I always look forward to sharing my monthly book recommendations with you! This month I read 8 books, 4 in print and 4 digitally on my Kindle. Several were excellent, and I know they will be big hits with many of you. So let’s get started!

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn may be the best book I have read by this author! She’s best known for books featuring remarkable women in war, espionage, and political intrigue. Her previous books along those themes were just ok for me. This book diverges considerably from her earlier work. Rather than being an espionage or wartime adventure, The Briar Club is essentially a historical mystery with elements of domestic suspense. The novel follows women living together in a boardinghouse in Washington, D.C., during the McCarthy Era, each with her own secrets. The book opens with a murder in the house and proceeds with flashbacks that tell the story of the women living there, ending with the revelation of “who done it”. The book’s themes are women’s friendships, hidden lives, resilience, secrets, and the ways women survive within restrictive societies. This author has a considerable talent for making a historical period feel immediate and personal. I really enjoyed it! 4.5 stars (Free on Kindle Unlimited).

The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian. This prolific author is an “auto-buy” for me. His themes are so diverse, often blending mystery, historical fiction, psychological drama, and social commentary. So, you never know what you might get! The plot revolves around 18-year-old Mira Winston, a golf prodigy. She is hitting golf balls at a net at the exclusive country club where she plays when a ball goes through the net, fatally striking a 17-year-old caddy. The themes of the book are guilt, privilege and class, vulnerability, family dysfunction, and the consequences of one random moment. The perspective of the book is Mira’s looking back at the events years later, which gives the book the feel of a memoir rather than a straightforward thriller. The novel eventually moves from the country-club setting into a courtroom drama, as Mira’s entire future comes under scrutiny. We go back and forth debating who was to blame: Mira, the country club, the net manufacturer? I was immersed in the story. 4 stars

The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand is a departure from her past beachy Nantucket books, which I liked. This contemporary mystery is set at an elite New England boarding school over one drama-filled school year. The story centers on the students, parents, faculty, and administrators of a prestigious academy whose carefully maintained world is shaken by a shocking death. As the investigation unfolds, long-held secrets, rivalries, affairs, and questions about privilege and power emerge. I really enjoyed the descriptions of the school and its students, but the pacing felt a bit off. It dragged in the first half, then felt like things wrapped up awfully fast at the end. I know this book is part of a two-part series, but the loose ends left at the finish were extremely frustrating, which brought my rating down. The second book is out now, so you can find out what happened. 3 stars (Free on Kindle Unlimited).

Under Story by Chloe Benjamin was a big disappointment to me. Unpopular opinion coming. The book follows Laurel Salter, a gifted biologist who retreats to an isolated research station in Antarctica after her marriage collapses. There she encounters a mysterious glowing phenomenon called the Arc, which attracts a team of physicists—including her estranged husband, Eli. Eli believes the Arc may be a gateway to a parallel universe where time runs backward. Laurel becomes convinced that crossing into this alternate world could give them a chance to undo the tragedy that destroyed their family. Okaaay. The book was way too long at 512 pages, and the sciency bits were impossible to understand or believe. I gave up at the 75% mark, feeling as though I didn’t care what happened to these people.

Receipts from the Bookshop by Katie Clapham was absolutely delightful. The author owns an independent bookshop in the English seaside town of Lytham St Annes. She decided to chronicle a year in the shop’s life, including all the joys and frustrations. She is quick to point out that owning a bookshop does not mean you get to sit around reading all day long! You will love hearing about her cozy shop, the small-town characters, and the reminder that bookshops will only continue to exist if we patronize them. I loved it. 4.5 stars

The Midnight Guests by Alex Hay is a historical mystery set primarily during the glamorous opening night of London’s luxurious Hotel Artemis in the 1920s. Diana Gold, the hotel’s ambitious owner, built the establishment from nothing, but she is secretly indebted to two dangerous criminals expected to arrive at midnight. When a body is discovered during the lavish celebration, the hotel’s glittering façade begins to crack. There is a dual timeline set in 2026, where historian Joe Carberry investigates the long-buried mystery surrounding the hotel and the disappearance of Diana Gold. As the two timelines converge, secrets involving wealth, organized crime, betrayal, and murder gradually come to light. I enjoyed the descriptions of the hotel and did not see the halfway plot twist coming. The characters were unlikeable, though, and the ending confused me.
3 stars

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy is a deeply personal memoir about the author’s childhood battle with cancer and the devastating physical and emotional consequences that followed. At age nine, Grealy was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, and surgery and radiation treatment left her with a severely disfigured jaw. Grealy recounts growing up feeling painfully different from other children and enduring bullying, loneliness, shame, and an intense preoccupation with her appearance. Rather than simply being a story about illness, the memoir explores identity, beauty, self-worth, friendship, and the complicated relationship between the face we present to the world and the person we believe ourselves to be. It is ultimately a poignant examination of how deeply physical appearance can shape a person’s sense of belonging and identity. The author was a poet and close friend of Ann Patchett, who wrote a book about their friendship, “Truth and Beauty”. I found Grealy’s book difficult to read because of the subject matter. It is problematic for me to rate a memoir, as it is the singular account of a person’s life and experience. I will say the book was a very well-written document of Lucy Grealy’s personal history.

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley was my absolute favorite book of the month. I preordered the book when I heard that mystery writer Lucy Foley had been approached by Agatha Christie’s estate to write a new Miss Marple novel. Yes please. The result is a locked-room mystery written in Christie’s style, set in the 1950s. Foley introduces considerably more modern, adult material than you would normally find in an Agatha Christie Miss Marple novel, though she apparently tried to keep it restrained because of the Christie estate. I thought her changes made the book even more contemporary and relatable. The Grand Alpine Hotel is an isolated, luxurious resort surrounded by the Swiss Alps, and Foley emphasizes the contrast between its glamorous interiors—grand rooms, dining spaces, fireplaces, and elegant guests—and the snowbound mountains outside. The winter landscape creates a sense of isolation that works particularly well for a closed-circle murder mystery. I found the book to be very plot-driven, page-turning, and ultimately completely satisfying. I think you will love this one! 5 stars

Do let me know in the comments if any of these sound good to you. If you have read any of them, I’d love to hear your thoughts.