Book of the Day Roundup: March 23-27, 2026
Down South + East
A Chinese American Cookbook
Ron Hsu
Abrams Books
Hardcover $40.00 (272pp)
978-1-4197-7747-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Infused with family stories and historical tidbits about Southern cuisine, Chef Ron Hsu’s bountiful, celebratory, and edifying cookbook Down South + East marries flavors from across the world in its irresistible dishes.
A La Bernardin alumni and the chef-owner of Atlanta’s Michelin-starred Lazy Betty, Hsu cooks “soulful dishes relevant to today’s increasingly global kitchens.” A tantalizing array of these are represented herein, via home cook-accessible variations. The book’s recommended larder includes ingredients ranging from okra to oyster sauce and star anise, reflecting Hsu’s Southern and Asian backgrounds and appetite for experimentation. Still, he resists labeling his multicultural recipes “fusion” food; rather, this is food for everyone, marked by generous cross-cultural ingredient sampling and luscious combinations.
Beginning with flavorful vegetable recipes for dishes including Braised Romaine with Ham Hock Pot Likker, Cucumber and Tomato Salad with Mala-Buttermilk Dressing, and Hoisin-Roasted Eggplant, the book includes chapters devoted to rice dishes, particular proteins, noodles, and sauces and dessert. Inspired flavor combinations appear in recipes for Spicy Dry-Fried Catfish with Cilantro and Cumin, Mandarin Beef and Papaya Salad with Roasted Peanuts, and Pimento Cheese Wontons, though the book also includes some classics.
Mouthwatering variations are proposed, and backstories are shared, in the recipe headings for dishes like Crispy Rice Sticks with Sriracha Ranch. Staple Southern ingredients including collard greens, bacon, and peanuts recur throughout. The mostly single-page recipes also boast clear instructions, as well as notes about modifications, kitchen tools, and preparation techniques, punctuating Hsu’s efforts to help home cooks experience the rich comforts of his particular culinary story.
Southern hospitality also informs the work, in which Hsu’s family proves to be a crucial element. Indeed, the book includes tributes to Hsu’s mother, Betty—a restaurateur herself—as well as recipe notes regarding which dishes his daughter can’t resist, and which were inspired by his wife. Credit is given to the chefs who mentored Hsu throughout his career as well, and an essay dedicated to Buford Highway’s international markets and fare captures the best of the “Dirty South.” These heartwarming elements function as an additional invitation to the audience, whose own families Hsu hopes will be fed from Down South + East.
Certain to “inspire you to explore a market you’ve never been in, to see and taste ingredients you’ve never heard of,” Down South + East is a warm and welcoming cookbook.
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (March 17, 2026)
Away to See
Martha’s Vineyard
Liz Norwood
Paul Norwood, illustrator
The Collective Book Studio
Hardcover $30.00 (96pp)
978-1-68555-177-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
In paintings and poems, Paul and Liz Norwood’s Away to See conveys the charm of a beloved vacation destination.
The California-based Norwoods have been “summer folks” at Martha’s Vineyard for over thirty years. As popular as the Massachusetts island resort has become, it is still possible to be alone in a chosen spot, they insist. The “distinct drop-in-anytime vibe” promotes total relaxation. Memories created each season bolster their spirits through the winter—“the cure for what ails” is to “steep in saltwater / soak in the sun.”
Images and verses combine to depict this timeless place of “picture postcard hamlets, white fences and blue hydrangeas.” Bygone fishing village motifs remain; old men sit on a bench outside a general store. Vistas alternate with action shots, as of boys jumping into the water from a bridge and a woman hanging pillowcases on a clothesline. Thick layers of oil paint in blues and coral overlap in abstracts of sea and sky, while a lighter, more realistic approach is applied to scenes featuring people. The text expounds the paradox that Martha’s Vineyard promises consistent amusement despite inevitable change: “our seeing is endlessly unfolding // … it never stops / surprising us.”
An alluring, poetry-infused art book, Away to See captures the laid-back atmosphere and sense of belonging found on Martha’s Vineyard: “when your toes / are planted firmly in the sand, / you can simply say you’re / on island.”
