Episode 332 || August New Release Roundup
The Bookshelf’s store manager, Olivia and online sales coordinator, Lucy join Annie this week to share their August new release rundowns.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, visit our new website:
Palm Beach by Mary Adkins
When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen
Ghosts by Dolly Alderton
The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir by Kat Chow
Holdout by Jeffrey Kluger
Dead Wednesday by Jerry Spinelli
Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka
Mrs. March by Virginia Feito
Say It Out Loud by Allison Varnes
The Family Firm by Emily Oster
The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters by Julie Klam
The Artist and the Eternal City by Loyd Grossman
The Arbornaut by Meg Lowman
Yours Cheerfully by AJ Pearce
The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert
From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in South Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website, www.bookshelfthomasville.com.
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found below.
Special thanks to Dylan and his team at Studio D Podcast Production for sound and editing and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
This week, Annie is reading Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer by Rax King. Olivia is reading We Are Family by Lebron James. Lucy is reading The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.
If you liked what you heard on today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on iTunes. Or, if you’re so inclined, support us on Patreon, where you can hear our staff’s weekly New Release Tuesday conversations, read full book reviews in our monthly Shelf Life newsletter, follow along as Hunter and I conquer a classic, and receive free media mail shipping on all your online book orders. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
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Episode Transcript:
Annie: [00:00:00] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.
“Maybe friendship is being the guardian of another person's hope. Leave it with me and I'll look after it for a while , if it feels too heavy for now.”
- Dolly Alderton, Ghosts
I’m Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and today, we’re kicking off a new monthly episode installment: New Release Roundup. Every four weeks, I’ll sit down with shop floor manager Olivia Schaffer and online sales coordinator Lucy Stoltzfus to discuss our favorite newly released titles of the month. It’s a way to highlight new books without you feeling too terribly overwhelmed by your maybe-already-daunting TBR list. We’ve been doing something pretty similar each week for our friends on Patreon, but weekly releases were getting hard to keep up with, and we think this will be more manageable for everyone, readers and booksellers alike.
Hi Olivia.
Olivia: [00:01:15] Hey.
Annie: [00:01:16] Hi Lucy.
Lucy: [00:01:17] Hello.
Annie: [00:01:17] Oh my gosh. Lucy's here in person.
Lucy: [00:01:20] I'm here!
Annie: [00:01:21] Normally we'll be recording long distance because Lucy helps coordinate our online sales from Pennsylvania, which is very exciting.
Lucy: [00:01:28] But here I am in the beautiful humid south.
Olivia: [00:01:31] Feel like you should sing something.
Lucy: [00:01:33] What would it be? Why? What could I do?
Annie: [00:01:41] Uh, we're so glad she's here. It is very fun to get to record all three together. We used to do that on the reg like, uh, we called it News Day Tuesday, which I believe was Lucy's invention and we did it on Patreon. Olivia and I've been carrying that torch for a year, I think, a year or more, but Lucy [00:02:00] reads so differently and we're very excited to have her voice back added to the mix and I think doing these on a monthly basis, rather than a weekly. It'll help me, I don't know if that's a selfish decision, but it just felt like you and I were talking about like 10 books each week. Just feels like a lot.
Olivia: [00:02:18] It was a lot.
Annie: [00:02:18] And so this is really going to narrow down kind of what we're featuring, which brings me to Olivia. Tell us what your tastes are. What's your literary genres?
Olivia: [00:02:30] Very sophisticated if I may. I love a good mystery, a cozy mystery, all the way up to a thriller psychological thriller and then I also read a lot of middle grade and chapter books as well.
Annie: [00:02:42] And Lucy, how would you describe your literary tastes?
Lucy: [00:02:46] Historical fiction. Um, I usually do kind of off the wall historical fiction, but I also, I'm going to talk about some kind of typical historical fiction and then also non-fiction, some memoirs. Um, [00:03:00] a couple of the ones on here are kind of like memoir mixed with non-fiction stuff.
