Episode 436 || New Release Rundown: August
This week on From the Front Porch, it’s another New Release Rundown! Annie, Olivia, and Erin are sharing the August releases they’re excited about to help you build your TBR.
When you purchase or preorder any of the books they talk about, you can enter the code NEWRELEASEPLEASE at checkout for 10% off your order!
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, visit our website (type “Episode 436” into the search bar to easily find the books mentioned in this episode):
Annie's books:
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
The Peach Seed by Anita Gail Jones
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
Holler, Child by LaToya Watkins (releases 8/29)
Olivia's books:
Mister Magic by Kiersten White (releases 8/8)
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus (releases 8/8)
Rewind by Lisa Graff (releases 8/22)
The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass (releases 8/29)
Erin's books:
The Connellys of County Down by Tracey Lange
Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (releases 8/8)
The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins (releases 8/15)
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 listening to Social Engagement by Avery Carpenter Forrey. Olivia is reading Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon. Erin is reading Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister.
If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also support us on Patreon, where you can access bonus content, monthly live Porch Visits with Annie, our monthly live Patreon Book Club with Bookshelf staffers, Conquer a Classic episodes with Hunter, and more. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
Our Executive Producers are...Ashley Ferrell, Cammy Tidwell, Chanta Combs, Chantalle C, Kate O’Connell, Kristin May, Laurie Johnson, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Nicole Marsee, Stacy Laue, Stephanie Dean, Susan Hulings, and Wendi Jenkins.
Transcript:
[squeaky porch swing]
Annie Jones: Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.
[music plays out]
“Funnily enough, this turned out to be the thing that saved me: the knowledge that I could get back by myself.” - Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
[as music fades out]
I’m Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week, I’m joined by Bookshelf floor manager Olivia Schaffer and online sales manager Erin Fielding to give you a rundown of our favorite new books releasing in August. Do you love listening to From the Front Porch every week? Spread the word by leaving a review on Apple podcasts. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for From the Front Porch, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Here’s a recent review from Katie: Great podcast! This podcast is very well done and covers a variety of books and bookish topics. It feels structured but not predictable, so listeners know what to expect but they are never bored or endlessly skipping over parts of the episodes. Thank you, Katie, and thank you to all of the reviewers who’ve left kind words and thoughtful reviews about the show. We’re so grateful any time you share From the Front Porch with your friends; thanks for spreading the word about our podcast and our bookstore.
[00:01:36] Now back to the show. Hi, guys.
Olivia [00:01:39] Hi.
Annie Jones [00:01:40] I cannot believe we're talking about August books.
Olivia [00:01:43] In my head, I thought we were talking about September books, so...
Annie Jones: I think we each have four. Is that correct?
Olivia [00:02:19] Yes.
Erin [00:02:19] Yes.
Annie Jones [00:02:20] And I had trouble finding August releases I wanted to talk about. Erin, I think you were in the same boat as I was.
Erin [00:02:25] I totally did.
Olivia [00:02:29] I thrived in August. I actually feel like the four books that I chose today are the perfect books that are, like, this is what Olivia reads. This is four. Which I might regret saying after I [inaudible].
Annie Jones [00:02:45] We'll see how you feel.
Olivia [00:02:46] But I went to them and I was like, this is a good four.
Annie Jones [00:02:50] I'm so happy. Do you think that August is a better month? I've never thought about this. Do you think August is like a really great month for thriller suspense for Kid Lit?
Olivia [00:03:00] I think because this is the month that, especially for kids, August and September are like the big like, hey, we're going to put all the good ones here. In my opinion. The publisher could listen to this and be like, no. But I think they put all the good books in August and September so that they're ready to sell when the holidays start.
Erin [00:03:19] That makes sense.
Annie Jones [00:03:20] It gives them time.
Olivia [00:03:21] Yeah, when I'm pulling for my holiday Kid Lit, it's almost all like August and September releases.
Annie Jones [00:03:28] That makes sense because we've noticed that November and December are not huge publishing release dates-- December especially. Sometimes in November you get some big books. But for the most part, I think publishers do try to get it in before those last two months so that the last two months the emphasis is just on recognizability and selling.
Olivia [00:03:48] Yeah.
Annie Jones [00:03:49] Gift giving. But I don't know, for some reason, August, I guess my typical genre is I had trouble finding some books. I don't know, maybe. Or maybe it's my brain. Maybe I'm just tired. And I was going into the list thinking--.
Olivia [00:04:04] Maybe it's you.
Annie Jones [00:04:05] Yeah. Maybe I'm the problem.
Erin [00:04:06] I don't think it's you. I had a very tough time, and usually I don't. I was really scrounging for-- Not to say that these aren't great books I'm going to talk about, but I love it when I get to come on and be like, "These are four amazing books that I just read." And like Olivia, I had a hard time narrowing it down. These are good books and I think people will enjoy them, but maybe they weren't even all for me. And so, it was just tough. There's just not a lot coming out in August for me.
Olivia [00:04:34] I think summer is the time of thrillers. So I am thriving right now; whereas, you guys are like, "What can we scrape?"
Erin [00:04:44] I like a good thriller, but I don't know.
