Late Fall 2026 Book Marks
Fiction:
Hollow Bones by Jodi Picoult
Picoult’s book nails the cultural moment, bringing together the 25th anniversary of September 11th and the fascination with the Lindsay Clancey case and the issue of post-partum depression. When Molly Fitzgerald was two months old, she lost her mother in the 2001 attacks. Now, as the current head of the Rhode Island Dept. for Emergency Preparedness, she has made that loss into her mission and she knows how to prep for anything. Add to that she is married to a police officer ( a character who makes a reappearance from “My Sister’s Keeper.” Molly is thrown a curve ball when her unplanned pregnancy beings to both untangle and clarify various tendrils of her life, including deep secrets about her mother.
Fiction:
The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian
It’s a hot August day in 1978. Eighteen-year-old golf phenom, Mira Winston, is practicing her swing on the tee near the caddy shack. Her ball tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams into the temple of high school junior Kenny Foster, who is dead minutes later. Although everyone initially agrees it was an accident, Mira must live with the consequences. But instead of dealing with her feelings, Mira turns to her married lover, three decades her senior, and develops a fascination with the dead caddy’s sisters. When an investigator looks closely at the torn net, Mira’s history of recklessness and rumors of her inappropriate affair turns the community against her. I loved this story from the first page at the green-lawned Westchester country club to the courtroom scenes.
Fiction:
John of John by Douglas Stuart
John-Calum Macleod returns to his hometown, broke and unemployed after art school on the tiny Scottish island of Harris. In this windswept, sheep laden setting, where the textile and weaving industry has largely moved overseas, nothing changes. Cal resumes his old life, stuck between the two people who defined his childhood: his sheep farmer father John, (a tweed weaver and pillar of their local Presbyterian church) and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian, who has resented her son-in-law for decades. Cal feels the judgement from his pious father and John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to embrace his religion. As lambing season turns to shearing season, the book takes an interesting turn, and all the beautifully drawn characters are synched together more tightly.
Fiction:
The Three Graces of Pearl Street by Elizabeth Wellington Rollins
Meet the three Graces, 96-year-old matriarch Graziella, her daughter Grace and granddaughter Ella. The three generations of Italian American women find themselves living under the same roof in a heartwarming novel that explores generational bonds, mother-daughter relationships and the connection of blood and secrets in working class New York. Graziella runs the family with an iron fist and works in the parish food kitchen, while her daughter Grace is facing a divorce, battling menopause and feeling uninspired. Ella is in her own kind of limbo, searching for a life that has more meaning than the one she is living. The characters, dialogue and familiar struggles of women under the same roof make this a sweet and nostalgic story.
Fiction:
Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason
Sophie Patterson is working her dream job at a local book festival, where she gets to rub elbows with famous authors. From the outside, life is full, with a husband, close sibling, and a best friend named Emma. But Sophie’s reality is a very different story. She’s about to be fired and over time she’s slowly isolated herself from everyone who loves her. When Sophie rediscovers a beloved author from her past, she devours their books and begins to imagine that they’re friends. What happens next is the magic of Mason’s writing as she brings us inside Sophie’s world.
Non-Fiction:
Plot Twist – Life, Craft and the Messy First Draft by Harlan Coben
The master of blockbuster thrillers has written a deeply personal and down-to-earth memoir that combines his best advice on writing. Coben writes like he talks, undercutting the subject with humility and fabulous storytelling, while including concrete examples. He’s quick to say he doesn’t have all the answers, but at the end of the day, it’s about putting your butt in the seat. This book offers tips and tricks and reassurances for every writer, from the person who just wants to journal, to the determined aspiring novelist.
Non-Fiction:
London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
In a quiet London neighborhood, Rachelle Brettler began to worry when her son didn’t come home. Days later, she received the horrific news that Zac was dead. Rachelle and her husband struggled to understand what had happened. Zac had been troubled, but not suicidal. But there was much they didn’t know, starting with his fictitious alter-ego as the son of a Russian oligarch. Zac had gotten caught up with the London underground, including a murderous gangster called “Indian Dave.” As they investigate Zac’s death, the Brettlers come in contact with a dangerous London, far beneath the glamorous city of posh mansions and private nightclubs. The book is both an inquiry into an inexplicable death and an intimate and touching inquiry into the challenges of parenting today.