Annie: [00:03:03] Okay, perfect. Okay. So we're going to do this round Robin style as we used to do. I will kick us off. The first book I'm featuring is Palm Beach. This is by Mary Adkins. It releases on August 3rd in hardback. I love this book. It's compulsively readable. Like I think I read it, it was one of those books that I started reading it and then took it out to lunch with me, like took myself out to lunch to read it by myself, just delightful. Uh, took it in the car with me when Jordan and I drove to Bainbridge, like everywhere I went, this book went with me until I finished it.
It is a story of Rebecca and Mickey. They are New York city residents who have decided to move to Palm Beach, Florida where Mickey, who is an actor has decided to kind of become a house manager, I think is the term they use for a very wealthy billionaire in south Florida and so the opulence of Palm Beach and West Palm Beach and the discrepancies or the [00:04:00] differences between those two communities, um, Mary Adkins really writes beautifully about.
What I liked most about this book was it's what I would call like sophisticated beach read, like you take it with you to the beach, but it also gets you thinking about things because the story is really interesting. It's like these two relatively liberal, progressive, um, husband and wife, like they moved to this town where now they are dealing with kind of this upper echelon of wealth and what oh, you know what grates against their conscience versus what do they kind of agree with? So there's that happening because Rebecca is a writer and she's a journalist who writes about wealth disparity and so the irony is great.
Um, but then there are also things about parenting and raising your kids and decisions that we're forced to make, um, when our circumstances change and so I think that this would be a great book club book. Um, I also think that if you were headed to the beach, you should take this with you, but like with your friends, so you can talk about it when you're done. I [00:05:00] just feel like Mary Adkins somehow managed to make a really great fly, you know, fly through it book while also tackling some tough subject matter and handling things with a lot of nuance, which I really appreciate. So that is Palm Beach by Mary Adkins out on August 3rd. Olivia, what do you got?
Olivia: [00:05:18] Okay. My first book is Holdout by Jeffrey Kluger. Also out on August 3rd. Um, and this one, I can't tell you too much about it because a lot of it will give away the spoiler and plot twists, not necessarily plot twist, but a spoiler for sure. Um, but this is about three astronauts who were, um, right in space. Obviously like right above the earth, they were circling earth. They were nowhere farther. Um, when like something terrible happened at the space station, they were all three supposed to evacuate and one stayed. She chose to, uh, not follow directions and stay in space [00:06:00] and you don't find out for a little bit in the book why she did this, but it causes a whole huge commotion of things to happen.
Um, it was fascinating. I loved all the characters in this book, which can be rare. Yeah. I thought it was so well done. This is perfect for people who really liked Project Hail Mary, but also like Falling and Hostage, like a good like plane ride thriller, but also has to do with some outer space. Not, it's not big on like the science fiction, part of the outer space, if that helps people.
Annie: [00:06:32] Sounds good to me.
Lucy: [00:06:34] I feel like every time I hear a Olivia described a thriller, I'm like, do I like thrillers?
Annie: [00:06:41] It sounds very good. She does such a good job, Lucy, what do you got?
Lucy: [00:06:45] Okay. Um, my first book. is Releasing on August 3rd. It's The Family Firm, by Emily Oster. Um, she's a best seller of Expecting Better and, uh, Crib Sheet were her two [00:07:00] previous books. Um, and she is a, an economist and so, and also a mother of two. So she, um, talks about in Expecting Better, she talks about pregnancy and she basically looks at all the data. So things like, can you eat sushi when you're pregnant? Well, this is what the data actually says, even though this is what your grandma told you or whatever. Um, and then Crib Sheet was about like the newborn stage and the infant years. You know, can a baby actually eat honey in their first year or will they get botulism? Right. Um, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry. I'll tell you all these things the first time. Um,
Annie: [00:07:41] Lucy's run it, so we don't have to.
Lucy: [00:07:44] Um, she's also really good follow on instagram. Um, she does like question and answers that, um, are good. She's tough. She talks a lot about COVID and making decisions for your family throughout COVID and so this one, The Family Firm is, um, the subtitle is [00:08:00] a data-driven guide to better decision making in the early school years. So it's basically age like five to 12, and she talks about specific questions, you know, like private school versus homeschooling versus public school, but she also gives you kind of like an economists, um, or like a data-driven guide to actually how you make decisions about your family. Um, and so I think it'll be really useful if you have kids that are approaching five. I mean, kid is one and a half so, um, but I still find it to be useful. So I'm really excited about that one.
