Ask a Bookseller

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

If you’ve read Allan Levi’s bestselling novel “Theo of Golden” — or you’re waiting for a copy to come available at the library — and you’re looking for the next book that will make you feel hopeful about the world, Diane Rineer of Rediscovered Bookshop in Boise, Idaho, suggests the novel, “The Left and the Lucky,” by Willy Vlautin.

At the book’s heart is a friendship: a father/son-style relationship that forms between Eddie, who is a workaholic painter, and 8-year-old Russell, who lives next door.

Eddie has lost somebody in his life, and he wants to make up for it any way he can. Russell is being badly bullied, both at school and by his teenage brother at home. He begins to linger around Eddie, who gives the boy small jobs to do and a listening ear.

“Eddie doesn’t have much, but he does have a big heart,” says Rineer, “and by the end of the book, you just want to hug him.”

“He’s helped so many people along the way in such big ways with what little he has. It’s just a feel-good story, and I feel like we need more Eddies in the world.”

Rineer is a big fan of Vlautin’s novels, in general, and she says this most recent one has her thinking about the importance of helping people in whatever way you can.

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Part of the joy of reading historical fiction is discovering moments or voices in our past that resonate today.

For Sophia Terry of Bank Street Books in Mystic, Conn., the novel that had her turning pages — and then diving into internet research to learn more — was "The Lilac People" by Milo Todd. It comes out in paperback this week.

The novel weaves between two starkly different timelines in the life of Bertie, a trans man living in Germany. In the early 1930s, Bertie works with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute for Sexual Science, where his work uplifts a thriving queer community in Berlin.

Ten years later, Bertie and his girlfriend are in hiding, living on a farm under assumed names. A young trans man winds up on their property, still dressed in the prison clothes from the camp in which he escaped, and the couple takes him in.

The fall of the Nazis and the arrival of the Allies, though, does not signal the end of danger for Bertie and other queer people.

Terry recommends this novel for lovers of Anthony Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See” and others who enjoy WWII or queer history.

“It was such a powerful debut novel. It’s a chapter of history and voice that you so rarely get to hear from, but it's as much about hope and resilience as [about] these darker chapters of history.”

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day, a national event celebrating reading and the booksellers at small businesses who put those books into readers’ hands.

Across Minnesota, more than 70 independent bookstores are participating. Many are offering readings, special offers and opportunities to win prizes.

In the greater Twin Cities metro, book lovers can pick up a free independent bookstore passport and get it stamped at any of the 38 participating businesses. Stamped pages serve as coupons for future visits, with bonus coupons and prize drawings for those with 10 or more stamps.

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Seeing a new work on the shelf written by an author you love can feel like winning the lottery. Shirley Fergenson of The Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore, Md., remembers being absolutely captivated by Daniyal Mueenuddin’s 2009 short story collection “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

This year — 17 years later — he’s published a new work of fiction, entitled “This Is Where the Serpent Lives.”

Fergenson says when she saw it, she “practically jumped up and down. I took it home, I read it, and I fell in love with it. It's the same voice. I loved it then, and I love it still.”

“This Is Where the Serpent Lives” is a sprawling work set in Pakistan over several decades, starting in the 1950s. It’s being marketed as a novel, but Fergenson says it’s actually three short stories and a novella with interlinking characters.

“It sort of feels like ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ with a little bit of ‘The Godfather’ thrown in,” she says.

“There are rich landowners, there are servants, forbidden Love, ambition, corruption. There is moral compromise and fluid loyalty. It is a class-and-cast panorama of amazingly rich characters. Each one could have a whole story written about them. They're so full of life.”

“The main reason to read this book is the exquisite writing, but if you need a story that is one story arc that takes you from the beginning to the end, this is not your story.

There are linkages, but they're literary, and they are so beautifully told that even in the bleakest, darkest setting, every detail feels like a photograph through an artist's filter. And the final novella is so powerful that it feels like its own full novel.”

Listen to an NPR interview with the author: Daniyal Mueenuddin discusses his debut novel, 'This Is Where the Serpent Lives' : NPR

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Lauren Groff’s novels and short stories have been finalists three times for the National Book Award, and now she’s out with a new collection of short stories entitled “Brawler.”

Maire Wilson of Huxley & Hiro Booksellers in Wilmington, Del., says this work is just as strong as her others.

Unlike Groff's earlier short story collection, “Florida,” the nine stories in “Brawler” vary their locations as well as time periods and life circumstances.

In “What’s the time, Mr. Wolf?,” the longest piece in the book, a young man struggling with alcoholism retreats to his family’s estate to grapple with the ways his life has fallen short of his expectations. “The Wind” is the story of fleeing domestic abuse, passed from mother to daughter.

In each story, Wilson says, “everything is so elegantly simple that it's almost like maintaining a conversation with the person across from you, or just kind of listening into this life story. I feel like I'm in the room.”

Wilson loves Groff’s “attention to the liveliness of the surroundings” in each story, adding that she comes out of Groff’s novels and short stories "just kind of feeling full” and satisfied.