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Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
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Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House is all about what it means to be the outcast in the particularly cut-throat world of the Ivy League, but does so through magic, ghosts, and monsters. Alex “Galaxy” Stern has had a rough few years, but that all changes when she gets admitted to Yale unexpectedly (right???). This is full of secret societies, New England ghosts, and the occult with a tinge of horror. Alex is a tenacious and gripping character thrust into a world in which she doesn’t feel at home by circumstance rather than by choice. Once I started this, I couldn’t put it down!

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, (List Price: $10.99, Flatiron Books, 9781250798008, June 2021)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Secret Dead Club by Karen Strong

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The Secret Dead Club by Karen Strong
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While Karen Strong’s previous two middle-grade books have had ghosty elements, The Secret Dead Club is a full-fledged haunted ghost story. After Wednesday Thomas moves back to her mom’s hometown in Georgia she realizes she’s not the only middle school girl who sees ghosts. This exciting mystery uses themes of friendship and grief to help the reader know themselves better. This story masterfully includes (what can be seen as) delicate topics such as getting your period or how emotions can manifest physically in your body to create an extremely relatable and readable book.?

The Secret Dead Club by Karen Strong, (List Price: $17.99, Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 9781665904506, August 2024)

Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Fire Exit by Morgan Talty

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Fire Exit by Morgan Talty
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Morgan Talty’s debut novel Fire Exit has an unmistakable pace that leaves you as unsettled as the main character, Charles Lamosway. This story about grief and mental illness is woven around struggles to understand family, both biological and nurtured. Brilliantly written, Fire Exit bears witness to what a birthright and culture mean when you were denied what felt like home.

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty, (List Price: $28.95, Tin House Books, 9781959030553, June 2024)

Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Body Farm by Abby Geni

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The Body Farm by Abby Geni
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Abby Geni’s short stories in The Body Farm are each deliciously different in scope, subject matter, tone, and voice. What they have in common is an exploration of being human, of having feelings that are confusing, and the physical manifestations these emotions can trigger. Being alive is messy and examining the complications of loving, aging, and simply living are some of the things Geni writes best.

The Body Farm by Abby Geni, (List Price: $27, Counterpoint, 9781640096264, May 2024)

Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Green Frog by Gina Chung

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Green Frog by Gina Chung
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This short story collection sparkles in its deft explorations of womanhood, identity, and family. Gina Chung interweaves the fantastical with the mundane throughout these stories that invite you to contemplate girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood in new and unique ways. I am taken with “Attachment Processes,” a meditation on grief, motherhood, and AI and “Mantis.”

Green Frog by Gina Chung, (List Price: $17, Vintage, 9780593469361, March 2024)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere

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Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere
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Cactus Country is a lucid and tender coming-of-age memoir of class and gender expression. With an enjoyable ease, Zoë Bossiere vividly paints the Tucson desert, the colorful residents of the trailer park, which gives the memoir its title, and the search for understanding and acceptance. Explores a young person’s gender journey without prescriptiveness but rather sensitivity and care.

Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere, (List Price: $27, Abrams Press, 9781419773181, May 2024)

Reviewed by Luis Correa, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Z Word by Lindsay King-Miller

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The Z Word by Lindsay King-Miller
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King-Miller’s The Z Word captures the same cackling, DIY, gory energy of the first time I ever watched Return of the Living Dead. Set during the sweltering energy of small-town, Southwestern Pride, Wendy finds herself experiencing the start of the zombie apocalypse in the midst of Pride festivities. There’s found family, betrayal, and evil corporations, all centered around the fun bonding activity of hitting zombies with your car.

The Z Word by Lindsay King-Miller, (List Price: $16.99, Quirk Books, 9781683694076, May 2024)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Savannah, Georgia

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The Mango Tree by Annabelle Tometich

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The Mango Tree by Annabelle Tometich
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Parts of Annabelle Tometich’s story of growing up in Fort Myers, FL, the daughter of a Filipino mom and white dad, are so unbelievable they must be true. Written by a veteran journalist, food critic, and writer, The Mango Treeis incredibly entertaining and compellingly readable. The book begins with Tometich receiving a collect call from an inmate at the county jail who is, of course, her mother. From there, the book goes back to tell the story of Tometich’s childhood, and we learn about the undying family loyalty of her mother, her father’s mental health struggles, and the very real times when Tometich not only had to parent herself but her siblings. This family saga is told with unflinching candor. Bravo!

The Mango Tree by Annabelle Tometich, (List Price: $30, Little, Brown and Company, 9780316540322, April 2024)

Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Blue Mimes by Sara Daniele Rivera

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The Blue Mimes by Sara Daniele Rivera
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A bilingual and elegiac collection that explores transnational sorrow with an openness to delving into the gulfs loss creates, rather than succumbing to them. Memories of family and political histories intertwine with cultural unrest and the sensorially intimate to form poems with a sketchy quality—much like the drawings in the book—with deep feeling and sense of possibility. Disarmingly beautiful.

