Staff Choices

Mad Men meets The Devil Wears Prada

Park Avenue Summer by Renée Rosen is a highly entertaining, enlightening, and fascinating historical fiction novel that immediately captured my attention and held my interest right to the very end.

The story follows a young, single woman named Alice Weiss as she relocates to New York City in 1965, to experience the life her late mother always encouraged her to live. With the assistance of her mother’s best friend Elaine Sloan, Alice is hired as the personal secretary to Cosmopolitan’s new editor-in-chief, Helen Gurley Brown, who along with Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem changed the world. As Helen fights to keep Cosmo afloat, Alice juggles the never-ending office gossip, lies, betrayal and manipulation, and her own heart breaking relationships.

Helen Gurley Brown was a visionary who fought to eliminate barriers in a male dominated workforce. Throughout the story, it gives us a glimpse of a generation of women taking New York City by storm and inspiring those who came after them. Grab a copy of this book, a martini and settle in for an amazing read!

The story of two broken souls trying to become whole is at the core of Linda Holmes' novel, Evvie Drake Starts Over.

Evvie is reeling from the sudden death of her husband and grappling with what it means to be a young widow. On the day he died, she had packed her car and planned to leave her husband. As she has not shared this secret with anyone close to her, Evvie struggles with guilt and lack of closure.

Dean Tenney is a former Major League pitcher who has troubles of his own. He suffers from the “yips” and just wants a quiet place to move on from his unplanned ending to his career.  He rents the apartment at the back of Evvie’s house. These two lost characters form an unexpected friendship that slowly turns into something more.

Evvie Drake Starts Over is a heartwarming story that is relatable and uplifting. If you are someone who enjoys baseball and a light romantic story in a small town setting, this one is for you. Holmes is also a correspondent for NPR and host of the "Pop Culture Happy Hour" podcast.

Gravity is the Thing is a self-help book, sort of, in fiction. Abi Sorensen is the owner of the Happiness Café and mother of four-year-old Oscar. She and several others have been invited to an all-expenses paid retreat to learn the truth about The Guidebook, something that all the participants have all been receiving in mysterious, out-of-sequence and puzzling chapters since they were teenagers. Abi has always associated this book with a tragic event from her youth and hungers for answers.

At first, the story may seem illogical or absurd but I found it to be a uniquely told novel about hope, trust, coping with grief and with motherhood. It is optimistic, sad, self-deceiving, bittersweet and romantic. Abi is taken on a long journey of introspection about past decisions and her belief that she was solely responsible for the emotional health in many of her relationships.

Author Jaclyn Moriarty has written several novels for young adults and children. This is her first novel for adults.

In Alex Michaelides debut novel, The Silent Patient, Alicia Berenson appears to have it all. She is a well-known painter and her husband is a famous fashion photographer. What would motive this seemingly content woman to shoot her husband five times in the face and then never speak again? Psychotherapist, Theo Faber, is desperate to work with Alicia to see if he can breakthrough her silence and finally get to the truth.

As it turns out, Alicia feels a draw to Theo as well. At a slow, but not tedious and incredibly suspenseful pace, Alicia begins to open up and little pieces of her story are shared for the reader and Theo to put together. What follows is a suspenseful, thrilling and surprising story that fans of B. A. Paris and Clare Macintosh will thoroughly enjoy.

An adaption of this twisty best-selling novel is in development and will soon come to the big screen.

Actress Alba August is luminous portraying beloved children’s author Astrid Lindgren of the Pippi Longstocking series in this Swedish language film, Becoming Astrid. Her performance from gawky teenager to a young woman is convincing, tender and compassionate.

Bored and restless, Astrid lived with her large family in rural Sweden. At age 16, she began a job at the local newspaper, first writing up ads and obituary notices, then gained new responsibilities of writing articles. An attraction developed between her married editor and herself and Astrid is soon pregnant. This is really where the story begins. She is forced to move away from her family because of the social mores of the time, around 1926. When her child is born, she must leave him with a foster mother in Denmark. When Astrid finds out that the foster mother can no longer care for young Lasse, she must step up and bring him home. To comfort her son who she barely knows, we see the beginnings of her story-telling talent as she weaves tales to ease his anxiety of being separated from the only person he knew as his mother.

