Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Jeffrey Blair of EyeSeeMe African American Children's Bookstore in University City, Mo."Black Panther" fans, here's your next obsession.Bookseller Jeffrey Blair recommends "Miles Morales: Spiderman," a young adult novel by The New York Times best-selling author Jason Reynolds. "In the spirit of 'Black Panther' coming and the excitement that's coming on, this is a new 'Spiderman' that's coming out that features a young African-American," Blair said. The classic Marvel web-slinging superhero has been reinvented as Miles Morales, a junior in high school. "Part of what we do at EyeSeeMe is allow individuals who might not have seen their story or their culture presented in literature have that opportunity," Blair said. "Being an African-American and living in New York, there are themes [in the book] that will really resonate.""So, if you are a Spiderman fan, you're definitely going to love all the various challenges a young person has trying to be a superhero, and still having that parallel normal life in high school. It's a lot of fun." Spiderman/a>9781484787489

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Susan Hans O'Connor, of Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley, Pa.Susan Hans O'Connor loves to dig into debut novels: "You feel like you're part of the discovery of a new voice."Her current recommendation is "Everything Here is Beautiful," the first novel from Mira T. Lee.The novel follows two sisters — Miranda and Lucia — and "their bond and their lives as they move through Lucia's battle with mental illness," O'Connor said."The way Lee handles it is so compelling. You get inside Lucia's head, which I think is unique, powerful and important, because those of us who don't struggle with these issues don't often have the chance to think about what it's like to have dreams and aspirations and family, yet be haunted by these demons.""The other piece that was so powerful is the relationship between the two sisters. ... It's about the power and bonds and the love of family, and how when one of our loved ones is facing challenges, crises, trauma, it's not just about the person going through it. It's about the people around them who love them and want to help them — but where do you draw the line? Where is the boundary between helping the person you love and also taking care of yourself, and living your own life?""I think that is the most compelling piece of it, that Lee achieves with this story: the dynamic between the two sisters dealing with such an enormous challenge." Everything Here is Beautiful Everything Here is Beautiful Meet the authorMira T. Lee will be in attendance at Literature Lovers' Night Out on Feb. 12 in Excelsior, Minn., and Feb. 13 in Stillwater, Minn. These are ticketed events.

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Emmet Penney, of Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe, New Mexico.Emmet Penney is a longtime fan of poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi, who he once had the opportunity to take a class from: "She absolutely changed my life."Calvocoressi's new collection, "Rocket Fantastic," is his current reading recommendation. The collection, Penney said, "has a lot of different characters in it. There's a loose family structure: the dowager aunt, an estranged brother who seems to be possibly stationed in Vietnam or at least overseas during wartime, the hermit, the major general, and there's this romantic other character named the bandleader.""As I heard another poet describe it: 'There's never any air in her collections,'" Penney said. "There's no wasted space." "One of its big explorations is that life is locked in an interlude of longing, of waiting for things to happen, of desiring that they happen to you and sometimes being terrified of what might come your way." Rocket Fantastic Rocket Fantastic

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Lori Fazio at R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn.Ever wondered who lived in your house before you?Lori Fazio recommends a novel which expertly indulges that curiosity: It's Ashley Hay's "A Hundred Small Lessons." "You know how you always hear 'if these walls could talk'?" Fazio said. "This is a perfect example of that."The book revolves around a house where a woman named Elsie lived for six decades. She raised her family there, grew old, and, after a fall, was moved to a care facility by her children, who sold the house.A new family moves in, and the young mother, Lucy, senses something in the house."I don't mean haunting like a ghost story, but it's this haunting overtone — the new mom has this connection to the previous owner, and it's just beautiful," she said."They realize there's this connection, but they don't know who it's to. Their paths start crossing in very small ways, and you're hoping they're going to bump into each other, that they're going to realize they're meant to talk to each other." A Hundred Small Lessons A Hundred Small Lessons

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Lacy Simons of Hello Hello Books in Rockland, Maine.Lacy Simons is a hard person to buy a book for — she owns a bookstore.But this holiday season, one of her employees did just that."Which was a bold move," Simons said. Though "it worked out really well for him, because it's one of the best books I've ever read."The book is "The Resurrection of Joan Ashby," by Cherise Wolas.At the center of the narrative is Joan, a woman who has known she wanted to be a writer since her earliest days. "The book starts with a list of precepts she lays out for her life, to be a successful writer," Simons explained. The most important one: Don't have children.For a time, her plans work. She publishes two novels to great acclaim, earns several awards and develops a fervent fan base.But "her clear and childless trajectory she plotted out for herself, she unwillingly deviates from it. She ends up having two sons and abandoning writing for long stretches of her life.""What's compelling and brilliant about it is the balance that you feel her constantly making," Simons said. "Any woman who has a creative bone in her body will be familiar with that struggle, the balancing of your own demands on your creative self with the demands of everyone and everything else in your life. That's part of what makes the book so riveting and familiar."The book's intricate structure also kept Simons hooked."There are books within the book. There are excerpts from Joan Ashby's own writing — the books she's already published as well as the book she's writing as the narrative of the novel itself unfolds," she explained. "It's absolutely brilliant. I would read all of Joan Ashby's books, and that's a testament to the absolute ridiculous skill that Cherise Wolas has. And it's her first book! I can't get over that. I can't wait to see what's next." Joan AshbyJoan Ashby

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Carla Ketner from Chapters Books & Gifts in Seward, Neb.In a season filled with wishes for the new year, Carla Ketner has two recommendations for young readers. The first is "Wishtree," by Katherine Applegate, for readers 8 to 12. The book's protagonist is a 216-year-old oak tree named Red, who has "seen a lot of people of many backgrounds move into and out of his neighborhood" over the years, Ketner explained. "He's been home to generations of wild animals."Red is a "wishtree" for his community: Every May 1, neighbors tie their wishes to his branches.When someone carves negative words into his trunk directed at a new family in the neighborhood, Red decides to take action."The ending is perfect for the story, and it sends a message that we all need to hear without being preachy," Ketner said. Wishtree WishtreeKetner's second recommendation is "As You Wish," by Chelsea Sedoti. It takes place in a small town in the Mojave desert, where every resident gets to make one wish on their 18th birthday, knowing it will come true.But there are rules and complications to every wish, and Eldon isn't sure what to wish for. He's watched people in his town wish for "money or beauty or athletic prowess — but those wishes have rarely lead to the anticipated happiness," Ketner said.Eldon has to choose his wish, knowing he can't wish for the one thing he truly wants."This is one of those books that tempts you to flip to the ending," Ketner said. "But don't do that.""I'm still thinking about whether Eldon made the right choice, and what I would wish for if I had the opportunity."As You Wish As You Wish

