropez world	NO
Service 95	Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter	London father and sons grieve dead mother; mythic Crow visits	YES
TeaTime	The Antidote, Karen Russell	Dust Bowl Nebraska town reckons with buried violence and memory	NO

May 2025

25 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Audacious	My Documents, Kevin Nguyen	Four cousins interned by US after attacks	NO
BBC Radio 2	The Book of Guilt, Catherine Chidgey	Alternate-history 1979 England: triplet boys at sinister state orphanage	NO
Belletrist	Twist, Colum McCann	Irish journalist repairs deep-sea internet cables off West Africa	MAYBE
Good Housekeeping	Immaculate Conception, Ling Ling Huang	Art-school friends, mind-merging tech, toxic obsession	YES
Good Morning America – Adult	The Original Daughter, Jemimah Wei	Singapore sisters torn apart by ambition and family secrets in turn-of-millennium Bedok	NO
I Care About Books	The Women, Kristin Hannah	Idealistic young nurse serves in Vietnam War, returns home to indifference	YES
Jack Carr	Gates of Fire, Steven Pressfield	Spartan Thermopylae from a captured helot’s perspective	NO
Jewish Book Council – Fiction	Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory, Iddo Gefen	Israeli family builds tech startup around eccentric mother’s cloud-making desert invention	NO
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	Chutzpah Girls, Julie Silverstein; Tami Schlossberg Pruwer	Illustrated bedtime book: 100 mini-biographies of daring Jewish women	YES
Mindy’s Book Studio	When Stars Align, Melissa de la Cruz	Three former teen Hollywood stars reunite after a decade	NO
Natalie Portman	Consider Yourself Kissed, Jessica Stanley	Decade-long literary romance set against London politics and motherhood	NO
Native American	Medicine River, Mary Annette Pember	Ojibwe journalist traces Indian boarding schools’ legacy through mother’s experience	NO
Oprah 2.0	The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong	Suicidal Vietnamese-American teen becomes caretaker for elderly widow with dementia	MAYBE
PBS Books	We All Live Here, Jojo Moyes	Divorced mom’s life unravels when both stepdad and absent bio-dad move in	NO
Poisoned Pen – British	Death at the White Hart, Chris Chibnall	Detective probes a ritualistically staged murder in a picturesque Dorset village	NO
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	Cover Art, Vanessa Westermann	Artist’s lakeside pop-up gallery is disrupted by murder via poisoned chocolates	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Crime	This Book Will Bury Me, Ashley Winstead	Online amateur sleuths’ hunt for an elusive killer goes terribly wrong	NO
Poisoned Pen – Historical	A Death on Corfu, Emily Sullivan	1898 Corfu widow investigates murder of local maid with visiting author	NO
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	Heartwood, Amity Gaige	Missing Appalachian Trail hiker; three women’s perspectives on a desperate Maine search	NO
	The Library of Lost Dollhouses, Elise Hooper	Library curator uncovers century-spanning secrets hidden inside historic dollhouses	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Noir	The Night in the City, Michael McGarrity	1950s NYC ADA accused of strangling his socialite ex-lover	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Romance	Courtroom Drama, Neely Tubati Alexander	Jury duty for reality-TV murder trial sparks juror-box romance	MAYBE
Read with Jenna	The Names, Florence Knapp	Three alternating timelines for one boy based on the name his battered mother chose	MAYBE
Reader’s Digest	Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man), Jesse Q. Sutanto	Cozy mystery sequel: Vera Wong investigates a dead influencer with no real identity	NO
Service 95	Still Born, Guadalupe Nettel	Two Mexico City friends navigate motherhood from opposite ends	NO

