Books of the Month | Month of the Books #23

“PIRANESI”

BY SUSANNA CLARKE

From the New York Times bestselling author of Jona­than Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic latest novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one dif­ferent from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house — a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

For readers of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susanna Clarke (b. 1959) is an English author known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the Strange universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manus­cript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller.

Two years later, she published a collection of her short stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (2006). Both Clarke’s debut novel and her short stories are set in a magical England and written in a pas­tiche of the styles of 19th-century writers such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. While Strange focuses on the relationship of two men, Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell, the stories in Ladies focus on the power women gain through magic.

Clarke’s second novel, Piranesi, was published in September 2020, winning the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

 

“THE KINDEST LIE”

BY NANCY JOHNSON

Every family has its secrets…

It’s 2008, and the inauguration of President Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated Black engi­neer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to — and was forced to leave behind — when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she’d never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past.

Returning home, Ruth discovers the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unem­ployment, racism, and despair. As she begins digging into the past, she unexpectedly befriends Midnight, a young white boy who is also adrift and looking for connection. Just as Ruth is about to uncover a burning secret her family desperately wants to keep hidden, a heart-stopping incident strains the town’s already searing racial tensions, sending Ruth and Midnight on a collision course that could upend both their lives.

Powerful and unforgettable, The Kindest Lie is the story of an American family and reveals the secrets we keep and the promises we make to protect one another.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Nancy Johnson worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates in markets nationwide. A graduate of Northwestern University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she lives in downtown Chicago and manages brand communications for a large nonprofit. The Kin­dest Lie is her first novel.

nancyjohnson.net | @nancyjauthor

 

“THE ENGLISH PATIENT”

BY MICHAEL ONDAATJE

With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel (1992), traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat lightening.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Ondaatje (b. 1943), is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker. He is the author of six pre­vious novels, a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and the Golden Man Booker in 2018; Anil’s Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis.

Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.

 

“KNOW YOUR VALUE”

BY MIKA BRZEZINSKI

The bestselling motivational guide by the cohost of MSNBC’s weekday morning broadcast show Morning Joe.

Why are women so often overlooked and under­paid? What are the real reasons men get raises more often than women? How can women ask for — and actually get — the money, the job, the recognition they deserve?

Prompted by her own experience as cohost of Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski asked a wide range of successful women to share the critical lessons they learned while moving up in their fields. Power players such as Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Sena­tor Elizabeth Warren, Harvard’s Victoria Budson, comedian Susie Essman, and many more shared their surprising personal stories. They spoke candidly about why women are paid less and the pitfalls women face — and play into.

Now expanded to address gender dynamics in the #MeToo era, Know Your Value blends com­pelling personal stories with the latest research on why many women don’t negotiate their compensa­tion, why negotiating aggressively usually back­fires, and what can be done about it.

For any woman who has ever wondered if her desire to be liked can be a liability (yes), if there is a way to reclaim her contribution after it’s been co-opted in a meeting (yes), and if there are stra­tegies men use to get ahead that women should too (yes!), Know Your Value provides vital advice to help women be their own best advocates.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mika Brzezinski (b. 1967) is an American journa­list, talk show host, liberal political commentator, and author who currently co-hosts MSNBC’s weekday morning broadcast show Morning Joe. She was formerly a CBS News correspondent, and was their principal “Ground Zero” reporter during the morning of the September 11 attacks. In 2007 she joined MSNBC as an occasional anchor, and was subsequently chosen as cohost of Morning Joe, alongside Joe Scarborough.

Mika Brzezinski is a visiting fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. Her main political interest is in wage equality for women. She is also the author of three books; two on her career as a journalist and one on food addiction.

Brzezinski began her journalism career in 1991 in Hartford, Connecticut, as a general assignment reporter at WTIC. A year later she joined WFSB, also in Hartford, and quickly became the weekday morning anchor.

A native of New York City, Brzezinski is the daughter of Foreign Policy Expert and Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

She attended Williams College and received a degree in English. Brzezinski has two daughters and lives in Manhattan.