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Moira Koskey at Green Bean Books in Portland, Ore.Meet Rot.Rot is a mutant potato. But he's not just any mutant potato — he's "a super cheerful and upbeat mutant potato," according to bookseller Moira Koskey."He loves his life, he loves his friends. He especially loves contests and games — that's his favorite thing."So when he sees a sign for "The Cutest in the World" contest, he has to enter."You could make the argument that Rot, as a mutant potato, is somewhat unattractive, but he does not feel that way about himself at all," Koskey explained. "He is bound and determined he is going to win this thing."Rot's fellow contestants are not so sure about him, though. There's a kitten, a tiny bunny, a little jellyfish. "That's who he's up against .... And his self-confidence is a little bit shaken."Maybe, he thinks, he should make a change. He tries on some whiskers and then some ears, but he realizes "the best thing he can possibly do is just enter the contest as his adorably hideous little self."Koskey doesn't want to give away the ending, but Rot's "little flame of self-belief is rewarded in the end. This is a very happy book.""Rot, the Cutest in the World!" is a read-aloud favorite at Green Bean Books, Koskey said, and Ben Clayton's illustrations "are simple and darling and cute.""It's impossible not to root for Rot." Rot, the Cutest in the World Rot, the Cutest in the World

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Karen Barros, from Another Chapter Bookstore in Owasso, Okla.Barros recommends a book about her own state of Oklahoma — and about a crime that shaped the way our justice system works today. David Grann's "Killers of the Flower Moon" follows the fate of the Osage tribe in the 1920s and 30s. The tribe was relegated to a corner of Oklahoma that the U.S. government considered a wasteland."The joke was on the government, because it was found that there was a huge area of oil underneath the land," Barros explained. Members of the tribe became stunningly wealthy — and then, they began to die. More: In the 1920s, a community conspired to kill Native Americans for their oil money Read the first chapter: 'Killers of the Flower Moon' "The wealthiest ... started mysteriously being killed, murdered," Barros said. "This book explores those murders, and the birth of the FBI in solving those murders.""We don't realize there has to be a beginning to everything — and the beginning to the FBI saga was very intriguing."Barros said she immediately wanted to have her book club read it, even if they normally only read fiction. She convinced them, and "they were all just as enthralled with it was I was."Sample Book Sample Book

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. For this week, we spoke with Corey Mesler, of Burke's Book Store in Memphis, Tenn.Corey Mesler doesn't want to describe the plot of "Little, Big," because it might turn away readers who think they don't like fantasy. (He understands — he's normally one of them.)In short, there's a man and a woman. They fall in love. Then come the fairies.But if that's where you might normally tune out, don't, Mesler says.John Crowley's "Little, Big" is a stunning masterwork and maybe "the best fantasy novel ever published," according to Mesler.Little, Big Little, Big

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Danilo Thomas at Sundance Books in Reno, Nev.Danilo Thomas grew up with guys who wrestled.During their season, he remembers, they would fall down the "wrestling hole."Their whole lives became about the physical and mental transformation necessary to give your whole soul over to the sport.Gabe Habash's new novel, "Stephen Florida," nails its depiction of the "wrestling hole," Thomas said.The book revolves around its title character, a hyper-motivated, almost dangerously focused college wrestler in North Dakota who wants nothing more in life than to take home the Division 4 national title — and he's got one last chance to do it."The language is excellent, and the first person perspective on these fringe, marginal sports and what drives people to commit their whole lives to accomplishing these things," Thomas said.Stephen FloridaStephen Floridat

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Vivien Jennings of Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kan.Vivien Jennings has a heartfelt recommendation for the holidays: "The Story of Arthur Truluv," by Elizabeth Berg.The book follows Truluv, a recent widower, as he goes about his daily routine. Every afternoon looks the same. Truluv packs his lunch, rides the bus to the cemetery and sits next to his wife's grave while he eats."One day he sees this sullen teenager who, it turns out, is coming to the cemetery to escape the other kids at school," Jennings explained. "They begin a surprising friendship."Their impromptu circle grows when Truluv's elderly neighbor joins the group. (Truluv's cat is never far from the crowd, either.)The book, Jennings said, "reminds us of our humanity and of those small acts that can turn friends into family.""I didn't want it to end. I tell you, anyone who reads this book is going to fall in love with Arthur Truluv, and with his new family as well." The Story of Arthur Truluv The Story of Arthur Truluv

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Sarah Hutton of Village Books in Bellingham, Wash."The Unseen World" tells the story of Ada, a young girl homeschooled by her father, David, in his computer lab. She grows up in a world of experiments and grad students."It's the 1980s, so computers aren't really doing a whole lot of anything yet," Hutton explained. The lab is attempting to teach a computer to hold a conversation, like a human would."They end up having a program that all of the people can talk into — all of the students and Ada and David — so the computer starts learning language and starts learning patterns.""As this is going on, Ada starts realizing David is starting to show symptoms of Alzheimer's. They start worrying that as he's losing his language, he is becoming less of himself," Hutton said. "So, it's his story against the story of this computer starting to learn more and more how to mimic a human."The story compounds when "we start realizing that David may not be all that he has been made out to be. So it becomes a bit of a family mystery as well."Unseen WorldUnseen World

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Melanie McNair from Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville, N.C."Jesmyn Ward is a genius."That's bookseller Melanie McNair's simplest possible review of the novel "Sing, Unburied, Sing.""It's a road trip novel that also manages to bring in ghosts; incredibly rich place details about Mississippi; and crystal meth," McNair said. "It's got a beautiful, beautiful set of characters with so much big-hearted compassion."Ward also weaves the burden of incarceration into the plot — a burden that has scarred generations of families in the area."Every time I thought I knew what was going to happen next, it didn't happen the way I thought it was going to," McNair said. "The whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking: How is she doing this?""It manages to be a book that leaves you feeling breathless, in the same way you feel when you've just encountered a master work of art." Sing, Unburied, Sing Sing, Unburied, Sing

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Katharine Nevins of MainStreet BookEnds in Warner, N.H.For people living in unconventional houses and remote locations, there's a very basic question to consider: How do you cook? Trevor and Maddie Gordon, who live on a sailboat off the coast of California, partnered with Mary Gonzalez, who lives in a camper on an avocado farm, to document people who are making meals in minuscule, improvised kitchens.Trevor is a photographer, Maddie is an illustrator and Gonzalez is a farmer and baker. The result is the visually stunning cookbook, "The Tiny Mess."It profiles people along the West Coast "cooking on a tiny budget in a tiny kitchen with very limited equipment," bookseller Katharine Nevins said. "Sometimes not even running water.""A lot of [the work] is foraging. Some are dumpster divers and get foods that have been tossed out by grocery stores that are still fine."The recipes run the gamut from lamb kebabs to blueberry pie to "kitchen sink quiche.""It's the kind of book I want to sit down with and just enjoy," Nevins said. "It's just one of those lush books."