June 2025

33 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Audacious	Marsha, Tourmaline	First definitive biography of Black trans activist Marsha P. Johnson	NO
Barnes & Noble	The Listeners, Maggie Stiefvater	1942 West Virginia luxury hotel hosts interned Axis diplomats	NO
BBC Radio 2	The Rush, Beth Lewis	Three women’s fates collide during 1898 Klondike Gold Rush murder	NO
Belletrist	Lush, Rochelle Dowden-Lord	Wine industry insiders’ secrets spill at a French vineyard	NO
Black Men Read	Don’t Cry for Me, Daniel Black	Dying Black father writes letters to his estranged gay son	NO
Good Morning America – Young Adult	Time After Time, Mikki Daughtry	Sapphic romance across two centuries, Victorian England to present	NO
I Care About Books	Erasure, Percival Everett	Black novelist parodies ghetto fiction and the parody becomes a hit	NO
Jack Carr	Point of Impact, Stephen Hunter	Retired Marine sniper drawn out of solitude into a presidential assassination conspiracy	YES
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	Kissing Girls on Shabbat, Sara Glass	Memoir of leaving Gur Hasidic sect to embrace queer identity	NO
Late Show	Orbital, Samantha Harvey	Six astronauts on the ISS, sixteen orbits, twenty-four hours	NO
Library Science	Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan	Seventeen-year-old’s jealous summer scheming on the French Riviera	NO
Mocha Girls Read	A Good Cry, Nikki Giovanni	Poet Nikki Giovanni reflects on aging, family, and her grandparents	NO
Natalie Portman	The English Understand Wool, Helen DeWitt	Orphaned Marrakech-raised heiress versus a publishing giant pushing a trauma memoir	NO
Native American	Bad Cree, Jessica Johns	Cree woman’s grief dreams turn deadly when she returns home	NO
Oprah 2.0	The River Is Waiting, Wally Lamb	Grieving father seeks redemption in prison after a fatal addiction-driven mistake	NO
Poisoned Pen – British	A Novel Murder, E.C. Nevin	Author investigates a literary agent’s murder at a crime fiction festival	NO
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	Murder Takes a Vacation, Laura Lippman	Widowed former PI stumbles into murder on a Paris Seine cruise	YES
Poisoned Pen – Crime	Don’t Tell Me How to Die, Marshall Karp	Terminally ill woman hunts for her family’s perfect replacement before she dies	NO
Poisoned Pen – Historical	With a Vengeance, Riley Sager	1954 luxury train: woman lures her family’s destroyers for vengeance	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	Welcome to Murder Week, Karen Dukess	Three Americans solve staged English village murder mystery while uncovering family secrets	NO
	The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club, Martha Hall Kelly	Two WWII Martha’s Vineyard sisters launch a wartime book club; 2016 dual timeline	NO
	The Girls of Good Fortune, Kristina McMorris	1888 Portland woman with hidden Chinese heritage unravels Chinatown abduction and massacre	NO
Poisoned Pen – Noir	The Medusa Protocol, Rob Hart	Reformed assassin captured by mysterious doctor probing her memories	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Romance	When Javi Dumped Mari, Mia Sosa	Best friend learns of Mari’s engagement weeks before her wedding	NO
Read with Jenna	A Family Matter, Claire Lynch	Dying father reveals lifelong secret about late wife’s same-sex love to his daughter	MAYBE
Reese	The Phoenix Pencil Company, Allison King	Granddaughter uncovers her grandmother’s WWII Shanghai past involving a magical pencil-reforging family power forced into espionage	YES
Richard & Judy	Do Not Disturb, Freida McFadden	Snowstorm forces fugitive into a Hitchcock-homage motel with a dark past	NO
	Famous Last Words, Gillian McAllister	New mom learns her husband is the gunman in a London hostage siege	MAYBE
	The Daughter, T.M. Logan	Mother searches dark London for daughter who vanished from university	NO
	The Hidden Girl, Lucinda Riley	Yorkshire model rises in NYC; the Delancey family hides Holocaust-era secrets	NO
	You Are Here, David Nicholls	Coast-to-coast English hike pairs an adrift teacher and a reclusive divorcee	MAYBE
Service 95	Widow Basquiat, Jennifer Clement	Memoir of Basquiat through his lover Suzanne Mallouk	NO
TeaTime	Flashlight, Susan Choi	Father vanishes from a beach; family unravels across decades	NO