Annie Jones [00:04:45] Okay, let's get started. I will kick us off with the book that I quoted from at the top of the episode. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. I think this is probably the most anticipated book of August, and not just for me, but I think readers in general really love Ann Patchett. I personally have always loved Ann Patchett's nonfiction, and then only in recent years have I really enjoyed and appreciated her fiction. I loved Commonwealth. That might have been my first Ann Patchett fiction to finish. I still have not read Bel Canto or State of Wonder, but Commonwealth I really loved. And then the Dutch House was one of my favorite books when it released. In fact, I feel like a friend of mine recently reread that and I'd like to reread it as well. I loved Maeve, the main character, and so it's like a certain type of Ann Patchett book is what I really love. And those are the books where she deals with family dynamics and family interactions. And I do think Tom Lake is going to return to that. I will be very upfront and say I have not yet read Tom Lake. However, it is on the top of my TBR list. I had some other things I had to finish and I knew it wasn't releasing till later. And so, Tom Lake released this week on August 1st. It is set in the spring of 2020 and much of the book takes place when three daughters return home to their mother during the spring. So kind of adult children returning home because of the pandemic and things happening in the world. And they wind up convincing their mother to tell them about the time that she fell in love with this handsome actor at a theater company called Tom Lake. So that is where the book titled gets it's name, is this theater company. I feel like we've had a lot of theater adjacent books this season. I think about Summer Stage, which my mom read and really enjoyed. I just finished Once More with Feeling, which is a romantic comedy that deals with the theater. So I think theater is having a moment in literature, and so it is all set at this theater company. The mother is telling her three daughters and reminiscing. And so the book is set at an orchard in northern Michigan, but there are kind of flashbacks and memories taking place at Tom Lake. I love the idea.
[00:07:16] I don't come from a large nuclear family, but I have a very large extended family that I spent a lot of time with growing up. And even this past week we had a family birthday party. And I loved nothing more than to sit and just listen to my mom and her siblings talk about their stories. And that has been one of my favorite parts of my childhood, is just hearing them talk about what life looked like when they were growing up. And so, I very much loved the idea as an adult child. I love sitting at the feet of my parents, listening to them tell stories. And so, these three daughters who come home-- and since the book takes place during spring of 2020, I have a feeling they needed those memories to kind of ground them and so they wanted their mom to tell them stories. And I love that. I feel like it's a flashback to our adolescent or younger selves where we just wanted to be told stories. And so, I love that Nancy on staff has read this. I think it took her a minute to get into it, which may be part of the reason I have hesitated. Also, everybody knows when I love an author's previous book, I really do tend to put off reading their next book. It happened with Brett Bennett. And then Brett Bennett's book, The Vanishing Half was beautiful. So I really do think I will love Tom Lake, but I have been a little hesitant because I really like you Ann Patchett, and I want to like what she writes. But Nancy, it took her a minute. Nancy also has a personal connection where Nancy grew up in Michigan, and so I think she was really looking forward to reading a book with that setting. So I'll be interested to see how Nancy finished it up and what her feelings were about it as she finished the novel. But this is on my TBR list. I think it is highly anticipated. It's got a great cover. I'm really looking forward to reading it. It came out this week. That's Tom Lake by Ann Patchett.
Olivia [00:09:03] You should listen to Stuff You Should Know. Just rerecorded an episode about the birth order and how that blends into your personality and everything and it was really well done.
Annie Jones [00:09:13] I'd love to listen to that.
Olivia [00:09:15] Listen to it because more information keeps coming out. So they're like, "We wanted to talk about it again." And I always find sibling order and dynamics super fascinating.
Annie Jones [00:09:24] Fascinating. Yeah.
Olivia [00:09:24] And I feel like someone who reads a lot of dysfunctional family would listen to that.
Annie Jones [00:09:28] Yes. I do need to listen to that. I would appreciate that.
Olivia [00:09:31] Okay. My first book is out August 8th. So next week it's called Mister Magic by Kiersten White. I think her first novel that she ever wrote was Hide and that came out last year, I want to say, and it was great. This one was even better.
Annie Jones [00:09:47] Okay.
Olivia [00:09:47] Hide was like I saw the end coming and I was slightly disappointed that I saw it coming. This one was I saw the end coming, but there was still such a big buildup that I was just like, I don't know, you saw it coming, but you had to see it played out sort of thing. Mr. Magic is about this television show that these kids grew up on. This group of six children grew up on this television show. I thought of it as like-- does anyone watch Out Of the Box?
Erin [00:10:15] No.
Annie Jones [00:10:16] So sorry, Is that a regional?
Olivia [00:10:21] Somebody somewhere in their car is driving and they're like, "Out of the Box.
Annie Jones [00:10:26] So excited.
Olivia [00:10:29] It was these kids who got together and they would build this playhouse out of boxes and they would like-- nope? Okay.
Erin [00:10:33] No
Olivia [00:10:34] Anyways-- .
Annie Jones [00:10:36] I mean, this sounds really good.
Olivia [00:10:39] This actually blends even more into the story than I thought because Mr. Magic was like-- it ended abruptly because one of the children left and there was a fire. And then no one can find any sort of evidence that this was the show. But everyone remembers growing up watching the show. Out Of the Box is very similar because it's very hard to find episodes. It's not played any more. It might be on YouTube. But I like Mr. Magic, there's like this huge cool following around it. Because there's this group of six kids. They would sit in this black room with like black walls, black floors, and then they would just use their imagination to go on all of these adventures.
Annie Jones [00:11:21] Erin is already shacking her head
Olivia [00:11:23] She already told me the plot of this and I was like, no. No children in the back rooms.
Annie Jones [00:11:28] That is the first mistake.
Olivia [00:11:31] So then there's this guy who comes on the show. His name's Mr. Magic.
Annie Jones [00:11:35] And that's where I am out. You want me to call you Mr. Magic? Absolutely not.
Olivia [00:11:46] Mr. Magic will come out if they ever have any problems and he solves them. Or if things get out of hand, he'll come and whisper to the kids and calm them down. But Mr. Magic was known he wore this cap and he had this stick and no one ever saw his face because he had this hood on. And so, moms were just enthralled by him because he had this way of like if a kid got to hyperactive, he would just whisper and then they would calm down. They were just like, oh, this is such a great show for my kid to watch. Or if like one of the kids would trick somebody or do something a little bit mischievous, Mr. Magic would come out and whisper and they would stop the situation. So moms were enthralled by him. Although, now everyone's looking back and they're just like, I think the kids were fine.
