Book of the Day Roundup: December 15-19, 2025
Banana Menorah
Lee Wind
Karl West, illustrator
Apples & Honey Press
Hardcover $19.95 (32pp)
978-1-68115-681-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
A girl’s ingenuity saves the day in this sweet holiday picture book about bringing new life to old traditions. At the start of Hanukkah, the girl and her family are far away—and her fathers forgot the menorah. The first night, she sticks two candles in a banana in their hotel room; the second, she gets creative with breakfast cereal. When they return home, they have all their familiar menorahs, but she feels something is still missing, and the makeshift menorah tradition is rekindled.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (October 17, 2025)
Home Before Dark
Eva Björg Ægisdóttir
Victoria Cribb, translator
Orenda Books
Hardcover $26.99 (300pp)
978-1-916788-60-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
A sister tormented by guilt investigates her sibling’s disappearance in Eva Björg Ægisdóttir’s beguiling psychological thriller Home Before Dark.
At fourteen, Marsí corresponded with a pen pal, Bergur, using her elder sister Stína’s name instead of her own. In time, though, she became suspicious that Bergur was lying about his age. Then Stína went missing.
In 1977, Marsí faces the ten-year anniversary of Stína’s disappearance. She thinks that her letter writing may have been responsible. An insomniac, she broods; she also has trichotillomania and perturbing visions of violence. Her mental state is ambiguous: her mother insists that she was always unreliable. Then a letter arrives from Bergur, reigniting her fears.
Marsí returns to her remote Icelandic childhood home in search of answers. Its eerie cellar yields clues about Stína, including diary pages. Marsí’s fragmented memories about the past intensify, and her confusion grows. Her family’s abattoir and egg farm unsettle her with grisly images of chicken flesh, and her parents are cagey in response to her questions.
Some chapters are narrated from Stína’s point of view prior to her disappearance. Her thoughts are consumed with social gatherings, art, and feelings that she has outgrown her town, fueling curiosity about whether she left on her own. Stina’s thoughts spill into Marsí’s narration, dialing up the suspense: Stina learns about her mother’s postwar history; in the present, Marsí does as well. Marsí also interrogates Stína’s classmates and renews friendships with a few, despite the discomfort of knowing that she can’t replace Stína.
With sharp twists and explorations of the damaging loyalties that warp those they’re meant to protect, the chilling, unrelenting noir novel Home Before Dark follows a missing persons case that masks enduring traumas.
KAREN RIGBY (October 17, 2025)
Teensy Weensy
Vered Lebber
Kinneret Gildar, illustrator
Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann, translator
Green Bean Books
Softcover $12.99 (36pp)
978-1-80500-154-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Detailed pencil and watercolor illustrations make effective use of white space in this charming picture book about caring for the natural world and all its creatures. When Efrat finds a sparrow hatchling who lost his nest to a storm, she brings him inside, nestles him in a cardboard box with twigs and leaves, and names him Teensy Weensy. Despite her friends and family telling her she shouldn’t bother, she diligently cares for him as he grows—and then lets him go.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (October 17, 2025)
The Royal Artisan
Queen Esther’s Court
Tessa Afshar
Bethany House Publishers
Softcover $18.99 (368pp)
978-0-7642-4370-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Set in Queen Esther’s court, Tessa Afshar’s enthralling romance novel The Royal Artisan is about family secrets and second chances.
After losing her parents, Sazana rebuilds her life, finding quiet joy in her work as a potter, though she’s forced to hide her Jewish identity. When a terrible plot to wipe out the Jews is revealed, Sazana learns that her lineage guards a secret that may help Queen Esther save their people. But unraveling the mystery of her past means working with a royal guard, Jadon, who once broke her heart.
Jadon and Sazana’s romance overlays an intriguing, secret-laden world of Persian politics that threatens their reemerging feelings. The tantalizing tension between the two is heightened by adept imagery. After yet another tragedy, Sazana is described as “an experienced sojourner” through the “endless night sky” of loss. The motif of pottery adds additional sophistication to the poetic prose, both propelling the plot as enemies close in on Sazana’s workshop and resulting in various metaphors that frame the story’s faith-centered message.
Scriptural references arise throughout. Sometimes Esther narrates from decades in the future, looking back; other chapters focus on Jadon and Sazana’s present perspectives. The clever use of dual timelines grounds the story: when Sazana and Jadon’s situation is at its most desperate, Esther’s future reflections offer hope that her people will yet persevere. Indeed, quiet moments of reflection balance well with the fast-paced, high-stakes scenes of espionage and bloodshed. There is consistent hum of regret and danger as Jadon strives to protect Sazana, making the sweet ending all the more satisfying.
A talented potter and the man who broke her heart reunite to save their people in the lovely romance novel The Royal Artisan.
VIVIAN TURNBULL (October 17, 2025)
Just Enough to Start Over
Sara Gothelf Bloom
Paul Dry Books
Softcover $17.95 (254pp)
978-1-58988-208-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Sara Gothelf Bloom’s sophisticated novel-in-vignettes Just Enough to Start Over is about an artistic German Jewish family in exile from the Nazis.
There are three Dubrovsky sisters: Bertha, a talented musician; Annelene, a gifted student of New Objectivity Expressionist artist Max Beckmann; and Hilde, a poet. They live in a world of beauty with danger and ugliness at its edges. When their lives are threatened by the Nazis, they pack up their most treasured belongings, including three significant paintings that appear as a leitmotif throughout the story, and depart for Shanghai. There, having brought “just enough to start over,” they resume their creative pursuits and await the papers that will allow them to emigrate.
Bertha marries a doctor who is also in love with Annelene. They have a daughter, Hanna, whose search for identity carries the story into the next generation. Annelene eschews domestic life and establishes herself as an artist, while Hilde falls in love with a communist poet, complicating her prospects for immigration, though she and her husband do manage to get permission to leave China in time. Meanwhile, the paintings are plundered, lost, and rediscovered.
Although slender, this novel’s scope is broad, spanning decades and continents. Its chapters dip into various characters’ lives, depicting intimate scenes contained within world events. The horror of war is conveyed via minutiae, such as in a Russian officer’s description of the Berlin Zoo: “I can smell the blood in the pool where the lone hippopotamus swims among the dead.” The paragraphs are packed with key details and place names, as rich and dense as the Black Forest chocolate cake craved by the exiles.
A gorgeous novel, Just Enough to Start Over is a feat of imagination based on meticulous research.
SUZANNE KAMATA (October 17, 2025)
Kathy Young