July 2025

20 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Audacious	Great Black Hope, Rob Franklin	Drug arrest and friend’s death send queer Black grad spiraling	NO
Belletrist	Notes on Infinity, Austin Taylor	Harvard biotech startup and love affair spiral into scandal	NO
Good Morning America – Young Adult	The Nightblood Prince, Molly X. Chang	Prophesied empress-to-be in Chinese-inspired empire fights fate between two princes	NO
Late Show	The Director / Lichtspiel, Daniel Kehlmann	Director G.W. Pabst, trapped in Nazi Germany, makes films for Goebbels	NO
Mocha Girls Read	The Reformatory, Tananarive Due	12-year-old Black boy faces ghosts and abuse at 1950 Florida reformatory	NO
Natalie Portman	A Different Kind of Power, Jacinda Ardern	Former NZ PM on empathetic leadership through Christchurch, COVID, and motherhood	MAYBE
Native American	Project 562, Matika Wilbur	Photo-portraits and interviews from all 562 federally recognized US tribal nations	NO
Oprah 2.0	Culpability, Bruce Holsinger	Self-driving car crash forces a family to reckon with AI culpability	NO
PBS Books	Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus	1960s chemist pushed out of science becomes cooking-show host teaching housewives chemistry	NO
Poisoned Pen – British	The White Crow, Michael Robotham	Police officer investigates a violent home invasion linked to her gangster father	NO
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	An Amateur Sleuth’s Guide to Murder, Lynn Cahoon	Author’s assistant investigates a literary agent’s murder on Bainbridge Island	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Crime	Cold Burn, A.J. Landau	Park Service agent and FBI investigate deaths in Alaska and the Everglades	NO
Poisoned Pen – Historical	The Listeners, Maggie Stiefvater	1942 West Virginia luxury hotel hosts interned Axis diplomats	NO
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	We Don’t Talk about Carol, Kristen L. Berry	Journalist unearths family secret tied to 1960s missing North Carolina Black girls	NO
	The English Masterpiece, Katherine Reay	1970s London art consultant questions a Picasso, sparking forgery scandal	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Noir	Florida Palms, Joe Pan	2009 Florida teens become drug runners during the recession	NO
Poisoned Pen – Romance	Last Night Was Fun, Holly Michelle	Wrong-number text flirtation between rivals competing for baseball-team promotion	MAYBE
Reese	Spectacular Things, Beck Dorey-Stein	Two close sisters in small-town Maine grapple with their mother’s secrets and the cost of one’s soccer-stardom dreams	NO
Service 95	Small Boat, Vincent Delecroix	French radio operator’s account of fatal Channel migrant disaster	NO
TeaTime	The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams	Earthman hitchhikes across the galaxy after Earth is demolished	YES

August 2025

25 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Audacious	Nice Girls Don’t Win, Parvati Shallow	Memoir of Survivor winner	NO
Barnes & Noble	Songs for Other People’s Weddings, Jens Lekman; David Levithan	Wedding singer’s own relationship frays while writing love songs	NO
Belletrist	How to Lose Your Mother, Molly Jong-Fast	Reckoning with a famous, elusive mother fading into dementia	NO
Black Men Read	That’s How They Get You, Damon Young	All-star Black humor anthology edited by Damon Young	NO
Jack Carr	An Inside Job, Daniel Silva	Allon investigates a Leonardo stolen from the Vatican Museums after a Venice murder	MAYBE
Jewish Book Council – Fiction	Sisters of Fortune, Esther Chehebar	Three Syrian Jewish sisters in Brooklyn navigate love and tradition	NO
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	Fear No Pharaoh, Richard Kreitner	Six American Jews and the Civil War-era slavery debate	NO
Late Show	A Marriage at Sea, Sophie Elmhirst	Whale wrecks a couple’s boat; 118 days adrift in the Pacific	NO
Native American	The El, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.	Indigenous teen gang members ride the El across 1979 Chicago	NO
Oprah 2.0	Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo	Two boyhood friends across small-town New York and expatriate Venice	NO
PBS Books	Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding	Thirtysomething London singleton’s year of dating disasters, calorie counts, and Mark Darcy	YES
Poisoned Pen – British	The Good Liar, Denise Mina	Forensic scientist learns her evidence in a famous murder conviction was junk	NO
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	Just Another Dead Author, Katarina Bivald	Mystery author investigates a literary titan’s death at a French retreat	NO
Poisoned Pen – Crime	You Belong Here, Megan Miranda	Mother’s college tragedy resurfaces when her daughter enrolls at the same school	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Historical	Departure 37, Scott Carson	Pilots refuse to fly after dead mothers’ phone calls	NO
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	The Witch’s Orchard, Archer Sullivan	Appalachian PI revisits cold case of three vanished girls and witch folklore	MAYBE
	Full Bloom, Francesca Serritella	Mysterious perfume transforms NYC lighting designer as buried fire trauma resurfaces	NO
	The Harvey Girls, Juliette Fay	Two 1926 women on the run hide as Harvey Girls railroad waitresses	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Noir	13 Hillcrest Drive, Gerald Petievich	Hollywood publicist’s deadly money drop reveals Beverly Hills elite’s dark secrets	NO
Poisoned Pen – Romance	Friends to Lovers, Sally Blakely	Childhood best friends reunite at her sister’s wedding after ruined friendship	MAYBE
Read with Jenna	My Other Heart, Emma Nanami Strenner	Vietnamese mother’s vanished toddler and two Asian-American teen friends searching for identity	NO
Reader’s Digest	The Glassmaker, Tracy Chevalier	Orsola Rosso’s Murano glassmaking family endures five centuries of Venetian history	NO
Reese	Once Upon a Time in Dollywood, Ashley Jordan	Grieving playwright escapes to Tennessee mountains, falls for single-dad neighbor	NO
Service 95	This House of Grief, Helen Garner	Australian writer covers father’s murder trial of three drowned sons	NO
TeaTime	Make Your Way Home, Carrie R. Moore	Eleven stories: Black Southern lives reckoning with home and history	NO