Annie: [00:08:33] Those books sound like with an Enneagram five will want.
Olivia: [00:08:36] Oh and for a One too. Love good data.
Annie: [00:08:40] Give me all the data. I don't need your opinion. Please just give me data. Just give me information. Okay. My next one, Olivia, I was worried that you and I were going to overlap on this one. Okay. I think you will like it, it is called When the Reckoning Comes. This is a paperback original by LaTanya McQueen. I am very intrigued by this. I was already intrigued by the premise, but the more [00:09:00] digging I did, it sounds like it's kind of going to be a thriller, horror potentially as well so I know.
So I, but the premise originally sounded like an Annie pick to me. So it is about a young woman named Mira who grew up in the deep south and she is a Black woman and she goes back to her hometown because her best friend, who's white, is having a wedding and the wedding is at a plantation and so she goes back to this wedding. So there's lots, the reason, it sounds like an Annie book to me is reckoning with your past, with your identity and like three college friends or three high school friends kind of reuniting.
Um, but then things start happening on the plantation and maybe there's some, there's some hauntings. Maybe there's a ghost element, it's hard to tell um, but basically not only is Mira reckoning with kind of who her friend is and their friendship and their relationship, but also who she is and then what this plantation means to her and what it means to her [00:10:00] ancestors um, but it sounds like it also has a dark kind of sinister element maybe along and I feel like we throw this comp out a lot, but I do think the applies, maybe like Get Out, um, because. I don't know the things that are happening and Get Out, it sounds like a reminiscent of what's happening in when the reckoning comes.
So I am going to read this and then I'll, I'll tell you if it's an Olivia or an Annie book, but I think it sounds really good and I like that it's a paperback original. I like that it's accessible and it's pretty thin. So it's not some kind of tell that you've got to wade through. Um, it sounds like a pretty succinct, um, suspense story but also kind of grappling with who you are, um, who you are and the repercussions of that. So it is called When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen I really, really want to read this one.
Lucy: [00:10:43] That reminds me of The Rib King too. Came out last
Annie: [00:10:46] year. It looks so good. Yes, it did look good and I started it and I really did like. I just didn't finish it. I'm telling you when you start a book, as you both know, when you start a book and you ultimately decide it's not a shelf subscription, moving on.
Lucy: [00:10:59] Come [00:11:00] back to this later.
Annie: [00:11:01] And then this book, because it's a paper, like, I'm glad it's a paperback book because it's a paperback original. I put it on the wayside cause I was like, oh, I can't, I can't read this for shelf subscription so got to move on. Anyway. Okay. Your turn.
Olivia: [00:11:14] Okay. Book is called Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka. This is it's also out August 3rd, hardcover release. Um, this is about six assassins on a train in Japan.
Annie: [00:11:28] Happiest person talking about assassins I've ever heard.
Olivia: [00:11:31] It was so much fun. I loved it so much, I read it on like a whole week's worth of lunch breaks. It was just so fun. Um, but you've like you get chapters from each set of, or not set of assessments, but each assassin, one of them comes in a pair, which is why I said set. Lemon and Tangerine are their code names and then there's Ladybug and, oh, there's another one, but I can't remember. It was the names are great and the characters so oddly [00:12:00] quirky, uh, they're so good. One of them is this high-schooler who is also an assassin called the Prince and he's holding a grown man hostage. That is not a spoiler, happens like right in the beginning. It's so much fun, highly recommend. Highly recommended.
Annie: [00:12:16] It sounds really fun. Fast paced?
Olivia: [00:12:18] Super fast paced. Yeah. And you'll love the characters.
Annie: [00:12:21] Okay. Okay. Good to know.
Lucy: [00:12:26] Um, okay. So my next book is called The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters and it's by Julie Klam. It comes out on August 10th. I almost chose this one for a show subscriptions. Sorry to say that, you know, a spoiler, it's not my shelf, so you can pre-order it if you want. Um, but yes, I found something that I liked more and I won't be talking about it today cause it doesn't come out until September. Um, I'll leave you guys wanting more. So The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters, um, it's by Julie Klam, who's [00:13:00] a journalist and she has this like story in her family about these great aunts of hers.
