A Girl Named Zippy: growing up small in Mooreland by Haven Kimmel

When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965 in Mooreland, Indiana, it was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period--people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.

To three-year-old Zippy, it made perfect sense to strike a bargain with her father to keep her baby bottle--never mind that when she did, it was the first time she'd ever spoken. In her nonplussed family, Zippy has the perfect supporting cast: her beautiful yet dour brother, Danny, a seeker of the true faith; her sweetly sensible sister, Lindy, who wins the local beauty pageant; her mother, Delonda, who dispenses wisdom from the corner of the couch; and her father, Bob Jarvis, who never met a bet he didn't like.

Whether describing a serious case of chicken love, another episode with the evil Edythe across the street, or the night Zippy's dad borrowed thirty-six coon dogs and a raccoon to prove to the complaining neighbors just how quiet his two dogs were, Kimmel treats readers to a heroine who is wonderfully sweet and shy as she navigates the quirky adult world surrounding Zippy.

282 pages (March 2001)

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Title Read-alikes: The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson; Born a Crime by Trevor Noah; Lake of the Ozarks by William Geist; If You Lived Here, You'd be Home by Now by Christopher Ingraham; Under Magnolia by Frances Mayes; The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls; Tales from a Free-range Childhood by Donald Davis; My Animals and Other Family by Clare Balding; The Undertaker's Daughter by Katherine Mayfield; Riverine by Anela Palm; Hands of My Father by Myron Uhlberg; The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan; fathermothergod by Lucia Greenhouse; and As the Poppies Bloomed by Maral Boyadjian.

The Gentleman Poet: A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare's The Tempest by Kathryn Johnson

The Gentleman Poet, author Kathryn Johnson’s novel of love, danger, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, is a wonderful story that imagines a series of astonishing events that just might have inspired the immortal Bard to pen his magical tale. Told from the point of view of a young servant girl who strikes up a friendship with the not yet famous playwright when they are shipwrecked in the Bermudas, The Gentleman Poet gives a delightful new spin on Shakespearean lore reminiscent of the Academy Award-winning film, Shakespeare in Love.

En route to the Americas in 1609, Elizabeth Persons, a young servant girl, sees her blinding headache as an ominous sign. Sure enough, a hurricane during the final leg of their journey tosses the ill-fated Sea Venture and its one hundred and fifty passengers and crew onto the dreaded shores of the Bermudas, the rumored home of evil spirits and dangerous natives. In the months that pass—time marked by grave hardship, mutiny, adventure, danger . . . and a blossoming love between Elizabeth and the wrecked ship's young cook—she despairs of their ever being rescued. But she finds hope and strength in a remarkable new friendship, forming a fast bond with the Sea Venture's historian, a poet traveling under the name of William Strachey. But Will is more than he seems. To many back home in England, he is known by a different name: Shakespeare. And he sees in their great shared travails the makings of a magical, truly transcendent work of theater.

319 pages (September 2010)

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Title Read-alikes: Beatrice and Benedick by Marina Fiorato; Even in Paradise by Elizabeth Nunez; A Place in His Heart by Rebecca Demarino; The Mark of the King by Jocelyn Green; The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow; A Ship for the King by Richard Woodman; Flight of the Sparrow by Amy Belding; Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson; John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk; The Photograph by Penelope Lively; and Incidental Inventions by Elena Ferrante.

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young

The lives of two very different couples are irrevocably intertwined and forever changed in this stunning World War I epic of love and war.

From the day in 1907 that eleven-year-old Riley Purefoy meets Nadine Waveney, daughter of a well-known orchestral conductor, he takes in the difference between their two families: his, working-class; hers, "posh" and artistic. Just a few years later, romance and these differences erupt simultaneously with the war in Europe. In a fit of fury and boyish pride, Riley enlists in the army and finds himself involved in the transformative nightmare of the twentieth century.

While Riley and his commanding officer, Peter Locke, fight for their country and their survival in the trenches of Flanders, Peter's lovely and naive wife, Julia, and his cousin Rose eagerly await his return. But the sullen, distant man who arrives home on leave is not the Peter they knew. Worried that her husband is slipping away, Julia is left alone with her fears when Rose joins the nursing corps to work with a pioneering plastic surgeon treating wounded and disfigured soldiers.