Annie Jones [00:12:35] Yeah, something was happening.
Olivia [00:12:38] The show ended abruptly. And flash forward 30 years, we meet this woman Val. Val was on the show, but she was the girl who was taken abruptly from the show by her father. And they have lived on this ranch for 30 years. She doesn't remember being on the show or what happened at all because her father has just kept her secluded on this ranch. When her father passes away, an obituary is put in the newspaper and all of the kids who are on the show come and they're just like, Val, we found you. There's a podcast being filmed and they want to talk about Mr. Magic. So they wanted to interview these last kids, this group of six kids, because there were kids that came prior to them, and this was the final Mr. Magic Group. Val was like, I guess so, but also I don't remember being on this show. And so they go to the house where the kids were filmed. And then they also like lived in this house. It was real weird. I will say that. I understand it's weird.
[00:13:39] And the whole truth behind Mr. Magic and what happened with Val starts to unravel. It was so good. And what I liked about it too was the end had a supernatural approach to it. But you saw it coming because right from the beginning you're just like, all right, these kids in a black room. And then all of a sudden color is everywhere. You saw it coming and you kind of see what's coming to the end, but you're just like, but how is she actually going to make this work? And then you read the afterword of the story by Kiersten White. She grew up Mormon, and so this was like her own way of reckoning with her childhood and just like putting it out there on paper. It was so good. I loved it. And the cover is awesome.
Erin [00:14:27] The cover is fun.
Olivia [00:14:28] It's this pink cover with this colorful panel on the TV. One of those just like "my TV is not working" colorful panel.
Annie Jones [00:14:37] Okay. I want to know two things. This sounds more horror than suspense; is that true?
Erin [00:14:44] I think we're asking the wrong person.
Olivia [00:14:49] I know I'm so bad at categorizing horror because where does that line fall? What parts of it, creepy? Yes, parts of it were creepy. To me, it was more suspenseful. I was never scared at any point. It was just kind of like what's going to happen next?
Annie Jones [00:15:06] Okay, the slight supernatural element I just wondered-- and obviously children in a black box with a man sounds horrific to me, but what [crosstalk].
Erin [00:15:17] Not looking good.
Annie Jones [00:15:20] Okay, my second question is, would you recommend-- obviously, these are totally standalone, but I am intrigued and I was intrigued by Hide when you first told me about it. Would you start with one or the other?
Olivia [00:15:31] I think if you're going to read both of them, read Hide and then read Mr. Magic. And on High it's on her strongest note. You know what I mean? But Hide was excellent because the characters were so well done. And I heard maybe Kyndall told me that they're turning it into a movie or something. [Crosstalk].
Annie Jones [00:15:52] Well, I told somebody it's a graphic novel.
Olivia [00:15:55] Oh, okay.
Annie Jones [00:15:57] It's a graphic novel.
Olivia [00:15:59] Yes, the movie should be great.
Annie Jones [00:16:00] Yeah. It's adapted, I think, by Scott Peterson, which I'm just really intrigued by because we don't really see this often. We get these graphic retellings of classic novels and stuff. But this is the first time, at least I am aware of, where we're taking a modern, just came out last year or two years ago, book and then we're reinterpreting it. I just think that's interesting. So that comes out this Fall too.
Olivia [00:16:28] That'll be great. This one, I think if it were turned into a movie, which would be excellent, it would be a horror movie.
Erin [00:16:33] Okay.
Annie Jones [00:16:34] Okay. That's helpful.
Olivia [00:16:35] I wouldn't watch the movie.
Annie Jones [00:16:38] Right.
Olivia [00:16:39] But I read the book and loved it.
Annie Jones [00:16:40] Okay. I'm intrigued. You've definitely intrigued me.
Erin [00:16:44] Okay. My first one is the Connellys of County Down. It's out August 1st, so it's out already. It's written by Tracy Lange. She also wrote We Are the Brennan's, which I did not know that when I chose this book. And then I thought Brennan's sounds familiar, and then I looked back and I thought, oh, well, she wrote We Are the Brennan's, which I did not read. I think you read that, Annie. You read We Are the Brennans?
Annie Jones [00:17:05] I didn't. I wanted to.
Erin [00:17:08] I didn't mean to call you out. [Inaudible the store, I think people bought a lot of it. But she does this what I understand as the similarities between this book and the other book is that familial sibling relationship storyline. And this is about Tara Connelly. She's 30 years old and she's just been released from jail for possession of drugs. That's all you really know her as. And so you're thinking like, okay. But you quickly come to find out that she was not doing anything bad, that she's covering up for someone and that she refused to tell the police who that was. And so she ended up going to jail and took that time. So she's back. She's living with her brother who has a son, raising a son as a single father. And she has a sister. They're all living in the same house. And I don't even remember where this is set, but it does kind of give me Boston vibes. Again, they're all this Irish family living together. I think they've been orphans for a while because both of their parents died in a car accident. Her brother has a traumatic brain injury, so he's been out of work. He's having a difficult time. Their sister is a bit of a hoarder, so each one of them have their own issues that they're dealing with. Tara gets out, she's trying to find work. She's trying to get her life back on track. She's trying to make up for lost time with her nephew and her brother and sister and it looks like things are going well for them. Her brother's maybe going to get a promotion at work. Maybe her sister is doing great. But she starts to have a lot of interactions with the police officer that put her behind bars, the police officer that was the one who was responsible for helping to convict her. And they sort of start a little bit of a romantic relationship. And I don't want to ruin the rest of it. But as you can imagine, a person on parole having a romantic relationship with the police officer that put her behind bars is a no-no.
