Maria Popova illuminates how science and poetry have reckoned with “the bewilderment of being alive” while reconnoitering truths of the body, soul, spirit, and space, all through the intertwining loves, lives, and labors of visionaries like Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Ruth Benedict, etc. Popova writes brilliant, fluid, lively nonfiction—like floating down a river of science, poetry, history, and stars.

A fascinating, multifaceted, historically contextual and futuristic book to read while contemplating my own Midwest move! From erstwhile frontier farming fund, failed utopias, and the origins of the Midwest‘s “normalcy” to corn and the birth of standardized futures trading, the “death” of manufacturing, and the pinned hopes of a region safer from climate change, Christman sets a wide table in the Heartland and offers a true cornucopia to chew on.

Through the experiences of ordinary people undergoing immense and uncontrollable changes in life, cognitive scientist Maya Shankar offers powerful insights into the transformative gifts often hiding in the losses that most challenge our sense of self and our orientation to the world. Full of the courage to face our worst fears and the compassion necessary to move forward, this accessible, inspiring read was the perfect way to start the new year.

If you grew up on classic portal fantasies like Alice in Wonderland or the Chronicles of Narnia, it‘s high time to have your mind blown by Seanan McGuire‘s Wayward Children series, which continues to delight me every single year with a fantastic new adventure through worlds logical or nonsensical, virtuous or wicked. This 11th novella in the Hugo and Nebula award-winning series brings us full circle, helping Nancy save the Halls of the Dead.

Heather Fawcett, you had me at the author of Emily Wilde‘s Encyclopaedia of Fairies meets mystical 1920s Montreal cat café. Add an inimitable heroine, a Howl‘s Moving Castle inspired love interest, magical artifacts, a mysterious otherworldly forest realm, and yes lots of cats, and how could you be anything but enchanted by this unique, cozy, but action-packed historical urban fantasy?

15 years ago when I was in a life-changing college class on Margaret Atwood, I would never have expected this level of access to the storied life that produced The Handmaid‘s Tale, Oryx & Crake, and poems like “Half-Hanged Mary” and “Habitation.” With manuscripts, early photos, even the author‘s full natal chart, and above all Atwood‘s wry, iconic, witty voice throughout, this autobiography is not only a testament or treasure, but a great time.

If you‘re curious about tarot cards, but uncertain where to start, this clear, clever, and fun guide will introduce you to the major and minor arcana in memorable, easy to understand ways. Emphasizing self-reflection over fortune-telling, using personal and pop cultural context, Wild Card is my recommendation for a welcoming entry point to this ancient practice.

One thing about me: I love a T. Kingfisher novella—and this delightful, warm-hearted, and downright disgusting romp of a fantasy captured my heart!

Naomi Novik can keep me up all night reading and knock me out in under 130 pages, anytime! This exquisitely wrought fairy tale of love, vengeance, and siblinghood is an ode to the magic and power of coming together to find a new and better ending for an old and painful story. A new all-time favorite.

A comforting, grieving, digging, driven collection of poems inspired by the author‘s experiences leaving her relapsed fiancé, selling their house, further deconstructing, and running West for a fresh start during the pandemic—full of bitter beauty, shards of piercing clarity, and flares of joy. My many favorites included Why Read Poetry If It Won‘t Make You Rich, Eve‘s Apology, Holy, Leap, Eden, I Haven‘t Prayed in Years, Culpable, and Even If.

Malala, the world‘s youngest Nobel Laureate, is not 15 anymore. In this riveting, achingly real, tender, funny memoir of college life and beyond, Malala finds her way while wearing jeans for the first time, experiences first crushes and panic attacks, struggles with study/work/life balance, finds friendship and romance and fights for her right to live her own life and for girls‘ education around the globe. Every graduating senior should read this!

Thorough, thoughtful, but also thrilling, this cultural history of Fiddler on the Roof explores the hit musical from book to Broadway to film and far beyond, from its beginning in Sholem Aleichem‘s stories and their many incarnations, through the complexities of Jewish identity across a century of history, finding its legacy in powerful interpretations across the world: Japan, Poland, a Black Brooklyn middle school amid integration, and more.

My mandragora-loving heart let out a fatal scream reading this 1934 book! This unique plant-human hybrid in Western folklore was used medicinally since Ancient Greece, shrouded in a sexy mythos since the Old Testament, a hangdog fairy tale in the Brothers Grimm, and with mere possession growing to an execution-worthy witchy Medieval offense—favorite chapters: the mandrake in literature, herbals, occult works, the gallows legend, medicine & more.

Jen Hatmaker takes the rude awakening that ended her 26-year pastoral marriage and turns it into a reflective and bold enlightenment, shining a light on the dark roots of shame, misogyny, and hypocrisy in the evangelical church and freeing herself and her readers along the way. I laughed, I cried, I cheered, I bookmarked, and I‘ve already given multiple copies away to family and friends. Fans of Brené Brown and Glennon Doyle, AWAKE is a must read!

Sweet and pumpkin spicy and set in the 90s, this was a nice, nostalgic, cozy Fall romance, but the slow burn wasn‘t helped by some pacing problems that make this just a so-so for me.