The Blue Mimes by Sara Daniele Rivera, (List Price: $17, Graywolf Press, 9781644452790, April 2024)

Reviewed by Luis Correa, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld

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All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld
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Rothfeld begins with the promise of un-containment. If all things are in fact too small, then this book cannot contain all that it hopes to include and isn’t there something beautiful about that? Truly, what Rothfeld deftly handles is the ways that excessiveness bleeds into all aspects of lived experience – minds, bodies, and things. At times this collection hits a wall, particularly as Rothfeld realizes the limits of her own experience. So, while I don’t wholeheartedly agree with everything Rothfeld says here, her nuanced thinking on particularly the move towards owning less, thinking less, and doing less of the last decade reveals my own thoughts in the process. Perhaps what ties these lightly disparate essays together is the promise that wanting and longing are active and pressing parts of our lives.

All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld, (List Price: $27.99, Metropolitan Books, 9781250849915, April 2024)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib

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There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib
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Hanif Abdurraqib’s newest book focuses his signature poetic lyricism and prescient cultural criticism on yes, basketball, but also on so much more. Abdurraqib asks his reader to consider what it means to “make it,” who gets to achieve that success, and if that success could be considered worth it. Perhaps most poignant, to me, is the way that Abdurraqib weaves personal history with the narrative of city, team, and people. So yes, let us sit and commiserate, and let us share what we can in these pages for the time we have.

There’s Always This YearThere’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib, (List Price: $32, Random House, 9780593448793, March 2024)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall

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I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall
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A beautiful punch in the gut like one from the mosh pit on a Saturday night. Mariah Stovall’s full-length debut sweeps her readers into the tender yet vicious embrace of teenage friendship and meditates on putting on your own life jacket before trying to help others. Stovall reveals connections and personal history slowly, moving between past, present, and future, all woven through with the heroes of post-hardcore, punk, and emo. This novel bears a re-read to untangle the ways that music and fiction intertwine.

I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall, (List Price: $28, Soft Skull, 9781593767600, 2024-02-13)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada

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Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada
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Perfectly tailored for the reader lingering weirdly between Gen-Z and millennial in title, this book kicks butt and takes names. Deftly navigating (justified) teen angst with a humorous voice and unmatched compassion, Nerada has taken up residence on my list of authors to watch. A book that commits to the bit, Skater Boy destroys labels and points directly at systemic failings we’ve had a propensity to overlook. Nerada’s debut cheekily plays with how the intersections of those two issues create divisive and dismissive behavior. Wesley’s confinement to “punk” and “failure” parallel Tristan’s shining “poise” and “success” as the two boys fall into their predetermined roles, but Nerada’s characters compel the story forward, pushing against the oppressive, frustrating isolation of their respective archetypes and finding themselves wholly realized. Do yourself a favor, get to know the skater boy.

Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada, (List Price: $18.99, Soho Teen, 9781641295345, February 2024)

Reviewed by Shae Jordan, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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49 Days by Agnes Lee

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49 Days by Agnes Lee
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An introspective and emotional exploration of life after death, both for those who have been lost and have experienced a loss, Lee has succeeded in capturing the full spectrum of emotions in a limited range of color. From scenes of laughter to those where no one can bear to speak, her graphic novel explores the different ways in which we know one another. What a deeply human story, and what a deeply moving way to consider each other. Part slice of life, part emotional trial, this is a particularly successful emotional exploration of grief.

49 Days by Agnes Lee, (List Price: $ , Levine Querido, 9781646143740, 2024-03-05)

Reviewed by Shae Jordan, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild by Mathias Énard

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The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild by Mathias Énard
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Énard chews on more than the average author bites off, but just when all hope for focus seems to be thrown out the window, clarity comes knocking on the door (after comical foley work of scrambling footfall from window to door) wearing a different shirt (hastily buttoned off-kilter). I know I’m stalling, but there are so many wonderful centrifugal tales orbiting the titular red giant offering distraction after delightful distraction, that I struggle to pinpoint just what I loved about this book. It’s a carnival that includes gravedigging jesters, a flea circus of soul transference, an oh-so-leaky tunnel of love, tasteful dunk tanks for every religion, and that’s where my analogy sits deflated. In short: a splendid (it is!) love story (or is it?) of antiquated country life in a dying world (or is it? Oops it is).

The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild by Mathias Énard, (List Price: $18.95, New Directions, 9780811231299, December 2023)

Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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