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.
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.