She, I think there's three, um, great aunts and there's like a great uncle who is not as much part of the story, but there are these like almost legendary characters in the family's history where they talk about how they came from nothing. They immigrated and they became like extremely wealthy and then they left millions of dollars to like these universities and they all lived together in New York city in their old, into their old age, but they, none of them ever married and, you know, there's just like, um, interesting stories about them in the family and so she decides that she's going to pursue this story and find out the reality of it. So, what it ends up being is like this mix of family genealogy and, um, like personal memoir with her story of, she travels around, um, try and find out, [00:14:00] uh, the truth about what these great aunts were like and how they made their money. Um, just really fun if you like those genealogy shows, which I love, then you will really like.
Annie: [00:14:12] Yeah. Or Inheritance by Danny Shapiro. That sounds Julie Klam. She wrote something else a few years ago. She wrote a book about friendship, I think that I really read and liked. Um, so I'm intrigued by that one too.
Um, okay. My next one is really exactly like Annie B Jones' personal tastes. So it's Ghosts by Dolly Alderton. This book has already been out in the UK. It comes out in the U S on August 3rd. I saw this book first featured by Kate Storehoff, who is the manager at Bookmarks in North Carolina, former bookshelf staffer and she and I have some overlapping tastes. She raved about this one. I adore this book. It is right up there with, uh, Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiney. I think this book is fantastic when I say it's an Annie, like right in my wheelhouse of tastes.
It is like a romcom, an adult coming of age [00:15:00] and a dysfunctional family story but when I say dysfunctional family, All the people like each other. Like, and so I really just loved this book because the main character, her name is Nina and Nina is turning, I think it's 32 or 33. The book starts on her birthday and immediately, like she says, things like that, I was marking in my book, like I finished and there were so many funny one-liners and things I laughed out loud at. Jordan was like, are you laughing at your book? Are you laughing at me? And I was like, oh, I'm laughing at this book. There were just so many witty kind of repertaes that I really liked and, but not only is kind of Dali coming or, um, Nina, the main character she's kind of coming of age, you know, in her early thirties, but she's got friends with children and so she's navigating that.
She is single so she's navigating that and then her dad is suffering from dementia and so she is struggling with taking care of her aging parents and kind of helping her mom grapple with this. So like there's a lot happening here. The book gets its title from the fact that, uh, [00:16:00] Nina finally decides to online date and she really likes this guy and then like, he tells her, he loves her and then he ghosts her and Nina has never online data before and so she's like, what, what is happening? And watching her, I got married so young that I have no experience with this but like listening and watching and reading about Nina's experience sounds like exactly what I would do. Like, like Jerry Seinfeld, like, do we not live in a civilized society? Like I would be so upset was confused and I just loved her character so much. I found her to be delightful and charming.
Um, there's this really great line opening about how all the eccentric, eccentricities we have as kid, if you give them time, they make you an interesting adult, which I think is a fascinating, lovely concept. So I just really liked the writing in this. If you like Katherine Heiney or Nora Ephron or Amy Poeppel I think, um, I think really this will belong right among those books. I loved it so much. It's called Ghosts by Dolly Alderton.
Olivia: [00:16:57] Okay. My next one is called Dead [00:17:00] Wednesday. It's by Jerry Spinelli, which I think most people should know from like Star Girl. Yeah. I got the reaction. Um, it is out on August 3rd. It's another hard cover release for middle grades. I would definitely say 10 and up on this one. Um, but this is about a kid named Worm. That's his nickname, it's not his real name. Um, and he got that name cause he he's very quiet and he likes to like hide. So they always joke that he like borrows. Um, but his best friend is the opposite. He's very extroverted, very goofy will like joke around a lot. Um, but worm is excited for the first time ever for school because, uh, every year the kids going into high school, eighth graders going into ninth grade. Is that right? They have a Dead Wednesday where the kids come in and their homeroom is super quiet and the teacher gives them a card of the kid who died from a reason that could have been avoided. I know, I know you guys [00:18:00] stay with me.
Lucy: [00:18:03] So bleak.
Olivia: [00:18:03] I ran this by Erin and she's also a parent of an 11 year old child. Okay. I've got it cleared but so they give you this card and you go put on a black shirt and your whole day at school, everyone ignores you as if you are dead. Okay. Stay with me,
Annie: [00:18:20] just such a traumatic exercise.
