Some Terrific Books That Kicked Off 2026

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

Some Terrific Books To Kickoff 2026

Although spring and fall are traditionally when publishers release the books they feel will be the biggest hits, this January has some terrific books to kickoff 2026.

Publishing at the end of December is Ain’t Nobody’s Fool- the Life and Times of Dolly Parton, Martha Ackermann's biography of one of our most talented and beloved people. 

Ackermann takes Dolly from her beginnings growing up in a large, loving, and impoverished family in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Music has always been a part of her life, and her talent and determination helped her climb the ladder to become the star we all know and love.

But it wasn’t always easy. Nashville did not welcome someone they saw as too ambitious. She was the subject of lawsuits and death threats at one point, and she suffered from a deep depression.

Parton came back, and in addition to her huge accomplishments in music, she developed Dollywood, a successful amusement park near her hometown. She gave back to her community and others worldwide with her Imagination Library, which has donated hundreds of millions of books to young children to encourage reading in the home. And she donated one million dollars to help create the COVID vaccine that has saved countless lives. Dolly is a national treasure.

If you like family stories, there are two good interesting ones this month. Angela Tomaski’s novel The Infamous Gilberts begins with the Gilbert family mansion about to be sold and turned into a luxury hotel while we learn of the lives of the five fatherless children who grew up there. 

The book takes the family from WWII through the beginning of the 21st century, as these eccentric children must learn to deal with all the changes in the world that baffle and confuse them. It’s billed as a blend of comedy, tragedy, and intrigue, and fans of the film “The Royal Tennenbaums” will enjoy this one.

Jennifer Niven’s Meet the Newmans also deals with a family. The Newmans- Del, his wife Dinah, and two sons Guy and Shep- have been staples of network television for two decades. (Think Ozzie and Harriet).  

They have basically been playing themselves in a sitcom, but recently ratings have been falling and the family is following suit. Del is hiding a secret from Dinah, Dinah is going numb, Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and rock’n’roller Shep seems headed for real trouble.

When Del has a bad car accident, Dinah hires a young female reporter to write their last episode, but she clashes with Dinah as she tries to bring the show into the ‘60s. It’s a nostalgic trip about changing times changing families.

If you loved Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six, Ashley Winstead’s The Future Saints is a good next read. Record executive Theo has been tasked with trying to get a new album from the Future Saints, a group featuring sisters who are spiraling after a tragedy. If he can’t, the label will drop them. 

Lead singer Hannah changes their style from pop-rock to a harder rock, and Hannah and her sister Ginny refuse to listen to Theo. When the new sound goes viral, and the Saints become poised on the dusk of stardom, is it everything they dreamed or will it destroy them?

There are several good mysteries out this month. Laura Dave continues the story she told in The Last Thing He Told Me with her sequel The First Time I Saw Him. Hannah’s husband mysteriously disappeared five years ago and left her to raise and protect his teenage daughter Bailey. 

When she sees her husband at her art exhibition, she realizes that she and Bailey are once again in danger. Hannah and Bailey have to go on the run and hope that the family can reconnect safely.

Alice Feeney’s newest thriller My Husband’s Wife also features an artist. Eden is returning home after her exhibition but when she puts her key in the lock, it doesn’t work. A woman who looks like Eden answers the door, and Eden’s husband tells her that the woman who answered the door is his wife. It’s another propulsive stunner from Feeney. 

Karen Parkman’s debut novel is The Jills, and it revolves around the world of the Jills, the cheerleaders for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. Virginia is a Jill, and when her best friend on the squad disappears, Virginia puts everything on the line, including getting involved with some dangerous men, to find her friend. It’s an intriguing look at life as an NFL cheerleader.  

I hope you can find something here to warm up your cold January nights.

Catching Up On 2025 Books I Missed

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

With the cold snowy weather taking hold this past month, it’s been a good time to stay inside under a blanket with a hot beverage reading good books. I read several of them, including the ones I’m writing about today.