REBECCA FOSTER (February 17, 2026)
Climbing
Amy Lowell
Paolo Domeniconi, illustrator
Creative Editions
Hardcover $17.99 (16pp)
978-1-56846-421-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
A poem by renowned twentieth-century poet Amy Lowell receives illustrative treatment in this picture book that transforms climbing a tree into a whimsical adventure. As a girl climbs an apple tree, the branches, blossoms, and fruit grow larger, dwarfing her as she approaches a glistening city perched atop the canopy. She next takes flight on the back of a majestic white bird. Enchanting illustrations enhance this homage to the ability of the imagination to make even the mundane magical.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (February 27, 2026)
Was That Normal?
Alex Potts
Avery Hill Publishing
Softcover $19.99 (208pp)
978-1-917355-25-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
In Alex Potts’s wry graphic novel Was That Normal?, a man vacillates between social connections and solitude.
In his forties, Philip rents a room, works from home, and is desperate to enjoy some social interaction. He’s awkward in social situations, though, and he often avoids his flatmate. He’s invigorated when he meets a woman who sings for a band, but their budding romance is paused when her ex-boyfriend is killed in an accident, leaving Philip confused and uncertain.
The book is both sad and funny. Philip overanalyzes his conversations, though his neurotic internal monologue is revealing. When he tries to interact with a woman, for instance, he wonders, “How much is the right amount of talking?” He rehearses small talk, reviewing the results by asking afterward, “Was that normal?” He also daydreams at random—about having a dog named Juan; about fighting a chihuahua and gorilla monsters. A snarky, omniscient narrator adds to the humor; for example, when Philip sits at a café, intending to read a book, the caption criticizes: “But look at him, checking his phone every minute or two.”
The art has grungy charm. Its depictions are often comical, though they hint at deeper personal and existential issues. For example, a huge, half-destroyed tower in town sheds pieces of itself every so often—a symbol of Philip’s emotional status, and perhaps the town’s.
In the dark but whimsical graphic novel Was That Normal?, a man resists his sense of isolation.
PETER DABBENE (February 27, 2026)
Honeysuckle
Bar Fridman-Tell
Bloomsbury
Hardcover $28.99 (336pp)
978-1-63973-673-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Bar Fridman-Tell’s aching and alarming novel Honeysuckle is part star-crossed love story, part allegory about human attempts to effect dominion over nature.
Eight-year-old Rory is distraught when his older sister, Wynne, outgrows their play. To soothe his loneliness, Wynne constructs him a companion, Daye, out of branches and flowers. Daye, who speaks only with her hands at first, spends her first summer with Rory running through fields, frogging, and climbing trees.
But flower girls are meant to be ephemeral: Daye must be rewoven with new materials each season, lest she dissipate. Worse, as he grows, Rory falls in love with Daye, becoming more desperate to stop her perpetual blooming and fading. Soon, Rory travels to Wynne’s university to learn about the magic of Daye’s formation, hoping to make her existence perennial.
Daye, meanwhile—not an automaton, but also not autonomous—feels like “an empty stretch of sky, blank and vacant without Rory.” Wild and innocent, she is not often asked what she wants or needs. Alone, she is kept company by rabbits and birds. When Rory inquires about intimacy, Daye agrees, though her true desire is to keep him near—and her assent cannot erase the inherent coerciveness of a creator-creation romantic relationship.
The novel is composed with brittle, devastating lyricism. Its horrors flutter beneath intoxicating layers of nature references—to Daye’s first strawberry mouth; to snowdrops and hollyberries in winter and “bluebells, daffodils, and wild garlic” in spring. As it progresses, concern for Daye increases; further, left alone, she begins to form feather-light desires at odds with Rory’s own. In a grand irony, twin betrayals (attributed, by Rory, to love, and exposed, within Daye, as entrapment) plant the seeds of her emancipation.
A flower girl magicked to life to be a boy’s playmate comes into her own in the exquisite fantasy novel Honeysuckle.
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (February 27, 2026)
Kathy Young