[00:19:15] So there's a little bit of a forbidden love storyline, but it's not raunchy. It's really just like we don't want to do this, but we like each other a lot. And so, that relationship and that secret starts to unravel some things for her, puts her parole in jeopardy. The secrets about why she went to jail start to unravel and they really start to put things in jeopardy for her brother and her sister. Her sister makes a choice during the book to do some fraudulent financial activity. And that also starts to put Tara's parole in jeopardy. So the whole time you're just like rooting for these people, you're rooting for them for their family, and you want them to do well. You don't want her to go back to jail. You want for things to work out with the police officer. So the whole storyline, the beauty of it is that it's very hopeful. Even though these people have been to jail, they're out of work, they're struggling with secrets. It's super hopeful. I love the relationship between her and her siblings and her nephew. It's very cute. And the characters to me just felt very real. I was really intrigued and really couldn't put it down once I started because I wanted to find out what's going to happen to them and are they all going to be okay? Because you're very invested in them pretty quickly. So that is The Connellys of County down by Tracey Lange out August 1st.
Annie Jones [00:20:42] Did you listen to that one, Erin?
Olivia [00:20:44] No, I actually read it.
Annie Jones [00:20:45] Because I have been curious about the audio adaptation because Libro.fm will sometimes publish blurbs from other booksellers or whatever telling their opinion of the audiobook specifically. And somebody, I think it was a bookseller, was like, this book is phenomenal on audio. And I was just curious. I have not read it, but I've been tempted to listen to it because apparently the audiobook is fantastic. Okay, my next one is The Peach Seed. This is by Anita Gail Jones. It came out this week. Part of the reason this has been on my radar since I first saw it in a catalog however many months ago is because the author is from Albany, Georgia. I laugh because locally that's Albany, but it is Albany, Georgia.
Olivia [00:21:36] I've heard you and Jordan say Albany so many times I just assumed that that's how-- like Cairo is not Cairo. I assumed that you had to say it like Albany.
Annie Jones [00:21:46] No, we tease because we're like “Olbany” is how people say it.
Olivia [00:21:49] I've never heard anyone down here call it Albany. It's called “Olbany”.
Annie Jones [00:21:56] Never. Yeah, always. I don't think it's like the “Ceiro-Cairo” thing. I think it is supposed to be “Olbany”. The author is from “Olbany”. And this is a book that is partly set in Albany, Georgia. And so, I am curious about it. This is a multi-generational novel that opens with a man named Fletcher Dukes. He is at the Piggly Wiggly in Albany, Georgia. And he kind of is taken back. He smells this perfume, and he's immediately taken back to his long lost love. And he turns around and there she is in the Piggly Wiggly in Albany, Georgia. Turns out we find out that she fled the South years before, that she and Fletcher are both black. And so she had fled the South after some negative experiences. And they kind of re-acquaint themselves with one another. And my understanding, because I've not finished this book, is that much of the book winds up being some flashbacks to the Duke's family (that's Fletcher's family) through the generations, including a period of enslavement in I think South Carolina was my understanding. And the novel gets its title from the fact that Fletcher's family, the Duke's family, passes down this peach seed that has kind of been carved, and it is passed down from generation to generation as like a talisman, a kind of good luck charm type of thing.
[00:23:26] That's where the book gets its name. So the book really belongs, I think, to the Duke's family. It kind of is a multi-generational story. You find out why Fletcher stayed and the love of his life left. What brought Fletcher's family to Albany, Georgia. What happened to his ancestors who were enslaved in South Carolina. So it sounds really interesting. And there are just not a lot of books. I mean, part of the reason that this was interesting to me and appealing to me back when I first read the description, there are just not many books set in our neck of the woods. Yeah. And so, I'm quite curious about it, curious to see how it does. It is not entirely historical fiction, but it is partly historical fiction. I'm curious about this one. I think I gave a copy to my mom to read potentially for Shelf Subscriptions. I don't know if it's when she has gotten around to, but anyway, I'm intrigued by it. It is called The Peach Seed by Anita Gail Jones. It is her debut novel out this week.
Olivia [00:24:24] Switching gears just a little bit, my next book is Whalefall by Daniel Kraus. In true Olivia fashion, I read this book about a man getting swallowed by a sperm whale while also following the news about the [inaudible].
Annie Jones [00:24:44] Timely.
Erin [00:24:45] Close to home.
Olivia [00:24:47] So this is about Jay Gardener. And Jay I think he's pretty young in the book. I want to say he's like 19 or 20 or so, but his father has just recently passed away. He commit suicide, trigger warning for that and many other things to come. But Jay never had a great relationship with his father. His father was this free diver. But then he also just did any odd job around the marina because he was a drunk and he couldn't hold a job for very long. And he would just drag his son, Jay, with him wherever he went, for whatever job he was on. So Jay from a very young age did learn how to dive. And so, they had like a big argument one day, caused Jay to leave his family, his sisters and his mom. And he just basically couch hopped between friends for years until his dad got sick and he still wasn't ready to reconcile things with his father. So when his father passed away, his way of getting closure not only for him but also for his family, was he was going to go free dive down and find his father's bones so that they could at least cremate him and have that. So Jay goes on this free dive. It's up in New England. So water's pretty cold, pretty crazy. He goes down this continental cliff, it's right there. And he's just like, I'm only going to go down until I have this much air, and then I will come back up and I'll keep it very safe because he knows he can't see anything. So he goes down, the water starts swirling around him, he looks behind him and there's a giant squid. And he is like, all right, we're just going to remain calm because the only reason a giant squid would be here is if it's being chased by something. And sure enough, a sperm whale comes up behind the giant squid and when he opens his mouth, the suction of the water just pulls Jay in. So from that point on, Jay is in the belly of a sperm whale. So does turn pretty survivalist at this moment in time. He does go through several stomachs. Trigger warning for claustrophobia.
