Thankful for the Written Word 2025

Hello friends It’s time for my annual book wrap-up covering titles I’ve read since last Thanksgiving…be they hardcover or audio through Libby, Hoopla or Chirp and new additions to the permanent collection here at the Chalet.

I’m the moderator of a Book Club at church and we meet September through June. (we read non-religious fiction) I’ve made a note of any Book Club titles on the list with an asterisk *. I hope you find a few new titles to enjoy!

*The Book Club Hotel: The Maple Sugar Inn is fully booked with guests but widowed far too young, and exhausted from juggling the hotel with being a dedicated single mom, Hattie Coleman dreams only of making it through the festive season. When Erica, Claudia and Anna—lifelong friends check in for a girlfriends’ book club holiday, it changes everything. Their close friendship and shared love of books have carried them through life's ups and downs. But Hattie can see they're also packing some major emotional baggage, and nothing prepares her for how deeply her own story is about to become entwined in theirs.

Marrying the Ketchups: Here are the three things the Sullivan family knows to be true: the Chicago Cubs will always be the underdogs; historical progress is inevitable; and their grandfather, Bud, founder of JP Sullivan's, will always make the best burgers in Oak Park. But when, over the course of three strange months, the Cubs win the World Series, Trump is elected president, and Bud drops dead, suddenly everyone in the family finds themselves doubting all they hold dear.

The Christmas Mouse: Mrs. Berry is frightened by a mouse and goes downstairs to sit-out Christmas Eve and is disturbed again by a young run-away boy. This lovely tale still enchants me about the best in human nature. I was given this book when I was 5yrs old and I try and reread it every year.

*In The Great Green Room: The extraordinary life of the woman behind the beloved children’s classics Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. Margaret’s books have sold millions of copies all over the world, but few people know that she was at the center of a children’s book publishing revolution. Her whimsy and imagination fueled a steady stream of stories, book ideas, songs, and poems and she was renowned for her prolific writing and business savvy, as well as her stunning beauty and endless thirst for adventure. Top Pick

The Life Impossible: “What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…”When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.

*The Libriananist: Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center.

*The Husbands: When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years. As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a light bulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a light bulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living? Top Pick

*American Daughters: This historical novel delves into the friendship of Portia Washington and Alice Roosevelt, the daughters of educator Booker T. Washington and President Teddy Roosevelt. At the turn of the twentieth century, in a time of great change, two women—separated by societal status and culture but bound by their expected roles as the daughters of famed statesmen—forged a lifelong friendship.

*In The Country of Others: Mathilde, a spirited young Frenchwoman, falls in love with Amine, a handsome Moroccan soldier in the French army during World War II. After the war, the couple settles in Morocco. While Amine tries to cultivate his family farm’s rocky terrain, Mathilde feels her vitality sapped by the isolation, the harsh climate, the lack of money, and the mistrust she inspires as a foreigner. Left increasingly alone to raise her two children in a world whose rules she does not understand, and with her daughter taunted at school by rich French girls for her secondhand clothes and unruly hair, Mathilde goes from being reduced to a farmer’s wife to defying the country’s chauvinism and repressive social codes by offering medical services to the rural population.

My Name is Lucy Barton: Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life.

The Art Thief: For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways, but no one has been quite as successful as master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years in museums and cathedrals all over Europe Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

The Third Gilmore Girl: For the first time, Kelly Bishop opens the door into her own life. She retraces her steps from Broadway to Hollywood and everywhere in between. Top Pick

Of Mice and Men: They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. Top Pick I love Steinbeck and when my son was assigned this book I decided I needed to read it - it’s a powerful story of friendship that has stayed with me.

*The House of Broken Bricks: As Tess and Richard settle in, the dramatic arrival of their fraternal twins—one who presents as black and the other as white—recasts the family dynamic, stirring up complicated feelings and questions of belonging. Tess yearns for the comforting chaos of life as it once was, instead of Max and Sonny tracking dirt through the kitchen where cooking Caribbean food becomes her sole comfort. And Richard obsesses over getting his crops planted rather than deal with the conversation he cannot bear to have.

Have I Told You This Already: With her signature sense of humor and down-to-earth storytelling, Lauren Graham opens up about her years working in the entertainment business—from the sublime to the ridiculous—and shares personal stories about everything from family and friendship to the challenges of aging gracefully in Hollywood.

