When a mother walking home with her young son lets go of his hand for a moment, she loses everything. This thriller simmers through the grief following the accident until it turns in a way you won't expect, in one of the few hyped "twists" of recent years that truly surprised me. The first half of the book felt aimless and actually felt like it reached a dead end in the story, but then it picked up and the pieces slowly fell into place. The backstory is well-crafted and walks us through the sadness and desperation the led up to the accident and its aftermath.

The Red Tent illuminates the lives of women who are only briefly mentioned in the context of the men around them in the Bible. Dinah is more than just the daughter of Jacob and sister of Joseph and their many brothers. She is a girl who grows up with four mothers, learning the feminine customs and the skills of midwifery in the red tent to which they all retreat each month. She's also the one whose life determines the fate of the entire family. This fictional imagining of Dinah grants her the hopes, fears, and--most of all--the agency she is denied in the male-centric stories of the Bible. Highly recommended, if only to contemplate the lives of the many, many women who lived their own rich lives alongside those detailed in the Bible.

I've mentioned before that Ann Patchett is one of my favorite authors, and this essay provides a bit of background on her road to authorship, as well advice for anyone struggling with the question of, "What now?" Originally a commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College, Patchett relates to the graduating students who have inevitably been asked the same question by detailing her own uncertainties and circuitous path to success. This is a short audiobook listen and a good reminder that sometimes the most unlikely situations can give rise to the next opportunity and take us on exactly the right journey toward our goals.

In Mengele's Zoo at Auschwitz, people with unique characteristics--albinisn, twins, and dwarfism among them--were singled out for human experiments. Fictional twins Pearl and Stasha devise ways to endure their torture and maintain hope of survival and life outside the Zoo--until one of them disappears. After the camp is liberated, the search for life, normalcy, and each other is paramount. Mischling is not a book for everyone. As with any story about the Holocaust, the horrors endured by so many people are difficult to stomach. While the book could have veered into "torture porn" territory (and fair warning: there are a few descriptions that are hard to take), readers are spared most of the details of the experiments. Instead, we are brought into the small moments, spaces, and relationships of the individuals ripped from their lives and fighting to maintain their own humanity while under the control of others who are determined to strip it from them.

This book has similarities to the very popular A Man Called Ove. It feels like a bit of a trope now, but it's a pleasing one: sad curmudgeon (in this case, A.J., a bookstore owner) finds his happiness when unlikely people enter his life. He continues to be curmudgeony but shows love and kindness in quirky, funny ways. What makes The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry even more relatable for readers is the bookstore setting and the way books and stories are woven into the lives of the characters: as comfort objects, discussion topics, relationship touchpoints, and contemplations on life.

Arlene ("Lena") thought she'd left Alabama and all that came with it behind her. Her persistent aunt brings it back over the phone each week, but so far she's avoided visits back and has done her best to reinvent herself and her life. But when her past arrives at her doorstep, her boyfriend Burr, who is black, insists on meeting her family. She is forced to face her family, their racism, the many gods of the South, and the past that she's bargained with her own God to keep buried. This is the first book by Jackson that I've read and I loved her turns of phrase and vivid characters; I will definitely be reading more.

When a young woman otherwise destined for a life of service is swept off her feet by rich widower Maxim de Winter, she dreams of a wonderful life together at Manderly, the country estate he owns. But soon after their marriage and arrival at Manderly, she realizes that the shadow of Maxim's late wife looms large and threatens her life, sanity, and their future together. While not a scary read, the tension underlying this entire book is masterful and the surprises continue until the very last page.

The second in the Harry Potter series has turned my six-year-old into a full-on Harry Potter superfan. We had a blast reading and discussing Harry's second year in the world of Hogwarts and who could have opened the Chamber of Secrets. The illustrated versions of these books are beautiful; she examines each one carefully so she understands which character or scene is being shown. We of course followed this up by viewing the movie, which is also wonderful.