I’ve been meaning to read this collection of linked short stories since it published in July. I’m so glad I happened to pick up the audio: I knew it had a full cast but didn’t pay close attention to the narrators and was happily surprised to hear Ed Helms, Paul Mescal, Jenny Slate, and Nick Offerman reading me stories! Though they range from 1700s Nantucket to present day New England, these stories are tightly interconnected, and it made me gasp each time I realized anew how Shattuck played them off each other. I’m a structure nerd, so bear with me here: the dozen stories themselves are also styled as a hook-and-chain song or poem: they are presented as pairs, with the second story providing a new perspective or fresh insight on what was shared in the first. The first and last stories serve as corresponding bookends, with the bracketed ten stories also divided into complimentary pairings. This is the best short story collection I’ve read in ages and I suspect it could happily stand up to multiple rereadings. More info →

This new holiday novella from the author of You, With a View and The Ex Vows was the last book I read in 2024, and the perfect close to my reading year. (Many thanks to my friend and team member Leigh who told me it existed—I had no idea!) It’s about a woman named Claire who meets a great (and gorgeous) guy she really clicks with … the night before she’s set to move from Portland to San Francisco to take a new job. But before she goes, she embarks on a wildly out of character one-night fling with Connor. When a snow and ice storm turns one night into a whole weekend, that proves to be long enough for them both to realize they belong together, even if their lives make that impossible for the time being. I loved the sweet story, lively banter, and earned happy ending in this delightful little novella. More info →

I’d like to read more German books this year (even though I’ll likely read them in their English translations) which prompted me to pick up this international bestseller often described as “heartwarming” and “unabashedly sentimental.” It’s about a man named Carl who works at a bookstore in small-town southern Germany. Carl’s customers love him for his knack of putting exactly the right books in their hands, but then two events disrupt Carl’s peaceful existence: the boss’s unsympathetic daughter takes over the bookstore and resolves to push Carl out, and a precocious nine-year-old girl attaches herself to Carl, saying he’s not truly giving his customers the books they need, so may she suggest a better way? This book reminded me of Sara Nisha Adams’s The Reading List for its book world setting and also because while both books are often described as “feel-good” they address plenty of difficult topics. (Reader, take note.) I listened to the audio version narrated by Raphael Corkhill. More info →

I’ve loved Liane Moriarty in the past so I’d been toying with the idea of reading this one; when I saw it on Audiofile magazine’s best-of-the-year list I decided to try the audio and enjoyed it so much. It’s got a big premise: on a delayed flight from Hobart to Sydney, an older lady walks the aisle and tells every single passenger their age and cause of death. After the flight, some try to laugh it off but many are deeply disturbed by the woman’s predictions and seriously rethink how to live their lives in the months following the flight. This multi-voiced novel tells the story of the psychic as well as many of the people whose lives were impacted by her predictions. As so often happens with Liane Moriarty novels, I didn’t want to put this down—and then I found myself pondering the book’s themes of probability, agency, and love long after I finished listening. This was great on audio, as narrated by Caroline Lee and Geraldine Hakewill. More info →