September 2025

36 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Audacious	Resting Bitch Face, Taylor Byas	Poetry collection on Black female subjectivity, art, and the gaze	NO
Barnes & Noble	Buckeye, Patrick Ryan	Two Ohio families’ intertwined secrets from WWII through Vietnam	NO
BBC Radio 2	A Splintering, Dur e Aziz Amna	Pakistani village woman’s burning ambition to escape into urban wealth	NO
	The Two Roberts, Damian Barr	Real Scottish queer painters’ lives and love from 1933 onwards	NO
Belletrist	Finding Grace, Loretta Rothschild	When secrets surface, two women’s paths become dangerously intertwined	NO
Black Men Read	Grant Park, Leonard Pitts Jr.	Race, terrorism, and the eve of Obama’s 2008 election	NO
Good Housekeeping	My Other Heart, Emma Nanami Strenner	Vietnamese mother’s vanished toddler and two Asian-American teen friends searching for identity	NO
Good Morning America – Young Adult	Sisters in the Wind, Angeline Boulley	Ojibwe foster teen on the run learns about the sister and family she never knew existed	YES
I Care About Books	The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver	Baptist missionary family in 1959 Belgian Congo, told by wife and four daughters	NO
Jack Carr	The Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown	Langdon races through Prague to save Katherine Solomon and the secret of human consciousness	MAYBE
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	Children of the Book, Ilana Kurshan	Mother of five reflects on reading with her children in Jerusalem	NO
Late Show	People Like Us, Jason Mott	Two Black writers’ stories merge against American gun violence	NO
Library Science	The Post Office Girl, Stefan Zweig	Post-WWI Austria: post office clerk plucked into wealth, then dropped	NO
Mocha Girls Read	Fearless and Free, Josephine Baker	Iconic dancer-spy’s dictated memoir of Paris, war, and stardom	NO
Natalie Portman	No Straight Road Takes You There, Rebecca Solnit	Essays on climate, women’s rights, democracy, and indirect paths of change	NO
Native American	Never Whistle at Night, Shane Hawk; Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.	Twenty-six Indigenous authors’ horror stories on tradition, ghosts, and folklore	NO
Oprah 2.0	All the Way to the River, Elizabeth Gilbert	Memoir of addictive love with her late best friend Rayya Elias	NO
PBS Books	Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia	1950s Mexican socialite confronts ancestral horrors in cousin’s haunted Anglo-colonial mountain mansion	NO
	The Bewitching, Silvia Moreno-Garcia	Three women across three eras face witches in New England and rural Mexico	NO
Poisoned Pen – British	Death in the Countryside, Maria Malone	Police sergeant and her spaniel investigate a missing wife in rural Yorkshire	NO
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library, Amanda Chapman	Book conservator and ‘Mrs. Christie’ team up to solve a Manhattan murder	NO
Poisoned Pen – Crime	Crooks, Lou Berney	Four-decade saga of the Mercurio crime family pursuing the American dream	YES
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	The Glass Eel, J.J. Viertel	Maine island thriller of black-market glass-eel poaching, addiction, and ecological noir	NO
	Under the Stars, Beatriz Williams	1846 Atlantic steamship disaster echoes through modern Winthrop Island family reckoning	NO
	The Moon in the Mango Tree, Pamela Binnings Ewen	1920s American opera singer follows missionary husband to Siam, sacrificing her career	NO
Poisoned Pen – Noir	The Gorgon of Los Feliz, Nolan Knight	Welfare-kid grifter turns gumshoe across L.A., Vegas, Mojave underworld	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Romance	The Girl Next Door, Rachel Meredith	Reporter goes undercover to expose anonymous author of sapphic bestseller	YES
Read with Jenna	Buckeye, Patrick Ryan	Two Ohio families’ intertwined secrets from WWII through Vietnam	NO
Reese	To the Moon and Back, Eliana Ramage	First Cherokee astronaut’s ambition strains bonds with sister, mother, lover	NO
Richard & Judy	Dead Simple, Peter James	Groom buried alive in stag-night prank; the friends who know are dead	MAYBE
	Don’t Believe a Word, Susan Lewis	Christy Ward’s true-crime podcast investigates whether Sadie was stolen as a baby	MAYBE
	Marble Hall Murders, Anthony Horowitz	Susan Ryeland reads a manuscript that encodes clues to a 20-year-old poisoning	MAYBE
	The Satsuma Complex, Bob Mortimer	Legal assistant chases vanished pub girl ‘Satsuma’ through South London	MAYBE
	The Shortlist, Andrew Raymond	Glasgow DCI investigates a crime novelist’s murder at a Highland writers’ festival	MAYBE
Service 95	The Trees, Percival Everett	Mississippi murders satirically reckon with America’s lynching legacy	NO
TeaTime	The Dilemmas of Working Women, Fumio Yamamoto	Five stories of Japanese women navigating work, illness, and marriage	NO

