Book of the Day Roundup: September 8-12, 2025
Other People’s Mothers
Julie Marie Wade
University Press of Florida
Softcover $28.00 (182pp)
978-0-8130-8114-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Julie Marie Wade’s shrewd and winsome memoir Other People’s Mothers is about the gendered conventions of her 1980s and 1990s Seattle girlhood.
Nine chapters, covering Wade’s life from the ages of six to thirteen, center observations of her friends and their mothers. Wade ponders the notion of being “born to be a mother” and proffers tongue-in-cheek commentary on what she learned from each family: “Mrs. Arlington [Or a Study of Apocalypse as an After-School Special]” introduces a Rapture-oriented clan whose faith bears little resemblance to the Wades’ cozy Lutheranism, making her consider “what I’ve been told versus what I believe, what I doubt versus what I know for sure.”
Wade embodies her precocious childhood point-of-view with aplomb. Vignettes reveal her incidental learning of truths about herself and her parents. From their parents’ reaction to her friend Steven’s request to be Florence Nightingale for Halloween, she grasps how strict their gender boundaries are. Overhearing her parents gossiping about Mrs. Lennox, she recognizes her mother’s hypocrisy; their discussion of her overweight friend Ellie equates thinness with virtue. Her voice matures as the chapters advance. That Mrs. Magnussen’s company and touch thrill Wade more than her son’s gives an inkling of Wade’s sexual orientation.
Popular culture references anchor the book. Food and fashion are frequent vehicles for epiphanies, pointing to the importance of the body—and perhaps sexuality. Everyone says Mrs. Fischer and her daughter Alicia are “cut from the same cloth,” whereas Wade knows that she disappoints her own mother with her unfeminine clothing. She is often accused of putting words in others’ mouths—a witty foreshadowing of just what she’ll do as an author.
A playful and insightful memoir-in-essays, Other People’s Mothers sets a coming-of-age story in the context of a conformist community.
REBECCA FOSTER (August 25, 2025)
Heartland Masala
An Indian Cookbook from an American Kitchen
Jyoti Mukharji
Auyon Mukharji
The Collective Book Studio
Hardcover $35.00 (288pp)
978-1-68555-328-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Spicy flavors zing through Heartland Masala, a delightful cookbook by mother-son team Jyoti and Auyon Mukharji.
Recreating traditional Indian dishes in American kitchens, the book combines culinary history and commentary with a wealth of regional recipes. Spices are central to its work, which includes ample advice on tempering them in hot oil or ghee and on how to make spice mixtures. A descriptive addendum on the usage and storage of numerous spices, from amchoor to turmeric, is also included.
Plenty of Indian favorites are here, including samosas, butter chicken, and mango lassi, but fusion dishes abound too. American Masala Brussels Sprouts with potatoes and ground dried mango; fresh corn meets ginger, lemon, and cilantro in Bhutta Chaat; and cubes of watermelon are dressed with kalonji and warm-flavored spices infused in hot oil. Further, a wealth of bean dishes proves perfect for meatless and budget-conscious home cooks.
The ingredients, gear, and techniques needed for each recipe are described with playfulness and panache. Most recipes involve just a supermarket trip, but there are some dishes that require sourcing ingredients elsewhere. For instance, Murgh Rezala calls for white poppy seeds, kewra water, and water lily seeds.
Lighthearted illustrations add wit and valuable information on how to prepare vegetables, identify legumes, and shape breads. Plentiful color photographs reflect how the finished dishes should look. The Mukharjis’ effervescent personalities sizzle in the recipe introductions and are further reflected in their illustrated selves and captioned banter, as when Jyoti has the last word over Auyon on the deep-frying of beloved snacks: “Ignore him. Fry deeply.”
Heartland Masala is a joyful, inspiring cookbook that shows off the dazzling culinary inventiveness of an appealing mother-son cooking duo.
RACHEL JAGARESKI (August 20, 2025)
Grave Flowers
Autumn Krause
Peachtree Teen
Hardcover $19.99 (400pp)
978-1-68263-649-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Inspired by Tudor history, Autumn Krause’s Grave Flowers is an intriguing fantasy novel full of conflict and love.
