A Book A Week

Adora Hazzard has life figured out. Or at least, she believes she does. A philosopher and devoted follower of Stoicism, Adora has built her entire worldview around the idea that happiness comes from wanting only what you already possess. And so she finds fulfillment in the life she’s carefully constructed, raising her teenage daughter, avoiding the complications of romance, and working as a moral tutor for the twin sons of an old-money Manhattan family.

She’s even devised a practical—if slightly eccentric—plan for aging comfortably in her Upper West Side apartment. Together with a group of like-minded women, she’s formed a sort of communal “coven,” built on the idea of sharing resources and looking after one another. After all, who really needs an entire loaf of bread to themselves?

But as Adora is about to learn, life rarely respects our carefully curated philosophies.

A chance encounter with a handsome stranger at the ballet sends her carefully ordered existence spiraling in an entirely new direction. For the first time in decades, Adora allows herself to feel something she’s long kept at arm’s length: desire. And once that door opens, there’s no closing it. Soon, she finds herself swept into black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue—all while reckoning with the traumas of her past and confronting the possibility that happiness might require wanting more after all.

It’s been a decade since Maria Semple last released a novel. While I loved her 2012 novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette, her follow-up, Today Will Be Different, left me wanting something more. So when I heard she had a new novel, Go Gentle, coming out, I decided to wait and see how readers responded before diving in myself. Thankfully, it seems the time away served Semple well. Heck, the book was even selected for Oprah's Book Club—high praise if there ever was any.

In the hands of almost any other author, Go Gentle would feel completely absurd. But Semple has a gift for grounding her madcap plots in characters who feel emotionally authentic and deeply human. At first, the novel seems poised to be a fairly straightforward, unexpected romance story. But a pivotal flashback in Part III reframes everything we think we know about Adora and the life she lived before becoming the woman we meet at the novel’s opening.

It’s a dark section of the story, and content warnings for emotional and sexual abuse are absolutely warranted, but it also provides crucial context for why Stoicism became such a central pillar of Adora’s identity. From there, the novel becomes something more powerful. It's a story about reclaiming your voice and pursuing happiness after years of denying it.

Yes, the road to get there is chaotic and often delightfully over-the-top, but that’s part of the charm. Semple asks us to grapple with whether a life spent avoiding desire is really a life fully lived at all. In the end, Go Gentle is a celebration of second chances and the courage it takes to finally choose yourself.

For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2026, 37)

At the ripe age of seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is facing what’s supposed to be her final move. After a minor car accident—one that ends with a priest confiscating her driver’s license and snipping it into pieces—her children decide it’s time for her to relocate to Vista View, a retirement community in Austin, Texas. Pepper has plenty of reasons to resist, chief among them the fact that her ex-husband (and father of her children) already lives there. Still, she chooses not to fight it. It’s easier this way.

As she settles in, Pepper begrudgingly begins to make connections. To her surprise, she finds a sense of community, and even more unexpectedly, the possibility of romance. At seventy-seven, she didn’t think she’d feel giddy about a man again, but life clearly has other plans.

And those plans are just getting started.

Pepper begins to feel unwell—exhausted, nauseated, and increasingly forgetful. At first, she blames the food, but no one else seems affected. As her symptoms worsen, her family braces for the worst: dementia, cancer, something irreversible. But after a battery of tests, the diagnosis is something no one could have predicted.

At seventy-seven years old, Pepper Mills is pregnant.

Enormous Wings takes its title from Gabriel García Márquez’s short story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, a tale in which a literal angel is treated as a spectacle rather than something sacred. It’s fitting, then, that Laurie Frankel draws a similar thread in her own work. Here, magical realism becomes a lens through which Frankel explores aging, mortality, bodily autonomy, and motherhood.

What comes to mind when you think of the word sanctuary? In a world filled with constant noise—politics, work, even the demands of family—having a place to retreat can feel more essential than ever.

This spring, I set out to create that space for myself. I went into my backyard and started digging. Weeks were spent pulling up roots (so many roots), turning over the soil, adding nutrients, planting, edging, and mulching. Slowly, a flowerbed stretching nearly 100 feet along my back fence began to take shape. And at the center of it all, I placed a simple bench, positioned just right to take in the birdbath and the blooms.

Piece by piece, I had built my own small sanctuary.

In her novel, These Silent Woods, Kimi Cunningham Grant tells the story of a war veteran who has carved out his own fragile sanctuary deep in the Appalachian Mountains. Cooper, as he’s known, lives in a remote cabin with his young daughter, Finch. Their life is simple—no electricity, no running water—but it’s one they’ve made their own.

Finch spends her days reading from the books that line the cabin walls, learning from the classics while also being taught how to survive in the wilderness. But as any child would, she has questions. What happened to her mother? Why do they live so cut off from the world? The answers exist, of course, but Cooper isn’t ready to give them. For him, it’s easier to protect the quiet life he’s built than to risk unraveling it with the truth.

Only two people know they live there. One is a reclusive mountain hermit who keeps a distant, watchful eye on Cooper and Finch. The other is Jake, Cooper’s former army buddy and the owner of the cabin, who visits once a year with the supplies they need to survive.

But this year, Jake didn’t come.

His absence sets off a chain of events that threatens the fragile life Cooper has built. As the walls of his carefully guarded sanctuary begin to close in, Cooper is forced to confront a question he’s long avoided. Can he keep hiding, or will he finally have to reckon with the past he’s been running from?

There’s a rich sense of atmosphere and place that runs through These Silent Woods. Kimi Cunningham Grant transports readers to the Appalachian Mountains, immersing us in the stark isolation of Cooper’s chosen refuge. His calm, measured demeanor contrasts beautifully with Finch’s bright curiosity, creating a dynamic that feels both tender and uncertain—you can sense he’s doing his best, even as he struggles to fully step into the role of father.

That character work is balanced by a steadily tightening sense of tension as the story unfolds. What begins as introspective and contemplative gradually gives way to something more urgent, pulling the reader deeper into the narrative. The result is a novel rich in character, steeped in atmosphere, and anchored by a story that softly grips you from start to finish. It reminds us how important it can be to carve out a place of peace, even if it can’t last forever.

For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2026, 35)