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.

Angel Horne of Two Friends Bookstore in Bentonville, Arkansas, recommends the novel “To the Moon and Back” by Eliana Ramage.

It’s a debut novel about a young woman’s quest to become the first Cherokee astronaut.

From a young age, Steph Harper is driven to get to space. She throws herself into education and training, determined to get out of Oklahoma.

The novel focuses on Steph and the important women in her life — her mother, her artist/influencer sister, her college girlfriend — as their relationships stretch and change through decades and across distances.

Horne appreciated the representation in this book, with a queer Cherokee woman in a STEM field at the center, and she also resonated with the setting Like the protagonist, Steph was born in the early 80s, and she appreciated watching her live through the introduction of cell phones and social media.

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.

Shannon Guinn-Collins of Bookworks in Albuquerque, New Mexico says she's still thinking about the novel "Lightbreakers" by Aja Gabel. 

Guinn-Collins recommends this novel for fans of literary time travel, as well as for readers of Jennifer Egan and Emily St. John Mandel.  

“Lightbreakers” centers on a married couple: Noah, who is a quantum physicist, and Maya, who is an artist. Shadowing Noah’s life is the loss of his young daughter with his first wife.

So, when Noah is approached by an experimental group that is exploring a form of time travel using memory, he takes the opportunity. As he steps further and further back into his own memories, Maya must grapple with the widening gulf with her husband in the present — and what that means for their future.  

Guinn-Collins offers this review: 

"The book really centers on themes of loss and longing, love and regret — all of these major human themes. It deals with really fraught, difficult topics, but it does so in a way that's really graceful. 

“Aja has a really light touch, and her writing is just gorgeous. The language she uses is really beautiful. It carries you forward in a really natural way. But I still found myself pausing and rereading passages just to enjoy what she was doing. Definitely one of my favorites from last year!”

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.

Becky Schlosser of Cherry Street Books in Alexandria recommends the novel "The Road to Tender Hearts" by Annie Hartnett. Schlosser calls it “darkly funny and heartwarming” — a “perfect” story about imperfect people.

This story involves a road trip like no other. 63-year-old PJ Halliday — survivor of three heart attacks, million-dollar lottery winner who’s nearly spent through his money — reads in the obituaries that the husband of his high school flame has passed away.

She was the one that got away, in his mind, and now that she’s single. PJ decides to road-trip from Massachusetts to her retirement community in Arizona to win her back.

Along for the ride are two tween orphans, Luna and Ollie, for whom PJ has recently become guardian; his disgruntled adult daughter; and a seemingly clairvoyant orange cat. Also, he technically doesn’t have a license, given some past DUIs, and he’s had to borrow his ex-wife's car. What could go wrong?

Schlosser says this novel, with its sharp wit, is quirky and lovable, but it deals with some pretty heavy, tender topics.”

She recommends this story of found family and second chances to readers who like Fredrik Backman’s novels.

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.

Alena Bruzas of Francie & Finch Bookshop in Lincoln, Neb., has a recommendation sure to appeal to weather heads and fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series alike.

It’s called “Wilder Weather: What Laura Ingalls Wilder Teaches Us About the Weather, Climate, and Protecting What We Cherish.” Author Barbara Boustead is a meteorologist, climatologist and Wilder scholar. She brings her passions together for this nonfiction work, published by South Dakota Historical Society Press.

Readers who love Wilder’s tales of growing up in the Big Woods — and on the shores of Plum Creek, etc. — know how dramatically the weather affected her daily life. Droughts, tornadoes, locust plagues and bitterly cold winters determined whether her family would have enough to eat throughout the year. Those stories offer exciting drama, but Boustead was able to verify that most of Wilder’s weather accounting was true.

“She goes into great detail about her methodology, about the science behind gathering this data, how people have gathered data about weather since the 1800s.”

Bookseller Bruzas, who says she is generally more drawn to historical fiction than meteorology, still found the book fascinating.

“The way that she describes the Ingalls family dealing with this weather — some of it was unprecedented. It makes me realize that now we're dealing with a lot of unprecedented weather events, and it feels relevant, almost eerily relevant. She really brings it to the present."

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.

It’s that time of year when readers start to catalogue their favorite books of 2025, and for bookseller Kelly Evert, that book is “Mona’s Eyes” by Thomas Schlesser.

Evert works at Village Books and Paper Dreams, with locations in Bellingham and Lynden, Washington.

When a young girl named Mona, living in Paris, learns she’s going to go blind, her grandfather determines to show her as much visual art as he can while she can still see.

Once a week, over the course of a year, he takes her to the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay and other French galleries, where they focus on a piece of art each time. Evert appreciated both the art discussions and the relationship between Mona and her grandfather.

“It’s just very beautiful and loving,” says Evert, who added that the dust jacket of the hardcover book includes images of all the featured artwork.

Art lovers will immediately recognize that the famed eyes on the cover belong to Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” not the Mona Lisa, though Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece is one of the 52 works of art featured in the book.