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Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

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Black Cake
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Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel Black Cake shares the story of a woman who survives a negligent father, an absent mother, racism, trauma, and exile from her home. It’s only after Eleanor’s death that her children Byron and Benne learn just how much they don’t know about their Ma. Full of twists, Black Cake is the story of a mother’s love and the sacrifices she makes to keep safe.

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson, (List Price: $28.00, Ballantine Books, 9780593358337, February 2022)

Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz

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Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz
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An exquisite view into the inextricable relationship among love, grief, and hope, Kathryn Schulz’s Lost & Found is a masterpiece. It’s been a while since I’ve underlined so many sentences and created marginalia—from page one, it felt as if I myself was part of Schulz’s story. Her metaphors are spot-on and stunning; her fondness for research and etymology manage to deepen our relationship to the work instead of distancing us. Five stars. I’ve already created a mile-long list of loved ones who will, like me, treasure this memoir.

Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz, (List Price: 27, Random House, 9780525512462, January 2022)

Reviewed by Janet Geddis, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia


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I Love You Because I Love You by Muon Thi Van

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I Love You Because I Love You
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I Love You Because I Love You is a sublime psalm to the ways in which love manifests and changes us for the better. Love’s soft, expressive illustrations are a perfect match for the heartfelt text, displaying a beautiful variety of relationships in which love abounds. A perfect gift for baby showers, weddings, graduation, Valentine’s Day, or any day—because every day is a good day to say, “I love you.”

I Love You Because I Love You by Muon Thi Van, (List Price: $17.99, Katherine Tegen Books, 9780062894595, January 2022)

Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

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Small Things Like These
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A Fall Read This Next! Selection

It’s a cold winter Irish winter in 1985 when local coal merchant Bill Furlong enters his busy season before Christmas. Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These tells the story of Bill Furlong who has lived in a small, quiet village his entire life. When Bill discovers an injustice, his decision to help brings up his lifelong question of who was his father. This is a quietly beautiful book.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, (List Price: $20.00, Grove Press, 9780802158741, November 2021)

Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Jack Ruby and the Origins of the Avant-Garde in Dallas by Robert Trammell

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Jack Ruby & the Origins of the Avant-Garde
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Holy cow, I love this ‘un! I saw in Ben Fountain’s preface that the author discovered Donald Barthelme during a stint in a Texas prison (marijuana, meh.). Well, I discovered DB while dumpster diving, broke and living in an attic in Tallahassee, so dingdingding I checked it out! The title story reads like a great conspiracy zine from the 70s, about JFK’s assassination (including Jack Ruby’s shooting of Oswald) all being one elaborate work of performance art created by Ruby to introduce internationally acclaimed avant-garde art to stingy Dallas. But that’s just a preview for the main attraction. The bulk of the book is around 20 short stories that all revolve, in some way, around a beer bar (you want liquor, you gotta bring it yourself). The bar is a safe-ish haven in the belly of the beast (1960s Dallas) that lives in the mouth of the king of beasts (anytime Texas). Every style of story lives inside this collection. I’d say it’s equal parts Donald Barthelme, Terry Allen and W.G. Sebald. It comes out in November and I will be talking this one up a ship ton! That’s right: tonnage is different on ships. A ship ton different!

Jack Ruby and the Origins of the Avant-Garde in Dallas by Robert Trammell, (List Price: $16.95, Deep Vellum Publishing, 9781646050499, December 2021)

Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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All Fires the Fire by Julio Cortázar

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All Fires the Fire
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I just spent a guilt-free rainy day with these high calorific, double-stuffed short stories. Located within: A traffic jam turned tribal via survival, some playful narrator juggling, an escapist daydream that turns O. Henry into an R. Serling nightmare, and fiery relationships that literally burn to literal litter. Looking forward to more rain.

All Fires the Fire by Julio Cortázar, (List Price: 15.95, New Directions, 9780811229456, April 2020)

Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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O Beautiful by Jung Yun

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O Beautiful by Jung Yun
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This beautiful character-driven book set in the American Midwest covers many contemporary topics like racism, fracking, sexual harassment, and the immigrant experience. I loved the messy protagonist Elinor Hanson, a Korean American who grew up in South Dakota. A former model with a new career later in life as a journalist, Elinor has baggage that needs unpacking so badly her clothes are spilling out of her metaphorical suitcase at a rapid pace. Korean American author Jung Yun has written a fantastic novel in O Beautiful that surprised me over and over, especially by book’s end.