Olivia: [00:18:21] Worm was so excited because he finally can just like be himself and no one will pay attention to them, make a big deal about it or anything. So he puts on his black shirt and the girl from his card shows up in ghost form and he gets to like talk with this ghost and like, they go off and do like some crazy things, but then it all comes down to just like who was helping, who was the ghost help bringing Worm out of his shell or was he helping the ghost reconcile and like move on? Oh, it was really well done. Did not dwell on the dead kid part.
Lucy: [00:18:54] It just reminded me of when Dwight Shrute, like bring your kid to work day, [00:19:00] read them that chairman morality tale book, which by the way we read in my family growing up, because there's a story where little Johnny suck a thumb, gets his thumbs cut off.
Annie: [00:19:13] Jerry Spinelli's just German or something. Oh, Lucy is yours similarly bleak?
Lucy: [00:19:24] Absolutely not. Um, I did not expect to like this one as much just I did. It's called The Artist and the Eternal City. It's nonfiction and it's about a Gianlorenzo Bernini, who was a famous sculptor, uh, specifically an artist in general, um, in Rome and, uh, the subtitle is Bernini, Pope Alexander, the seventh, the eighth, and the making of Rome. Um, and so to me, It was a really well-written nonfiction and it's talking about, um, Bernini was, um, patronized by the Pope. So this, this [00:20:00] Pope Alexander the eighth, um, took him under his wing and try to like regather the power of the papal state by fostering the arts and, um, and so I just, I went to Rome with my mom and like 2015 or something like that, 2014. And it just took me right back there. I remember I was going, oh, I remember that sculpture I saw at that museum and so, um, just really kind of a fun late summer, almost a travelog.
He's talking a lot about the city of Rome. And if you like art or art history, you'll really like it. If you like Italy, I think you'll like it a really great one. So that comes. Also on August 3rd, it's called The Artist and the Eternal City by Lloyd Grossman.
Olivia: [00:20:46] You know, in my head, how I related to that book, not my mom, who's an art teacher, so, sorry, mom. It was Angels and Demons that Robert Lang
Annie: [00:20:55] Aw, damn. [00:21:00] Um, okay. My next one is The Reading List. This is By Sara Nisha Adams. This is a book that I really like started it and really liked it and then loaned it to my mom who also was really enjoying it. So if you typically like more PG lit, I think this might be a safe pick for you. Um, this is fiction about a young woman named Alicia. She is, I'm trying to remember. I do not think this was originally published in the UK, but I want to say this was set in the UK`. I could be wrong about that, but basically Alicia grows up going to this library and she, the library starts to, um, not receive as much funding and, um, Alicia goes there to kind of for comfort, but she's not maybe the world's best reader and she doesn't really read a lot of books, but one day when she's at the library, she opens a book and she sees a list inside the book and the, the list is full of literature and so she kind of makes her way through the list, but she's also curious, like who left the list? They're like, why, why this [00:22:00] list of books? What are these books mean?
And then at the same time, she is kind of dealing with her granddad and so it's a really, to me, it's a book about granddaughters and grandfathers and a book about family. A lot about family tradition and about the reading life. So if you are a person who loves books about books, I'm thinking of feel good books like The Storied Life of Aj Firky or something like that, I think this one will be right up your alley. Um, I really liked what I read. I think I read probably 50 or a hundred pages and then pass it along to my mom who also was really enjoying it. It sounds like it could make a good book club book.
Um, I feel like we get a lot of customers in here who like books that then make them make them bigger list of other books to read and so I think this one will certainly do that by just nature of what it's about. Um, so if you like books with a strong family dynamic, but also books about books, I think this would be a good one. It i`s called The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams. It is out on August 3rd. It's a hard back as well. Okay.
Olivia: [00:22:55] My next one is called Mrs. March by Virginia Feito. [00:23:00] Um, I tried to look up how to pronounce that name and I came to no conclusion. I'm so sorry. We're trying, it's coming out August 10th. Um, and this is about Mrs. March, who was George March's wife, the author and it's all about the scene sets it up perfectly in that she is going to like their local butchery shop to go pick up her normal needs and her George just published a new book and she goes up to the counter and the woman asks if she's read the new book yet and she's like, not yet and then she asks if the main character was inspired by herself, in which case that makes and what it makes her spiral, essentially, because the main character in this book is a, I don't know what word to use.