Madalina is princess of Radix, a staid kingdom known for its grave flowers, deadly magical plants. Her twin sister, Inessa, is sent to marry the heir of Acus, a place known for its wild parties. But when Inessa dies, Madalina is sent to take her sister’s place—and to kill Aeric, her betrothed. While she has been taught to believe that she must do her duty to keep Radix’s independence, her attraction to Aeric throws her off. Further, the identity of her sister’s killer remains hidden.
The grave flowers center the book’s intriguing magic system, standing in for royal abuses of power, death, and the afterlife. Felys, people who are displaced and mistreated, have deep knowledge of the grave flowers; Madalina’s Fely heritage through her mother plays a powerful role. Indeed, Madalina is a complicated but lovable heroine who grows from cold to vulnerable across the book, her qualities contrasting with those of Aeric, who is strong underneath his lighthearted behavior. The secondary characters, including Madelina’s friend Yorick, are well-developed too, as with notes about Yorick’s distance from the social order and his gentle care for Madalina.
The prose includes evocative descriptions, as of a “garden [writhing] in fretful waves.” People’s exchanges are formal, reflecting their various suspicions and social roles, and the background is fleshed out with keen details, as of the norms at parties, which are used to reflect the respective kingdoms’ cultures.
Fast and tense, the exciting fantasy novel Grave Flowers follows a princess as she navigates the complications of love and political intrigue.
M. W. MERRITT (August 25, 2025)
The Lighthouse Keeper
Eugenio Fernández Vázquez
Mariana Villanueva Segovia, illustrator
Kit Maude, translator
Tapioca Stories
Hardcover $19.95 (48pp)
979-898874994-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
A surreal neon dream, this picture book is an ode to the sea, to connection, and to weathering the storm. Neon pinks, yellows, greens, and blues leap out from dark backdrops, depicting the lighthouse keeper’s ever-growing beard of small fishes, desperate sailors swirling in stormy seas, and the wink of a crescent moon as she bids farewell for another phase. Rhyming lines complete this enchanting picture book about a lonely, steadfast lighthouse keeper and the natural world that keeps him company.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (August 25, 2025)
Under the Pink Triangle
Katie Moore
Amsterdam Publishers
Hardcover $27.95 (420pp)
978-949341807-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
In Katie Moore’s moving historical novel Under the Pink Triangle, gay men navigate Dachau in 1942.
Manny and Rudi are imprisoned in Dachau, forced to wear pink triangles, because they are gay. They form a deep connection with one another. Meanwhile, Augustin, a guard, searches the camp for his son, Otto. Desperate, he commits atrocious acts against other prisoners in a futile attempt to protect Otto from the violent reality of the Nazis’ longest-operating concentration camp.
Between the three rotating narrators are short vignettes from the perspectives of prisoners who are about to die, fleshing out life in the camp and illuminating its horrors in evocative terms. Even those who occupy a mere few pages are fleshed out well, including a WWI veteran who used to be proud to serve Germany, but who dies as the result of a bet between guards. Elsewhere, starving prisoners turn on fellow prisoners for extra portions of bread.
The book walks a delicate line, intertwining horrific, visceral violence with brief flashes of love and humanity. In one unflinching scene, a doctor’s assistant brings a dying prisoner within sight of the sunset before taking his life. This jarring caduceus of darkness and light is the hardy spine of the book, illustrating that people will do anything to be kind to each other even in the grimmest of circumstances.
The prose is beautiful, evoking sharp emotions. Its harsh descriptions of emaciated prisoners, at times both pitying and dehumanizing, vivify their mistreatment: they appear as “bent, twisted creatures, a parody of man.” This sets high stakes for Manny and Rudi’s budding relationship, as either could die at any moment, leaving the other alone again.
Small acts of kindness are exchanged between prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp in Under the Pink Triangle, a masterful depiction of humanity’s capacity for both violence and love.
LEAH BLOCK (August 25, 2025)
Kathy Young