Catching up on some great books published in 2025, Lily King’s gorgeous Heart the Lover tells the story of Jordan, a college student who begins dating Sam, a brilliant student who, along with his best friend Yash, is staying at the home of a professor on sabbatical. 

Jordan finds that she has more in common with Yash, and things become complicated. This is a short novel- only 250 pages- but King packs a lot into story that recalls first loves and what it feels like to be caught up in it.

Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief brings the reader to a time in not-too-distant future in India when climate change has brought unbearable heat, droughts, food shortages and more. Ma is preparing to take her young daughter and elderly father to Michigan where her husband has a job. 

When a young thief steals her purse with their passports in it, Ma must track him down and get the passports back before their flight leaves in two days. It’s a harrowing tale and you can feel Ma’s desperation growing as time ticks by as she must decide what lines she will cross to get her family to safety.

For something lighter, B.K. Borison’s First-Time Caller takes inspiration from “Sleepless in Seattle”. Single mom Lucie’s twelve year-old daughter Maya calls into a local radio romance show to try to get her mom a date. 

The show’s host Aiden is getting discouraged about true love but when Lucie agrees to come on the show to try to find true love, sparks obviously fly between Aiden and Lucie. The writing here shines, and when the dates that Lucie goes on turn into disasters, will Aiden change his mind about true love? It’s charming, funny, and has a few very spicy scenes.

Madeline Cash’s debut novel Lost Lambs also had me laughing out loud, even though the premise is not so humorous. Bud Flynn is devastated when his wife Catherine declares she wants an open marriage. 

He becomes depressed, and their daughters are having issues of their own. Beautiful high schooler Abigail begins dating a man called War Crimes Wes, a security officer at the compound of a creepy billionaire shipping magnate.

Middle daughter Louise has an online relationship with a possible terrorist, and youngest daughter Harper is insistent that the citizens of the town are being monitored by someone dangerous and will get to the bottom of it.

It all ties together in the end, and the Flynn family are truly unforgettable characters in this comedic novel.

On the Nonfiction side, there are two books I would recommend. Beth Macy returns to her hometown of Urbana, Ohio to discover why her friends and family have become so hardened and unhappy in Paper Girl. They no longer seem to have the same views on life as she does. 

Opioid abuse is rampant, school absenteeism is high, jobs and the middle class have all but disappeared. Macy interviews students struggling to deal with drug addicted parents, juggling multiple low-paying part-time jobs and school and trying to get into college to make a better life for themselves.

She also interviews counselors and people doing their best to get children to go to school, and community members who run programs to help them with schoolwork, teach life skills, and keep them off the streets.

She finds plenty of blame to go around from politicians on both sides over the past forty years as to how this country has gotten to the point we are at now. It’s an insightful and important read for everyone.

Belle Burden’s memoir Strangers recounts how her life dramatically changed the day a man called to tell her that her husband was having an affair with his wife. When she confronted her husband, he told her he was leaving and she could have the house and their three children, he wanted a different life. 

All this occured during the pandemic as Belle struggles to understand how this could be happening to her. Her husband was a good man and father, and now he rarely saw their children, and the prenup that she signed allows her husband to keep everything he earned during the marriage and he got half of the expensive homes they owned. It’s an eye-opener.

Four Books That Got Me Through February

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

Four Books That Got Me Through February

February was tough month, and between the freezing cold and multiple snowstorms we had plenty of time to stay inside and read good books. I read several in February.

I’ve read every book Tayari Jones has written, including her last novel An American Marriage, which I and many others felt was tremendous. Her new novel Kin may be her best yet. 

Vernice and Annie both lost their mothers as babies. Vernice’s mother was murdered by her father and Annie’s mother abandoned her at birth. Both girls were raised by their aunts and were best friends all the way through high school.