Annie Jones [00:27:09] Trigger warning for if you get swallowed and you're stuck in a stomach.
Olivia [00:27:13] If you have a fear of getting swallowed by a whale.
Erin [00:27:16] That's a very common fear? I don't know. I mean, swallowed by a whale?
Annie Jones [00:27:20] Biblical trigger for the story of Jonah.
Olivia [00:27:27] But while in this whale trying to survive, he has an hour left on his air tank. But he starts having all of these flashback moments to times with his dad. And they might be bad times with his dad. And some of them are like few good memories he has with his father, but he's really getting closure inside this whale. So it has these beautiful moments throughout this book. The majority of it is him hacking his way out of this whale.
Annie Jones [00:27:55] No.
Olivia [00:27:57] But t's really good.
Annie Jones [00:28:00] Well, it sounds like Drowning a little bit. The book that we all read this year and really loved. We loved that book. I think I would like to read this very much.
Olivia [00:28:11] And the chapters are so short. Some of them are just like a page because it was just a quick memory or just, like, I'm in stomach number two now. And there is definite gore involved because he is in the stomach of a literal whale. It was just really well done and it was a really unique book. I've never done anything else with a guy literally in a whale.
Erin [00:28:39] Okay. Let's just go from the stomach of a whale to-- the title of this book seems fitting. It's called Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAallister.
Olivia [00:28:50] Just another whale story
Erin [00:28:51] Yeah, just another day. It is coming on August 1st. It's out already. This is her second book. I don't know Annie if you read it, but Olivia and I definitely read. You read it?
Annie Jones [00:29:02] Yes.
Erin [00:29:02] Wrong Place Wrong Time. And it was great. It was time travel, but it wasn't overly scientific. It was just a great book about family dynamics and a good mystery. Again, I'm not finished with this one yet. Olivia has finished it, so sort of blink twice if I'm getting all the details right. But the story of Julia, she is a detective. Both of these books are set in England. I think Gillian is a British writer. So it's all set in Britain. And she has a teenage daughter named Genevieve. Her marriage is on the rocks with her husband, and she is reeling from two things that happened to her, which was something happened to her daughter-- which I won't spoil it. There's an event that happened with her daughter the year before that she has covered up. And then there is another missing persons case that she kind of bungled the year before and they never found the girl. There's a missing girl named Olivia who has gone missing, a young woman who just moved to the area and she goes in an alleyway. They can see this closed circuit TV. She goes in an alleyway and she never comes out. They don't ever see her coming out. They've searched the alleyway. There's no possible way that she could have escaped out of there. And so they're just going through everything, trying to figure this out.
[00:30:27] In the meantime, she is, I guess, accosted by a mystery man in her car who tells her to drive to the scene of the crime and to plant some evidence that has DNA on it of a different person. And he says basically, like, if you don't do this, plant this and convict this person of Olivia's murder, then I'm going to reveal what happened with you and your daughter last year. The thing that you covered up. So she has a choice. Should I be a corrupt cop and save my family or should I basically air all my dirty laundry, lose my job, and maybe my daughter might go to jail. But also try to be not a corrupt cop. So that's where I'm at right now. I wish I knew more about the ending, but I do love the way that she writes. I feel like she's so good about dropping small breadcrumbs along the way so that you're already interested. Then she'll just drop a chapter here or a fact here or a name here that makes you be like, ooh! And suddenly you're putting it together. You're putting the pieces together. Olivia, you said you might have kind of seen the ending coming, like you could sort of see it coming.
Olivia [00:31:41] Past a certain point. There was a huge plot twist that happens. I think you're really close to getting to the plot twists, where I did have to pause for a second and go back and look at some stuff. And she did a really good one on that one. And then from that point on, you're just like, "Okay, I know how this might play out now." But that plot twist really was a game changer.
Erin [00:32:01] Yes. At least so far with this one and in her previous book, I never get bored. I always really want to just finish it and see what's happening. So I think she does a great job of not only including the mystery, the thriller aspect, the crime solving. But to me the relationships she writes about as far as familial relationships, she just does a really good job about that too. And just showing you the motivation between the main protagonists, like between their pull of their love for their family and what should they do about that. And then also there's this other thing. And sometimes it means betraying your family and are they willing to do that? So I am really looking forward to finishing this one. I know a lot of people are excited about this. We loved her first book. So it's Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister. It's already out.
Annie Jones [00:32:47] I am excited about that. I would like to read that because I loved her first one. And I agree, I think they're great mystery, suspense books, detective books, but they're also lots of family dynamics that she does a really good job writing about. Okay. Next up, for me, out this week is Family Lore. This is by Elizabeth Acevedo. I have not read her previous books, but I think both of you have read her previous work.
Olivia [00:33:11] Yeah, Clap When You Land was one of my favorites.
Annie Jones [00:33:13] Yes. So this is her first adult novel. So I'm super intrigued. It's got a gorgeous, I think, very striking cover. But like her previous works, this one is told in verse. So it is the story of a Dominican-American family told through the voices of the women in that family, and particularly the voice of a woman named Flor. Flor can predict when to the date someone is going to die, which honestly does not sound great to me. I would.
Olivia [00:33:46] I want to know.