Non-Fiction:
The Last Free Women – A Daring Escape from Afghanistan and Coming of Age in America by Rebecca Blumenstein
In 2021, the world watched in shock as Kabul fell when the Taliban swept in, plunging the city into desperation. Anyone who’d been connected to foreigners, military, journalists, NGOs and translators, knew that retribution was coming, which set off a frantic effort to evacuate people who had helped. This is the singular story of the incredible effort by the New York Times to help evacuate the Kabul bureau’s Afghan employees and families and an intimate portrait of four brave women as they start over and seek to rebuild their lives in the West. At the end of the day, it’s a life-affirming story.
Non-Fiction:
Ahead of All Parting – On Learning to Live with an Open Heart by Barry Michels
As one of the most sought-after therapists to the stars, Michels transformative approach earned him a giant reputation in Hollywood and beyond. While at the height of his power, the author’s world crumbled when he received a Lewy Body Dementia diagnosis following a series of troubling symptoms. As he began telling friends, family and patients about this devastating news, that vulnerability allowed him to discover more about himself, unleashing a creativity and depth in his relationships that ended up astonishing him. This memoir reminds us how embracing our humanity can help unlock our own life force.
Non-Fiction:
True North – On the Road in Canada by Paul Theroux
A seasoned and prolific travel writer, Theroux has chronicled the world’s most far-flung destinations in a career spanning nearly 60 years. This book begins as the capstone of a North American road trip trilogy and takes a turn into ancestral history as he traces his roots from France through 17th century Quebec. The book’s sweeping view of Canada examines the geographic and regional variation and the grandeur. He also looks at the changes wrought by the Trump administration, questions of assimilation and Canada’s more lenient laws and human rights.
Thriller:
Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd
The husband and wife writing team are known for their thrillers about rich people behaving badly, and this one does not disappoint. An Elon Musk-like figure has perfected time travel, available only to those with deep pockets. The book opens with a group that’s gone back in time to experience the Blitz in 1941 wartime London. But there’s been a glitch in the meticulously planned experience. To complicate matters, the whole experience is being filmed by a documentary film maker, who’s shooting when the group arrives back in the present, bloody and traumatized, one of their members missing. And so begins a twisting but well-plotted story of what could happen when you mess with the past and rewrite the future.
Anthology:
20 Over 60 by Beth Weinhouse and David Galef
Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Theroux, and Jane Gardam are among the authors of these vibrant, moving, and often hilarious short stories that form a portrait of later life that’s often drowned out in our youth-obsessed culture. Some of the highlights are a retired couple whose steal pepper mills from high-end restaurants, a woman juggling her husband and ex-husband who are in the same hospital, and a wife who discovers her husband has gifted her an STD while they’re attending a wedding. Life after sixty is strange, surprising, and vibrant. We’re not dead yet, baby.
Memoir:
This is What Happens When Women Read by Julianna Glasse
I was unprepared for the raw honesty and propulsion of this memoir about the awakening of an Evangelical Christian pop star during her marriage to a professional baseball player. As Julianna began to read “unauthorized books,” (Plato, Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson!) she begins to look at the world from a different perspective and question the restrictive patriarchal construct of her marriage. She begins to ask questions that expand her sense of self until she ultimately grows out of her restrictive community. The rest of the story moves from her nasty, public divorce and shaming to her discovery of sexual freedom and then a low point, including suicidal ideation, that many would not have survived.
Non-Fiction:
The Saved Effect – True Stories of Lives Reclaimed by People who Were Ready to Act by Brad Newbury and Keira Newbury
Veteran firefighter and EMT co-authors tackle the moments when someone steps forward in a split-second decision to intervene and save a life. This is a collection of true stories that demonstrate how, in a single moment of readiness, we all have the power to ensure future birthdays and days that make up a life that would have otherwise been interrupted by accident or tragedy or one split second of hesitation. The lesson in the stories of this book is that saving a life doesn’t end when the moment passes. It’s a reminder that saving a life continues forward in time, and it inspires us to be prepared for when the moment comes.
Lee Woodruff Speaker-Author-Executive Media Trainer
Leewoodruff.com
Leave a Reply