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Jamie Thomas, of Women & Children First Bookstore in Chicago.There's a bit of a battle among the staff at the Women & Children First Bookstore: They can't decide who gets to put Jeannie Vanasco's memoir "The Glass Eye" as their staff pick — too many of them want to recommend it.Store manager Jamie Thomas said the staff has all different reading styles, yet they "can't rave enough about" the book."It's one of the most inventive and engrossing memoirs I've read in a long, long time," she said.The night before Jeannie Vanasco's father died, when she was just 18, she promised she would write a book for him. "She was only a freshman in college, but this book is the decade-long result," Thomas explained. "It starts out a love letter to her father and her childhood. But it becomes more and more layered.""She suffered from deep grief, more than I can possibly imagine, and she is trying to figure out why she wasn't able to get past it." Then comes a diagnosis: Bipolar. Vanasco writes openly and honestly about her mental illness. "I've read the book a couple of times now and each time I discover more," Thomas said. "If you want to read something that will make you think and that will keep revealing more to you every time you read it, this is the book." Glass EyeGlass Eye

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Ronald Davis, co-owner of Wild Fig Books & Coffee in Lexington, Ky.There's a persistent myth about booksellers — that they spend all day reading. In fact, Ronald Davis has very little time to read while running Wild Fig Books & Coffee. That's why he planned to just flip through a few pages of "Beautiful Darkness" when he first picked it up — but he was hooked."I finished the whole thing," Davis said.The graphic novel is not for the faint of heart; it's a "very dark story, gorgeously illustrated." It centers around a group of fairies who live inside a decomposing body."The dark part is how they treat each other," Davis said. "You grow up on all these fairy tales, and you're not used to sprites being so vicious to each other. It's almost this 'Pan's Labyrinth'-type of thing."Davis recommends the book for fans of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore or Terry Pratchett. The end of the graphic novel moved him to tears."It was sad and beautiful at the same time. I highly recommend it. You have to kind of be a dark person, a little bit, to truly appreciate it. But that's the type of person I am."Beautiful DarknessBeautiful Darkness

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Vivienne Evans of Books & Books in Miami Beach, Fla.Vivienne Evans has been a bookseller for more than 20 years — long enough that she now just calls herself a "book therapist."Handselling books directly to customers is her lifelong passion, and she said she particularly loves young writers — those willing "to venture forth, go into those unknown hidden valleys and set something down in writing, because who knows where it's going to take them? Or the reader?"Evans first fell for Hannah Kent's work in her first novel, "Burial Rites," which centers on a real-life execution that occurred in Iceland in the nineteenth century.When Kent's second novel came out, Evans was just as enamored."The Good People" is set in Ireland in the early part of the nineteenth century. "It's located in this rain-soaked, mud-filled, dark, hidden valley in the southwest of Ireland," Evans explained.The story focuses on three women. The first is Nora, a woman overwhelmed by grief from the sudden death of her husband, and left to care for her 4-year-old grandson, who "for no apparent reason, suddenly stops talking and walking."Enter Nance, the town shaman of sorts, who offers her services to Nora, and Mary Clifford, a 14-year-old girl who works for Nora."They're all in many ways outliers, they're outcasts in society," Evans said. "Between the three of them, they decide to come up with ways and means of trying to heal this child, all along conscious of the fact that there's something else out there. Something superstitious, something spiritual, something ill-defined, known in the local parlance as 'the good people' — like fairies."Evans said Kent's novel is, like her first, loosely based on actual happenings. "The Good People" jumps off from an old account of strange happenings in "this peculiar valley, a very claustrophobic place." The whole thing unspools amid tensions over "hard-held beliefs, superstitions, herbal remedies, all being pitted against a very shrouded Catholicism, which is embedded in the Irish psyche."It's the story of "how those in desperate circumstances — and I mean desperate, desperate poverty, desperate weather, desperate situations — cling to the old bulwarks, the old beliefs, even though something inside of them knows it's going to work against them and continue to render them utterly powerless."The Good PeopleThe Good People

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with David Enyeart of Common Good Books in St. Paul.The British novelist Jon McGregor isn't well known in the U.S. yet, but bookseller David Enyeart thinks that will certainly change.McGregor landed on the Man Booker longlist for the third time this year, this time with his novel "Reservoir 13.""It's a portrait of an English village over about 12 years," Enyeart said. "It begins with the disappearance of a girl who is hiking on the moors with her family and it follows the repercussions that creates in the village over time."McGregor "tells the book in very small fragments. ... It's a beautiful pointillistic portrait, which becomes really hypnotic as the book continues.""Although it takes place over a dozen years, it really pulls you through the entire way," Enyeart said. "It's a very different novel, not one you've read a lot of places. I can't recommend it enough for everyone this fall."Reservoir 13 Reservoir 13

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Jude Feldman, at Borderlands Books in San Francisco.Borderlands Books is your place for strange. The bookstore is the city's home for all things science fiction, fantasy, mystery and horror.Jude Feldman, the store's general manager, doesn't just have one recommendation. She has seven."Passing Strange" by Ellen KlagesThe novella takes place both in 1940s San Francisco and in contemporary times, Feldman notes, and it dives into queer life in the 40s. The story has a "fairy tale quality ... I like it because it's barely genre, it's barely magical. It's our world, just tweaked a little bit."Passing StrangePassing Strange"Spoonbenders" by Daryl GregoryGet lost in the family saga of the "amazing Telemachus family." "Most of them have a psychic power — but one of them's just pretending," Feldman explained. "They were discredited on live television in the 1970s, and have fallen on harder times since then.""This is the story of the family patriarch who is still around, and his grandson Matty, who is just starting to discover that he might have some powers. ... It's a compelling family saga with magic at its heart, and it's very sweet."SpoonbendersSpoonbenders "A Crown for Cold Silver" by Alex MarshallTired of waiting for that new George R. R. Martin? (Hang in there, folks.)For now, this entry in the world of grim dark fantasy may tide you over, according to Feldman."It has a lot of black humor," she said. "The first line is: 'It was all going so well right up until the massacre.'"The novel explores many different characters' plights in the fantasy world — "one is a middle-aged woman who used to be a very fierce warrior. Now she's in hiding — she's the title character. And her well-ordered life in obscurity is about to come to an end."A Crown for Cold SilverA Crown for Cold Silver"Every Heart a Doorway" by Seanan McGuireThis book took home not only a Hugo Award but a Nebula too, making it fantasy royalty.It centers on a special school for children who have returned from portal fantasies. Think, for example, of the children who made it through to Narnia or of poor Alice down the rabbit hole. "This is a book about what happens to those kids when they get back to our world, and are now no longer kings and queens or great warriors, but just kids again," Feldman said. "Many of them have a version of P.T.S.D, and are really not ok.""Every Heart a Doorway" explores what happens next for them. "The characters are beautiful, and there's a murder mystery at the heart of it," Feldman said.If you fall in love with it, there's also "Down Among the Sticks and Bones," a spinoff that explores the portal trip for two of the characters in the first book. "It's well worth reading — and also stands on its own," Feldman said. Every Heart a Doorway Every Heart a Doorway"The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" by Becky ChambersCall these books "domestic space operas," Feldman said."What I mean by that is not that things don't blow up — they definitely do — but that's not necessarily the point of the stories.""Long Way" is the story of "a young woman who has paid a lot of money for a new identity. She's signed on as a clerk on this spaceship that tunnels wormholes. It's a dangerous job, and she's adjusting to her new life and her new 'family' on this ship, many of whom are aliens and have utterly different points of view from her.""It's got a little 'Firefly' quality to it," she said, referencing the cult favorite sci-fi television show.Again, if you fall in love, there's more: "A Closed and Common Orbit" is the sequel, and Feldman said she liked it even more than the first.Long Way to Small, Angry PlanetLong Way to Small, Angry Planet"Summerlong" by Peter BeagleIn order to keep spoilers to a minimum, Feldman had to keep this review super short."This is a brand new, yet very classic fairy tale set in our world," she said. "It has a magical character in it, and it's about the dissolution of a relationship. ... It's beautiful and nostalgic and bittersweet."SummerlongSummerlong"Midnight Riot" by Ben AaronovitchSeries alert: There's six of these so far."This is about a police constable who stumbles into a kind of magical Underground in London, and becomes part of the three-person task force that handles all of the things that the regular public in London are not supposed to know about," Feldman explained.The books have "a marvelous sense of humor."Midnight RiotMidnight Riot