Only eighteen at the outbreak of the war, Nadine and Riley want to make promises to each other—but how can they when their future is out of their hands? Youthful passion is on their side, but then their loyalty is tested by terrible injury, and even more so by the necessarily imperfect rehabilitation that follows.

Moving among Ypres, London, and Paris, this emotionally rich and evocative novel is both a powerful exploration of the lasting effects of war on those who fight—and those who don't—and a poignant testament to the power of enduring love.

330 pages (May 2011)

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Title Read-alikes: Atonement by Ian McEwan; The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason; The First of July by Elizabeth Speller; The Absolutist by John Boyne; Life Class by Pat Barker; The Cartographer of No Man's Land by P. S. Duffy; The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear; Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden; and Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

In her best-selling debut, Commencement, J. Courtney Sullivan explored the complicated and contradictory landscape of female friendship. Now, in her highly anticipated second novel, Sullivan takes us into even richer territory, introducing four unforgettable women who have nothing in common but the fact that, like it or not, they’re family.

For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. Their beachfront property, won on a barroom bet after the war, sits on three acres of sand and pine nestled between stretches of rocky coast, with one tree bearing the initials “A.H.” At the cottage, built by Kelleher hands, cocktail hour follows morning mass, nosy grandchildren snoop in drawers, and decades-old grudges simmer beneath the surface.

As three generations of Kelleher women descend on the property one summer, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her imperfect boyfriend the news; Ann Marie, a Kelleher by marriage, is channeling her domestic frustration into a dollhouse obsession and an ill-advised crush; Kathleen, the black sheep, never wanted to set foot in the cottage again; and Alice, the matriarch at the center of it all, would trade every floorboard for a chance to undo the events of one night, long ago.

By turns wickedly funny and achingly sad, Maine unveils the sibling rivalry, alcoholism, social climbing, and Catholic guilt at the center of one family, along with the abiding, often irrational love that keeps them coming back, every summer, to Maine and to each other.

388 pages (June 2010)

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Title Read-alikes: The Matchmaker by Elin Hilderbrand; Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead; Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders by Julianna Baggott; Ladies of the Lake by Haywood Smith; Summer People by Elin Hiderbrand; Summer Rental Mary Kay Andrews; The Dutch House by Ann Patchett; Monogamy by Sue Miller; Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan; All Adults Here by Emma Straub; Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner; The Comeback by Ella Berman; and Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

451 pages (February 2009)

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Author Kathryn Stockett describes her reaction to the success of her first novel, The Help, and explains the reasons why she wrote it. (CBS News):

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Title Read-alikes: The Postmistress by Sarah Blake; Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg; The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd; The Healing by Jonathan Odell; The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin; Right as Rain by Bev Marshall; Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera; Dollbaby by Laura McNeal; The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett; The Mercy Seat by Elizabeth H. Winthrop; Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen; The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold; and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

Jerusalem Maiden by Talia Carner

In 1911, in the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem under the backward Ottoman rule, a young woman’s struggle for self-expression clashes with her society’s religious dictates.

Esther Kaminsky knows that her duty is to marry young and produce many sons to help hasten the Messiah’s arrival: that is what is expected of young ultra-Orthodox women in Jerusalem at the end of the Ottoman Empire’s rule. But when her French teacher catches Esther’s extraordinary doodling and gives her colored pencils and art lessons, Esther wonders if God has a special destiny for her: maybe she is meant to be an artist, not a mother; maybe she is meant to travel to Paris, not stay in Jerusalem.

In the coming years, as Esther sacrifices her yearning for painting and devotes herself instead to following God’s path as an obedient “Jerusalem maiden,” she suppresses her desires—until a surprising opportunity forces itself into her pre-ordained path. When her beliefs clash with the surging passions she has staved off her entire life, Esther must confront the hard questions: What is faith? Is there such a thing as destiny? And to whom must she be true, to God or to herself?

454 pages (May 2011)

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Title Read-alikes: An Unorthodox Match by Naomi Ragen; Together Tea by Marjan Kamali; When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant; The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak; Brick Lane by Monica Ali; Day After Night by Anita Diamant; A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum; Girl in the Afternoon by Serena Burdick; and On Division by Goldie Goldbloom.

