August 2, 2025
Two powerful memoirs lead this week’s selection—one recounting a Black man’s journey through trauma to literary success and its aftermath; the other, a horrific childhood survived. In fiction, you’ll encounter love in unlikely places; strange goings-on in 1700s England; and a tender, end-of-life depiction of a Scandinavian octogenarian. There are even some happy endings.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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The Broken King
By MICHAEL THOMAS
Published by GROVE PRESS
When Michael Thomas’s first novel appeared almost twenty years ago, it catapulted him into the public sphere. Now we have a heartful and heart-rending memoir of early violence, how he navigated being a Black man in the Boston suburbs, and the nearly overwhelming effects of instant fame. Through the stories of four generations of his family, we trace Thomas’s often-troubled trajectory through childhood trauma, mental instability, self-medication, and the constrictions of racism in America. The title harks back to T. S. Eliot and is a good description of the author, who chronicles his tribulations as he travels toward a more positive future. It is a very courageous book.
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When the Cranes Fly South
By LISA RIDZÉN
Published by VINTAGE
Translated by Alice Menzies
Like her fellow Swedish novelist Fredrik Backman, Ridzén creates a touching portrait of an older person’s shrinking world. Bo’s autonomy is reduced when his son, with whom he has a contentious relationship, takes away his dog. (“I fantasize about cutting him out of my will…”) The house is filled with carers, food doesn’t taste right anymore, and they don’t want him to tend the fire though he is always cold—he’s cantankerous and who can blame him? The indignities of aging and the struggle to reconcile the present with the inevitable are sensitively rendered, made even more poignant as the novel was inspired by the author’s grandfather. It’s moving and ultimately quite uplifting.
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The Hounding
By XENOBE PURVIS
Published by HENRY HOLT & CO.
Purvis had me hooked on her creepy Gothic novel from the conceit: In a small 18th-century English village live five mysterious sisters, the Mansfield girls. During a parched, rainless summer, odd events begin to amass. Their grandmother who raised them dies, a giant fish is found beached by the riverbank, and then there is a murder. The general frenzy that abounds is Crucible-like, but instead of becoming witches or outcasts (one sister is named Hester), the girls are turning into dogs. “The season of strangeness had begun.” This is an exciting debut with great atmospheric detail, a very visual style, and a story that puts a modern twist on female hysteria.
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This Happened to Me
By KATE PRICE
Published by GALLERY BOOKS
Price grew up in Appalachian Pennsylvania in a “house full of booze not books.” Her father beat her and her older sister, but it was not just violence and incest that marked her childhood; he drugged her and sold her to truck drivers for sex. Her long journey, from the trauma that unmoored her to healing, was enabled by books, libraries, and in particular by Bessel van der Kolk. Kate went on to Harvard, married, adopted a son, became an activist and researcher, and is living proof there is help for victims. Like Educated, this is a truly important book. (Price is the first of van der Kolk’s patients to speak publicly about EMDR therapy.)
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Moderation
By ELAINE CASTILLO
Published by VIKING
Castillo’s (America Is Not the Heart, longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2018 First Novel Prize) latest features Girlie, who has been wildly successful in the tech world as a “Virtual Moderator.” Job description: “Think of yourself as someone who makes our social media family a safe, fun place for everyone.” It’s a hard, lonely role, but her salary means she can help her own Filipino American family with their financial problems. There are violent videos to be vetted, and racial and sexual abuses to detect. Not your typical environment for a love story, but when ambitious Girlie meets the co-founder of the parent company, sparks fly. Castillo is a sharp cultural critic, needling identity politics with a timely, entertaining satire.