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Vanessa Martini, a bookseller at the legendary City Lights bookstore in San Francisco.This summer was flooded with must-not-miss fiction, but bookseller Vanessa Martini wants to make sure one title doesn't get lost in the rush: Danzy Senna's "New People."The book opens in 90s Brooklyn, and follows Maria and her fiancee Khalil. She's a grad student, he's in the early tech boom. As the book declares, the couple are "King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom." Maria, though, finds herself drawn to a poet she meets out one night, and "proceeds to do a series of horrible choices. She makes the worst choices," Martini said."As a reader, you are completely engulfed in what she's doing. You can't look away. It's like a train wreck, it's that feeling of secondhand embarrassment when you're watching a movie and a character does something so awful, and you're watching through your hands."Senna's writing was what hooked Martini."I was sitting on the couch and then I emerged from the book and realized three hours had passed, and I was done with it. I had no idea what had happened to my life," she said."[Senna] is really amazing at a sentence level. She writes these clean, propulsive sentences that are almost like — I don't want to sound too woo-woo — but they're almost like a swimmer doing laps. Very slow, meditative laps.""The sentences she writes are absolutely incredible, and paired with what she's talking about, it makes this book completely hypnotic."New PeopleNew People

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Steve Bercu, CEO of BookPeople in Austin, Tex.Steve Bercu has a timely reading suggestion for your nonfiction shelf: "Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam."The fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Hue will be marked this January; the battle was part of the Tet Offensive. At Hue, American troops were surprised by an attack from North Vietnamese forces."Aside from being astoundingly good writing, and a story that I guess a lot of people have forgotten, this was a major turning point," Bercu said. "In a grander context, it was also the first recognition, nationally, that the government could not be trusted because it became obvious that the government had lied about the status of the war.""I find it to be a great book."Hue 1968Hue 1968 NewsCut: Final episode of 'The Vietnam War' fails to deliver 1971: John Kerry speaks of the monster created by the Vietnam War

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Molly Coogan of Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven, Mass.Molly Coogan is a bookseller at Bunch of Grapes Bookstore on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. It's the shop the Obama family used to wander through on their summer vacations, and it sits not far from where "Jaws" was filmed.That plays well with Coogan's recommendation for readers: "Shark Drunk." More: A bookish tour through Obama's years in the White House The nonfiction tale follows a writer and an artist — Morten Stroksnes and Hugo Aasjord — as they embark on a Richard Dreyfuss-worthy adventure. The two friends set out from an archipelago north of the Arctic Circle, on a hunt for Greenland shark.It's "the nastiest, biggest oldest shark you can possibly imagine," Coogan said. "They're 400 years old, they weigh a ton. They're like 24 feet long. They're even bigger than the great white sharks we have here on the Vineyard — in movies and in real life."The Greenland shark "is a killing machine." Even its meat is toxic, capable of causing hallucinations — "that's where the title comes from," Coogan said.The premise of "Shark Drunk" is these two friends, alone in a rubber dinghy in the ocean, on the hunt for a shark. "But it's a lot more than that. The author meanders through these philosophical musings. There's all these 'Gee whiz!' science moments."Their friendship blossoms in this dinghy. [Stroksnes'] mind rambles and wanders the way one would when you're out in the middle of the ocean ... It's almost like you have this Wikipedia rabbit hole through the whole book, just more beautifully written."Coogan said the book touches on everything from the history of Norway to the biology of deep-sea creatures. "It's a book I think will appeal to everybody, and certainly to anyone looking for high seas adventures," she said. "Even if you missed Shark Week, it's something that will resonate throughout the year." Shark DrunkShark Drunk

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Kathryn Harper, a bookseller at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York City.Kathryn Harper already had a book in mind to recommend to me when I called — and then, she picked up Achy Obejas' "The Tower of the Antilles."She tore through it in two days, and changed her mind: She had to recommend Obejas' new short story collection instead.The book features 10 tales set in Cuba and the U.S."It's amazing," Harper said. "I couldn't stop reading it. I love it."As a resident of New York City, Harper spends a lot of time commuting, and short stories are the ideal companion."They're only 30 pages. How can you not be satisfied with this one perfect, delicious thing? Then, not only is it one, but you get ten. Ten different, interesting pieces that you put together," Harper said.With Obejas, "every little story, even though they're short, [makes] you feel immediately immersed in whatever world she's creating for you. It's like 10 teeny-tiny novels."One story in particular stuck with her: "Kimberly" is about a young college-age woman who sees another young woman "who is kind of troubled, down on her luck."She invites the woman to move in with her and "all these weird things start happening," Harper said."It begins so differently than it ends. You have no idea what's going to happen."Tower of the AntillesTower of the Antilles