New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance by Elna Baker

It's lonely being a Mormon in New York City. So once again, Elna Baker attends the New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance-a virgin in a room full of virgins doing the Macarena. Her Queen Bee costume, which involves a black funnel stuck to her butt for a stinger, isn't attracting the attention she'd anticipated. So once again, Elna is alone at the punch bowl, stocking up on generic Oreos, exactly where you'd expect to find a single Mormon who's also a Big Girl. But loneliness is nothing compared to what happens when she loses eighty pounds. . . . and falls in love with an atheist.

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance is the memoir of a girl who distresses her family when she chooses NYU over BYU. A girl who's cultivating an oxymoronic identity as a bold, educated, modern, funny, proper, abstinent, religious stand-up comic, equal parts wholesome and hot. As Elna test-drives her identity, she finds herself in the strangest scenarios including selling creepy, overpriced dolls to petulant children at FAO Schwarz and dressing a head wound with a maxi pad while on a date.

276 pages (October 2009)

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The Moth Presents Elna Baker: Yes Means Yes?

 

 

Title Read-alikes: Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin by Nicole Hardy; Bossypants by Tina Fey; Yes Please by Amy Poehler; Next Level Basic by Stassi Schroeder; The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer; Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle; Cool, Calm, & Contentious by Merrill Markoe; Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes; Help Me! by Marianne Power; The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman; You're Not Doing It Right by Michael Ian Black; and Gunn's Golden Rules by Tim Gunn.

Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner

Vaclav and Lena seem destined for each other. They meet as children in an ESL class in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Vaclav is precocious and verbal. Lena, struggling with English, takes comfort in the safety of his adoration, his noisy, loving home, and the care of Rasia, his big-hearted mother. Vaclav imagines their story unfolding like a fairy tale or the perfect illusion from his treasured Magician's Almanac, but among the many truths to be discovered in Haley Tanner's wondrous debut is that happily-ever-after is never a foregone conclusion.

One day, Lena does not show up for school. She has disappeared from Vaclav's and his family's lives as if by a cruel magic trick. For the next seven years, Vaclav says goodnight to Lena without fail, wondering if she is doing the same somewhere. On the eve of Lena's seventeenth birthday he finds out.

Haley Tanner has the originality and verve of a born storyteller and the boldness to imagine a world in which love can overcome the most difficult circumstances. In Vaclav & Lena she has created two unforgettable young protagonists who evoke the joy, the confusion, and the passion of having a profound, everlasting connection with someone else.                

292 pages (May 2011)

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Title Read-alikes: The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach; Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok; Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson; The Leavers by Lisa Ko; Saints for All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan; On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong; And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini; The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende; A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza; Normal People by Sally Rooney; The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern; Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman; The Margot Affair by Sanaë Lemoine; and The Sun Collective by Charles Baxter.

Room by Emma Donoghue

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

321 pages (September 2010)

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Title Read-alikes: Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips; The Marsh King's Daughter by Karen Dionne; His Illegal Self by Peter Carey; Rust & Stardust by T. Greenwood; Only Child by Rhiannon Navin; Baby Doll by Hollie Overton; Trance by Christopher Sorrentino by The Bear by Claire Cameron; Child of God by Cormac McCarthy; Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk; We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver; The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides; and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Daughters of the Revolution by Carolyn Cooke

It’s 1968. The prestigious but cash-strapped Goode School in the town of Cape Wilde is run by its aging, philandering headmaster, Goddard Byrd, known to both his friends and his enemies as God. With Cape Wilde engulfed by the social and political storms of integration, coeducation and the sexual revolution, God has confidently promised coeducation “over my dead body.” And then, through a clerical error, the Goode School admits its first female student: Carole Faust, a brilliant, intractable fifteen-year-old black girl.

What does it mean to be the First Girl?

Carolyn Cooke has written a ferociously intelligent, richly sensual novel about the lives of girls and women, the complicated desperation of daughters without fathers and the erosion of paternalistic power in an elite New England town on the cusp of radical social change. Remarkable for the precision of its language, the incandescence of its images, and the sly provocations of its moral and emotional predicaments, Daughters of the Revolution is a novel of exceptional force and beauty.

173 pages (June 2011)

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Title Read-alikes: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara; Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson; The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott; The Help by Kathryn Stockett; In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende; NW by Zadie Smith; New Boy by Tracy Chevalier; Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee; More Information Than You Require by John Hodgman; Light Years by Emily Ziff Griffin; The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel Garcia Márquez; and Ohio by Stephen Markley.