1. The Summer of Lost and Found, by Mary Alice Monroe (Tickets for May 24 event here)
2. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
3. While Justice Sleeps, by Stacey Abrams
4. The Hill We Climb, by Amanda Gorman
5. Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
6. The Paris Library, by Janet Skeslien Charles
7. The Five Wounds, by Kirstin Valdez Quade
8. Raft of Stars, by Andrew J Graff
9. Swimming Back to Trout River, by Linda Rui Feng (Register for May 18 event here)
10. At the End of the World, Turn Left, by Zhanna Slor
Today's big breakout is politician Stacey Abrams's While Justice Sleeps, but unlike most politicians, this is no political platform or a gimmick where a noted pol teams up with a famous writer. Jeff Rowe writes for the Associated Press, reprinted in the Tulsa World: "While Justice Sleeps is a deftly written page-turner - understated action, vivid characters and a tense, plausible plot...Supreme Court justice Howard Wynn, suffering from a rare illness, falls into a coma, leaving his young law clerk, Avery Keene, as his legal guardian with power of attorney. Keene soon finds herself the key figure in the planned merger of an American biotech company and an Indian genetics company. At stake, a weaponized genetic editing capability and the tenure of a corrupt American president. Wynn is the swing vote on the merger and his fate now is controlled by Keene."
1. Reaganland, by Rick Perlstein
2. No One Succeeds Alone, by Robert Reffkin
3. Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard
4. Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner
5. The Promonition, by Michael Lewis
6. Frank Lloyd Wright's Forgotten House, by Nicholas D Hayes (Register for May 17 event here)
7. What Happened to You? By Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry
8. The Sum of Us, by Heather McGhee
9. Broken in the Best Possible Way, by Jenny Lawson
10. The Code Breaker, by Walter Isaacson
It's the second week on the list for another Father's Day gift hopeful - The Premonition, by Michael Lewis. In his latest, Lewis looks at some untold stories behind the recent COVID pandemic, and as he usually does, calls out some heretofore under-the-radar prophets, like Charity Dean, a public health doctor in California, and Carter Mescher, one of the doctors on the disbanded-by-Trump pandemic response unit. Mark O'Connell writes in The Guardian: " As with his last book, The Fifth Risk, Lewis’s approach here is to find a small number of unheralded individuals working within vast systems, and use them to portray the workings (or, in this case, not-workings) of those systems. The malevolent force in The Premonition is institutional malaise."
1. Leonard and Hungry Paul, by Rónán Hession (it's here in paperback!)
2. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
3. The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune
4. Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn
5. The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
6. People We Meet on Vacation, by Emily Henry
7. A Raising in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry
8. The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides
9. The Blue Star, by Pam Jenoff
10. The Bookshop of Second Chances, by Jackie Fraser
With The Underground Railroad the big streaming release this week and Leonard and Hungry Paul's sales pop in paperback, you'd think I'd be talking about them. But no, this week we feature a new paperback original romantic comedy with a nice AP review (reprinted in the Gillette News Record) from Alicia Rancilio: "A truly good romantic comedy, whether it be a novel or a movie, justifies why two people are drawn to each other. It builds a case for the relationship so it makes sense why they’re together. In Emily Henry’s latest book, People We Meet on Vacation, she does just that, introducing Poppy and Alex, two polar opposites who met in college but happened to both be from the same town in Ohio. It’s a shared ride home for the summer (hello, wink to one of the greatest rom-coms ever, When Harry Met Sally) where they talk about everything and anything, and a friendship is born." And yes, they go on vacation and have a terrible split and the question is whether they can piece their friendship (and more?) back together again.
1. Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered, by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
2. Healing the Human Body with God's Remedies, by Lester Carter
3. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
4. Dirt, by Bill Buford
5. The Body, by Bill Bryson
6. The End of Everything, by Katie Mack
7. Trees of Wisconsin Field Guide, by Stan Tekiela
8. New Day Yesterday, by Mike Barnes
9. 111 Places in Milwaukee You Must Not Miss, by Michelle Madden
10. The Year 1000, by Valerie Hansen
I don't remember this book going top 10 in hardcover, but we've got a nice paperback pop for The End of Everything from theoretical astrophysicist Katie Mack, who writes a column for Cosmos Magazine. From James Gleick in The New York Times: "Many books have been written about our cosmic origins: the creation of the universe 13.8 billion years ago; the Big Bang and all that followed. The denouement, presumably tens of billions of years away, remains comparatively mysterious. How does it all end? For that matter, does it all end, or can we keep on in our merry way indefinitely? In The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking), Mack, a theoretical cosmologist at North Carolina State University, attempts to answer what might seem the most remote of scientific questions."
1. Firekeeper's Daughter, by Angeline Boulley (Register for June 29 event here)
2. One Thing You'd Save, by Linda Sue Park and Heng Sae
3. Dog Man V10: Mothering Heights, by Dav Pilkey
4. City Spies V1, by James Ponti
5. Golden Gate V2: City Spies, by Mames Ponti
6. Stamped for Kids, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi
7. Dog Man V5: Lord of the Fleas, by Dav Pilkey
8. Goodnight Moon board book, by Margaret Wise Brown
9. Jungle Night, by Sandra Boynton/Yo Yo Ma
10. And Then Came Hope, by Stephen Savage
We're getting close to the end of our school year visits, but we still have an event with James Ponti coming up next week and we're still soliciting sales for Stephen Savage's And Then Came Hope. It's a new book for the vehicle obsessed young reader, based on the true story of the SS Hope hospital shop, which Booklist calls "sometimes comical, sometimes exciting, and most of all, comforting... Savage's hospital ship looks like a nurse - facial features are drawn on the bow of the ship, and the rectangular superstructure on top, with the Red Cross symbol in the middle, looks like a nurse's white cap." They publishers are rushing a board book edition for fall.
Over at the Journal Sentinel, it's time for Carole E Barrowman's summer mystery roundup. Her picks:
--Quiet in Her Bones, by Nalini Singh
--The Bombay Prince, by Sujata Massey (Register for June 17 event here)
--Bad Moon Rising, by John Galligan
--Dead Before Dawn, by Paul Doiron
--The Hollywood Spy, by Susan Elia MacNeal
--Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Register for July 20 event here)
--For Your Own Good, by Samantha Downing
--Mrs. March, by Virginia Feito
Next up, Boswell events for next week
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