REQUIRED READING
A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out Sally Franson (f iction, The Dial Press)
As a rising star at a top ad agency, Casey Prendergast isn’t sure if she’s a sellout or just doing a great job of adapting to the Real World of life and bills post-college. But when her boss tasks her with heading up a project that pairs well-known authors with corporate brands, she begins to question her career. A wry, observant take on career success and ambition.
My Patients and Other Animals Suzy Fincham Gray (memoir, Spiegel & Grau)
This moving memoir by a veterinarian reflects on spending a life taking care of animals (and their people). The reader is introduced to a wonderful cast of furry characters, including Grayling the Irish Wolfhound and Zeke the overeating tabby cat.
Ecstasy Mary Sharratt (f iction, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
In turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna, Alma Mahler was the ultimate It girl, capturing the hearts and minds of some of the most prominent men of her time. A poet once described her as “one of the very few magical women that exist.” In “Ecstasy,” Sharratt re-imaginess the red-redhaired beauty.
All the Beautiful Lies Peter Swanson (f iction, William Morrow)
Harry is just about to graduate from college when his stepmother Alice calls him with terrible news: His father is dead, and it’s a suspected suicide. Devastated, Harry goes to Maine to stay with Alice and deal with his father’s business. Hee has always been attracted to his stepmother, but now the attraction feels dangerous, everyone he meets in town seems suspicious, and he begins to suspect there’s a lot he didn’t know about his dad.
Family and Other Catastrophes Alexandra Borowitz (f iction, MIRA)
Emily Glass is getting married, and her therapist mother, who has never met someone she couldn’t diagnose, seems to think that wedding week is a great time for Emily and her siblings to have some family therapy sessions. Hilarity and dysfunction ensues.
Can’t Help Myself: Lessons and Confessions from a Modern Advice Columnist Meredith Goldstein (memoir, Grand Central Publishing)
Boston Globe advice columnist Meredith Goldstein always has a solid answer for the readers who write to her every day, asking for help in love. In her own life, she’s not always quite as self-assured.