In “Brawler: Stories,” Lauren Groff presents an electric collection in which each story stands as a powerful triumph—bold, agile, and intensely charged. When read together, these stories resonate in an exhilarating way. Spanning from the 1950s to the present and encompassing diverse ages, social classes, and regions—from New England to Florida and California—these nine stories reflect and explore a common theme: the ongoing struggle between the darker and lighter aspects of human nature.

“In every human being, there exists both an animal and a god, locked in a struggle for dominance,” one character tells us. Among those caught in this conflict are a young woman who suddenly becomes responsible for her disabled sibling, a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of guidance, a mother grappling with the loss of her family, and a banking heir burdened by a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love and hindered by the well-meaning intentions of others, they strive to do the right thing for as long as possible.

Brawler is precise, surprising, and thought-provoking, offering deep insights into human nature. It reveals the heartbreaking turning points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and the will to survive.

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of five novels, including Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, as well as two story collections, including Florida. She has won The Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and she has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Groff’s work frequently appears in prestigious publications such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and her books have been translated into 36 languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband own the independent bookstore The Lynx.

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“The Ten Year Affair” by Erin Somers is a witty and emotionally charged exploration of marriage, family life, and the paths not taken, ultimately asking: Do we really want our fantasies to come true? This hilariously sharp novel weaves a sliding doors narrative around a chance meeting between two young parents, both happily married (just not to each other), that sparks a will-they-won’t-they romance—perfect for fans of “Big Swiss” and “Acts of Service.”

When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is undeniable. Both are content in their marriages and have two kids, and neither sees themselves as the type to engage in an affair. Yet, their connection deepens, and as their lives intertwine, the romantic tension becomes all-consuming—until their worlds unravel into two parallel timelines. In one, they pursue their feelings; in the other, they resist.

As reality splits, the everyday details of Cora’s life—her unfulfilling marketing job, her daughter’s newfound fascination with the afterlife, and her husband’s obsession with podcasts about the history of rope—gain fresh perspective. The intersecting and diverging timelines blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy, questioning what might have been and what truly matters.

Erin Somers is a reporter and news editor at Publishers Lunch. Her debut novel, “Stay Up with Hugo Best“, was recognized as a Vogue Best Book of the Year in 2019. Her work has appeared in esteemed publications such as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, New York magazine, The Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, and Best American Short Stories, among others.

Somers has received an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the NYC Center for Fiction, a fellowship from the Millay Colony, and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 2020. She resides in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich reminds us how close we were to halting the climate emergency, and our failure has resulted in our passing the tilting point. The book “reveals, in previously unreported detail, the birth of climate denialism and the genesis of the fossil-fuel industry’s coordinated effort to thwart climate policy through misinformation propaganda and political influence.”

By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change – including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late. Losing Earth is their story and ours.

The New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to Nathaniel Rich’s groundbreaking chronicle of that decade, which became an instant journalistic phenomenon – the subject of news coverage, editorials, and conversations all over the world. In its emphasis on the lives of the people who grappled with the significant existential threat of our age, it made vivid the moral dimensions of our shared plight.

Losing Earth tells the human story of climate change in even richer, more intimate terms. It reveals, in previously unreported detail, the birth of climate denialism and the genesis of the fossil-fuel industry’s coordinated effort to thwart climate policy through misinformation propaganda and political influence. The audiobook carries the story into the present day, wrestling with the long shadow of our past failures and asking crucial questions about how we make sense of our past, our future, and ourselves.

Like John Hersey’s Hiroshima and Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth, Losing Earth is the rarest of achievements: a riveting work of dramatic history that articulates a moral framework for understanding how we got here and how we must go forward.

Losing Earth is a must-read book!

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Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack delivers a thrilling, unpredictable tale of a sex worker who morphs into a political assassin, thrust into a high-stakes game of survival. This captivating story weaves together elements of deception, murder, and the complexities of today’s political landscape, offering readers a fresh, gripping perspective that keeps them on the edge of their seats.

The protagonist, a thirty-two-year-old sex worker, is taken by surprise when undercover government agents approach her to assist in a top-secret plot to assassinate a politician known as Meat Neck. However, after the assassination, she realizes the harsh truth: she has been deemed 100% disposable.

Now holed up in an off-the-grid cabin in the woods, she has only two days, her wits, and a laptop to save her own life.