Annie Jones [00:33:47] I would opt out. Flor decides she wants to hold a living wake. And what her sisters and the other women in her family don't know, is does Flor want to hold a living wake for herself because she knows when she is going to die? And she has figured that out and it's soon. Or is it someone else in their family and Flor is just trying to kind of think ahead and have this living memorial? It almost reminded me-- Olivia, I don't think you would have read it. Erin, did you read The Celebrants by Steven Rowley?
Erin [00:34:17] No, I haven't read it yet.
Annie Jones [00:34:19] It's a great little book, but interestingly deals with this idea of living wakes and living funerals. And so they kind of have some similarities. The book is set across three days, which I do love. I love something that has a very specific start and end. It's set across three days leading up to the wake. And then the story is told not only in verse, but in different voices of different women in the family. I have started this one. Part of the reason I have held off on finishing is because, I think, partly each daughter or woman in the family my understanding is has a different kind of gift and ability.
Erin [00:34:55] It reminds me a little bit of like an adult version of Encanto where they all have like these gifts that they have in the family.
Annie Jones [00:35:02] Yes. And my brain does not naturally read magical elements really well. I have to really hunker down and get into it. And so, I have not really fully dived into this book because there's a magical realism element to this book, which is not my typical genre. I think the writing is beautiful. I love books and stories told in verse. I am always truly amazed by that kind of talent. That is just a type of writing that is absolutely foreign to me. But I am very curious how this one will do because it is her adult debut. I wonder if her young adult fans, most of whom I believe were adult to begin with, how they will appreciate her adult novel. So this is Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo. You were reading this too Erin or you were listening?
Erin [00:35:53] I was listening to it, which that's what I was going to say. If you think, "Oh, that sounds great, but maybe verse is not for me," I have listened to both of her books, and you cannot tell. The narration is just like someone telling a story. So if the story is interesting to you, maybe get the book and also listen to it and read the book at the same time. You get the experience of the verse and the narration. But it's really beautiful. The women are so strong. I just love a good book where the women are the protagonists and they are the matriarchs of the family and they have all these gifts.
Annie Jones [00:36:27] Erin, do you know, does the narration alternate or is it the same? I'm just curious since it's a family of multiple women.
Erin [00:36:33] I am pretty sure it alternates. I think there's more than one narrator.
Olivia [00:36:37] Okay. My next book is really fun. It's middle grade. No one gets swallowed by whales. This is Rewind by Lisa Graff, and it's out August 22nd. I just jumped to the end of the month. But I read other stuff by Lisa Graff. I want to say there is one called Far Away, and she's excellent. She is a really good writer where she will sneakily put somebody in somebody else's shoes and give you a whole another perspective and you watch the main character have a lot of great realizations. This one was about this little girl named McKinley. And McKinley lives just with her dad and her grandmother. Her grandmother had a stroke years ago, so she's on a very strict like this is when she gets medicine. This is how and when she eats. And her and her dad take care of her grandmother. But her dad is very strict about everything, obviously. McKinley is this like carefree girl. She loves fashion. And so, her school every year puts on this big day called the Time Hop, where they choose a decade and they do a whole day based on a decade. And this time frame they're doing is the nineties. If you look at the cover of this book, it is like it walks out of [crosstalk]. And so McKinley is really excited. She has put together this whole fashion show for the Time Hop. She gets really excited about that and then her dad gets called at work and she has to watch her grandmother. He's like, I'm so sorry, but you can't go because your grandmother needs to be taken care of. And she's distraught. So McKinley obviously sneaks her grandmother into the Time Hop and goes to the fashion show anyways.
[00:38:15] Her dad finds out, gets so upset and yells at her in front of everybody. And so she runs away into the girls bathroom. And when she comes out, she realizes she just time hopped into the literal nineties at that school. And so, then she gets to meet her dad as a kid who was this bully of a kid, picked on everybody, was always mean, very selfish. And she meets her best friend's mom and husband-- but not husband at the time, obviously. And then she meets her grandmother pre stroke. And has a really nice moment with them. I don't want to give away too much. Well, first off, she messed up a lot of things because when you time travel like that due to the butterfly effect, you really can't do much. And one of the teachers in the school time hopped himself. And so he keeps trying to rally her in and she can't be held down. But she does learn a lot about her father as a kid and why he is the way he is today, and with her grandmother. And it was it was such a fun story because also she just threw in a ton of nineties references. Like someone was wearing parachute pants. They went to the arcade and played Donkey Kong. There were sour punch straws involved. It was just so much fun. I think if you're in our millennial age group and you're just like, I'd like to try middle grade, this is a great place for you to start.
Erin [00:39:50] And it sounds just like a sweet story. Forget the time travel. That's an awesome story.
Olivia [00:39:56] It is.
Annie Jones [00:39:56] It reminds me of Back to the Future, which I loved. And how great for many Millennials who are in our age group have young kids. And to get to read this together would be really fun too. But I love the premise of that. That sounds really fun.
Erin [00:40:13] Okay. My next book is The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. Literally when I'm looking for a book, I'm just like scrolling the list of the books that are available to us. I was like, this sounds interesting. So I picked it up. He obviously has written tons of other books. Deacon King Kong, The Color of Water, The Good Lord Bird, The Five Karat Soul, which I read back like a really long time ago when it came out and enjoyed it. I'm again not finished with this one yet-- thank you, August, but I'm going to finish it. It really drags you in because the very first chapter is these workers in 1972 are doing some construction. They uncover a well and they find a skeleton inside of it. And there's a clue. I think the skeleton has a something in its hand some sort of metal pendant or something, and they can tie that clue back to someone. And so they go to his door and they knock on the door and they asking him about it. That's how the book opens. And then the rest of the book so far that I've read is The Story of Moshe. But Moshe and Chona Ludlow, they are a Jewish couple that lives in this Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Olivia, is Pottstown a real place?