O Beautiful by Jung Yun, (List Price: 27.99, St. Martin’s Press, 9781250274328, November 2021)

Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia


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Hamsters Make Terrible Roommates by Cheryl Klein

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Hamsters Make Terrible Roommates
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This should be required reading for any and all roommates (from siblings to college freshmen)! Featuring an odd diametrically opposed hamster duo, this vibrantly illustrated, darkly funny tale will leave even the crankiest readers holding in giggles as they learn all about the art of compromise.

Hamsters Make Terrible Roommates by Cheryl Klein, (List Price: 17.99, Dial Books, 9780593324233, November 2021)

Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

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The Island of Missing Trees
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The Island of Missing Trees is a beautiful, sweeping tale of enduring love, grief, and the ways in which we move forward from intergenerational traumas. Split between a cold London winter and the midst of the Cypriot civil war of 1974 and narrated by a fig tree, the story aches with a love for the natural world, giving voice to the voiceless. Its quiet profundity opens a world beyond borders and human conflicts, a world where truths are uncovered and healing is possible.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak, (List Price: $27.00, Bloomsbury Publishing, 9781635578591, October 2021)

Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Interim by Wolfgang Hilbig

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The Interim by Wolfgang Hilbig
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Our “hero” takes us on many liquor-fueled Mobius Teacup Rides between East and West Germany, keeping the limbo bench warm on the sidelines of love and lust, looking for someone, something, or some country to blame for his writer’s block, impotence, and irresponsibility. Told in such a comedic, controlled scatter to keep the reader comfortably teetered on a seat’s edge, if sitting’s a thing said reader’s into.

The Interim by Wolfgang Hilbig, (List Price: 22.95, Two Lines Press, 9781949641233, November 2021)


Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia


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Amos McGee Misses the Bus by Philip C. Stead

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Amos McGee Misses the Bus by Philip C. Stead
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I loved the first Amos McGee so much, and admired his clockwork schedule. In this return to Amos’s animal-filled world, though, the schedule goes awry when he stays up late planning a surprise outing and misses his morning bus to work. In the Steads’ gentle, compassionate (and lightly humorous) trademark style, Amos’s friends help him rest and reset, creating a day full of nice surprises. This lovable, heartwarming sequel is just as pitch-perfect as the first.

Amos McGee Misses the Bus by Philip C. Stead, (List Price: $18.99, Roaring Brook Press, 9781250213228, November 2021)

Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia


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Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit

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Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit
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A Fall Read This Next! Selection

Jumping off from a mention in a 1946 essay by George Orwell about fruit trees and roses he had planted ten years earlier, Solnit begins a meandering path through a garden of antifascism, art, and the ways in which they intertwined in Orwell’s life. In the span of about 270 pages, coal mining and climate change, mass rose production in Columbia and the invisibility of capitalism’s machinations, Orwell’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War, and his ancestral connection to the slave trade are all explored deftly and, in the ususal Solnit style, with lines beautifully drawn to our current condition. Whether you are deeply interested in Orwell and his milieu or just a fan of Solnit’s incisive writing, you will find this biography/essay collection bears flowers scented with hope, resistance, and pleasure.

Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit, (List Price: $28, Viking, 9780593083369, October 2021)

Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia


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Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo

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Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo
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A Fall Read This Next! Selection

Chibundu Onuzo’s Sankofa is the story of Anna, an African British woman who never knew her father. Anna discovers clues to her African father’s identity only after her mother dies. This is fortuitous. What follows as Anna acknowledges and accepts her father, a man with a vast reputation and many secrets, is the healing and melding of Anna’s two identities and a new beginning. A master storyteller, Onuzo’s third novel is an epic story of belonging and identity.

Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo, (List Price: $26, Catapult, 9781646220830, October 2021)

Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Hao by Ye Chun

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Hao
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Each story in Hao pulses with life—with all its pain and beauty—and the power of language to transform it. They all, in a way, revolve around Chinese women past and present and their entanglements with motherhood, migration, and trauma. Ye’s prose is searingly honest, paying close attention to those tiny gaps in relationships where loneliness and love reside, and the ways in which we try to bridge those gulfs with communication. Both meditative and fierce, these stories will hold your heart long after you close the book.

Hao by Ye Chun, (List Price: 26, Catapult, 9781646220601, September 2021)

Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Intimacies by Katie Kitamura

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Intimacies
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Kate Kitamura’s Intimacies details a few months in the life of an interpreter at The Hague who is looking for belonging to a place and perhaps to a partner. Just as she has to see beyond the words in her work, she has to interpret the actions of her married lover as well as the alleged atrocities of a war criminal she works with at the International Court. This novel is both quiet and thrilling.

Intimacies by Katie Kitamura, (List Price: 26, Riverhead Books, 9780399576164, July, 2021)

Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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