Category: Book Recommendations

• Hellions by Julia Elliott

  Lush and evocative, rich and atmospheric, Hellions is a collection of loosely themed fantastical southern gothic short stories centered around the horror, magic, and mystery of the female experience. With narrators spanning from girls on the brink of puberty to loving and tired mothers to newly single academics to nuns and beyond, each character is…

  Kristen Csuti

  May 15, 2025

  Book Recommendations

  Fantasy, Hellions, Horror, Julia Elliott, Literary Fiction, Short Stories, Southern Gothic

• One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J. Novak

  I promise you haven’t read short stories like these. One More Thing is a madcap collection of mostly satirical short stories covering everything from fractured fairytales to modern dating to family dynamics to politics and religion and historical events of questionable integrity. B.J. Novak, of The Office fame, has an unmistakable and engaging voice, which…

  Kristen Csuti

  March 28, 2025

  Book Recommendations

  BJ Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories, Short Stories

• Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

  While not Steinbeck’s most famous, Cannery Row is, in my opinion, one of his best. A short meditation on a lively place and the collection of people both living there and passing through, this novel is a beautiful and nonjudgmental look at the foibles and follies of humanity, and the joy that often triumphs in…

  Kristen Csuti

  March 28, 2025

  Book Recommendations

  Cannery Row, John Steinbeck

• Loot by Tania James

  A short yet sprawling novel, Loot is the story of a young toymaker in India at the end of the eighteenth century commissioned to make an automaton for Tipu Sultan, and the journey that it sets him on for the rest of his life. Political intrigue, war, adventure, friendship, romance—the pages are packed with a…

  Kristen Csuti

  March 28, 2025

  Book Recommendations

  Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Loot, Tania James