January Recommendations Roundup
It’s my favorite time of the month – our monthly roundup! I love hearing from all of you about what you are reading, watching and listening to!
I’m starting off this post with an exciting release from Tammy Gooler Loeb, one of our very own Badass Women’s Book Club members!
Afraid you’re too old to make big changes? Are you worried that it’s foolish to break away from a well-formed path even though you’re unhappy? Is fear holding you back from growth? As a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach and host of the popular Work from the Inside Out podcast, Tammy Gooler Loeb has dedicated twenty years to helping individuals explore satisfying career transitions. And now she’s sharing how you can overcome personal, internalized barriers and set yourself on a more rewarding path. You can read more and get your copy here.
The award-winning master of psychological suspense is in top form in this collection of diverse and diabolically clever stories. In the never-before-published “Just One More”, a married couple - longing for that old romantic spark - creates a playful diversion that comes with unexpected consequences. Lippman’s beloved Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan keeps a watchful eye on a criminally resourceful single father in “Seasonal Work”, while her mother, Judith, realizes that the life of “The Everyday Housewife” is an excellent cover for all kinds of secrets. In “Slow Burner”, a husband’s secret cell phone proves to be a dicey temptation for a suspicious wife. A father’s hidden past piques the curiosity of a young snoop in “The Last of Sheila-Locke Holmes”. Plus, seven other brilliantly crafted stories of deception, murder, dangerous games, and love gone wrong - irrefutable evidence that Laura Lippman’s riveting fiction will more than satisfy any crime lover. You can read more and get your copy here.
I just recently finished Lippmann’s 2021 summer release, Dream Girl. It’s such a great read if you love a good psychological mystery along the lines of Stephen King’s Misery. You can read more about it here.
Early on in Kendra James’ professional life, she began to feel like she was selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for independent prep schools, she persuaded students and families to embark on the same perilous journey she herself had made—to attend cutthroat and largely white schools similar to The Taft School, where she had been the first African-American legacy student only a few years earlier. Her new job forced her to reflect on her own elite education experience, and to realize how disillusioned she had become with America’s inequitable system. In ADMISSIONS, Kendra looks back at the three years she spent at Taft, chronicling clashes with her lily-white roommate, how she had to unlearn the respectability politics she'd been raised with, and the fall-out from a horrifying article in the student newspaper that accused Black and Latinx students of being responsible for segregation of campus. Through these stories, some troubling, others hilarious, she deconstructs the lies and half-truths she herself would later tell as an admissions professional, in addition to the myths about boarding schools perpetuated by popular culture. You can read more and get your copy here.
Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families' tumultuous pasts. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California and grieves her estranged father's sudden death, in the process alienating an overzealous girlfriend. Strained by distance and unintended betrayals, the women float in and out of each other's lives, their friendship both a beacon of home and a reminder of all they've lost. In stories told in alternating voices, Jean Chen Ho's debut collection peels back the layers of female friendship—the intensity, resentment, and boundless love—to probe the beating hearts of young women coming to terms with themselves, and each other, in light of the insecurities and shame that holds them back. You can read more and get your copy here.
In this brilliant, fierce, and funny memoir of transformation, Jami Attenberg (author of the fantastic All This Could Be Yours) reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. As the daughter of a traveling salesman in the Midwest, Attenberg was drawn to a life on the road. Frustrated by quotidian jobs and hungry for inspiration and fresh experiences, her wanderlust led her across the country and eventually on travels around the globe. It is during these adventures that she begins to reflect on the experiences of her youth—the trauma, the challenges, the risks she has taken. Driving across America on self-funded book tours, sometimes crashing on couches when she was broke, she keeps writing: in researching articles for magazines, jotting down ideas for novels, and refining her craft, she grows as an artist and increasingly learns to trust her gut and, ultimately, herself. Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class, and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring story of finding one’s way home—emotionally, artistically, and physically—and an examination of art and individuality that will resonate with anyone determined to listen to their own creative calling. You can read more and get your copy here.
Somehow I missed this summer release, but thanks to a loyal reader who clued me in! Perfect escape read for these dreary winter days…
Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award‑winning novelist, who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that 15 years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. While they may be pretending not to know each other, they can't deny their chemistry - or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books through the years. You can read more and get your copy here.
From open floor plans and Zoom calls to Slack channels, the workplace has changed a lot over the years. But there’s one thing that never changes: you’ll always encounter jerks. Jerks at Work is the definitive guide to dealing with—and ultimately breaking free from—the overbearing bosses, irritating coworkers, and all-around difficult people who make work and life miserable. Social psychologist Tessa West has spent years leveraging science to help people solve interpersonal conflicts in the workplace. What she discovered is that most of our go-to tactics don’t work because they fail to address the specific motivations that drive bad behavior. In this book, she takes you on a rollicking deep dive of the seven jerks you’re most likely to encounter at the office, drawing on decades of original research to expose their inner workings and weak points—and ultimately deliver an effective game plan for stopping each type before they take you down with them. You can read more and get your copy here.
Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider―brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets. Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture―one more after thousands―she can unlock the building blocks of life. Marie Benedict's powerful new novel shines a light on a woman who sacrificed her life to discover the nature of our very DNA, a woman whose world-changing contributions were hidden by the men around her but whose relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind. You can read more and get your copy here.
Are you watching Abbott Elementary? I am – and I am really enjoying it! Read about why now is the perfect time for this new show!
I know I have mentioned the Murdaugh Murders podcast before but I think it’s worth promoting it again! The whole saga was the focus of ABC’s 20/20 last Friday, bringing much-deserved attention to badass podcast host, Mandy Matney. And, y’all – just when you think you can’t be any more shocked by the behavior of Alex Murdaugh, you learn you can. This past week’s episode about Hakeem Pinckney broke my heart. I am hoping Mandy’s unwavering commitment to exposing this brings justice for the many people they’ve wronged. You can check out the podcast here.
Finally, our January author is on the cover of Time magazine! You can read the article here.