Her best chance is to reach out to the popular feminist investigative podcast, Justice for Bimbos. In a series of hastily typed emails, the newly dubbed Murder Bimbo reveals how she was recruited and trained by a group of covert U.S. agents to eliminate Meat Neck.

Next, she opens a new email addressed to her ex, where the facts present a different narrative.

Structured in three increasingly unhinged acts, each offering a more subversive version of the story than the last, Murder Bimbo is simultaneously a thrilling literary work, a satirical manifesto for vigilantes, or a raucous commentary on the political madness we experience daily. Regardless, it serves as a serious announcement of an electrifying new voice in American literature.

Rebecca Novack grew up in the Rocky Mountains. She has a master’s in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

The Fire and the Ore by Olivia Hawker is a novel set in 1856 when three women—once strangers—come together in unpredictable Utah Territory. Hopeful, desperate, and willful, they’ll allow nothing on earth or Heaven to stand in their way. I have always enjoyed the history of the movement of people across the plains. Tamar, Jane, and Tabitha, along with their shared husband, Thomas Ricks, were real people, and Olivia Hawker compellingly describes them as people living in difficult times.

Olivia Hawker is a descendant of Jane and a former Mormon. She writes eloquently about the unnecessary Utah War (AKA Buchanan’s Blunder) and how the sister-wives grow to love and support each other. Tamar’s sister Patience, although a minor character, wrote a memoir of the time that the author used as a resource.

Reading a compelling historical fiction novel about family, sisterhood, and survival about three women like Jan was an easy choice. It was a page-turner from the first page to the last.

The Washington Post bestselling author of One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow is a compelling novel of family, sisterhood, and survival.

The Goodreads summary provides a good overview,

Following the call of their newfound Mormon faith, Tamar Loader and her family weather a brutal pilgrimage from England to Utah, where Tamar is united with her destined husband, Thomas Ricks. Clinging to a promise for the future, she abides a surprise: Thomas is already wedded to one woman—Tabitha, a local healer—and betrothed to another.

Orphaned by tragedy and stranded in the Salt Lake Valley, Jane Shupe struggles to provide for herself and her younger sister. Out of necessity, with no love lost, she too must bear the trials of a sister-wife. She is no member of the Mormon migration, yet Jane agrees to marry Thomas.

But when the US Army’s invasion brings the rebellious Mormon community to heel, Tamar, Jane, and Tabitha are forced to retreat into the hostile desert wilderness with little in common but the same man—and the resolve to keep themselves and their children alive. What they discover, as one, is redemption, a new definition of family, and a bond stronger than matrimony that is tested like never before.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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The Secrets We Left Behind by Soraya M. Lane is a historical fiction that raises the question, where were the women after Dunkirk and the fall of France? When World War II appeared to have been lost with a Nazi victory. Ms. Lane watched the movie Dunkirk and then researched that time and the women’s possible roles during that difficult moment in history.

She connected the evacuation at Dunkirk to the Massacre at Le Paradis, fifty miles away, to connect a British nurse and two French women whose strength helps them survive Nazi-occupied France. Three British male soldiers, two of whom survived the massacre and one who escaped Dunkirk, have secondary roles in the novel. 

The Secrets We Left Behind is the story of the three strong women and their efforts to survive the occupation while hiding the three soldiers. This focus on the role of women has been long overdue in history. Ms. Lane, who studied to be a lawyer, has found a career as a writer. The Secrets We Left Behind is the first book I have read, but it will not be the last one by Ms. Lane that I read.

I strongly recommend this book!

The Goodreads synopsis provides an overview of the novel.

How far will they go for family, friendship, and love? Occupied France, 1940. When the staff at a field hospital draw straws to find out who will join the evacuation from Dunkirk, Nurse Cate is left behind. But when the Nazis arrive to claim prisoners of war, she takes her chance and flees into the night, taking one patient with her.

Fifty miles away, the surrendering soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment are shot dead by the advancing Germans. Beneath the pile of bodies, two men survive, crawling to the safety of a nearby farmhouse, where sisters Elise and Adelaide risk their lives to take them in. When Cate, too, arrives at their door with her injured soldier, the pressure mounts.

The sisters are risking everything to keep their visitors safe. But with the Nazis coming ever closer and relationships in the farmhouse intensifying, they must all question the sacrifices they are willing to make for the lives of others. How far will they go for family, friendship, and love?

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