Annie Jones [00:41:35] Olivia is so excited.
Olivia [00:41:39] Yeah, that's real close.
Erin [00:41:41] You should read those. They are in this neighborhood. It's mostly now made up of sort of down and out Jewish people and down and out black people. It used to be like a thriving town, and of course, as these things terribly happen, the white people decided to move, the upper class Jews decide to move. And so Chona and Mosh are have big hearts and they decide to stay. And they have this grocery store called the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. They serve their Jewish neighbors, their black neighbors, but everybody's sort of down and out in this town. But they all have these really strong bonds because they've been together forever. Moshe runs these theaters. She's one of the first Jewish people to allow black performers in this time period and perform in his theaters. And so he has the respect of the black community and their thanks and gratitude. He's doing very well. They do well with the theaters. They do well with the grocery store. But, of course, they're just so kindhearted that they're always like flipping food to this person and giving credit on this person. This is not exactly a plot driven book, I would not say. But you get in-depth chapters about each character, about Chona and her life, about Moshe and how he grew up. There's other side characters that they meet that you kind of get their back story, but I think it's all leading up to seeing how each of these characters is about to play a part in sort of a plot point. So I'm not there yet. I'll update later.
[00:43:19] But there's a boy who is maybe nine or ten years old and he's deaf and mute. He is the nephew of their janitor, their beloved janitor that's been with them forever, that works in the theater. The state wants to take him and send him to this institution for kids like this. And, of course, they know this institution is not a good place for a child. This is the kind of place where kids are not taken care of. They're just shoved into this institution and not taken care of, especially a black child. And so Chona agrees to basically take on this child. They don't have children of their own, so they take on this child. They are trying to hide him from the people who are looking for him. And I have a feeling that what's coming is going to involve a very prominent doctor in the town who's also part of the Ku Klux Klan, which is just terrible. But obviously you can tell that there's tension boiling between him and the members of this community. And the search for this little boy, I think, is all going to come to a tipping point in the book. And that's going to result somehow in the skeleton being found in the well at the end of the book. So I am fascinated to continue reading it. If you've read his other books and liked it or this just sounds interesting to you, it's a bit of historical fiction. It's not set in the present time. So if historical fiction is your jam, this would be for you too.
Annie Jones [00:44:49] I'm excited about this one. I like James McBride quite a bit. I feel like I've said this on the podcast before, but he performed at Word of South few years ago and just was one of the best performers I've ever seen live. He did readings alongside his gospel band and it was phenomenal. Anyway, I love Color of Water and then Deacon King Kong I enjoyed, but I guess because of book life, I never finished it. And so, I'm curious about this one.
Erin [00:45:15] He's just like a storyteller. That's what helps. Even though the plots aren't moving along a ton, you're all invested in these stories he's telling you about these people-- at least I was.
Annie Jones [00:45:25] Yeah. Okay. My last book is Holler Child. This is by LaToya Watkins. It comes out on August 29th. It's not out yet. LaToya Watkins is the author of Perish, which I think did pretty well at the bookstore. I think it did well in bookstores nationwide. But this is her short story collection. And I will say that earlier this week I read a really fantastic short story collection. And I'm discovering that when my brain feels a little fractured and I feel like my concentration cannot handle much, short story collections are a great solution for that. And I feel like short story collections often get, I don't know, kind of disregarded or ignored. I think people think they're not accessible. And I would gently push back on that and encourage people to give short story collections a try because you don't have to read the whole collection if you don't want to. And I think those stories would be such an answer to our collective concentration problem. And so this is LaToya Watkins collection. It's 11 stories. Most of them are dealing with race, power and inequality and how those affect an individual. But the stories are not necessarily connected in any way, they're just short stories kind of dealing with those themes. I like LaToya Watkins as a writer, and I'm excited for this short story collection. I think it could be a really great answer to maybe struggling to read, especially in the waning days of summer. So it is Holler Child by LaToya Watkins. I love that title. There's a short story in the collection of that same name by LaToya Watkins. Out on August 29th.
Erin [00:47:05] I think short stories are, to me, sometimes even more impressive than a full novel because they pack so much into a little story.
Annie Jones [00:47:13] Yeah, it's wild to me.
Olivia [00:47:15] My next book is another middle grade. I think it's a grade between chapter book and middle grade for me. There aren't any pictures in there, but it's a shorter middle grade story called The Lost Library. And this is two authors, Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass. I don't know Wendy Mass that well. She wrote, Lo and Behold, which was pretty big, I think, in the indie book realm. And then Rebecca Stead wrote The List of Things That Will Not Change, which I also believe won an award or two. The first chapter is from the point of view of this cat named Mortimer. And Mortimer is like a library cat, but he lives in this historical home because in this town the library burned down years and years ago. And he is just like the cat from that library who got displaced from it. But when you first meet Mortimer, he finds a couple of mice in the museum that he lives in, and he just kindly ushers them back outside. But he lives there with this ghost of a woman who used to work at the library, and they're setting up a little free library outside of the museum. And Mortimer decides that this is where he's going to be. So he stations himself in the little free library where he meets this kid named Evan, who comes to take a couple of books from the library stand.
