Today’s Shelf Awareness Maximum Shelf pick is Charlotte McConaghy’s urgent and moving U.S. debut, MIGRATIONS. Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean’s tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she so loves begins to disappear, Franny can […]
Tag: Maximum Shelf

Maximum Shelf: THE BOOK OF V.
Today’s Maximum Shelf pick is Anna Solomon’s bold, kaleidoscopic novel intertwining the lives of three women across three centuries, THE BOOK OF V. Lily is a mother and a daughter. And a second wife. And a writer, maybe? Or she was going to be, before she had children. Now, in her rented Brooklyn apartment she’s […]

Maximum Shelf: THE SECOND HOME (1/6/20)
Today’s Maximum Shelf pick is Christina Clancy’s debut novel of family, nostalgia, and second chances, THE SECOND HOME. After a disastrous summer spent at her family summer home on Cape Cod, seventeen-year-old Ann Gordon was left with a secret that changed her life forever, and created a rift between her sister, Poppy, and their adopted […]

Maximum Shelf: SAINT X (11/6/19)
Today’s Maximum Shelf pick is Alexis Schaitkin’s debut, SAINT X–a haunting portrait of grief, obsession, and the bond between two sisters. Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s […]

Maximum Shelf: THE YELLOW BIRD SINGS (10/17/19)
Today’s Maximum Shelf pick is Jennifer Rosner’s breathtaking WWII mother/daughter story, THE YELLOW BIRD SINGS. As Nazi soldiers round up the Jews in their town, Róza and her 5-year-old daughter, Shira, flee, seeking shelter in a neighbor’s barn. Hidden in the hayloft day and night, Shira struggles to stay still and quiet, as music pulses […]

Maximum Shelf: UNCANNY VALLEY (9/4/19)
Today’s Maximum Shelf pick is Anna Wiener’s page-turning account of her time in Silicon Valley, UNCANNY VALLEY: A Memoir. In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener–stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial–left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital […]

Maximum Shelf: AMERICAN DIRT (8/21/19)
Today’s Maximum Shelf pick is Jeanine Cummins’ AMERICAN DIRT–a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope. Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who […]

Maximum Shelf: THE FURIES
Today’s Maximum Shelf pick is Katie Lowe’s debut novel, THE FURIES, a page-turning, harrowing story of a girl trying to fit in, whose obsessive new friends and desperation to belong leads her to places she’d never imagined…dark, dangerous, and possibly even violent. In 1998, a sixteen-year-old girl is found dead. She’s posed on a swing […]

Maximum Shelf: A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD
Today’s Maximum Shelf pick is Therese Anne Fowler’s exploration of class, race, and heartrending star-crossed love, A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD. For fans of Celeste Ng and Jodi Picoult comes a stunning page-turner about two very different families living side by side in an idyllic neighborhood–and the summer that changes their lives forever. In Oak Knoll, a […]

Maximum Shelf: HERE WE ARE
Today’s Maximum Shelf pick is NPR correspondent Aarti Namdev Shahani’s immigration memoir, HERE WE ARE: American Dreams, American Nightmares! Who really belongs in America? That question has chased every newcomer and many native born since the founding of the republic. In this heart-wrenching, vulnerable and witty memoir, journalist Aarti Shahani digs deep inside herself and […]