Currently they are: Angeline Boulley ( Firekeeper's Daughter), Mercedes Helnwein ( Slingshot), Tiffany D. My top five are always the most recent authors whose talents reinvigorate my process by reminding me what writing can be, in a way that makes me demand more from myself. The intensity of the connection I forged with those characters was a foundational part of my childhood. I'll never forget the anticipation I felt waiting for the latest installment. I also just finished Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield, about a girl who spends the summer in Jamaica, hoping to reconnect with her father-it's a powerful coming-of-age novel, unflinching and bold. It's incredibly lovely and thoughtful and sad. I'm reading Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy, about the ravages of climate change through the eyes of a traumatized woman. She lives and writes in Canada. Summers's most recent book is The Project (Wednesday Books). Her work has received numerous honors, including an Edgar Award, a John Spray Mystery Award, a Cybils Award and an Odyssey Award. Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf AwarenessĬourtney Summers is the author of the YA novels Cracked Up to Be, All the Rage and Sadie.

So, if I ever worry again, in the bleak midnight hours, that I'll never find another book as good as the one I just finished, I need only remember that if it's happened once, it's happened a thousand times. It's the utterly dazzling story of a New York street photographer whose commitment to her art risked everything, including her relationship with her daughter, and it's styled as a retrospective exhibition of photos, which readers must imagine. Farria's superb novel follows three young Black men from Oklahoma as their ambitions take them all over the world.Īnd then there was the way I felt after finishing Myla Goldberg's latest novel, Feast Your Eyes (Scribner, $17).

Anyone who reads a lot knows that feeling of a 'book hangover,' a reading experience that just won't let go, a fear that nothing else will come close.īut then I remembered I felt this way after finishing Revolutions of All Colors by Dewaine Farria (Syracuse University Press, $22.95) mere months earlier. Not that Patrick is exactly a shining beacon of wisdom and reason, as he does everything in his power to avoid solidifying his own relationship with the man who wants to buy a house with him.Īfterward, I found myself wondering if another book could possibly feel as warm and satisfying as this again.

That novel was The Easy Way Out by Stephen McCauley (Washington Square Press, $19.99), the ridiculously funny story of Patrick, an irresponsible travel agent who must advise his brother Tony through an ongoing affair in the lead-up to Tony's Irish Catholic wedding. It's regrettably rare, considering how much I love doing it, leafing through those first pages with my morning coffee, marking my spot with a finger while I fix an afternoon snack, burning the midnight oil to linger over that final scene.

Down comes the night