Larkin’s follow-up to 2021’s The People We Keep opens with 30-year-old Freya tending bar in Maine, where we learn she’s escaped after life back home fell apart. But following a medical emergency, she decides to return to her tiny hometown of Somers, New York to live in the falling-down house she inherited from her abruptly deceased parents. Despite her attempts to keep a low profile, Freya can’t avoid bumping into people who knew her before she left town, and from these interactions we begin to piece together a picture of what compelled her to flee, what she lost when she did, and what wrongs she needs to make right if she is to have any hope of finding healing and forgiveness. While reading I was constantly wondering how much to make of the circus as a potential metaphor for Freya’s life. The setting of Somers (which happens to be Larkin’s hometown) is also the actual birthplace of the American circus, and Larkin weaves little snippets about Halichiah Bailey and his elephant Old Bet into the narrative. More info →

I read this novella from Chinese Australian author Au in just two days (and, at 144 pages, might have needed only one). In it, a mother and daughter pair meet in Tokyo for a short vacation, to see the sights at a leisurely pace but mostly to spend time together. The story itself is leisurely paced; the prose precise and reflective. Neither character seems to say what they really think, or mean, or actually feel; they are quite careful with each other and spend most of the book dancing around each other and any real topics of mutual interest. But I was intrigued to see how this dance would play out, and whether or not they would genuinely connect by book’s end. Upon finishing, I was left with a number of questions, the biggest being I’m not entirely sure whether the mother’s presence was physical or more like a haunting. Though I haven’t done so yet, this strikes me as a book that would reward rereading, and certainly one that a book club could enjoy picking apart together: there is plenty to talk about. More info →

I’ve been following Wilkinson’s work ever since our team member Ginger introduced me to her book Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women and we subsequently discussed it with the author in MMD Book Club. Since its publication she’s also become a movie critic at the New York Times. Perhaps it should then come as no surprise that her new biography of Joan Didion is shot through with film references—not just because of the time Didion spent writing movie reviews and scripts in Hollywood, but as a way of illustrating which movies and motifs were capturing Americans’ imaginations at various points in Didion’s career. I found this thoughtful and fascinating: Wilkinson’s central argument is that yes, Didion did indeed believe and write (first in the opening to The White Album in 1979) that we tell ourselves stories in order to live. But here she intended to point out a tempting coping strategy, not coin an inspirational aphorism: whether on the individual level or as a Hollywood screenwriter, she observed that we naturally want to make sense of the reality we’re faced with by shaping it into a meaningful narrative arc. But reality doesn’t work that way, and Didion believed we do great harm to ourselves and others when we prioritize our pretty narratives over reality. This wasn’t quite the book I expected, as before reading I did not grasp the extent to which Didion was involved in either Hollywood or politics, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and turned the last page (metaphorically speaking, because I listened to the author-narrated audiobook) wanting to read more from Didion, and Wilkinson. More info →

I actually read this April 2025 release months ago but now that the Summer Reading Guide is out I can tell you about it here. (The book is not in the 2025 Guide, for reasons I discuss in this WSIRN bonus episode.) I loved Gaige’s 2020 novel Sea Wife (included in that year’s SRG) and was excited to read more from her. When Heartwood begins, we know a search is underway for experienced 42-year-old hiker Valerie, who has somehow wandered off the Appalachian Trail. In rotating points of view, we learn where Valerie currently is and the details of her current predicament, the plan for coordinating scores of volunteers to comb the woods to find her, the reasons the authorities consider her ex-husband to be a suspect, and why a seemingly unconnected woman at a nearby retirement community may hold the key to Valerie’s survival. I raced through this gripping tale of survival, isolation, and the deep human need for connection. I think it’s fair to say that the Maine woods are a character in their own right: they are vast, wild, and unforgiving. More info →

I didn’t love this new May 2025 release, but I’m nevertheless impressed that a month or so after reading it I find myself talking about its premise all the time. This political thriller (think John Grisham, but with a medical bent) imagines a world in which a safe, effective, and inexpensive cure for cancer has been found, but the truth has been suppressed because actually curing the disease would destroy the U.S. economy. When the U.S. president’s cancer returns, the real powers that be begrudgingly let him in to their circle of trust—and then all hell breaks loose. I was curious enough about what would happen to keep listening (to the audiobook, narrated by Eric Conger), but my favorite parts of the story involved the chief of staff’s visits back home to Florida’s Gulf Coast to visit family and do a little research on a personal project. Bailey name-checks quite a few Panhandle locations I’m familiar with and it was an unexpected delight to see them in print. More info →