Boswell bestsellers, week ending June 1, 2019

Sorry friends. I'm having trouble uploading images to the blog. Hope to add them later.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Beneath the Flames, by Gregory Lee Renz (also paperback)
2. If She Wakes, by Michael Koryta
3. The Sentence Is Death V2, by Anthony Horowitz
4. Resistance Women, by Jennifer Chiaverni
5. Cara Mori, by Thomas Harris
6. Normal People, by Sally Rooney
7. The Flight Portfolio, by Julie Orringer
8. The Guest Book, by Sarah Blake
9. The Farm, by Joanne Ramos
10. Ask Again, Yes, by Joanne Ramos

New this week is the second installment featuring author/mystery solver Anthony Horowitz, The Sentence Is Death. The book is an Indie Next Pick and has also received raves from the trades, with Booklist notes: "the overall voice of the series is fresh and original, Horowitz writing with the effortless élan that distinguishes all his work."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. A Good American Family, by David Maraniss
2. Tribe, by Sebastian Junger
3. Under Pressure, by Lisa Damour
4. Educated, by Tara Westover
5. Braving the Wilderness, by Brené Brown
6. Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, by Yossi Klein Halevi
7. Fraternity, by Alexandra Robbins
8. Spying on the South, by Tony Horwitz
9. The Second Mountain, by David Brooks
10. Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered, by Karen Gilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

Several Boswellians are fans of the comedy true crime podcast My Favorite Murder so they've been gung ho on Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide. Barbara VanDenburgh writes in USA Today: "It feels less like reading a book and more like hanging out with your cool aunts, who will slip you a wine cooler or two and listen without judgment while you spill your guts."

Paperback Fiction:
1. Beneath the Flames, by Gregory Lee Renz
2. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
3. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
4. There There, by Tommy Orange
5. Milwaukee Noir, edited by Tim Hennessy
6. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
7. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson
8. Vintage 1954, by Antoine Laurain
9. Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan
10. Paris by the Book, by Liam Callanan

It's here! Vintage 1954 is the new novel from Antoine Laurain and I love it. Hope to have a full blog post on this in the next week or two. From Eric Patterson in Foreword Reviews: "The book’s descriptions are a must for any Francophile, who will be able to meet Dali, Edith Piaf, Audrey Hepburn, and other luminaries in these pages. A character’s walk through the legendary market of Les Halles at a time when it was in its full glory, all on the way to dinner at Au Veau qui Tete: such scenes are written beautifully, entering fully into the busyness of their settings."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Can Francis Change the Church?, by Thomas Sweetser
2. When Pride Still Mattered, by David Maraniss
3. The Mueller Report, by US Department of Justice (Melville House)
4. The Mueller Report, by US Department of Justice and Washington Post (Scribner)
5. Black Theology and Black Power, by James H Cone
6. How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan
7. Writing Fiction, 10th edition, by Janet Burroway (event at Boswell Wed June 19, 7 pm)
8. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan
9. At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, by Yossi Klein Halevi
10. Healing the Thyroid with Ayurveda, by Marianne Teitelbaum (event at Boswell Mon June 10, 7 pm)

We're celebrating the release of the 10th edition of Writing Fiction with a conversation with Janet Burroway and Kim Suhr.  Here's a taste of what you might hear in this interview by Julianne Hill in TriQuarterly for an older edition. On what writer Burroway has learned the most from: "George Eliot, above all. I’ve learned that depth of emotion can come out of minute observation and that repetition and motif are hugely satisfying to the reader."

Books for Kids:
1. The Place for Pluto, by Stef Wade, with illustrations by Melanie Demmer
2. The Land of Permanent Goodbyes, by Atia Abawi
3. Darius the Great Is Not Okay, by Adib Khorram
4. An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green
5. On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas
6. The Runaways, by Ulf Stark, with illustrations by Kitty Crowther
7. Endling the First V2, by Katherine Applegate
8. The Great Milwaukee Hamburger War, by Paul Bialas
9. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, by Fred Rogers, edited by Luke Flowers
10. Oh, the Places You'll Go, by Dr Seuss

From Gecko Press comes The Runaways, a picture book from Sweden about a grandfather who wants to leave the hospital and escapes with the help of his grandson Gottfried. Oddly enough, this is also one of the plotlines of the novel I am currently reading, We're All in This Together. Of the kids book, Kirkus Reviews offers this praise in its starred review: "A touching, realistic, gently humorous story of how a sensitive boy copes with his treasured grandfather's decline." Of the art, Booklist observes that "expressive full-page illustrations add color to the pages while supporting the story's tone."

The Journal Sentinel book page features these reviews.

Two girls go missing in in Siberia in Disappearing Earth the "splendidly imagined" (Simon Winchester) thriller from Julia Phillips. Barbara VanDenburgh of the Arizona Republic's take: "It has the makings of a lurid thriller, but first-time novelist Julia Phillips (who has long worked as a journalist, her work appearing in many publications, including the Moscow Times) does something more sophisticated than that and turns her unshakable debut into a meditation on the lives of women in a far-flung corner of the world, spanning generations and ethnicities, in the months that follow the disappearance."

Todd Goldberg from USA Today reviews The Obsoletes, a novel from Simeon Mills. He writes: "Though The Obsoletes ends up feeling like a book made of too many parts that don’t fit firmly together, there is something inherently charming about the effort. Mills clearly loves this world he’s created, and if his plot doesn’t quite sustain close examination, the author’s big imagination certainly does."

Ann Levin of The Associated Press writes about Gabriel Garcia Marquez's posthumous essay collection, in which she notes that the author always considered himself a journalist. Levin continues: "That may well be the case. What’s also true is that the 50 pieces in The Scandal of the Century and Other Writings, selected by Cristobal Pera, who helped edit García Márquez’s memoirs, and with an introduction by journalist Jon Lee Anderson, are more than just a little literary."