October 2025

27 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Audacious	The Wilderness, Angela Flournoy	Five Black women navigate twenty years of friendship and midlife	NO
BBC Radio 2	Artificial Wisdom, Thomas R. Weaver	AI vs. ex-president in 2050 election amid climate apocalypse	NO
Belletrist	Will There Ever Be Another You, Patricia Lockwood	Pandemic-era woman’s mind unravels under a mystifying chronic illness	NO
Black Men Read	Out There Screaming, Jordan (ed.) Peele; John Joseph (ed.) Adams	All-new Black horror short stories edited by Jordan Peele	NO
Good Housekeeping	Workhorse, Caroline Palmer	Editorial assistant claws her way up at a NYC fashion magazine in 2001	NO
Good Morning America – Young Adult	Fake Skating, Lynn Painter	Childhood sweethearts reunited in hockey-mad Minnesota for a fake-dating arrangement	NO
I Care About Books	Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.	POW witness to Dresden firebombing comes “unstuck in time”	NO
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	Hostage, Eli Sharabi	Israeli survivor’s memoir of 491 days in Hamas captivity	NO
Late Show	What We Can Know, Ian McEwan	2014 lost poem; 2119 academic in climate-shrunken Britain pieces it together	NO
Library Science	Nymph, Stephanie LaCava	Daughter of assassins swerves love and courts an early death	NO
Mindy’s Book Studio	I’ll Follow You, Charlene Wang	Two friends share a viral social media persona that brings fame, danger and toxicity	NO
Mocha Girls Read	Ring Shout, P. Djeli Clark	Black women monster-slayers hunt KKK demons in 1922 Georgia	NO
Native American	I Am My Name, Na’kuset; Judith Henderson	Cree Sixties Scoop survivor’s picture-book journey to finding her family	NO
Oprah 2.0	A Guardian and a Thief, Megha Majumdar	Two Kolkata families clash over stolen visas in climate-ravaged near-future	NO
PBS Books	The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman	Four British retirees in a luxury retirement village solve a present-day murder	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – British	Bog Queen, Anna North	Forensic anthropologist’s bog-body discovery unearths an Iron Age druid’s story	NO
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	Witches of Dubious Origin, Jenn McKinlay	Librarian discovers she’s the last descendant of a family of witches	YES
Poisoned Pen – Crime	The Librarians, Sherry Thomas	Four quirky librarians band together when murder hits their Austin library	YES
Poisoned Pen – Historical	The Gun Man Jackson Swagger, Stephen Hunter	1890s Arizona Civil War vet sharpshooter investigates suspicious cowboy death	YES
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	The Confessions, Paul Bradley Carr	World’s AI supercomputer goes offline; mass-mailed letters expose humanity’s darkest secrets	MAYBE
	Widow’s Point, Richard Chizmar	Cursed Nova Scotia lighthouse traps doomed thrill-seekers across 2017 and 2025 hauntings	NO
	Midnight Burning, Paul Levine	1937 Hollywood: Einstein and Chaplin fight Nazi insurrection with LAPD’s first Black female officer	NO
Poisoned Pen – Noir	What About the Bodies, Ken Jaworowski	Three desperate lives collide in a rust-belt town through accidental violence	NO
Poisoned Pen – Romance	And Then There Was the One, Martha Waters	1930s English village sleuth investigates a suspicious council chairman death	MAYBE
Read with Jenna	The Irish Goodbye, Heather Aimee O’Neill	Three adult sisters reunite over Thanksgiving; brother’s old boating tragedy still haunts the family	MAYBE
Service 95	Flesh, David Szalay	Detached Hungarian István’s life from housing estate to London elite	NO
TeaTime	The Wilderness, Angela Flournoy	Five Black women navigate twenty years of friendship and midlife	NO

