March Staff Picks
In honor of Women’s History Month, all of our staff picks this month are written by women. Check out some of the titles our staff just can’t get enough of! You can find all our past staff picks here.
Much like the Antigone myth on which it is based, Home Fire is a quick, powerful read with an absolutely brutal climax. Isma is a young Muslim woman and the primary caretaker of her younger twin siblings, Aneeka and Parvaiz. Once her siblings turn 18, Isma seeks to continue her education by leaving their London home for America; Aneeka begins a clandestine affair with the son of the British Home Secretary; Parvaiz, adrift without his siblings, is seduced into the mire of radicalization with promises of information about the siblings’ father. If you know the myths, you know: this is a tragedy. Kamila Shamsie has transformed it masterfully. —Abby
A powerful and visceral collection that will take you out of your comfort zone. The stories in Verge focus on the subject of the body; bodies trying to find comfort, bodies trying to become whole, bodies destroyed, bodies as an object, how they are connected to one another, how they can be broken, and how much they are worth. To dive into this collection is to let a cinderblock tied to your leg drag you down into unknown watery depths and instead of trying to loosen the knot, you hold tight and let the waters consume you. —Anthony
Kaitlin Greenidge is a treasure and I want everyone to know just how wonderful of a writer she is. This story is about the Freeman family, chosen to participate in a highly selective science experiment socializing chimps to learn sign language. But when they get there, 14-year-old Charlotte discovers the disturbing past of the institute, marred in a history of racism. There is so much to unpack here in terms of the roles women are expected play, especially Black women, in families and in larger society, the complications of family, motherhood, and the fragile bond of sisterhood. There is young, queer love, dangerous infatuation, budding radicalization, and a deep examination of the possibilities and limitations of language. Pick this up as you wait for Greenidge’s next book, Libertie, to come out at the end of this month, and join me in falling in love with this gift of a writer. —Colleen
Four misfits in Cork, Ireland, find themselves pulled together by an accidental murder. McInerney's prose goes down smoother than a pint of Guinness. A perfect fit for St. Paddy's Day. —Eddie
Middlemarch is a place, but it's also a state of mind. I think I've been in middle March since last March, and though there are signs of hopeful change (three vaccines! woo hoo!), I am still in my house almost all the time. Early on in the pandemic, lots of people were buying classic novels that they'd avoided to date, but I was in no head space to do so. Maybe now, though, I could luxuriate in this, one of my very favorite novels of all time, with it's enormous cast and incredible sentences, and fully move into Middlemarch until this March is over. Here's hoping Dorothea Brooke and her friends can help us cross the year anniversary with the hope of better days ahead. —Emma
This important anthology gives voice to sex workers - who have unfortunately been voiceless for too long. A portion of the net proceeds go to SWOP Behind Bars. They need your support! —Jacque
As a native Bostonian this book has a special place in my heart! The characters are sent on a wild scavenger hunt all around the Boston area in pursuit of a dead millionaire's fortune. But as the chase continues, some players might not turn out to be who they say they are... —Lindsay
Everything in The Low, Low Woods deepens its sense of danger: From the name of the town in which it’s set (Shudder-to-Think, Pennsylvania) and the sketch-style artwork, to the way the events therein seem to both connect and disconnect simultaneously. The Low, Low Woods draws you into a uniquely horrifying contained mythology while also keeping you feeling like it might disappear out from under you at any moment. It tells the story of two teenagers, El and Vee, as they unravel the eldritch mysteries of Shudder-to-Think, caught in its gravitational pull and its deepening madness, like witnessing a dying star and trying to escape before it turns into a black hole. It’s that rare combination of cerebral and visual, and deserves a place on any horror lover’s bookshelf. —Michael Chin
I'm not going to lie, The Mars Room is brutal. But, while steadily pulverizing you with the sad, desperate circumstances of a broken prison system, Kushner also gives you an enormous amount of unexpected humor and heart. It's a gripping page turner that you'll never forget. —Mike FS
A Little Life revolves around a diverse group of talented young men embarking on adulthood in New York. Yanagihara's descriptions of childhood trauma can make for a tough read, but Jude's suffering finds balance in the compassion from those who love him. Yanagihara excels at capturing the radiant moments of beauty, warmth and kindness that help redeem life's inevitable tragedies. It's so beautiful and you're going to love it! —Natalie
It is hard to tell exactly what Suite for Barbara Loden is supposed to be, other than an obsessive quest to find out everything about Barbara Loden's film, Wanda. All I can say is Nathalie Léger's obsession will become yours. Dorthy, a publishing project is an amazing press and this beautiful book is, as Valeria Luiselli succinctly puts it, a "brilliant little book." —Nick
Nona Fernández is a master of writing around absence, threading together various narrative strands until they form a shoreline, and The Twilight Zone does just that. It’s a fearless exploration of what it means to live with the legacies of horrific crimes and a gaping historical void, written in fragments and clear-eyed, arresting prose that takes you straight into the eye of the storm. —Nika
I so loved and needed this weird lil electric collection from the mind that gave us the essential Carceral Capitalism. These prose-poems rose to me like buckets from the dark, bountiful well of dreams: dream-image, dream-logic, dream-consciousness… Here the brainy & revolutionary spirit of Fred Moten meets the biting irony of Jenny Zhang and the rigorous searching & excavation of Bhanu Kapil (who, aptly, praised the book!). The result is something wholly original that radically embraces the potential for poetry to alter and expand social imaginations. While these poems may be rooted in the dirt of our collective traumas, our interpersonal harms—carceral, capitalist, colonial, and otherwise—they reach towards light with liberatory fervor. —Serena
The Bonesetter's Daughter is a story within a story. Ruth is a ghostwriter with a boyfriend, two stepchildren, and a mother in the grips of illness. When Ruth was a child, Lu Ling was convinced that the long dead ghost of her nursemaid, Precious Auntie, was trying to communicate with her through young Ruth. Decades later, Ruth learns the story behind Precious Auntie's death and the truth of her mother's lineage. A family drama at its core that is rife with ghosts and secrets, the love story nestled within it in a revelation. —Shulokhana
We choose new staff picks every month, so stay tuned for regular updates.
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