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
“Women, Seated”
By Zhang Yueran
Random House, 208 Pages, $30 (hardcover)
Yu Ling is a devoted nanny to a wealthy family in Beijing. When the family she works for is caught up in a sudden, political scandal, Yu Ling must assess the boundaries, loyalties, and loves of her own life.
“The Rest Is Memory”
By Lily Tuck
Liveright, 128 Pages, $17.99 (paperback)
Slim, startling, and spare, this book is devastating and memorable. The book’s structure is a mosaic that presents the few facts known about a young girl, Czeslawa, a Catholic Pole killed by the Germans in a concentration camp, alongside her imagined friends and flights of fantasy.
Nonfiction
“Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free”
By Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson
Simon & Schuster, 336 pages (hardcover)
If you’re a woman who has ever worn a dress with pockets, you can thank Claire McCardell. And though you may not have previously heard of her you’ll be riveted by this masterful biography, by Dickinson, a Baltimore writer.
“All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art”
By Orlando Whitfield
Knopf Doubleday,336 Pages, $19 (paperback)
This wild, lavish memoir is one part an expose of the highest stratum of the art world, and one part a poignant story of friendship, betrayal, and loss. This book both glitters and breaks your heart.
Children
“Vanished: Seven Women Magicians Who Simply Disappeared”
By Anna Hays
Bright Matter Books, 240 Pages, $18.99 (Middle Reader)
Hays tells the fascinating stories of seven women in the Victorian era who defied all odds to become public, performing magicians — escapologists, mediums, mind readers and levitators — that inspire our admiration.
“A Spoonful of The Sea”
By Hyewon Yum
Norton (Picture Book)
With graceful language and gorgeous illustration, Hyewon Yum tells the story of a young girl served sea wood soup — instead of cake! — on her birthday, who learns of its ancestral importance, from her own mother. A book full of tradition, and of love.
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