Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week.
1) Sunday was a beautiful day in NYC so we took a walk through Central Park. It was so good to see the park filled with people, and it seemed like everyone was celebrating a birthday, we ran into mutliple celebrations..
2) The Center for Fiction hosted a discussion between Silas House, about his book Lark Ascending, and one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, about her novel Demon Copperhead. I read an early copy of Demon Copperhead, and it is Kingsolver's best book yet, a contemporary retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Her young protagonist deals with a mother who is an addict, living in a broken foster care system, poverty and the beginnings of the opioid crisis in Appalachia. I haven't read Silas House's book yet, but it sounds fascinating. It's a dystopian story about a young man who leaves the United States for Ireland, seeking refuge from devastating fires and political persecution where he walks across the country with a dog he finds. The discussion was fascinating about two epic books, and what it means to be a writer from Appalachia. I watched it on YouTube, but I wish I had been there in person.
3) I love getting book mail, and this week I received my Stories & Suspects box filled with fantastic mystery books from Bantam. It features the new book from Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, about a mother-daughter duo living in Los Angeles during WWII who end up spying on people involved in the Nazi movement for the US government. It has a lot of resonance for events happening today. It also has a new crime drama by William Landay (I liked his Defending Jacob), a psychological suspense from Catherine Steadman (The Family Game- a Book of the Month selection for October), a locked room mystery by Jilly Gagnon (All Dressed Up), and their Buzz Pick, a debut novel from Erin E. Adams titled Jackal about missing girls in a Rust Belt town. The box was sponored by Tony's Chocolonely, one of my favorite chocolate treats.
5) I adore Mary Beth Keane's books, and her upcoming 2023 novel, The Half Moon, is wonderful. Malcolm and Jess are a happy couple living in Gillam, a small town a hour upstate from New York City. Jess desperately wants a baby, and after several expensive and emotionally draining IVF tries doesn't undertstand why Malcolm is willing to give up on their dream. Malcolm's dream is to own the Half Moon, a bar he has worked in for years. They are at a crossroads, and the novel explores how that came to be and where it is headed. It is phenomenal, I read it a little bit at a time because I did not want this fantastic book to end. I wanted to stay with Malcolm and Jess forever. 
4) Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy is back on Sunday nights on CNN, and we are enjoying traveling to the different regions of Italy. The first few episodes took us Calabria, Sardinia and Puglia and we've seen a lot of seafood dishes this season.
Have a great, safe, healthy week.
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