November 2025

22 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Audacious	We Survived the Night, Julian Brave NoiseCat	Indigenous memoir, journalism, and Coyote storytelling on contemporary Native life	NO
BBC Radio 2	The Eleventh Hour, Salman Rushdie	Five Rushdie stories on mortality across India, England, America	NO
Belletrist	Simultaneous, Eric Heisserer	Homeland agent and therapist discover past-life patterns behind serial killings	NO
Black Men Read	Isaac’s Song, Daniel Black	Gay Black man processes father’s legacy in 1980s Chicago	NO
Good Morning America – Adult	Wreck, Catherine Newman	Anxious mom Rocky’s life upended by a local fatal accident and a mystery spreading rash	NO
Good Morning America – Young Adult	Coldwire, Chloe Gong	Cyberpunk dystopia where the wealthy live in virtual upcountry while the poor rot in downcountry	NO
Jack Carr	Exit Strategy, Lee Child; Andrew Child	Reacher follows a stranger’s plea-for-help note into a Baltimore conspiracy	YES
Jewish Book Council – Fiction	I Wanted to Be Wonderful, Lihi Lapid	Two intertwined stories of early marriage and motherhood, one autobiographical	NO
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	Heart of a Stranger, Angela Buchdahl	First Asian American rabbi’s memoir on identity, faith, and belonging	NO
Late Show	This Is Happiness, Niall Williams	Coming-of-age in 1950s Ireland as electricity arrives in a Clare village	NO
Mocha Girls Read	Black AF History, Michael Harriot	Comedic, incisive retelling of American history centered on Black experience	NO
Natalie Portman	Father Figure, Emma Forrest	Scholarship student’s dangerous entanglement with classmate’s wealthy, haunted father	NO
Native American	Turtle Island, Sean Sherman	Oglala Lakota chef’s regional cookbook of Indigenous North American foods	YES
PBS Books	America’s First Daughter, Stephanie Dray; Laura Kamoie	Thomas Jefferson’s daughter Patsy shapes her father’s legacy from Paris to Monticello	NO
	My Dear Hamilton, Stephanie Dray; Laura Kamoie	Eliza Schuyler Hamilton’s life as patriot, wife, and widow preserving Alexander’s legacy	NO
Poisoned Pen – British	The Dentist, Tim Sullivan	Bristol detective on the autism spectrum investigates a homeless man’s strangling	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	The Botanist’s Assistant, Peggy Townsend	Lab assistant investigates her botanist boss’s suspicious death at a university	NO
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	The First Witch of Boston, Andrea Catalano	1648 Boston: midwife Maggie Jones becomes Massachusetts Bay Colony’s first woman hanged as witch	NO
Poisoned Pen – Noir	The Red Scare Murders, Con Lehane	1950s blacklisted PI fights to save innocent Black man from execution	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Romance	Christmas People, Iva-Marie Palmer	Cynical screenwriter wakes inside a Hallmark Christmas movie of her hometown	NO
Read with Jenna	Cursed Daughters, Oyinkan Braithwaite	Lagos woman fights family curse and belief in cousin’s reincarnation	NO
Service 95	The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood	Atwood’s dystopian Gilead: women enslaved as forced surrogates	NO

