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The week of December 31, 2024 Take your reading to the next level in 2025. Read these next!  "Read more books!" That should be everybody’s New Years Resolution. The books on the January Read This Next! list are described by their bookseller fans as haunting, joyful, scrappy, unexpected, and tough. Read This Next! books will bring your reading to the next level. Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix A beautifully haunting thought-provoking story about societal views and motherhood while also dabbling with witchcraft. There are moments where you laugh, feel scared, and even cry. That’s the beauty of this book, everything comes with a price. – Caylee Wilson, Midtown Reader in Tallahassee, Florida The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case Electric, angry, joyful, scrappy, and full of life – I could not get enough of Neko Case’s memoir. A celebration of the power of art and the power that comes from being our true selves in the world – an unforgettable read! – Caleb Masters, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson I loved the way this book explored the ideas of trauma, PTSD, and loss as well as how resilience and strength can grow out of them. The ending brought together the past and the present in a beautiful way, and showed the power we all have to preserver and learn from our past traumas. – Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans, Louisiana Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su Built on the premise of Build-a-Bear gone funhouse mirror build-a-boyfriend, Blob really is a love story, but maybe not in the way that you expect. At the core Blob is about falling back in love with the parts of yourself that you’ve thought you lost forever. – Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin Emily Austin has the ability to make those of us that think differently feel seen. She tackles tough subjects –complex family dynamics, being an outsider in your community and battling mental illness — with care, humor and wit! – Kelley Barnes, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina Read This Next! books and what SIBA booksellers have to say about them can always be found at The Southern Bookseller Review. You can help! 
Independent bookstores in the South are still struggling in the wake of Hurricane Helene, and now Hurricane Milton. You can help: Donate to Binc; a relief organization for booksellers and comic book sellers. Visit the SIBA Hurricane Relief Resources page to donate directly to store fundraisers. And shop online at a store that has been impacted. Read This Now | Read This Next | Book Buzz | The Bookseller Directory |
Read This Now! Recommended by Southern indies… |
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In Praise of Mystery by Ada Limón Children, Juvenile Fiction, Poetry 
2025 Southern Book Prize Finalist U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón and acclaimed illustrator Peter Sís have joined forces to craft one of the most impactful children’s books I’ve read all year. In Praise of Mystery started as a poem from Limón that will be inscribed onto NASA’s newest spacecraft, planning to orbit Jupiter and its moons in the Fall of 2024. Translated onto the page, the poem becomes a story of hope and guidance, teaching the reader to accept and invite the unknown rather than fear it. At times prayer-esque, the love and comfort surrounding this story, paired with gorgeous sketches, will make this a bedtime staple. Timeless and transcendent, Limón’s venture into children’s literature, paired with Sís’ illustrations will be cherished for generations to come. Reviewed by Grace Sullivan, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia |
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The Champagne Letters by Kate MacIntosh Adult Fiction, Historical Natalie is trying to pick up the pieces after she is blindsided by a divorce, and Barbe-Nicole is trying to keep her family’s wine-making business afloat after her husband’s untimely death. Both women face challenges as they navigate new lives, but each one’s story takes place in a different time. Natalie takes off for Paris to heal and explore in today’s time, while Barbe-Nicole is the famed Madame Clicquot struggling to produce and sell champagne during the 1800s. Told in alternating time periods, this story will appeal to anyone who believes in second chances, the timeless power of choice, and the healing properties of a lovely glass of wine. Reviewed by Mary Jane Michels, Fiction Addiction in Greenville, South Carolina |
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Bookseller Buzz |
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The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister 
The mythology of the bog wife began with other stories about nonhuman women who marry into human families, like selkies. There is Welsh folklore of a woman made out of flowers who is brought to life. Thinking about those stories, what I find fun is that there is a certain amount of ambiguity as to how human this woman appears and how human she really is, and how much the husband in question is willfully deluding himself about having some kind of quasi-human marriage partner. I went back and forth about how much to physically describe the bog wife and how much to describe the logistics of this dirt and plant woman who had raised five children and lived in a house and seemed to exist like a human for a while. I ultimately decided, which is pretty habitual for me, that I don’t care very much about the logistics. I wanted her to be in a state of flux. She is more human for a period of time and then less. ― Kay Chronister, Interview, Electric Literature What booksellers are saying about The Bog Wife 
Kay Chronister is the author of Thin Places and Desert Creatures. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Dark, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards. She lives outside of Philadelphia. |
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Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato Adult Fiction, Literary A sparse novel about the desire to be independent and the struggle to remain connected that we all experience when we leave home. The switch in narration in the second and third sections pulled me out of the story a bit but served to highlight the growing distance between mother and daughter. Reviewed by Melissa Taylor, E. Shaver Bookseller in Savannah, Georgia |
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Ingrained by Callum Robinson Adult Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Memoirs A beautiful memoir about the importance of making things with your hands and how a point of crisis can bring what is important back into focus. Reviewed by Holly Wunsch, The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, North Carolina |
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What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould Supernatural, Thrillers & Suspense, Young Adult Fiction What the Woods Took follows five teens forced into a wilderness trek masqueraded as a cure to them being "troubled teens", but when their guides, who are barely older than them, disappear in the night they begin to suspect there’s something wrong in this forest, more so than the bogus promise the "camp" made to their parents. Mind-blowingly timely and terrifying at the same time. I couldn’t stop reading this deliciously dark and queer story. This is one that will have readers up late and checking over their shoulders deep into the night. Reviewed by Katlin Kerrison, Story on the Square in McDonough, Georgia |
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On Our Way! What a Day! by JaNay Brown-Wood Children, Family, Juvenile Fiction A birthday! A gift? Hmmm… A delightful journey ends with a celebration of found things, group effort and a very happy Gran. A perfect read-together for those families who delight in the joys of nature, music, and time together. Reviewed by Angie Tally, The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, North Carolina |
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Sunday by Olivier Schrauwen Comics & Graphic Novels, Literary Olivier Schrauwen’s Sunday is an epic of interiority, emerging like a psychological hologram out of one fragile, mundane, ridiculous, precious human mind to commune with a world of love, sex, art, work, time, and experience at the nexus of the goofy and the transcendent: imagine James Joyce’s Ulysses as a comic book. Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky |
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Decide for Yourself Books that appear on PEN America’s list of challenged books. |
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Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar Banned Books, LGBTQ+, Young Adult Fiction Even before To All The Boys I Loved Before, I’m a sucker for a fake dating story – add in two young, queer brown women and I was hooked from the outset! Hani’s popular and happy, but her two best (white Irish) friends don’t really understand any part of her – not her obligations to the local Bengali community, her Muslim faith, and, most recently, her bisexuality, telling her she can’t be bi if they’ve never seen her with a girl. Ishu, the only other Bengali student at the school, is closeted, doesn’t have many friends, and worries people find her unapproachable. Even though they barely know each other, they hatch a fake relationship plot to convince people around them that they’re really bi and possibly likable, respectively – but find out that being with somebody who makes an effort to understand you is pretty wonderful! I adored this book: its Irish charm, its Bengali cultural specificity without falling into a single character type, its tackling of toxic friendship and racial gaslighting, and a satisfying ending on several different fronts make this an easy rec for lovers of fluffy YA! |
Southern Bestsellers What’s popular this week with Southern Readers. |
[ See the full list ] |
Parting Thought “Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work.” |
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Publisher:
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