Book of the Day Roundup: December 8-12, 2025
The Gallagher Place
Julie Doar
Zibby Publishing
Softcover $17.99 (336pp)
979-899237700-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
In Julie Doar’s thrilling novel The Gallagher Place, a murder on a family’s estate reveals long-buried secrets.
On a walk with her brothers, Nate and Henry, Marlowe discovers a dead body on her family’s land. The discovery is unpleasant enough, but when the investigation reveals a link with her best friend Nora’s disappearance twenty years ago, the situation takes an even more sinister turn. All of a sudden, Marlowe doesn’t know who to trust.
With the murder investigation encompassing a couple of weeks, the novel moves at a ruminative, measured pace through its limited number of events. Its tension is heightened by chapters set in the past, through which Nora’s vivid presence casts a greater pall on her continued absence in Marlowe’s present. The prose is lyrical and moody, lingering on descriptions of nature and the settings to set the mood:
The field and the orchard were surrounded by the woods, carved up by old footpaths and loosely mortared stone walls—a perfect playground orbiting the warm sun of the Gray House.
The flashback chapters prove to be of crucial importance to Nora’s characterization, filling in the blanks in the memories of those left behind. Indeed, the book’s treatment of the past is tantalizing. Interest is generated by accounts of pranks played on elderly neighbors, and dark consequences are implied for youthful deeds. Marlowe is a more subdued heroine, but her hidden depths are revealed as the book continues and moves toward its shocking conclusion.
A character-driven mystery novel, The Gallagher Place is about the cost of keeping secrets, even in the name of personal ambition or one’s family.
CAROLINA CIUCCI (October 17, 2025)
The Lightyears Between Us
Shannon K. English
Tiny Ghost Press
Hardcover $23.99 (316pp)
978-1-915585-37-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
In Shannon K. English’s science fiction novel, rivals clash over duty and agency.
After wars leave Earth uninhabitable, humans survive aboard the Eden space station. There, Will, the daughter to a royal leader, goes to school and campaigns to ensure her father’s continued leadership. She also has immature battles of wits with a classmate, Paige, who, despite her own family’s influence, champions freedom for commoners and detests Will’s nobility. Will finds Paige irritating: She keeps up with Will in school while still having friends and a life outside of politics, which Will cannot. After the Eden‘s lottery makes them work partners, they’re forced to coexist.
The novel makes excellent use of its minimalistic settings aboard cramped spacecraft while exploring Will’s and Paige’s lives and Will’s inner perspective. Her status as royalty is engaging; she makes personal sacrifices to live up to her name. Paige’s story is involving, too: She cares for troubled friends with ailing families and nips at Will about her privilege and ego. Emotional highs land as Will’s softer side reveals itself: She is a lonesome teenager longing to belong.
Life on separate parts of the Eden, where people live as close to normalcy as their circumstances allow, is well detailed. People go to school, fall into social cliques, space race, and hold elections. Meanwhile, the lottery summons commoners to probe space for new frontiers every twenty-five years. Will and Paige become participants and bond on their mission. Their rivalry blossoms into friendship, surprising them both. When secrets are revealed about the lottery and the Eden, Will is driven to look toward a more fulfilling future. The finale is tantalizing, making room for sequels.
In the science fiction novel The Lightyears Between Us, relationships are formed beyond the bounds of social status.
BRANDON PAWLICKI (October 17, 2025)
Snuggle Season
Jaimie MacGibbon
Quirk Books
Hardcover $18.99 (32pp)
978-1-68369-512-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
The first installment of a series honoring the four seasons, this picture book centers on all the snuggly sensations of winter. Piling in bed with Mom and Dad first thing in the morning, bundling up in snowsuits, reading books under blankets, and being wrapped in a towel after an evening bath are but a few of the snuggles depicted in the soft, colorful illustrations that contrast the warm, golden glow of home with the icy blue of the world outside.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (October 17, 2025)
Delicious Japanese Street Eats
60 Soulful Street Food Recipes
Laure Kie
Takashi Fujii, illustrator
Tuttle Publishing
Hardcover $24.99 (208pp)
978-4-80531993-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
An encyclopedic recipe book, Laure Kié’s Delicious Japanese Street Eats brings together Japanese culinary culture and cooking know-how in a colorful, eye-catching format.
A mouthwatering collection of recipes for popular and traditional Japanese street food, the text includes fan favorite dishes and drinks like ramen and matcha alongside regional treasures like kaisendon, a raw fish rice bowl, and okonomiyaki, a region-specific fry dish. Throughout, the direct, single-page recipes are complemented by explorations of cultural idiosyncrasies like “noodle vending machines” and the history of Japanese beer (the first brewery was opened in 1876). Elsewhere, the book contains a crash course in Japan’s many different kinds of street food, where certain foods come from, and recommendations on where to find great street food in cities including Tokyo and Kyoto.
The exuberant color illustrations and photographs, which depict the final products of the recipes, result in a magnetic quality, drawing the eye from one image and story to the next. Some include a striking level of detail. Early in the book, yakitori, grilled chicken skewers, are given a multi-page treatment in which the drawings show nine different versions of the same dish, capturing changes in the ingredients, preparation, and presentation. This level of detail enriches the text, providing a useful taxonomy for comparing the ways a single food can be reimagined.
The recipes themselves are broken into intuitive sections that lay out serving sizes, cooking and preparation times, ingredient lists, and the instructions. The use of columns, images, and other organizational elements make the information distinct and clear, with enough white space for adjustments and personal flourishes to be noted.
A beautiful curation of recipes, illustrations, and nuggets of cultural and culinary information, Delicious Japanese Street Eats shows how food is a total sensory experience.
WILLEM MARX (October 17, 2025)
Book of Exemplary Women
Diana Xin
YesYes Books
Unknown
978-1-946303-09-7
In Diana Xin’s playful story collection Book of Exemplary Women, characters navigate relationships and religious mores while enduring hauntings.
These short stories focus on family bonds, marriages, and Chinese American families. Magical touches lighten the palette despite illnesses and death. In “Camp Wish-Song,” adolescent campers wonder if their cancer gave them superpowers. In “Someone Else,” two couples hit it off over horror movies but face a breakdown when they try to film their own. In “Sweet Scoundrel,” the Cao family adjusts to the news that their patriarch impregnated his mistress in Beijing.
Many of the situations are universal, but their protagonists don’t exhibit model behavior. At times, they transgress the rules by exploring their sexuality. In one tale, a pastor’s wife goes rogue in her thirties, writing erotica and having affairs. Elsewhere, a seventh-grader escapes a home Bible study to flirt with her former babysitter’s husband. The book also includes an erotic appraisal of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s characters and a Midwest high school update of Dracula.
Religion is a frequent theme. The spirit world contrasts with Christianity in the impish tale “The Magnificent Funerals of Grand Auntie Du,” wherein a woman attends her own funeral at the New Chinese Baptist Church of Seattle, watches a monk pray over her, and joins Ghost, who lived in her cellar, in wandering the earth. Several stories are connected by recurring characters: Du bequeaths Ghost to Mrs. Liu, who travels to China to bring back her daughter, Michelle; later, Michelle visits Mrs. Liu in a care facility and prepares to inherit Ghost. Brooding on choices and regrets, the stories sometimes have unsatisfying endings, if ones that suggest that immortality means being remembered by loved ones.
Book of Exemplary Women is a daring short story collection about loss and what might come next.
REBECCA FOSTER (October 17, 2025)
Kathy Young