Annie: [00:23:47] I can't help you.
Olivia: [00:23:48] Um, a woman who uses her body.
Lucy: [00:23:53] It was so much worse.
Annie: [00:23:57] The lady of the night?
Olivia: [00:23:58] Lady of [00:24:00] the night. Mrs. March was just like, did he based that character off me, is that what he thinks about me? And she starts over analyzing every single thing he does to the point where like she does very much reached like near psychosis. Um, so well done and it's one of those books that like, it builds so slowly, but it's snowballs and so you just read it in one sitting because you just, you can't escape her mind, you know, you have to get to the end.
Annie: [00:24:28] Okay. Isn't this the one we talked about where like Elizabeth Moss is going to be in the movie?
Olivia: [00:24:33] Yes.
Annie: [00:24:33] Okay. I'm intrigued by that one. Okay.
Lucy: [00:24:37] My next book is called The Arbornaut by Meg Lowman. It's out on August 10th. Um, this is a, like an environmental memoir. Um, Meg Lowman was, I guess, instrumental in the, um, field of Arbornauts, which is, which are people who study the like tree tops. So [00:25:00] she started in the seventies, she's retired now, but, um, she would like climb up into the tree tops to and then like set up like walkways up on the tops of the trees to study what's happening up there because they call it the eighth, the eighth continent or something like that, because it's like, apparently it's totally unstudied. Um, or it was in the seventies. Thanks to Meg Lowman now. Um, but like the life up on the top is just so much different from the life you can see from down below. Um, and so she tells a story of her becoming interested in this field as a child and then her all the like obstacles she had to overcome as a woman in a male dominated field and all the things she learned.
Um, she also talks about her family life. She had two boys, um, she started studying in Australia and then she moved back to America where she was from and it's just [00:26:00] like really interesting study of a woman in a man's field. Super interesting, uh, study of trees and nature and animals, and a really compelling. Memoir as well. So I loved to read The Arbornaut.
Annie: [00:26:14] It does sound fascinating. I don't know why it makes you want to cry in a good way. Very touched.
Lucy: [00:26:22] You don't think about there's an entire world up there that nobody has thought about.
Annie: [00:26:31] That nobody thinks about. That's beautiful. Um, okay and I'm sorry to keep us down. Uh, but the next book is called the Afterparties and this is a debut short story collection by a much anticipated author, Anthony Veasna So. Unfortunately Anthony passed away quite young and so this book is being published, posthumously. It was highly anticipated. Um, like a lot of literary critics, particularly you like literary fiction, this book, I think you're going [00:27:00] to see in a lot of much anticipated lists. It releases on August 3rd. It's a short story collection. Um, Anthony is writing about Cambodian American life. He's talking about race and sexuality, but he's doing it in the short story format. So it's a short story collection, which I don't always love, but occasionally I will find one that I just really enjoy and I always think it's a good way to see if you like an author's work and so since this author, this is the only work we're going to really see from him, I think it might be worth trying and seeing what it was about.
Um, again, already getting kind of rave reviews from the kind of highly literary world, the literati, I think of, um, of America. I am intrigued. I have a copy of this at home. Um, the short stories look really compelling and really accessible. Um, again, this is the author is Anthony Veasna So, and the book is Afterparties. It releases on August 3rd and this is a posthumous publication. So I'm kind of, I'm kind of curious about it myself.
Olivia: [00:27:56] I keep getting them after you [00:28:00] which is so silly. okay. My next one is called Getaway by Zoja Stage and this is out August 17th in hardcover. This is about two sisters and they're like closest friend, which growing up me and my sister two years apart and we both shared a common friend. So I very much, I very much felt this like triangle of friendship. Um, but you know, right from the bat that the younger sister in this group had a big falling out with that friend and that they haven't fully recovered, but like superficially recovered from it. So the older sister is like, Hey, let's go hike this path in the grand canyon where y'all can't escape and we're going to talk about this.
