February 21, 2026
Sometimes I read based on the setting—location and circumstance can be very persuasive. In the four novels below you’ll find yourself on a journey to the unforgiving Canadian Arctic in search of treasure; in a chaotic Midwestern restaurant with an entertaining ensemble of characters; in the South with two female friends from Honeysuckle, Louisiana (a good name for a town…); and with a prize-winning writer who sets some of the tales in her new collection in her native Florida. As a nonfiction entry, we have a superb triple biography of three women writers who changed the face of journalism.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
-
.
Kin
By TAYARI JONES
Published by KNOPF
Jones’s latest is the story of the ineffable power of female friendship and how different paths taken cannot shake ties formed in childhood. Niecy and Annie grow up together in Louisiana in the ’50s, bonded by the fact that they both had absent mothers. Niecy’s was murdered by her husband, and Annie’s mother left the family when she was a baby. One goes to Spelman College in Atlanta, the other to Memphis to look for her mother. Jones structures the novel in alternating voices and, while we follow their divergent lives, it is their connection that shines through.
-
.
Starry and Restless
By JULIA COOKE
Published by FSG
An enthralling group biography of three fabulous, early-feminist journalists who “believed in the power of witness.” Martha Gellhorn, primarily known to many as one of Hemingway’s wives; Emily ‘Mickey’ Hahn, a New Yorker writer who spent time in the opium dens of Shanghai; and Rebecca West, a British Dame who wrote in multiple genres—fiction, travel writing, and journalism. All were working mothers. We follow their journeys as they grapple with their own fame and have glamorous and dangerous adventures trailblazing the way for women writers to come. Their influence and impact on female journalists are long-lasting and Cooke’s book is a mirror for the fast-changing world of the mid-20th century.
.
-
.
White River Crossing
By IAN MCGUIRE
Published by CROWN
McGuire is highly lauded for his historical tales of men in harsh climes. This entry is as gripping, gruesome, and compelling as his previous novels like The North Water. Based to some extent on real events and characters, it is set in the 1770s as the Hudson Bay Company, the Canadian fur trading company, assembles a group to go on a foolhardy secret search for gold in the sub-Arctic area we now call Manitoba. The group includes the manager, his innocent nephew, and a group of Dene (the “Northern Indians”), including their guide and his relations. It is a get-rich-quick scheme that will go horribly wrong. There will be blood…
-
.
Brawler
By LAUREN GROFF
Published by RIVERHEAD
The nine stories in this collection present families with problems–abusive parents, drinkers, mental health issues, all sorts of tragic circumstances. The title story refers to the nickname given to teenaged Sara by her diving coach when she kept getting in fights and was banned from the swim team “after she had been discovered brushing the boys’ junk in their Speedos with her hand as they swam by.…” She also steals frozen dinners to take home to her single mother, who lives with an unexplained, debilitating pain and only imbibes vodka and pills. These pieces are marked by hardship, but Groff imbues each character with a tenderness and empathy that gives her fiction its power.
.
-
.
The Reservation
By REBECCA KAUFFMAN
Published by COUNTERPOINT
Who doesn’t love a story set in an insulated small-town restaurant—so ripe for drama. Kauffman, longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize in 2016, has penned a thoroughly appealing and subtly insightful novel about the pressure cooker of a restaurant called Aunt Orsa’s (Orsa says, “I’m everyone’s crazy aunt”). It is a big night—they are expecting John Grisham for dinner. With the disappearance of twenty-two steaks earmarked for his group, the staff becomes panicked and accusatory—in an entirely revealing way. Everyone’s a suspect, from the chef to the baker to the hostess to the servers. You’ll enjoy finding out who did it and why.