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Meredith Hylton, a bookseller at Indy Reads Books in Indianapolis.Growing up, Meredith Hylton devoured young adult historical fiction.So when she picked up "Serafina and the Black Cloak" by Robert Beatty, it was a welcome return to her young reader roots. It's "a good escapist middle grade novel," Hylton said. The book, which mixes historical fiction with fantasy, takes place on the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C. The protagonist is an unusual young girl named Serafina, who lives in the basement."She's part girl, but she's part something else — and it's a bit of a mystery the whole time," Hylton said."Serafina" has shades of classic "Goosebumps" and "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark." "It's exactly the kind of book I would have read when I was 11 or 12. And it was perfect, even now, as a good diversion — something you could read in just a few hours."The book is the first in a trilogy, followed by "Serafina and the Twisted Staff" and "Serafina and the Splintered Heart."Serafina and the Black Cloak Serafina and the Black Cloak

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Jonah Zimiles of [words] Bookstore in Maplewood, N.J.Some people are better than others at predicting the future. You could be one of them.We're not talking about correctly guessing lottery numbers, but about the kind of practical predictions that people make every day when it comes to business, finance and human behavior.In "Superforecasting," which was named one of the best books of 2015 by The Economist, authors Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner look at different "superforecasters" — people who demonstrate exceptional predictive abilities.Bookseller Jonah Zimiles recommends the book for its practical lessons. "While knowledge and intelligence help [in forecasting], attitude and methodology are what make the difference," Zimiles said. "So, it seems like a skill that can be learned, rather than just something people are born with."What I would urge is people who may not always be drawn to business books to consider reading it. It's got this handy pull-out: 11 Commandments of Superforecasting. It gives all kinds of life lessons about humility, having confidence and seeking out diverse and opposing viewpoints."If people are open-minded, it can really change what they do in life and how they approach everyday situations."SuperforecastingSuperforecasting

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Hans Weyandt of Milkweed Books in Minneapolis.For summer reading, bookseller Hans Weyandt said he often turns to true crime: "It's a guilty pleasure of mine."And this summer, he recommends "American Fire."One night in 2012, in a rural part of Virginia, an abandoned house went up in flames. Then came another fire. And another.Over the next five months, the area saw 86 different fires: An arsonist was at at work.In "American Fire," journalist Monica Hesse writes about these fires, their impact and those responsible."The big kicker in this is that the people involved in the arson are not just men, which is a very rare thing," Weyandt said. "It's a couple — a man and a woman. They're not really posited so much as Bonnie and Clyde, as they are two people in a dying part of the country, in a dying relationship. [Hesse] does a fascinating look inside their lives and the place." More: An interview with "American Fire" author, Monica Hesse American FireAmerican Fire

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Vivien Jennings of Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kan.Vivien Jennings of Rainy Day Books says that this new spy thriller "grabs you from the very first scene and never lets go."It opens in 1936, when the Russian secret police catch a 16-year-old boy who escaped from an orphanage. They've been watching him for months: He's been living on the street as a thief, but he shows impressive language skills and ingenuity under fire.They make him a deal: Spy for Russia and take on a mission in Nazi Germany, or spend the rest of your life in prison.Christie is a history buff, Jennings said, and he "decided to write the novel after discovering in declassified documents an account of a German plan to assassinate Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference of 1943.""The plan was defeated by a Soviet intelligence officer who had infiltrated German military intelligence. What a possibility that one well-placed agent — a single spy — might be able to affect the course of world history." Jennings added: "These days, if you're curious at all in how Russian intelligence works, Christie's history and tradecraft are very well-researched — and very scary." Single SpySingle Spy

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Betsy Burton, the co-owner of The King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City.You know the feeling of a long, difficult read? The book was good, you're glad you read it, but it was just hard to get through?That's what Betsy Burton was feeling earlier this year: She needed a perfectly plotted palate cleanser. And she found it in "Golden Hill," a novel by Francis Spufford. "I read the first page and it was just ah, I was so relieved, I was so happy. I could tell right then that it had a narrative that was going to grab me by the throat and not let me go," she said. "The historical novel is set in 1746 New York."So the Revolution is due in 30 years. The characters don't know it's coming, but of course the reader does," Burton said. The book opens with a young man jumping off a ship before it can even dock in the New York harbor, and swimming to shore so he can make it to a counting house — essentially a money lending firm — before it closes for the day. He has a letter of credit for a thousand pounds, a fortune in 1746. The owner of the firm is confronted with this mystery, and a risk. Should he honor the note? Even if it could sink the firm?"Who is this guy? Is he for real? Who knows?" Burton remembered wondering about the main character. That's just where the action starts. "There's a kind of an odd love story involved in this book. There's a real mystery about who our main character is. ... There's a boisterous, fun tone, underlain with all of this really interesting history. And a very literary writer who pulls this off with such panache that you cannot put the book down. "I absolutely adored every page of it. When I finished it, I just wanted to turn it over and start again. It's the best read of the summer."The Golden HillThe Golden Hill

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. For this week, we spoke with Kate Weiss at Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, Ky.Laurel Snyder's new book, "Orphan Island," is aimed at middle grade readers, but there's plenty for adults to enjoy, too, according to Kate Weiss of Carmichael's Bookstore.The novel takes place on an island that's always inhabited by exactly nine orphans. Every year, a boat arrives with a new child. When it leaves, it takes the eldest away. The book has "a really quiet, powerful quality," Weiss said. "It's a meditation on childhood. It's metaphorical without being super heavy." Weiss said the book could spark discussions between parents and children, especially about topics that kids "may not have the words to talk about.""This book opens up what growing up can mean," Weiss said.Orphan IslandOrphan Island

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. For this week, we spoke with Amanda Sutton of Bookworks in Albuquerque, N.M."We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" tells the story of an unusual family experiment: The Cookes adopt a chimpanzee to raise alongside their own young children.The story is told from the perspective of a grown-up Rosemary Cooke, who spent her childhood with her chimp sister, Fern.Fern, however, disappears after a few years of the experiment, and her absence plunges the family into a long-lasting grief. Rosemary is left to unravel the true story as she grows up."I've recommended this book to a lot of readers for the ways that it has made me ponder how we treat animals — and also fellow human beings," Sutton said.We Are All Completely Beside OurselvesWe Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Jennifer Norton, a bookseller at The Homer Bookstore in Homer, Alaska.Samuel Hawley has a violent past, and his body shows it: He has twelve bullet wound scars.And over the course of Hannah Tinti's novel, Samuel tells his daughter Loo the story behind each of them. In "The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley," Tinti weaves together a father's secrets with a daughter's coming-of-age story. Jennifer Norton loved it. She became a fan of Tinti's a few years ago, when Tinti came through Homer with her previous novel, "The Good Thief." Alaska is just one of the places in "Twelve Lives" where Samuel earns a bullet wound. The sense of place that Tinti instills in her novel is one of the reasons Norton loved it. The settings of the Samuel's scar stories range from an inn in the desert to Alaska to the northeastern coast of the U.S. Twelve Lives Twelve Lives