Annie: [00:28:42] It sounds like an eldest sibling.
Olivia: [00:28:44] Sounds like up your alley, but just wait. So then they meet this guy out in the grand canyon who starts like stealing some of their food and at first they're just like, all right, like he must need it and then they're like, okay, no, we now need our food. I may go confront [00:29:00] him. And then things just fall right off.
Annie: [00:29:02] Is this an adult novel?
Olivia: [00:29:03] Yes. Oh yes.
Annie: [00:29:04] Thank you. I was like, oh my God.
Olivia: [00:29:10] The thriller, like psychological thriller, but with like a survivalist element to it, which I do love a good survivalist story because they are in the middle of the grand canyon in a place where like, they took a detour where now no one knows their track. They only know when they are expected back.
Lucy: [00:29:27] Never do that. Don't do that.
Annie: [00:29:30] Oh, I'm so excited. It does sound good. What was the name of it again?
Olivia: [00:29:35] It's called Getaway by Zoje Stage. Did she wrote, um, Baby Teeth, which I did not read, but it was pretty popular. Yeah. Yeah.
Do you have this arc?
I already read it. Yeah. I'm so sorry.
Annie: [00:29:48] No, that's fine. I'll wait.
Lucy: [00:29:50] The Annie B Jones would surely be getting an ARC.
Annie: [00:29:55] I think that, but that is not true.
[00:30:00] Lucy: [00:30:01] Um, okay. So my next book is called Yours Cheerfully. Uh, it's by AJ Pearce.
Olivia: [00:30:06] And I can say happy?
Lucy: [00:30:07] Yes. I mean, it's not my typical, uh, historical fiction, but I do think a lot of people will like it. Um, it's a follow-up to a novel called Dear Mrs. Bird.
Annie: [00:30:18] It's oh
Lucy: [00:30:20] yeah. Its a PG pick. Um, and it's, it's historical fiction from world war two. Um, it's about these two friends. One of them works for a, um, women's newspaper, I think, or just a newspaper, but she's a woman and, um, she is um, beat to cover like women's lives during the war um, and she talks to a lot of different women and kind of under starts to understand more what they're going through, trying to like work full-time for the war effort, but also take care of their children and, um, that sort of thing. So it's a story of [00:31:00] friendship, but it's also kind of a feminist story and somehow during world war II in London, also just like kind of an uplifting, sweet, quirky, fun story. Okay.
Annie: [00:31:11] What was that? What was that world war II book with the horrible title, and then it became a Netflix movie? Guernsey literary potato peels society. Sounds like a book for those fans, which I liked that book. I just, that title I used to, it's too long.
Lucy: [00:31:24] I wish you could write down all the different ways people have bungled it on purpose. Yeah. Well just saying it too.
Annie: [00:31:30] Yeah. Yes. Because, and it's impossible not to bungle it every time. I feel like I say something different.
Olivia: [00:31:36] Let's just continue using the word bungle.
Annie: [00:31:39] I think it's a great word. Okay. My next one is the, this is so weird. This is the only book um, all of my releases came out August 3rd, except for this one, this releases on August 24th and it is one of my most highly anticipated of the year. This is Seeing Ghosts. It's a memoir by Kat Chow. I have been talking about this one for a while because it was supposed to come out last [00:32:00] year. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to come out last summer and is instead coming out this late summer, early fall. Um, it releases on August 24th.
Kat Chow often occupies the fourth chair on Pop culture happy hour, which is an NPR, NPR podcast that I really enjoy. Um, and I always like what she has to say, but this is her very personal story about her mother and Kat Chow is a, um, is a Chinese American immigrant. Um, her family came over from Hong Kong and her parents kind of had a complicated relationship that she didn't really realize was complicated until adulthood. So it's interesting watching her kind of grapple with that after the death of her mom.
So I think the similarities will immediately be drawn to Crying in H Mart, but, but based on what I've read, I loved Crying in H Mart, based on what I've read of Seeing Ghosts, it's just a totally different story to me, and a totally different way of telling a story. Um, Kat Chow's writing is very, um, poetic and, uh, [00:33:00] sparse. I really liked the writing a lot and the way she's writing about her mom is just so different from the way, um, that Michelle's Zauner wrote about Crying in H Mart. So I think, um, it's not one of those things where if you've read one, you don't need to read the other one.