December 2025

26 rows

Book Club	Book title & author	Brief Description	Yes/no for me
Audacious	Cursed Daughters, Oyinkan Braithwaite	Lagos woman fights family curse and belief in cousin’s reincarnation	NO
BBC Radio 2	The Merge, Grace Walker	Daughter merges consciousness with Alzheimer’s mother in dystopian future	NO
	The White Octopus Hotel, Alexandra Bell	Time-travel romance through magical 1935 Swiss Alps hotel	YES
Belletrist	Lightbreakers, Aja Gabel	Grief and time travel: physicist tries to relive memories of his dead daughter	YES
Good Morning America – Young Adult	There’s Always Next Year, George M. Johnson; Leah Johnson	YA holiday romcom — New Year’s Eve catastrophe, dual POV, two love stories in a small town	MAYBE
Jack Carr	The Tin Men, Alex DeMille; Nelson DeMille	Army CID agents investigate murder at a Mojave AI/robot warfare base	MAYBE
Jewish Book Council – Fiction	Hunting in America, Tehila Hakimi	Israeli woman on US tech assignment becomes hunter, predator, and prey	NO
Jewish Book Council – Nonfiction	Beyond Dispute, Daniel Taub	Israeli diplomat draws on Talmud for art of constructive disagreement	NO
Late Show	Beasts of the Sea, Iida Turpeinen	Steller’s sea cow from 1741 discovery to extinction to museum restoration	NO
Mocha Girls Read	Spilling the Tea, Brenda Jackson	90-something matriarch plays matchmaker for injured veteran great-grandson	NO
Native American	The Bone Thief, Vanessa Lillie	BIA archaeologist hunts stolen ancestral remains amid Native teen’s disappearance	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – British	Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife, Martin Edwards	Six contestants compete in a Cluedo-style Christmas murder mystery in Yorkshire	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Cozy	The Snow Lies Deep, Paula Munier	Ex-MP and her retired bomb-sniffing dog investigate a Vermont Christmas murder	NO
Poisoned Pen – Crime	Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Ace Atkins	1985 teen suspects his mom’s new boyfriend is a KGB spy	NO
Poisoned Pen – Historical	The Secret Sharers, Xiaolong Qiu	Retired Shanghai inspector helps locate a wealthy woman’s missing past lover	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Mystery	Wreck, Catherine Newman	Anxious mom Rocky’s life upended by a local fatal accident and a mystery spreading rash	NO
	Blood and Treasure, Ryan Pote	Sabotaged ISS and ancient Ark of the Covenant collide for ex-Navy treasure hunter Ethan Cain	NO
	Holy Island, L.J. Ross	Tidal Lindisfarne murder pulls sabbatical DCI Maxwell Ryan back into pagan-ritual investigation	MAYBE
Poisoned Pen – Noir	Only Way Out, Tod Goldberg	Crooked cop pockets a dead thief’s millions, then the family arrives	YES
Poisoned Pen – Romance	The Marriage Method, Mimi Matthews	Schoolteacher marries newspaperman amid Victorian conspiracy and murder investigation	MAYBE
Read with Jenna	Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen	Regency comedy of manners: Elizabeth Bennet’s wit meets Mr Darcy’s pride	MAYBE
Reader’s Digest	Before I Forget, Tory Henwood Hoen	Stalled 26-year-old daughter caregives her Alzheimer’s-stricken father at his Adirondack lake house	MAYBE
Reese	The Heir Apparent, Rebecca Armitage	Princess in Australian exile inherits British throne, must choose duty or love	NO
Richard & Judy	Me and Mr. Darcy, Alexandra Potter	Romantic on a Jane Austen tour bus meets the real Mr. Darcy	NO
	The Lucky Winners, K.L. Slater	Cash-strapped couple wins national dream-house raffle; their prize becomes a nightmare	MAYBE
TeaTime	Thirst Trap, Grainne O’Hare	Three Belfast friends grieve a fourth as they approach thirty	MAYBE

And that’s a wrap on my retroactive curation. I hope you find some of the books in there intriguing enough to try, too!

My next post will clean up any gaps from January to April. 🙂