I love the HBO show Somebody Somewhere—real and funny and tender and queer and fat and Midwestern, there‘s nothing like it and I want more! I am thrilled to share this memoir by one of its stars—and a first-time Emmy winner, Jeff Hiller! This memoir is like if David Sedaris was just as funny and risqué—but much more deeply earnest and kind-hearted at the same time. Jeff Hiller, you‘re an American treasure.

This witchy, gothy, cozy, and spicy monster romance rivals Morning Glory Milking Farm for my favorite C. M. Nascosta yet! All with a realistic and beautiful depiction of grief, depression, and finding your own path after failure—and MAGIC TEA HOUSES AND RARE MAGIC BOOKS AND LITERAL SHADOW DADDIES.

I‘ve loved these Ted Lasso-inspired, career-oriented, fat positive contemporary rom-coms by Charlotte Stein, and While You Were Seething DID NOT DISAPPOINT! Two former academic rivals find each other fake dating and finding their true feelings emerging in front of an entire high-stakes, high-steam author tour in this yearn-worthy, yet deliciously funny conclusion to the trilogy.

Another cozy hug of a book by the beloved author of Legends & Lattes—this time starring the foul-mouthed bookselling rattkin Fern, whose success starting a bookstore in Thune…doesn‘t make her happy. A drunken incident leads her on an epic journey with a legendary elven warrior, a delightful chaos goblin in her custody, and the enemies on their tail! As a bookseller selling her 10+ year open shops to focus more on rare books, I needed this book!

Returning to an old childhood classic with Alexis Bledel, Winnie herself in the 2002 film (I was 11!), narrating the story was soothingly nostalgic all while retaining Natalie Babbitt‘s understated explorations of time, nature, death, injustice, and the cycle of life for children. A brilliant classic of children‘s literature, recommended for all ages.

This personal and historical exploration of women‘s friendships was a challenging and consoling read—and an unexpected yet loving reality check, while I‘ve been suffering from a life-upturning rupture with a best friend. In Bad Friend, cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith not only traces how women‘s friendships have evolved in the human imagination across centuries, but confronts a legacy of impossible ideals that turns us all into bad friends.

I‘m so grateful my public library has the Palace app now so I can listen to Audible exclusives without having to give money to Bezos 🙌

Sometimes you really need a self-help book to remind you that you have power over your own life—and no control over others. A fatphobic, diet culture heavy chapter didn‘t work for me, but the rest was really helpful as I‘ve been working through how to move with integrity and wisdom through a hard chapter in life.

A must for fans of Becky Chambers and Murderbot, this affirming, funny, anti-capitalist sci-fi follows Scout, an archivist in a barren universe where Earth is the last civilization. Along with their brother and cat, they search for messages left behind from dead civilizations, seeking information to stop the end of our own. Cozy, yet action-packed and soulful, this book had me saying: “This is the perfect moment. This one is. This one is.”

As the great-granddaughter of Jewish emigrants from Kiev, one of whom was born the year these stories were first published, it was fascinating to hear the original inspiration for Fiddler on the Roof and this production captures Tevye‘s humor, tenderness, and grapplings with god and tradition vs humans and love. (Also, Free Palestine 🍉)

This cozy but emotionally deep, peer-reviewed, pro-union slow burn academic rivals to marriage of convenience to friends to lovers romance was a soothing and well-crafted story but I wish it were a little more spicy tbh

Daddy Issues is an Ali-Hazelwood grade (said adoringly) age gap romance that has it all—a real, messy protagonist, a hot, dedicated single dad next door, riveting professional stakes, unexpected info about a niche subject (cartoons), and meaningful, believable resolution and character growth through the book—a romcom that also has steaming hot “driving lessons” in a Chili‘s parking lot! What more do you want? The girls who get it NEED TO GET THIS.

Pádraig Ó Tuama once again brings us a beautifully selected, introduced, and meditated upon collection of poetry by diverse and international poets—this time about the pains and tendernesses and complexities and truths about togetherness, about being with each other as humans, something that never seems to get simpler but here feels holy.

After becoming obsessed with this woodcut of a mandrake in the 1896 book Natural History in Shakespeare's Time, I couldn‘t believe my luck to find this brand new book about the mandragora plant! Here, Swiss artist Leonie Brandner explores the medicinal, magical, historical, folkloric, personal, political, genderqueer story of the only plant in the European context historically depicted as half human and half plant—with supernatural powers at that!

I think this sequel to Divine Rivals was longer than it needed to be (or maybe the series needed to be a trilogy), but I enjoyed more time in this world with these characters.

The Song of the Lioness was one of my all-time favorite series growing up, so I was thrilled to hear a graphic adaptation was in the works! I really enjoyed returning to this story in a very thoughtful and well-executed graphic format for middle grades, from nonbinary Afro-Puerto Rican comic book writer Vita Ayala and fantasy artist Sam Beck. Can‘t wait to share this with my godchild!