Though her burdens are great, there is a brightness and humanity in how all the actors depict these real-life individuals. It was especially heartwarming to see a reconciliation with her estranged mother. I highly recommend this movie; watch with a box of tissues close at hand.

Erin Lee Carr is the daughter of New York Times journalist and author David Carr. In this case, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Erin is drawn to journalism and documentary filmmaking, her father is her guiding light. Preserved in emails and texts his advice to her is tender, loving, incredibly supportive, eloquent, direct, gruff, blunt, hard-hitting, spot-on and delivered with just the right touch whenever Erin reaches out to him.

Journalism is a competitive, work hard, play hard environment, constantly changing with breaking news and evolving with the rise of social media. Life is not easy. Both Erin and her father got caught in the trap of losing themselves to addictions and addictive behavior. How do you break free? Erin attributes her hard-won success to her father, leading her forward.  He opened some doors for her professionally but she had to do the work. She has spoken for a TEDx talk about her work and has directed two documentaries for HBO. After his sudden death when Erin is 26 years old, she is stopped short, forced to look at her life and actions closely without filters.

All That You Leave Behind is a candid, moving memoir to celebrate fathers, families and I think this is a good read for high school and college graduates.

In the author’s acknowledgements, she includes a thank you and directive to her readers: “YOU (for reading this; now go write someone you love an email).”

Author Nina Willner is from a strong family. Forty autumns, forty years of an oppressive, ruthless regime that once in place, no one believed it would ever end. After WWII ended, communism took hold in East Germany; one war morphed into a different kind of war. Eventually, the Berlin Wall went up around the entire perimeter of the city. With such a constant state of fear, oppression, deprivation and suspicion, Nina’s grandmother created a safe haven in their home, a family wall.

Many of us watched on television as the Berlin Wall fell. Nina’s perspective and her family’s first-hand accounts make this story come alive as quite a history lesson. This memoir provides an intense, unique portrait of life behind the Iron Curtain.

Four thousand miles is a long way to travel, especially on foot. Traveling by car isolates and insulates you from everyone and everything you pass; so Andrew Forsthoefel walked. Newly graduated from college at age 23, Andrew had something to prove, to find and to learn as he made his way across America from Pennsylvania to San Francisco by way of Texas. His parents’ divorce when he was a teenager was a pivotal time in his life, a shadow, a reckoning he needed to address.

While on the road he is frequently surprised by the kindnesses of strangers. Many took him into their home, fed him a meal, or allowed him to camp on their property. By keeping his eyes open, he kept his mind open, meeting people from different cultures, religions, and backgrounds; he listened. And when he was alone, he had the writings of Rilke and Whitman for company.

Hurt walking, urge walking, dream walking, fury walking, scream walking, dance walking, weep walking, why walking, beauty walking – Andrew experienced all of these.

His writing got better as the book went on. He became more confident, more introspective, asking different questions of himself and others he meets trying to understand the world around him. Walking to Listen may appeal to those who also read Wild by Cheryl Strayed, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, and Tracks by Robyn Davidson.

The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin is a family saga that spans almost a century, starting in the not so distant future and looking backwards as famous poet Fiona Skinner reflects on her life. An environmental crisis has significantly altered life on earth, but this is not a dystopian novel. Instead, we spend most of our time with the four Skinner children, who first lose their father to a sudden heart attack, and then their mother to “the pause”, what the kids have dubbed her long period of severe depression that essentially leaves them parentless for several years. This rudderless childhood forges strong bonds between the siblings, but also impacts each of them in ways that will haunt them throughout their lives.

The Last Romantics does a beautiful job of conveying all  the messiness, heartbreak, and beauty of what makes up a family, what constitutes love.

The River by Peter Heller is one of the best books I've read so far this year, but it is hard to classify. It is in parts a riveting suspense tale, an outdoor adventure, and an elegiac ode to nature.  But mostly this novel is a beautiful, heartrending story of friendship between two young men. Best friends and avid outdoorsmen Wynn and Jack are on a canoe trip in Northern Canada when everything starts to go horribly wrong. They must call on all their survival skills and instincts as they are forced to outrun a vicious forest fire while simultaneously trying to save the life of a woman who has been brutally attacked. Facing constant danger from fellow men and nature, both Wynn and Jack must confront their deepest held values, revealing fault lines in their friendship. The River would make an awesome action film...I'm already casting the two main characters in my mind.