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Susan Kehoe, the manager at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, Del."The Nix" is a big book. It clocks in at more than 600 pages.And it sat on Susan Kehoe's book stack for almost a year. She just couldn't find the right moment to dive into Nathan Hill's sprawling novel. But when she finally did this spring, she was hooked.It's the story of an English professor, trapped in the malaise of a third-rate university. One day, he gets a call about his mother — a woman he hasn't seen since he was a child. She's been arrested, he learns, for protesting an infamous political figure, and now she needs a character witness.That's just where the story kicks off, but it goes to strange and unexpected places, bouncing among the son's story, the mother's story and even the story of an avid video gamer that Hill winds masterfully through the book. Kehoe is not the only one to fall for this book — critics compared Hill to John Irving and Charles Dickens. It might be cliche to call something a Great American novel, Kehoe said, but "The Nix" is one. More: An interview with Nathan Hill, author of "The Nix" NixNix

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Richard DeWyngaert, the owner of Head House Books in Philadelphia.Richard DeWyngaert picked up "Outline," by Rachel Cusk, while traveling — which is the most fortuitous way to stumble upon this sly novel.It centers on a writer whose life is falling apart. "Her marriage, her career, her sense of self as a mother — all those facets of her identity are failing," DeWyngaert said. So she leaves it all behind to teach a summer creative writing course in Greece.The book takes non-traditional structure that excels in its minimalism."I love the fact that we don't know very much about the narrator, except through conversations," he said. "Each of the ten chapters is a conversation with someone different. It begins with the gentleman seated next to her on the plane, then there are various writers and poets and teachers and students in her class."DeWyngaert said the book stuck with him because "we all go through periods where what used to work for us no longer works." As for Cusk, he said, "I just think she's a remarkable writer. I think it's so disarming because it's so simple, and yet I kept rereading 'Outline.' I kept going back to it and being spellbound by how brilliant it is."OutlineOutline

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Aja Martin, a bookseller at Indigo Bridge in Lincoln, Neb.Aja Martin is a self-proclaimed geek. She loves graphic novels and comics, and she's excited about a new collection that documents the whole history of female comic book characters. It's "The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwoman," by Hope Nicholson.The book gives an encyclopedic overview of strong, powerful and occasionally extremely obscure characters, from the 1930s to present. It includes not just details about their origins, but the historical context around their creation. Martin loved the opportunity to learn more about a favorite hero of hers."I have a huge, huge love of Wonder Woman," she said. "I think that her creation was kind of an interesting look into how people were processing sexuality at the time, which a lot of people don't realize."The book also gives a glimpse at characters you've never heard of — like Olga Mesmer, from 1934, or Friday Foster, from 1970. There's also the Man-Huntin' Minnie of Delta Pu, from 1952.It's a must-read for any comics fans, Martin says, and good background to how the powerful characters we see in modern culture evolved.

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Josie Danz, a manager at Zandbroz Variety in Fargo, N.D.Josie Danz grew up in the bookstore — Zandbroz is a family business.Lately, she's been recommending "Pachinko," a new novel by Min Jin Lee.It's a sweeping family saga set in Korea and Japan. The story spans nearly the entire 20th century, following four generations through colonial rule, war and dislocation. For Danz, who has read a lot of historical fiction, it offered a different perspective on events like World War II and the Korean War. Much of the fiction on the market tells those stories from a Western perspective.It all begins with Sunja, a young girl in a Korean fishing village who falls in love with an older man. When she becomes pregnant, she learns he is already married. To spare her from social disgrace, a visiting minister agrees to marry Sunja himself. Together, they move to Japan."I found this novel very relevant to today's world, just because it's about outsiders, familial roles and also the politically marginalized. For me, it drew a lot of questions of what makes a nation, what defines a home, how do we define family, and how do we define what loyalty is to family?" Danz said. "Also, how do we learn to forgive those we're closest to?""Anyone that wants to read a book about historical fiction or a family epic, but wants a different cast of characters with a different historical viewpoint, this is the book for them." PachinkoPachinko

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Angela Maria Spring, the owner of Duende District, a new bookstore in Washington, D.C.Angela Maria Spring has worked in bookstores for 16 years — in New Mexico, in New York and most recently at Washington D.C.'s storied Politics and Prose. But now, she's trying something new: She's opening her own shop.Duende District will be a bookstore "owned, operated and managed by a majority of people of color," Spring said. The publishing industry remains predominantly white, and the book-selling business isn't much different. "There are very few people of color who own bookstores," Spring said. And she wants to change that.She's starting Duende District as a pop-up store, with plans for a more permanent location within the year.In the meantime, she's putting one book into the hands of everyone who stops by: Daisy Hernandez's memoir "A Cup of Water Under My Bed." When she first picked it up, she thought she'd just get through a few chapters. Instead, "I sat down on a Saturday afternoon and I couldn't stop reading it until the very last page. And I just couldn't stop crying.""Not only is [Hernandez] a brilliant writer, the way that she describes her story of growing up in an immigrant Latino family in the U.S. touched on so many things that mirrored my own experience," Spring said."First of all, she can turn a sentence like nobody's business, so it's a gorgeous, almost lyrical way of telling her story of growing up in New Jersey. And I hadn't read anything by a fellow Latina who was close to my age in a long time. "I called my mother immediately and I was crying: 'I understand so many things now, I understand how I've been colonized in so many ways and how we've been separated from our language. I understand who I am so much better just because Daisy's book forced me to think about it in ways I hadn't before.'""And my mother was like: 'That's how I felt when I read "When I Was Puerto Rican" by Emeralda Santiago.' And it was just a really poignant moment between us.""Not only is it a book that I think every Latino in America should read, but I also think if you ever want to understand the immigrant experience, and who we are as people, and how we grow up as Americans, and how we're continually considered 'other,' it is definitely a book everybody should read."Reading Hernandez's book is one of the things that spurred Spring to move forward with her plan for Duende. The memoir, she said, is her shop's "La Patrona."A Cup of Water Under My BedA Cup of Water Under My Bed

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Cynthia Justus, one of the owners of Talk Story Bookstore in Kauai, Hawaii. Talk Story Bookstore, on the island of Kauai, is the westernmost bookstore in the entire United States. Run by Cynthia Justus and her husband Ed, the shop serves both locals and the constant crowd of tourists flocking to the island.With so many tourists in the shop, the booksellers end up recommending titles to people from all over the world. Many people write back — weeks or months later — to tell them what they thought of the books.One book that Justus has been recommending for more than a decade is Carlos Ruiz Zafon's "The Shadow of the Wind." She's turned dozens of people onto it. Originally written in Spanish, the translation is beautiful, Justus said. The novel is set in Barcelona, in 1945. "Without any spoilers, the book starts out with a young man who comes of age. As a gift, his father takes him to this vast, underground library. In the library, there's only one book by each author," Justus explained. After many hours of exploring the shelves, the young man finally picks a book. He takes it home and begins to read."Within the first couple of pages, he must find another book by the same author, and that's where the tale begins."Justus said she loves recommending it because it has everything a great novel should: It has "a bit of adventure, a bit of mystery, the tiniest bit of romantic interest in it — and you go on a journey." The Shadow of the Wind The Shadow of the Wind

