Just when we get the blog back up and running, a recommendation drought hits. Just one of those weeks, I suppose. Here's our one recommendation for a brand new book, courtesy of Kay:
Where the Wildflowers Grow is a paperback original (in a fancy, sprayed-edges deluxe edition, no less!) by Terah Shelton Harris. Of it Kay says: "A freakish accident leads to Leigh’s unplanned “entry back into society.” She stumbles into a job on a flower farm, and it feels good. The owner and his two employees all suffered traumatic childhoods, and they see it in Leigh. Leigh isn’t ready to face her trauma, even as she’s surrounded by people who are eager to help her. Their attempts are described in some detail, giving the book a self-help twist. For fans of intense, emotional rollercoaster rides."
However, as this is just our second weekly blog in quite a while, here are a few catch-up recommendations we missed for books that hit our shelves in January.
We had an excellent event last month with Josiah Hesse, and Iowa native who's written a charged account of growing up amongst Christian fundamentalists in the 80s and 90s in a small Midwestern town. The book is
On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right - a Personal History. Chris says: "Harrowing, important, and bold. Hesse’s chronicle of his life, one nearly destroyed by and then reclaimed from religious trauma, opens a window into the world of American fundamentalism and the myriad terrors it inflicts upon its denizens. From hiding in his family’s Iowan basement from storms he believed heralded the end of days, chugging coffee all night to put off nightmares of the rapture and being left behind, and the unsilenceable voice of a demon hissing of Josiah’s unforgivable lust, to the string of dead-end jobs his apocalyptic upbringing left him ill prepared for and the drugs that filled the void of lost faith and family - the fact that Hesse now lives a relatively normal existence is just about as miraculous as the story of the resurrection. As much a cultural history as a memoir, Hesse dissects his own story in order to understand lives all across the country that have been terrorized by Christian fundamentalism. Along the way, he connects the dots from travelling tent revival preachers (some true believers, just as many ruthless grifters) to the post-hippie ‘Jesus Freak’ communities and rural evangelical centers, to the insidious creep of fundamentalist ideology, the gospel of prosperity, and (again) grift into the highest levels of government. A Rosetta Stone for understanding America’s rural working class and the Christian right’s grip on the country." And we have a few signed copies left!
Alex has already found his favorite book of the year - that's
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash. Alex writes:"It's January 28th, 2026, and this is my Book of the Year. Without hesitation, without question. It's effortlessly funny; every other line is a joke that could easily be someone's favorite. The novel follows the highly dysfunctional Flynn family, an eclectic cast of characters, each with their own distinct quirks and questionable morals; the youngest daughter teeters the fine line of extreme intelligence and sociopathy. The middle daughter, unremarkable and invisible, struggles with identity and the Transportation Security Administration. The eldest girl, possessed of a beauty that Pornhub would categorize as ‘jailbait,’ finds love in the quiet stoicism of War Crime Wes. And the father, like all middle-aged men who used to be in an inappropriately named band in college, struggles with keeping his sanity after his wife has flung open their marriage to seek spiritual, emotional, and sexual gratification from their next-door neighbor. I haven't been able to have a conversation where I don't bring up this book at least once. It's one of those novels where I'm almost furious that I can't read it for the first time again. It invokes the same feelings of watching a Wes Anderson film; quirky and dry humor wrapped around a heartfelt story that just made me all sorts of fuzzy inside."
From Jason, notes on
Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York's Explosive '80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation, by Elliot Williams: "
Five Bullets is a riveting work of narrative nonfiction that revisits the December 22, 1984 shooting on a New York City subway train, when Bernie Goetz fired five shots at four Black teenagers and instantly became a national symbol of fear, vigilantism, and racialized “law and order.” Before reading this book, my own awareness of the case barely rose above pop-culture shorthand - something name-checked in “We Didn’t Start the Fire” - but Williams restores the event to its full, troubling complexity, showing how media frenzy, political rhetoric, and public anxiety transformed a violent encounter into a cultural flashpoint. What makes Five Bullets feel so urgent now is how closely its story echoes our own moment. Williams reveals how narratives about crime, race, and self-defense can be weaponized to justify brutality and harden public opinion, often at the expense of truth and human lives. In tracing how Goetz was turned into a folk hero by some and a monster by others, the book exposes the dangerous power of simplified stories in a polarized society. This is history that doesn’t sit quietly in the past - it keeps resurfacing, asking us what kind of justice we are really willing to accept."
Greta now with her praise for
A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang: "A historical epic, a magical realist dream, a family saga:
A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is a bold debut. Qianze is shocked when her father reappears at her childhood home years after deserting his family. She tries to care for a man she barely recognizes despite the resentment that has been holding her back. Unflinchingly, characters from multiple generations confront their pasts in order to move forward. Whether you believe in curses or prophecies, we all have demons.
And those are just some of the books we loved this week! We'll have more suggestions next Tuesday-ish. Stay tuned! Read on!
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