These two books and one podcast are what I shared this month on Good Day Alabama on WBRC Fox 6. They kept me entertained during a long week away, relaxing and resetting and reading at a remote farm in Virginia.
By Gareth Brown
This debut novel of science fiction and fantasy is magical and full of adventure and time travel and romance. I listened to it, and the reading was excellent. Highly recommend listening! Cassie Andrews works in a New York City bookshop, living an unassuming life until one of her favorite customers dies and leaves her a mysterious book. The Book of Doors is far more than it appears to be—it is, in fact, a book that will transport the reader to anywhere and any time. Any door is every door. So, she can step out of her apartment into Paris or even her childhood home. It’s all great fun until it isn’t. A rumpled stranger, a librarian who keeps watch over an entire collection of special books, becomes the key to Cassie’s future and her very survival. And Cassie has to decide—at the risk of losing her own special book—whether or not to help him protect the other books from those who want to use them for the very darkest purposes.
By Kate Quinn
This book by the New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye is set in 1950s Washington, D.C. at Briarwood House, a rather shabby boarding house for women. When mysterious Grace March moves into the tiny attic room, she begins gathering the women together for Thursday supper club, and they begin to create a family of sorts. We get to know an Englishwomen named Fliss who is struggling with motherhood while her husband is at war; Nora, a policeman’s daughter, is in love with a gangster; Claire, who is a bit of a con herself; Bea, whose baseball career is ended by a knee injury just when the Women’s Baseball League is also ending; an old woman named Reka who fled Nazi Germany; and mean-spirited Arlene who is all in with McCarthy’s Red Scare. All the women have secrets—some large, some small—including Grace, who has the biggest secret of all. And they all are trying to navigate the changing roles of women during a time of fierce paranoia. Will the discovery of two bodies in the house drive them apart or keep them close? This is a thrilling and atmospheric historical novel.
By Patrick Radden Keefe
This is not a new podcast, but it is new to me. My husband and I binged it on a recent eight-hour car trip. Do you remember the song Wind of Change by the German heavy metal band the Scorpions? Nope? But you probably do remember their Rock You Like a Hurricane. I’ll tell you that Wind of Change is more important. The ballad is often associated with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the broader changes in Eastern Europe, but it was actually written about a different event: the Moscow Music Peace Festival in 1989. The lyrics reflect the atmosphere of hope and change at the time, particularly the opening of the Soviet Union to the West. This podcast—with spies and secrets and soviets and musicians and tight leather pants—is about that song (one of the world’s bestselling rock singles) and that influence—and how it might have been written by the CIA. Journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, following a tip that the CIA was involved, does an eight-episode deep dive into that time in our not-so-distant history and the power of music to create world-reordering change. If you like history and music and great storytelling, get it on Spotify.
I link to Amazon to show you exactly what book I’m talking about, but I love to shop locally at Church Street Coffee and Books, The Alabama Booksmith, Little Professor, and Thank You Books in Crestwood. And I visit my local library often in person and online!
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