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Akbar Watson, the owner of Pyramid Books in Boynton Beach, Fla.Watson rarely re-reads books, but he found himself pulling an older book off the shelf this month: "The Healing Wisdom of Africa" by Malidoma Patrice Some.The book explores the role of ritual and nature in the lives of people in Burkina Faso. It explores "spiritual principles that can enhance us in the West, about building relationships with the community, our health and family," Watson said."At the time we're in, there seems to be a disconnection. We seem to be fractured as a people. And this book is good at bringing some type of restoration or healing to us as a human family."The Healing Wisdom of Africa The Healing Wisdom of Africa

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. For this week, we spoke with Jonathan Sanchez, the owner of Blue Bicycle Books in Charleston, S.C.Kyla Cheng tells you in the very first sentence that you aren't going to like her — but that's what hooked Jonathan Sanchez.Kyla is the central character in Corrie Wang's young adult novel, "The Takedown." She's got it all: the grades, the boyfriend, the close clique. She's popular at high school, with a capital "P.""The Takedown" is set in a (scarily) plausible near future, where tech rules all. Privacy is a thing of the past. (It doesn't seem so futuristic, Sanchez said, when you think of how obsessed with with our phones we already are.)Enter the scandal: Someone posts a fake sex tape of Kyla. It's not her in the video, but no one believes her. Desperate to clear her reputation, she starts to dig into the darkest corners of the ultra-connected world to try and erase the video. Thus the title, "The Takedown.""If you're a fan of 'Mean Girls' or 'Clueless,'" Sanchez said, "it's very much like that.""What I like best about it is that it's a social novel," he said. It's not fantasy. It's not dystopian. Those types of books seem to be flooding shelves today. Instead, "it's a relatively realistic book, it just happens to be set five, ten years down the road.""The Takedown" will be published on April 11.The TakedownThe Takedown

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Lisa Sharp, the owner of Nightbird Books in Fayetteville, Ark.Short story collections aren't Sharp's usual jam.She prefers full-length novels — "I always feel like I want a little more," she said.But Carys Davies' forthcoming collection, "The Redemption of Galen Pike," won her over. She picked it up at a bookseller convention, read it in one night, and spent the rest of the weekend telling everyone to check it out.The stories in the collection bounce all over the world, from Siberia to Australia to a Colorado jail. They circle the issues of isolation and loneliness."The stories tend to go places you didn't expect," Sharp said. "Not like some kind of hokey surprise ending, just not what you would expect.""I read constantly as a bookseller, so I feel like I know stories — I can guess where they're going. But these all resolved in ways that came out of the blue for me."They're always a little bit dark, a little bit odd, always absolutely beautiful and hard to forget.""The Redemption of Galen Pike" will hit shelves in April.The Redemption of Galen PikeThe Redemption of Galen Pike

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Jodi Smits, a bookseller at Page & Palette in Fairhope, Ala.Smits said Page & Palette has been selling out of the historical novel "The Other Einstein" lately. The store's book club devoured it, and customer after customer is scooping it up. It's been a staff pick favorite since it came out last fall.The novel tells the story of physicist Mitza Maric, the first wife of Albert Einstein. "It's an astonishing account," Smits said. "It's about the possibility of her contributing work on the accounts of relativity. It's the story of an unsung heroine, about fame and love and pain, and what it means to live with purpose and place and timing.""It also gives us an insight into what their marriage was about," she said. Einstein was not always the most supportive or agreeable partner. "But she loved him dearly and supported him completely, with everything he was doing."Smits said the book is a remarkable reminder of how women scientists had to fight for recognition. "[Maric] had a sense of what it meant to live in that time and not be appreciated for her work solely based on the fact that she was a woman."The Other EinsteinThe Other Einstein

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with David Shuman, a bookseller at Book People in Richmond, Va.Since today would have been Douglas Adams's 65th birthday, there was really only one book that Shuman felt he could recommend: Adams's classic, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."First published more than 30 years ago, the comedic space romp is a fan favorite. Shuman himself rereads it every few years, along with Adams's other four books in the series.For anyone who hasn't experienced the mix of off-the-wall humor and deep philosophical musings that "Hitchhiker's Guide" is known for, Shuman says: Dive in. "It's a humorous sci-fi book about philosophy and 'why are we here' and 'why do we die'," Shuman said. "Douglas Adams managed, in a humorous way, to tell universal truths." "I got a lot of my philosophical and political start reading Douglas Adams. Before I discovered 'real philosophers' as a teenager, I read 'Hitchhiker's.'"The book opens moments before Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a galactic freeway. Arthur Dent, the hapless main character at the center of the book, is rescued at the last minute by his best friend, who turns out to be an alien at work on "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a travel guide for navigating outer space. "Shenanigans ensue," Shuman said.For anyone who has been waiting to pick it up, Shuman said "if you need a humorous way of discovering why we're here, this is the answer to all of your questions."Then he clarified: "I didn't necessarily say they'd be the right answers."Adams would approve. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Michael Herrmann, the owner of Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, N.H.Herrmann finished reading Dan Chaon's novel, "Ill Will," six weeks ago, but he hasn't stopped thinking about it."I couldn't even pick up another book for two or three weeks, just because I was still working out what had happened in this book in my head," he said. "It was that impactful as a psychological novel for me."The book follows Dustin Tillman, a psychologist in the Ohio suburbs whose parents were brutally murdered when he was only 13.When the story opens, Herrmann said, it's chaos. There's talk of a serial killer on the loose, preying on male college students. Then Tillman finds out that his half-brother, who had been convicted of killing their parents, has just been released from prison after several decades due to DNA evidence. The story unfolds from there."It's a literary novel and it's a horror novel at the same time," Herrmann said. "It's very ambitious. It has a few narratives that stretch across three decades. ... There's half a dozen main characters. There's two unsolved killing sprees. He writes in first, second and third person, he writes in past and present tense. ... You don't even notice it really, because the narrative just carries you along."The book toys with identity, memory and the binding power of family."After I finished this book, I turned to my wife and said: 'I'm a good parent, right?'" Herrmann remembered. "This book really just makes me question everything."Ill WillIll Will