Vernice prepared to attend college, something not many people, especially Black women in 1950’s and ‘60s Louisiana, did. Her tight knit community rallied around her, raising money and providing clothing. 

Feeling out of place surrounded by wealthier people, Vernice did her best to fit in, helped by her roommate who became her best friend. Her future was bright.

Annie was obsessed with finding the mother who left her and instead of college, she and her boyfriend ran away to Tennessee to find the woman. With no money or prospects, Annie and her boyfriend end up in dead end jobs. 

While their lives diverge, Annie and Vernice stay connected through the years, and when Annie needs her most, Vernice is there for her. It’s a beautiful story of friendship and how losing your mother as a young child affects your entire life. Kin is Oprah’s Book Club choice this month and has already received much well-deserved praise, including mine.

Sadeqa Johnson writes wonderful historical fiction and her newest Keeper of Lost Children tells a largely unknown story set after WWII. Following the war, American soldiers were sent to occupied Germany. 

Ethel is the wife of an Black American officer stationed in Germany. Wanting to have a baby and discovering that she is unable, Ethel is despondent. One day she comes upon a orphanage run by nuns. Most of the children there have been left by their mothers who were shunned because they had babies whose fathers were Black American soldiers.

Ethel decides to find adoptive families for these children back in the United States. She creates a program for this, and she and her husband even adopt several children.

Ozzie is a Black soldier in Germany who falls in love with a German woman. Flash forward to 1965 and Sophie is headed to a prestigious boarding school on scholarship. This is an opportunity to make something of herself and get away from her parents who treat her as a farmhand.

Keeper of Lost Children threads together these three stories to create a fascinating tale based on a real program that brought babies to the United States for adoption. I highly recommend it.

If you are missing the Olympics, Layne Fargo’s novel The Favorites will take you back there. Kat is young girl who dreams of becoming an gold medal Olympic ice dancer like her idol Sheila Lin. 

Kat’s boyfriend Heath does not have the same dream, but because he loves Kat he wants her to be happy. They become a team, and after winning competitions in the Midwest, they work their way to Los Angeles to train with Sheila Lin.

Lin’s twins, Bella and Garrett, are destined to become gold medal winners like their mother. Soon it becomes clear that Kat and Heath may be the only ones who stand between Bella and Garrett becoming Olympic champs.

The story is told by Kat, and interspersed are comments from people participating in a documentary about Kat and Heath. We watch them over the years as Kat’s ambition pushes them to great heights, and eventually low lows.

If you think hockey is a rough sport, wait until you read about these cutthroat people involved in ice dancing. The Favorites is a real page-turner.

Anna Quindlen writes heartfelt novels and her latest More Than Enough is beautiful. Polly is a high school teacher who longs to have a child with her loving husband as they struggle with infertility. 

Her best friends from book club give her an ancestry DNA test as a joke, but when she takes it, she discovers a connection with someone she doesn’t know. When she meets the person she connected with, they are both confused and surprised. 

As Polly becomes more involved with her new family member she looks for answers. Her father has dementia who lives in a memory care center, and the scenes between them are lovely. Her mother is a highly respected judge with whom Polly has a challenging relationship.

The characters are so well-drawn, and I would love to know more about Polly’s brother. Their relationship is so realistic, as is Polly’s relationships with her friends in book club. Anna Quindlen’s novels always touch my heart.

Spring Has Sprung With Good Books To Read

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

Spring Has Sprung Some Good Books

Spring is here (isn’t it supposed to be?), and this is the time of year when many publishers are gearing up to bring out the books they feel will be big sellers in the coming months. Here are a few I read that fit that bill.

First up is a historical novel from Allison Pataki, who specializes in fictionalizing stories of women in history we may not know much about, like Marjorie Post (The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post) and Empress Sisi of Austria-Hungary (Sisi). Her latest is It Girl, which takes on the life of Evelyn Nesbit, a young woman who became world-famous for her beauty at the turn of the 20th Century. 