[00:48:35] Evan starts putting together all of the books in the library from the card in the back. They all got returned on the same date. So he starts looking into this because he realizes this was the date that the library caught on fire and no one knows how the library caught on fire. And so he's just kind of like, well, maybe I'll try to figure it out. But while Evan's trying to solve this mystery, you see all of these townspeople walk by and see the start of this little free library. And slowly and slowly, everyone starts adding to it. So they'll bring a wheelbarrow and a big beach umbrella to keep it from rain. And then adds a box of books, but turns it sideways so that it's covered like. And it just grows into this library on the side of the road while Evan's solving this mystery of what happened to the library. It was delightful. Also, Evan's dad is this pest control guy who specializes in mice, but he doesn't like to harm the mice. So instead he will catch them and then he'll drive to the nearest field and he'll just release the mice. So he's not great at his job. He's not making so much money because he has to give so many refunds because the mice just keep coming back. I think it's one of those stories that's like this would be an excellent read aloud. I think if you do a chapter a night with your kids, it's delightful for everybody.
Erin [00:49:59] Okay. My last book is called The Great Transition. It's out August 15th is written by Nick Fuller Googins. Sorry, that's funny-- last name-- to me. This is his first novel. He is an elementary school teacher from Maine, and he wrote this book. Again, I'm always impressed by people with these debut novels, and they're so good. This book takes place in a post climate crisis world. In other words, there's a climate crisis. And I was a little scary reading it and then talking about the things that were happening that led up to the climate crisis. And I literally opened my weather app to just to check the local weather. And it was like hurricanes in this town and record heat in this town. And I was like, oh, no. But basically what happened was they could see this climate crisis happening. So all these people sort of created this volunteer-- I can't remember if it's volunteer or mandatory army. The world was like enough, we've got to deal with this. And so people just started volunteering to go help with this climate crisis. And because of everyone's work, they actually reached zero carbon emissions and the world was finally healing again. And they changed everything around. People got displaced, of course, because these towns were not suitable for living anymore because of the climate crisis, rising water levels and stuff.
[00:51:31] So we meet Emi, who's living in Greenland with her father and her mother, and she's a teenager. We find out throughout the book that her mother and father met as climate activists, climate crisis warriors or whatever. He had a lot of deployments. He ended up being a fire jumper where he would jump out of a plane and try to put out fires on the ground. And one of his assignments was to go in and save some other fire jumpers that had been surrounded by fire and couldn't get out. So he jumped in, save the people. One of those people was Kristina, who's Emi's mom and his wife. Eventually they fell in love and become married. She's always been like while everyone else is celebrating and kind of enjoys living in this utopian world where everything seems to be working okay, Kristina just can't let it go. She's like the person who's like, "No, if we don't remember, we'll just keep repeating our mistakes." And so she does all these basically voluntary things where she leaves Emi and Larch. Larch is the dad's name. She leaves them to go do climate work. So she's never really there. She's sort of this character who's talked about, but she's never around. And so when we meet her in this book, she's about to leave for another deployment in New York, where no one can live because of the water rising.
[00:52:52] Basically, she's gone and Larch and Emi are celebrating this day they called Zero Day, which is the day they celebrate reaching zero net emissions and an assassination start happening all around the world of what they call climate criminals. And Kristina, it turns out she's a part of the group that's assassinating all these people. So she goes dark. They can't find her. They go to New York together to try to find her. And in the meantime, Emi is taken by some people who are trying to use her as ransom, basically to make Kristina stop killing all these people. To me it leaned a little bit YA. Not to say that the writing is YA. But just because Emi is our main protagonist, it's a lot of from a viewpoint of a teenager. So it reads like a teenager telling you a story. You get to see all of her emotions. It's interspersed with chapters of this project that she's doing for school called the Great Transition Project, which I think everyone has to do, which is where they interview people who were there when all this happened. They called it the Great Transition when all of that started happening. So she's interviewing her mom. There's a lot of chapters where she's interviewing her mom about what happened. And so that's really all you get. You never get that from the viewpoint of the mom. You just get it from Emi and her dad.
[00:54:13] I just liked it. It was a great family dynamic story. She has a really fraught relationship with her mom. She's really close to her dad, but she's also a teenager. So as you can imagine, she hates the world and everything in it. But she's also going through it. She's also sweet and kind and curious and loves her parents a lot. And there was enough mystery, sort of like the thriller part of who can you trust? Who took her? Why do they want her? And there was a bit of Thriller in there. And I do love a bit of like post-apocalyptic, science fiction type stuff too. And there is enough of that in there for me to just want to keep reading and find out what happened. It's not deep, but it's about a loss of a relationship, about a loss of identity. It's about Emi goes from this naive teenager to this world war torn person in the search to find her mom. If you do like that sort of post-apocalyptic, a little bit of a teenager viewpoint with a little bit of thriller thrown in, The Great Transition by Nick Fuller, Googin comes out August 15th.
Annie Jones [00:55:18] Okay. So as we move into August and then September, just keep in mind when we do these new release episodes, Erin has made browsing podcasts book selections super easy .so you can go to your Bookshelfthomasville.com. You can type episode 436 into the search bar, and then you'll see all of today's books listed ready for you to purchase. You can also use the code new release please at checkout to get 10% off your order of any of today's titles. That includes books that are out already and books that you would be per-ordering. So that code again is new release please. And today's episode number is 436.
[Out of the Box “Goodbye Song”]
[00:55:57] This week I am listening to Social Engagement by Avery Carpenter. Olivia, what are you reading?
Olivia [00:56:03] I am reading Mother Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simons.
Annie Jones [00:56:09] Erin, what are you reading?
Erin [00:56:10] I want to finish up Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister.
Annie Jones: From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, 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: bookshelfthomasville.com A full transcript of today’s episode can be found at:
Special thanks to Studio D Podcast Production for production of From the Front Porch and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
Our Executive Producers of today’s episode are…
Cammy Tidwell, Chantalle Carl, Kate O'Connell, Kristin May, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Stacy Laue, Chanta Combs, Stephanie Dean, Ashley Ferrell
Executive Producers (Read Their Own Names): Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins, Laurie Johnson, Susan Hulings
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