I actually think these are two pretty unique stories and pretty, pretty interesting books to read, dealing with grief and the loss of a mother and, and then how that also changes your relationship with your father and changes, in Kat Chow's case changes in, um, affects the relationship she has with her siblings. I also really like it because it's not too linear in terms of storytelling. She kind of is going back and forth, which it took me a minute to but again, I really like it and I can't wait to see what she does next cause I think the writing and this one's really good. It is called Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir by Kat Chow, out on August 20.
Olivia: [00:33:44] Okay. My last one is Say It Out Loud by Allison Varnes . It comes out August 24th, and this is a middle grade book. Um, but honestly I think eight through 12, um, this doesn't have to be tented up. She, you might know this one you'll know her because she wrote Property of a [00:34:00] Rebel Librarian, which came out I think two years ago now and it was absolutely delightful.
This one is the same way. I read it in one sitting because I just loved it so much. Um, but this is about a girl who she struggles with stuttering and she has like one good friend who she's like super comfortable around, but everybody else she really tries to like either start her sentence with a soft um, like sound cause it's the hard sounds like get them stuttering. I didn't know that. The Ks and the GS and the PS tend to lead into a stutter because it's such a hard sound to start a sentence with. So she has like a lot of techniques to get around just talking to people in general that'll like stop her from stuttering, but she's very self-conscious about it um, and she gets made fun of for it and then her and her friend have like this big falling out after they were both bullied so she started, I wish for remembered her name.
Um, she starts writing these little kindness notes and leaving them anonymously in people's bags or on people's seats or tucked into books and it [00:35:00] starts this whole trend throughout her school where like another person starts anonymously leaving these positive messages for people and it like really starts to change the school around, especially the bullies who then start to like soften up a little bit and understand more differences. It was really good. I really loved it.
Lucy: [00:35:18] My last book is called The Perfume Thief, and this is really amazing historical fiction. It's by Timothy Schaffert and it comes out on August 3rd. Um, and the premise is this American ex-pat in Paris during world war two. Um, She is 72 years old, which was like not typical for a protagonist. She is a pants suit wearer so shoot, there's like a queer element to it and she used to be a con woman and , and she has settled down in Paris and she like, as a perfumer, basically. She like provides perfume for like [00:36:00] cabaret artists and stuff and this one cabaret artist comes to her and says that her father, the cabaret artist's father had been a perfumer and he had this book stolen.
He was taken by the Nazis and they have this, um, possession of this book that would show that she is his daughter and that she's Jewish and she doesn't want them to find that out so she asks, Clementine this main character to like, basically get in good with the Nazis that have this book and like try and get it from them and do like one last con. Um, so just like very exciting all this, kinda thriller um, aspect to it, but also really well written historical fiction, uh, by Timothy Schaffert.
Annie: [00:36:46] I love a heist. That sounds good. Okay. Thank you guys so much for coming on. We will be doing this every month so hopefully you got some good books for your August TBR, but we will be back in September with another round of books. Thank you guys so much. [00:37:00] See you next time.
Lucy: [00:37:01] Bye.
Olivia: [00:37:02] Bye.
Annie: [00:37:02] From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in South Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website, www.bookshelfthomasville.com
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found at www.fromthefrontporchpodcast.com
Special thanks to Dylan and his team at Studio D Production for sound and editing and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
This week, I'm reading Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer by Rax King. It's as hilarious as that title sounds. Olivia, what are you reading?
Olivia: [00:37:49] I am reading We Are Family by LeBron James. Oh, so at the end of this month and delightful so far.
Annie: [00:37:55] Oh, fun. Lucy, what are you reading?
Lucy: [00:37:57] I'm reading The Lincoln Highway. The new book [00:38:00] by Amor Towels. Yes.
Annie: [00:38:03] Oh boy.
Lucy: [00:38:04] Very good. Very good so far.
Annie: [00:38:05] Yes. If you liked what you heard on today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on iTunes. Or, if you’re so inclined, support us for $5 a month on Patreon, where you can follow along as Hunter and I conquer a classic and participate in live video Q&As in our monthly lunch break sessions. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.