Book of the Day Roundup: January 1-5, 2024
Chasing Stars
Meg Gaertner
Jolly Fish Press
Softcover $9.99 (160pp)
978-1-63163-790-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A poignant story of sisterhood and coming-of-age, Meg Gaertner’s novel Chasing Stars follows changes to a seventh grader’s life that leave her floundering and searching for stable ground.
Libby and her sister Erica were born just two years apart. Erica is Libby’s closest playmate; they are used to doing everything together, from playing dress-up to having snowball fights. But Erica has recently become distant; now, everything Libby does seems to irritate her sister or be met with a cold shoulder. At the same time, the girls’ grandfather comes to stay as his dementia worsens; no affordable memory care facilities are available, forcing Erica to give up her room and move in with Libby. Close quarters do nothing to improve the sisters’ relations. Then, Libby discovers that her sister will be leaving for boarding school in just a few months.
Bewildered and hurt, Libby reveals her feelings via careful introspection throughout the book, trying to figure out her sister’s motives as well as her own. The pressures of intergenerational living and chronic illness weave through the plot, resulting in both tension and an opportunity for growth. Libby sees her parents’ vulnerability in grieving their own aging parents and, in a deft parallel, her grandfather’s loss of memory comes just as Libby is trying to save her childhood memories from being dismissed by her sister’s new insistence that they are “cringe.” And outside of the family circle, the cultures of the seventh and ninth grades are captured with detailed litanies of babysitting jobs, dances, tone-deaf friends, and movie marathons.
In the empathetic and warm novel Chasing Stars, once-close sisters navigate accumulating changes to find their ways back to each other.
CAMILLE-YVETTE WELSCH (December 21, 2023)
Alexandria
The City That Changed the World
Islam Issa
Pegasus Books
Hardcover $29.95 (496pp)
978-1-63936-545-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Islam Issa’s Alexandria is an outstanding biography of a unique city, describing how the Egyptian locale changed from its founding by Alexander the Great into the modern day.
“Despite its classical renown and enduring impact, Alexandria is neglected in comparison to other centres of antiquity,” Issa argues before seeking to correct the issue. The book starts with the iconic commander measuring the footprint of the future city and planning what it would become. It then tracks how his successor, Ptolemy, built Alexandra into the capital of his family’s longstanding dynasty.
There are fascinating discussions of the city’s Royal Library and of how it acquired books from far-flung empires; there’s coverage of the Pharos of Alexandria, too, as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The story winds through the city’s conquest by the Romans, the rise of early Christianity, and the city’s destruction in the fourth century CE. Also covered are the Islamic conquest and the Fatimid caliphate. Every era receives its due, with events recounted in narrative form, embellished by historical anecdotes and memorable figures throughout.
Cleopatra and Hypatia are among those who played extended roles in Alexandria’s development, and Alexandria weaves their stories into its pages well. And there’s contemporary reportage on how the city still evokes specific events from its history and on how the myriad people and cultures who made their way to Alexandria over the centuries continue to define it. “Alexandria is a lens through which people, civilisations and ideas came and went,” Issa says, “and yet the city still stands.”
Conversational and rich with research, Alexandria is a fantastic history of a storied city that pays fitting tribute to its subject.
JEFF FLEISCHER (December 21, 2023)
Rabbit Hole
Kate Brody
Soho Crime
Hardcover $25.95 (384pp)
978-1-64129-487-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A father’s suicide shakes loose family secrets, reigniting interest in a cold case, in Kate Brody’s engrossing thriller Rabbit Hole.
A decade past her older half-sister’s disappearance, Teddy teaches in the high school where her last name became infamous. There’s still local sympathy—and judgment—around her family’s story: Angie, the disappeared daughter, was both Mark’s niece and his stepdaughter; Mark left his wife and son to marry Angie’s widowed mother. Though these decisions were all made before Teddy’s time, her childhood was still shadowed by their implications. When Mark drives off a bridge, Teddy’s mother is the only family member who she’s left with––at least, the only one who’s willing to talk to anyone in her family’s shunned branch.
Bereft, Teddy begins to investigate what pushed her father over the edge. A true crime message board proffers leads; it connects Teddy to Mickey, who’s morose, younger, and remembers Angie’s disappearance well, and to Bill, a former classmate who teaches her about firearms and in whose arms she seeks comfort. Pulled against her better judgment toward conspiracy theories and wild suspicions, Teddy begins to cross ethical lines. She brings a weapon to school. She forces herself into her half-brother’s family, prompting legal warnings. And she begins to wonder about becoming a mother herself, in a town where everyone would rather she not.
Teddy is a complicated heroine whose ill-advised decisions and self-destructive tendencies make her less than sympathetic, though also impossible to ignore. Her descent is swift and systematic, leading to sensationalist developments and voyeuristic turns. No one and nothing, she learns, should be trusted—including her own tangled memories.
The dark corners of the internet feed a teacher’s investigation into her sister’s probable murder in the contemporary thriller Rabbit Hole.
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (December 27, 2023)
Sophia and Cassius
Anna Canić
Addison & Highsmith Publishers
Hardcover $29.99 (484pp)
978-1-59211-378-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Yearning spans centuries in Anna Canić’s bold feminist novel Sophia and Cassius, about a Lilith-inspired woman who is reborn to love a warrior.
Sophia was created together with the first man and later hated by Eve. In this extrabiblical foray, she reveals her side of the tale: she never consummated her relationship with Adam. When a trick by a rebellious angel, Mithras, sowed irrevocable doubt, Sophia was replaced. Though destined to be maligned, she still desired love. She found refuge with some of Adam and Eve’s descendants before she died.
Now reborn as Julia, a princess and sister to Caligula, Sophia relishes in storytelling. Intricate Latin terms are used to convey the details of life and language during the Roman Empire; the privileges of rank, tense loyalties, and darker politics are revealed in lucid terms, too. Women’s restrictions surrounding whom to marry propel Julia’s efforts to protect herself, also furthering a plot to ensure Caesar’s successor.
Amid its distinctive sections, in which it’s ambiguous as to how much Julia recalls of her past as Sophia, her headstrong actions stand out. She makes a few miscalculations, such as about her feelings; her suppressed longings help to humanize her. Highlights include her rapport with Greek servants and others who support her desire to help those who are powerless.
Meanwhile, meeting Jewish and Christian people, including Mary Magdalene, fuels Julia’s awareness about the larger battle between Mithras and Adonai—and her own surprising role as someone in whom Caesar confides. A slow-burning acknowledgment of her feelings toward a centurion, Cassius, is sometimes left to the background; still, when their stories converge, it’s an antidote to the Romans’ loveless cruelties.
Steeped in ideals about love and justice, the provocative alternative history novel Sophia and Cassius explores a storied woman’s influence on the Roman Empire.
KAREN RIGBY (December 27, 2023)
Have You Seen Mikki Olsen?
Alex Macdonald
Frances Lincoln Children’s Books
Hardcover $18.99 (32pp)
978-0-7112-8531-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A sleepy mishap with a favorite toy leads a little penguin on a frantic search in this cheeky picture book. The little penguin takes his pink teddy bear, Mikki Olsen, everywhere with him; an ill-placed “sticky icky fish” fixes Mikki to the penguin’s backside, where he remains all throughout the penguin’s earnest search. Subtle details, such as an “I love MO” sticker on the penguin’s snowmobile, infuse whimsy into this playful tale.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (December 27, 2023)
Barbara Hodge