This is a bit different from Pataki’s other historical novels in that she changes the name of Evelyn Nesbit to Evelyn Talbot in her novel. Evelyn is a young teenager who, after her father dies and leaves her family impoverished, discovers that her beauty can be her ticket out.

She meets a female sketch artist who uses Evelyn in advertising, and soon Evelyn’s face is everywhere. She moves to Manhattan with her mother and finds more work as a sketch model, becoming the first Gibson Girl known the world over. Eventually she ends up on the Broadway stage.

Evelyn catches the eye of Stanley Pierce (a stand-in for architect Stanford White), a rich and powerful man who takes Evelyn and her mother under his protective wing- too protective. He controls Evelyn’s every move until it becomes too unbearable for her.

Like her real-life counterpart, Evelyn becomes involved in “the Crime of the Century”, a murder-love triangle that captivated society, but Pataki tweaks the story enough to make it even more intriguing. Pataki immerses the reader in this time period, and while we may think this generation is obsessed with female beauty, we see the seeds of the supermodel in Evelyn. Historical fiction readers will want to pick It Girl up.

In more contemporary fiction, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s Lake Effect begins in 1977 Rochester, New York. A company town where many men have good jobs at Xerox and Kodak, the story takes place in a suburban neighborhood where families are friendly, frequently hosting dinner parties for each other.

Women’s roles are changing at this time, and when Nina Larkin is given a copy of The Joy of Sex, she discovers that she has been missing out on something in her marriage. When her neighbor Finn, who feels that he is missing something is his marriage as well, kisses her at a party, everything changes for both families.

Nina divorces her husband and marries Finn. This throws the lives of both families into turmoil, especially Nina’s daughter Clara, who was beginning a relationship with Finn’s son Dune.

Dune has to care for his mother Honey and his sister now that his father is out of the house. Clara becomes a mother figure to her younger sister Bridie, taking over in the kitchen where her mother used to make elaborate meals for them all. Dune and Clara’s relationship is over before it started, and Clara blames Nina.

Over the next few decades, we see how the divorce causes ripple effects in their lives. This is a powerful family story and, like Allison Pataki’s It Girl, Sweeney immerses the reader in a particular time period when things began to change for both men and women. It’s about how changes in both society and personal life affect these family members for good and bad. I highly recommend Lake Effect.

Susan Mallery is an author I frequently read and her newest novel The Bookstore Diaries initially attracted me as I also work in a bookstore. This one takes place in a small seaside California community, and I also enjoy a small town story. 

Jax is a divorced mom of two who owns a local bookstore. Her husband left her and now is dating a much younger woman. Jax and her husband switch off weeks in the family home to make things easier on their children. Which it does until he becomes engaged.

Jax has control issues, and when her sister Ryleigh hints she may be moving away, Jax will not stand for it. When the bookstore has some foundation issues that need to be addressed, the handsome contractor who steps in to help is attracted to Jax, but Jax doesn’t know if she is ready to date or not.

The characters in the story are interesting, and I like that Jax has some obvious flaws. The small town setting wonderful, and this is a terrific book to kick back with and enjoy.

It Girl by Allison Pataki- A

Published by Ballantine

Hardcover, $30, 416 pages

Lake Effect by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney- A+

Published by Ecco

Hardcover, $30, 288 pages

The Bookstore Diaries"by Susan Mallery- A-

Published by MIRA

Trade paperback, $14.99, 384 pages

The Most Compelling Books of 2025

Reprinted from auburnpub.com:

The Most Compelling Books of 2025

Each year I set a goal to read 100 books. Out of those 100 books, the ones that stay in my mind- the ones with characters that I just can’t forget and want to know what they are doing now- make my list of the Most Compelling Books, and here I share them with you.

January started off the year strong in 2025, with two books that still resonate with me almost a year later.