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Tom Lowenburg, one of the owners of Octavia Books in New Orleans.Lowenburg recommends Michael Finkel's "The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit." It tells the history of Christopher Knight, a man who lived alone in the Maine woods without human contact for 27 years.Knight first entered the woods in 1986 when he was only 20, driving down dirt roads until the roads disappeared entirely. He set up a rough camp and lived off the grid. He didn't even light a fire in Maine's brutally cold winters, Lowenburg said.When there was something he needed, he would break into one of the hundreds of vacation cabins in the area. His rumored presence became a legend in the local community."But at the end of 27 years, someone has laid a trap for him and he gets caught," Lowenburg said. Knight was suspected of over 1,000 burglaries, and he was jailed after he was found in 2013.Finkel wrote letters to Knight while he waited in the Kennebec County jail, suffering through the abrupt switch from forest freedom to imprisonment. He later visited him in jail, as well. Drawing on those interviews, Finkel researched Knight's past to understand why he slipped away into the woods without a goodbye to anyone. Finkel's writing about Knight began as an article for GQ, and is now a full-length book.The book, Lowenburg said, "makes you think about what it's like to be really alone."Stranger in the WoodsStranger in the Woods

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Anne Marie Keohane, the owner of Symposium Books in Providence, R.I.The reading tastes of Symposium Books customers seemed to change overnight, Keohane said, after the inauguration of President Donald Trump.Books that have been staples on high school syllabi are suddenly flying out the door. "People have started off the year on a more academic setting than we've seen before," she said.They're buying up classic dystopic novels like "1984," "Animal Farm" and "A Brave New World." Keohane said that, in fourteen years of owning the store, she can't remember buying a new copy of "A Brave New World" from the publisher, because she always had a reliable stack of used copies. Not now.Customers are also snapping up "The Communist Manifesto" and Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here." When it comes to newer titles, she's having a hard time keeping "The New Jim Crow," by Michelle Alexander, and "Hillbilly Elegy," by J.D. Vance, in stock. "The New Jim Crow" looks at the effect of mass incarceration on African-Americans. "Hillbilly Elegy" is a memoir about growing up in Appalachia. "'The New Jim Crow,' we're selling them daily," Keohane said. "We sold a lot when it first came out. It slowed down like all books do, but here it's back in again." "People are reading all of these texts now, both to get an understanding of what they feel 'went wrong' with the election. But then others, who agree with how the elections turned out, are reading it just to see what everyone else is talking about," Keohan said. "We're selling out constantly of them."

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Sarah Bagby, the owner of Watermark Books in Wichita, Kan..Bagby recommends Sheila Kohler's memoir, "Once We Were Sisters." Kohler is the author of more than ten novels, but in this book, she explores her own past — and what shaped her as a writer.When she was 39, Kohler's sister Maxine died in a car accident in their native South Africa. After hearing the devastating news, Kohler flew home, where she began to sort through the memories and the loss. The sisters were only two years apart, and they had weathered the storm of their childhood together."She talks about how this loss — and how other losses in her life — made her a novelist," Bagby said. "On the surface, Kohler is examining the heartbreaking loss ... But deeper down, she is examining what it's like to have a sister, how your sister influences you, how those early relationships are so close and bound by such a tie to family."Kohler, Bagby said, also explores the question of whether "we're culpable if we don't point out something that might be dangerous to someone we love."Once We Were SistersOnce We Were Sisters

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Kendra Adkins of Four Seasons Books in Shepherdstown, W.V.Adkins recently picked up "Life Among the Savages," Shirley Jackson's autobiographical story collection about the chaos of raising her four children.For Jackson, who is best known for unsettling works like "The Haunting of Hill House," it shows a different side — her domestic life. "I loved it. Dearly," Adkins said, "I had no idea she was so witty and dry. Because of the book, I'm now going on and reading her other works." More: New biography chronicles Shirley Jackson's "Rather Haunted Life" High school is where most people encounter Jackson, if they read her at all. Her short story, "The Lottery," is on many a syllabus. But her novels are not as well-known, and so Adkins recommends picking up "We Have Always Lived in the Castle." It's modeled after the town where Jackson lived with her family in Vermont."It was, like a lot of little towns, not so welcoming to outsiders. In the '40s, it had a very particular anti-intellectualism bent and some anti-Semitism going on," Adkins said. "So she writes a lot about modern-day evil — how it's all around us and how do we move through that? How do we continue to live with it?"The book is narrated by 18-year-old Merricat, one of only three surviving members of the Blackwood family. She and her sister and uncle have locked themselves away in their house, after the rest of their family was murdered by arsenic poisoning. The people in the town suspect her sister was responsible for the deaths.We Have Always Lived in the CastleWe Have Always Lived in the CastleIn true bookseller fashion, Adkins has a second recommendation — and a stark departure from "We Have Always Lived in the Castle." She recommends "Pond" by Claire-Louise Bennett.The book, she said, is like "you're having coffee with a friend and you're jumping from topic to topic to topic." For anyone who enjoys non-linear, meditative stories, "Pond" will be a pleasure.PondPond

Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Jenny Lyons at the Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, Vt.Vermont Book Shop has a very famous former customer: Robert Frost. The poet loved to stop by the store when he was staying at his cabin in nearby Ripton, Vt.But Jenny Lyons, who is the marketing manager at the shop, is channeling fiction, rather than poetry, for her current recommendation. She has been talking up "Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk" by Kathleen Rooney to customers. The novel is based on the real life of Margaret Fishbach, who wrote ads in 1930s New York City, at a time when few women were in the industry. Rooney has reinvented Fishbach as Lillian Boxfish in the book.The novel opens in 1984, when Boxfish, now her in 80s, decides to take a walk — her walk is the structure of the book."She's 85 years old now, and she's still very sharp and very smart, and she still lives in the city. She takes a walk all around the city on New Year's Eve and reminisces about her life," Lyons said. "It only took a chapter before you're like: I really like Lillian. It would be fun to walk around the city with her and hear what she has to say."For Lyons, the book was a pleasant escape."To me, books are still an escape, a way to get away from everyday life and immerse yourself in someone else's life, in someone else's experience," Lyons said. "A lot of contemporary fiction can be rough, challenging, important to read — and this has its importance as well — but it was also just pleasant and enjoyable, and I think that's what resonated with me right now."Lyons also had two other recommendations for eager readers. Katherine Arden's "The Bear and the Nightingale" is the first in a trilogy."Its genre, technically, is fantasy, but it's a magical tale that's steeped in Russian folklore and set in medieval Russia," Lyons said. She considers it more of a crossover novel than a traditional fantasy book — it bears similarities to Tea Obreht's "The Tiger's Wife." Her third recommendation is for "The Signal Flame" by Andrew Krivak, whose previous novel, "The Sojourn," was a finalist for the National Book Award. His new novel, Lyons said, is "quiet and powerful and kind of reminds me of Kent Haruf."It follows a family of Hungarian descent in Pennsylvania. Their son is missing in action in Vietnam. The book traces their relationships with their community, with the land and with each other.Lillian BoxfishLillian Boxfish