Seeking your next good read? Emma Snyder, owner of The Ivy Bookshop at 5928 Falls Road in Baltimore, offers recommendations for must-read titles for adults and children.
Fiction
“King of Ashes”
By S. A. Cosby
Flatiron, 352 pages, $28.99
Cosby brings us his fifth propulsive thriller, set in what has become his trademark Virginia noir landscape. This time he focuses on fraught familial bonds, as two brothers reunite after their father’s death.
“The Safekeep”
By Yael Van Der Wouden
Avid Reader Press, 288 pages, $17.99
Recent recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Van Der Wouden’s eerie debut is set in a provincial Dutch house in the 1960s. The prose is tense and the landscape is uneasy, as we meet Isabel, a woman who is finally showing signs of recovery from the war.
Nonfiction
“Is a River Alive?”
By Robert Macfarlane
Penguin, 348 pages, $31.99
The author invites the reader to tune in to the deep, complex, near-spiritual reality of rivers. It’s travel writing, it’s reportage, it’s natural history, it’s meditative memoir — as he highlights the symbiosis between we humans and the waterways that surround us.
“The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir”
By Griffin Dunn
Penguin, 400 pages, $21
Immerse yourself in the world of Griffin Dunne, nephew of Joan Didion and inhabitant of the cultural maelstrom of 70s and 80s L.A. His warm storytelling evokes respect and appreciation for his encounters with Hollywood elites, even as he tells the sincere story of his deeply complex family.
Children
“Candle Island”
By Lauren Wolk
Dutton, 352 pages, $18.99
A moving novel for young readers that weaves together art, loss, and the power of a beautiful setting. Lucretia and her mother have moved to a tiny island in Maine in the wake of a car accident that killed her father.
“The Gathering Table”
By Antwan Eady & London Ladd
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 40 pages, $18.99
This delightfully illustrated book presents a table as the anchor point for community — the focal point of all life’s celebrations, overflowing with food, tradition and life lessons.
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