Irish author Niall Williams’ The Time of the Child continues the story of the small Irish village of Faha that we met in his novel “This Is Happiness”. In this book, an abandoned baby is found by a young boy who brings the child to the local doctor. The doctor’s daughter falls in love with the baby, but in 1962 Ireland a single woman can’t adopt. The village setting and the characters are indelible.

I always look forward to a new novel by Tracey Lange, and What Happened to the McCrays? is her best one yet. A man who left his wife and hometown of Potsdam, New York returns home when his father has a stroke. He has to face the consequences of leaving his wife behind, and we learn the sad circumstances of his sudden departure. It’s heartbreaking. 

Lauren Willig’s brilliant historical novel The Girl From Greenwich Street takes the reader back to 1800 New York City as she fictionalizes a real-life murder mystery. When a young lady’s body is found at the bottom of the town well, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton reluctantly team up to represent the accused murderer. It’s a fascinating novel, filled with intriguing characters and a compelling storyline. Willig drops the reader right into 1800 New York City, and you feel like you are right there watching the action as it happens. 

No one writes family stories better than Adriana Trigiani, and her latest The View From Lake Como shares the story of Jess, a young divorced woman who lives in her parents' basement and works for her lovable Uncle Louie. It will make you smile and laugh as Jess strives to find her place in this world while she deals with her large Italian family and her former husband and mother-in-law. 

Maria Reva’s Endling is a creative, fascinating novel about a young scientist in Ukraine trying to save an endangered species of snail. She works with a mail-order bride operation to raise money for her project, and ends up involved in a kidnapping scheme with two sisters trying to stop the bride organization, when the Russians invade Ukraine. 

Michelle Huneven is another author whose novels I will always read, and Bug Hollow is another amazing story. A family is rocked by the accidental death of their son and brother when they discover his new girlfriend is pregnant. We follow how all this affected the family through the years. It is unforgettable. 

Virginia Evans’ superb debut novel The Correspondent shares the story of an elderly woman through the letters she writes to others and the letters she receives back, including from famous authors like Ann Patchett and Joan Didion. It’s an ingenious way to build a character, and this book has been deservedly building good buzz for months. 

Another book that took time to build an audience is Clare Leslie Hall’s gripping 

Broken Country. The book begins with the shooting death of a someone, and the book flashes back to tell the story of a couple dealing with the aftermath of a family tragedy. The wife becomes involved with the young son of her former boyfriend, now a wealthy man who has come back to town. It’s a love story with elements of a thriller thrown in. 

Florence Knapp’s novel The Names has a unique concept. A woman, who is a domestic violence victim, sets out to complete her baby son’s birth registration. When it comes to giving his name, she can give the name her six year-old daughter wants, the one she herself wants, or name him after her husband, as he insists. The story is then told in three parts- how the young boy’s life proceeds in each life with the different names he could have been given. It’s brilliant and heartbreaking at the same time. 

Jess Walter’s novel, So Far Gone is a timely one. After Rhys heatedly argues with his son-in-law over politics and punches him, he goes off the grid in the Pacific Northwest where he can be alone and read literature. Seven years later, his two grandchildren show up on his doorstep with a note from his daughter asking him to care for them.  When their father shows up with two armed militia men to take the children back, Rhys rounds up his only few friends to take the children back. 

I have two nonfiction titles this year that impressed me. Jeff Hobbs’s 

Seeking Shelter addresses the growing problem of homelessness in this country through the lens of a mother of five children whose main goal is to get her children into a good school district. What they endure for that is thought-provoking. 

Will Bardenwerper’s Homestand- Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America spends one summer following the Batavia Muckdogs after Major League Baseball drops 42 minor league teams (including the Auburn Doubledays) . The community of Batavia rallies around the couple who buys the team to keep baseball in their hometown. It successfully combines a look at a small town community with the one thing that continues to bring them together- a love of baseball. It’s a five star read. 

Share your favorite reads this year with me at laruediane2000@yahoo.com.