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
“The Bookbinder’s Secret”
By A.D. Bell
St. Martin’s Press, $29, 388 pages (hardcover)
It’s 1901 in Oxford, and Lily Delaney is feeling suffocated by the confines of her life as an apprentice bookbinder in her father’s struggling bookshop. But when she discovers a hidden letter inside the cover of a burned book, she falls in thrall to a story of love and murder.
“Autobiography of Cotton: A Novel”
By Cristina Rivera Garza
Graywolf, $17, 288 pages (paperback)
In 1934, José Revueltas supported the cotton workers’ strike in Estación Camarón, which formed the basis of his landmark novel, Human Mourning. Simultaneously, Garza’s grandparents journeyed from post-revolutionary mining towns to those same cotton fields, where their stories intersected.
Nonfiction
“Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat To) the Modern Dictionary”
By Stefan Fatsis
Grove Atlantic, $30, 416 pages (hardcover)
“I fell in love with the dictionary on my eleventh birthday,” Stefan Fatsis writes about the full-color college version he received on that day. That love lasted, and we’re the fortunate recipients of its most recent product: “Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat To) the Modern Dictionary.”
“Traversal”
By Maria Popova
Macmillan, $36, 609 pages (hardcover)
In her newest book, Popova delivers a bold and associative exploration of what makes a meaningful life by reconstructing and intertwining the lives, loves, and work of visionaries like Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, and so many more. Those who, by being as alive to their own specific existence as possible, helped forge the future.
Children
“Bog Myrtle”
By Sid Sharp
Annick Press, $22.99, 156 pages, Ages 6-11 (hardcover)
A bit of a modern fairy tale, Bog Myrtle tells the story of two sisters who live in a drafty old house with a family of helpful spiders. When the more cheerful sister, Beatrice, meets a giant forest spider obsessed with sustainability, she’s gifted some magic yarn, and sets about, with her housemates, to knit up a perfect sweater.
“Your Truck”
By Jon Klassen
Candlewick, $8.99, 28 pages, Ages 2-5 (board book)
From Caldecott Medalist Jon Klassen comes a beautiful, minimalist board book. Subtle humor, rhythmic language, and restrained illustrations make this an ideal bedtime book for any toddler in your life — transportation-crazed or not.
Filmmaker Justin Schein looks at wealth and inequality through the very real story of his late father.
For 35 years, the late Deborah Brodie, aka Bubbie Cookie, amassed a collection of over 200 Jewish ritual objects, which she used to teach her Hebrew school students with special needs.
Conceived by Columbia resident Benjamin Kintisch, "Life Review: The Hospice Musical" offers a thought-provoking and occasionally amusing perspective on mortality.
Steve Hofstetter, who will perform at Soundstage next week, recently made headlines for his social media post ridiculing some fans' warnings about Charm City's safety.