Three Days in June: Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit

*Summers at the Saint: Everyone refers to the St. Cecelia as “the Saint.” If you grew up coming here, you were “a Saint.” If you came from the wrong side of the river, you were “an Ain’t.” Traci Eddings was one of those outsiders whose family wasn’t rich enough to vacation here. But she could work here. One fateful summer she did, and married the boss’s son. Now, she’s the widowed owner of the hotel, determined to see it return to its glory days.

Be Ready When The Luck Happens: Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. Top Pick

The God of The Woods: Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found

Seating Arrangements: Winn Van Meter is heading for his family’s retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke for the marriage of his daughter Daphne. Daphne’s younger sister Livia has recently had her heart broken by the son of Winn’s oldest rival. Winn is beguiled by Daphne’s bridesmaid Agatha. Temptation and bad behavior abound.

*Let’s Call Her Barbie: When Ruth Handler walks into the boardroom of the toy company she co-founded and pitches her idea for a doll shaped like a grown woman - she is not met with support. In 1956 the only dolls on the market for little girls let them pretend to be mothers. It will take the world a moment to catch up.

James: When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. Top Pick. I strongly recommend the audio version. The diction of the characters is an integral part of the story.

The Beach Club: Elin Hilderbrand’s first novel about the Nantucket Beach Club. Mack Petersen manager of the hotel, has been working at The Beach Club for 12 summers but, this summer is different his girlfriend Maribel is pressing to get married. There are old and new staff like Vance a bellman who hates Mack for stealing his job 12 yrs ago, Love O'Donnell the front desk person straight from Aspen searching for a stranger to father her child and Jem Crandall a fresh face kid on his way to LA until he falls for Maribel.

*The Mystery of Mrs. Christie: In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car—strange for a frigid night. Her World War I veteran husband and daughter have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously, claiming amnesia and providing no explanations for her time away. With her trademark historical fiction exploration author Marie Benedict brings us into the world of Agatha Christie.

The Ministry of Time: In the near future a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is shortly afterward told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible for the body but also for the fabric of space-time.

The Screwtape Letters: At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis gives us the correspondence of the wordly-wise devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man. The most engaging account of temptation and triumph over it ever written

*Society of Lies: Maya has returned to Princeton for her college reunion—it’s been a decade since she graduated and this visit is special because she’ll also be attending the graduation of her little sister, Naomi. But what should have been a dream weekend becomes Maya’s worst nightmare when she receives news Naomi is dead. The police are calling it an accident but Maya suspects that there is more to the story. As Maya pieces together what happened in the months leading up to her sister’s death, she begins to realize how much Naomi hid from her.

The Kitchen House: Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart by her white skin. Eventually she is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself straddling two very different worlds. Top Pick

Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old: With remarkable candor Brooke bares all, painting a vibrant and optimistic picture of being a woman in the prime of her life, while dismantling the myths that have, for too long, dimmed that perception. Sharing her own life experiences with humor and humility, and weaving together research and reporting, Brooke takes aim at the systemic factors that contribute to age-related bias.

We Might Just Make It After All: When Elyce Arons first met Katy Brosnahan in a University of Kansas dorm room, she had no idea that this polo shirt–wearing Missouri girl would not only become her best friend but also change the course of her life. Reflecting on her long relationship with Kate Spade, whom she co-found the multi-billion-dollar fashion company. It a touching portrait of friendship and love. Top Pick

The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen: In a remote seaside town outside of Tokyo Kotoko makes her way to an enigmatic restaurant whose traditional meals offered in remembrance of loved ones promise a reunion with the departed.

The Book of Lost Friends: A new novel inspired from actual "Lost Friends" advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold off. A story of three young women on a journey in search of family amidst the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who rediscovers their story and its connection to her own students' lives.

Chasing Beauty: The story of an American original - Isabella Stewart Gardner - a formidable art collector and builder of one of America’s most unique and stunning museums located in Boston - the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Top Pick

I’ve been a bit disappointed in some of the books this past year. There are eight titles that fell below expectations. I thought of missed opportunities for the characters and where the stories could have gone. This coupled with the ton of time spent voice messaging/texting with friends and listening to Podcasts (You can find my list of Podcasts in the side bar ➙) I read/listened to 33 titles - twelve less than last year.