A new Rachel Hartman book is cause for celebration in this house! Set in Goredd centuries before Seraphina or Tess of the Road, Among Ghosts is a Decameron-inspired tale of plague, memory, religious violence, and the courage it takes to pursue freedom, truth, peace, and community.

This beautiful exploration of the essential queerness of nature gave me one of those deliciously transformative reading experiences where it feels like the book‘s in conversation with your life, from a passage about caterpillars‘ imaginal cells, amazing to hear after using the same metamorphic metaphor for my own life recently to a chapter about cicadas and “queering time,” the day after finding a beautiful fresh cicada husk! Euphoria, indeed.

I‘m still having a good time on Not-Hoth, but I‘ve got to space these out. The line-by-line writing quality started to get me in this one, which just felt more drawn out than the first two, though I loved the more active plot in this one and am curious to read the next when I get to it.

A recent bookplate book curse, from a 1928 first edition of Bells: Their History, Legends, Making, and Uses offered in a recent issue of our monthly rare book newsletter at UndergroundBooks.net 🔔📖🤬

As a rare bookseller, I‘ve encountered book curses, mostly in kids‘ scrawls and bookplates, and we even tried to deter a bout of theft by posting some in our open shop! This charmingly packaged, if unillustrated, collection of anti-theft book curses spans across history, from ancient Babylon to Medieval manuscripts to 20th-century America—offering a unique perspective on the history of the book and its (sometimes overzealous) ownership.

One of the most inventive, clever, and spellbinding fairy tale retellings I‘ve read in years—grown up fans of Ella Enchanted, T. Kingfisher, Naomi Novik, and Rachel Hartman will be delighted by the knock-out potion Freya Marske has concocted out of a very rightfully enraged Cinderella, haunted houses, fairy curses, murder, sorcery, swoony queer romance, and the power of being seen.

In this encouraging and reflective guide, a chorus of voices respond to 20 of life‘s essential questions, like Why am I like this?, How do I figure out what I want?, and How do I go on? I was delighted to encounter writers like adrienne maree brown, Stephanie Foo, Alok Vaid-Menon, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Ocean Vuong among many more here. There were chapters I connected to more than others, but overall I recommend for anyone struggling.

I‘m having a GOOD TIME.

Soulful and raw, wise and whimsical, Something in the Woods Loves You is a memoir of severe depression, therapy and recovery, and the transformative power of our relationship with nature—a living invitation of kinship with and inspiration from the world around us. A new all-time favorite, full of passages I underlined to return to in times of need—highly recommended for fans of Mary Oliver!

The aching queer romance, found family, and representation of the challenging dynamics of being a woman astronaut are what I loved most about Atmosphere…but I found myself looking for a more pronounced sense of time (the 1980s) and place (NASA). I would recommend this to fans of Lessons in Chemistry that I would like to convert into fans of The Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal!

A dark and beautiful fable, this graphic novel follows the orphaned daughter of witches whose debt to a magical well requires she fulfill three of the wishes cast into its depths. Recommended for fans of K O‘Neill!

While this graphic memoir offers a unique, distinct, and compelling account of growing up and becoming politically active in post-Soviet Poland, it also often reads like a series of breadcrumbs to shape back into a loaf—it can be fractured and hard to follow.

I had a good ass time and already picked up the second book—fans of Morning Glory Milking Farm will find this sweet and spicy, but with significantly more snow, survival, and alien threats.

Powerful, expansive, clear, compellingly told, heartbreaking, and yet hopeful, by the end of this short yet transformative read, you‘ll be agreeing with John Green: everything is tuberculosis.

If you wrote “NEW ALI HAZELWOOD BOOK IN HERE” on the outside of a wishing well then you came there at night with a flashlight and looked down in there, I‘d be there. Having pursued an older man as a trauma-surviving independent college student, and being married to that man for 11 years now, Problematic Summer Romance was practically fan service and it‘s me, I‘m the fan. 💃

A short, delightful, and inventive trip back to the world of Holly Black‘s Folk of the Air series!

This is a useful, relatively quick-reading resource for those delving deeper into fairy tales, their history, and most of all, their critical and popular reception. A bit dated (a couple of unnecessary references to Harry Potter, for instance) and I wish the author had spent more time on Les Conteuses of the 17th century and their use of the literary fairy tales as resistance, but I found a lot of useful context too!

This whimsical, warm-hearted, wonder-filled fantasy is full of found family, grumpy x grumpy romance, old spell books, the magic of home—and one conniving fox! Sangu Mandanna is a sorceress of cozy, steamy romantasy with heart and I will happily follow her to the warm hearth and unexpected lemon tea showers of Batty Hole Inn—and beyond!

I loved the historical context and the #development and relationship between the Luna sisters, but it didn‘t do a lot for me as a romance, with some instant attraction and pacing issues.

Wow I feel personally attacked by getting sent this ARC—everyone on our staff laughed, they got me HARD! I have to say there wasn‘t a lot new to me in this book, but it made an impactful, concise, and accessible summary of my past 10+ years in therapy—so if you have noticed fawning or people-pleasing as a theme in your life, you should absolutely read this book. It will help you and heal you, you are not alone (and no one‘s mad at you). ❤️