Ask a Bookseller

Are you looking for a novel to generate a good discussion for your book club? Pamela Klinger-Horn of Valley Bookseller in Stillwater recommends “Coyoteland” by Vanessa Hua. With the novel’s multiple viewpoints and complex issues, “Coyoteland” will appeal to fans of Celeste Ng’s “Little Fires Everywhere.”

After years of scraping, Jin Chang has finally managed to move his family into a prestigious suburb east of Berkeley, Calif.

Secretly, Jin has high hopes of making a big real estate deal that will cement his family’s future. Next door, Blaire Belle, who is white, makes a show of welcoming her new Chinese American neighbors. That is, until Jin’s hopes threaten her own plans to develop a high-end neighborhood.

“This taught me a new [phrase] called ‘performative progressivism,’” laughs Klinger-Horn.

“This is a very insightful look at suburbia, where privilege, racism, and class consciousness are set to a low boil and will be soon threatening to boil over because all these people also have teenagers, and you know how teenagers like to push the envelope. They are not happy with the hypocrisy that they see in the town, and they plan to expose this. And the fallout will intensify everything and have a cataclysmic end that will change the course of everyone's life.”

The name “Coyoteland” references the fact that humans are not the only ones who view the land as their own. The suburb is in coyote territory.

And while the human residents view the coyote who enters the scene as a threatening, dangerous predator, Klinger-Horn says, “he is the least of their worries when they have neighbors like this.”

If you’re in a book club, you know that not everyone is going to like every book every time. So, it was a delight for Gina Grinde of Four Pines Bookstore in Bemidji when everyone liked Bailey Seybolt’s mystery/thriller “Coram House.”

"They said, ‘This was a page-turner; I forgot to go to bed on time; I didn't do any chores,’ stuff like that. There's over a dozen of us, and we all agreed upon it. It’s my best-selling book so far this year."

Here's the story: Alex Kelley, a true crime writer recovering from a flopped book, gets an exciting offer from an attorney to tell the story of their recent case. It’s an old one: 50 years ago, a boy disappeared from a Catholic orphanage in Vermont. Alex moves to the small town and starts sifting through the case file, but she quickly runs into more questions than answers.

Why did the investigation go this direction? Why didn’t they speak to that person? And could the body of the woman who has just been found in a lake be related?

Alex sets out on her own investigation, interviewing past residents of the now-closed orphanage. The secrets she unearths in the small town — and the danger that arises — keeps readers turning pages.

Like many readers of mysteries and thrillers, Jackie Fuchs of The Book Keepers in Hutchinson loves to try to figure out whodunnit and why, and she appreciates a book that keep her guessing. That was the case with Taylor Adams' thriller "Her Last Breath."

“Every time I thought I figured out, it took us the other way,” Fuchs said.

This is not a book for the claustrophobic, unless, like Fuchs, you believe in exposure therapy through reading.






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The book centers on Allie and Tess, who have been best friends since high school. Allie is the adventurous traveler of the two, and she convinces Tess to join her in exploring a cave. At the cave entrance, they encounter a creepy fellow spelunker.

Allie’s response to this stranger sets him off, and soon Tess is trapped in a cave with a murderer. The novel jumps between Tess’s harrowing experience in the cave and her debrief with a detective afterwards.

“So you get moments of reprieve out of the cave with those moments with the detective, but also you’re getting more questions because what Tess is saying and what the detective is asking— and the things the detective is not saying — [all] lead to more questions. You want to get back in that cave...even though you don't want to get back in that cave,” she said.

Do you love the science-focused, curiosity-driven storytelling on Radiolab? Pallas Erdrich, manager of Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, recommends reading Radiolab co-host Lulu Miller's memoir “Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life.”

Its exploration of how and why animals are classified the way they are will make you more curious about the world, Erdrich says.

“It’s more than just a science book. It is a book about love. It is a book about discovering yourself. It is a book about not holding on to the rules that were made up around us and trying to figure out where we fit in the world.” she said.

“And it’s funny. It’s bright. It’s short. There are illustrations that are very beautiful that kind of give you a peek into her mind. It’s just, for me, a nearly perfect book. I have no notes for Miss Miller!”






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Miller also voices the audiobook. Radiolab airs Saturdays at 2 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. on MPR News.

Birchbark Books celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

Laura Haave of Content Bookstore in Northfield said one of her top recommendations so far this year is a YA graphic novel called “Wake Now in the Fire“ written by Jarrett Dapier and illustrated by AJ Dungo.

The title is a reference to a Rage Against the Machine song, “Sleep Now in the Fire,” which is about protesting oppression; it’s a fitting title for story about Chicago high school students standing up — successfully — to book banning.






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The graphic novel is based on a true story, based on interviews with the students and teachers who were involved. Dapier is a librarian who was working in a Chicago-area library in 2013 when students uncovered that Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel “Persepolis” had been systematically pulled from their schools. “Persepolis” is Satrapi’s story of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.

In “Wake Now in the Fire,” Satrapi appears as a character in the book in support of the students. Haave says Dungo’s bold black and white illustrations are a visual nod to Satrapi’s style, and Dapier’s story speaks about her book’s legacy:

“And there’s a lot of discussion in the book about how important ‘Persepolis’ is as a novel, and just the continuation of graphic novels about young people coming of age, becoming aware of injustices and fighting back against them.”

Satrapi passed away in June at the age of 56.

“Wake Now in the Fire” was one of Haave’s picks for Content’s Paperback Summer series, in which staff select 10 fiction books, 10 nonfiction, 10 young adult and 10 middle grade novels that have come out in paperback in the past year.

She recommends this YA book for teens and adults alike.