Author: Erica Ezeifedi

It’s prime time for soup, especially with these book recs. This one is vegan, and Aysha pairs it with a wild, good-looking grilled cheese.

You’ll need: butternut squash, carrots, shallots, rosemary, coconut milk, and a bevy of spices. For a full list of ingredients and instructions, here’s the Instagram video.

In 1908, in Vermont, Sara Harrison Shea’s dead body was found in the field behind her house not long after the death of her daughter. Now, about 100 years later, Alice has moved off the grid to Sara’s house to live with her two daughters, Ruthie and her younger sister. But this comes with a cost. One day, Ruthie wakes to a motherless house, with Alice nowhere to be found. As she searches for her mother, she finds a copy of Sara Harrison Shea’s diary under Alice’s floorboards. The more she learns about Sara, the more she realizes she’s not the only one looking for someone.

There are a couple tales from American settler history that have always intrigued but also kind of haunted me — a few of them being the lost colony of Roanoke, what the Jamestown settlers did during “the starving time” (Google that if you dare), and what happened with the Donner Party. Here, Katsu gives life to the latter — an ill-fated journey made from Illinois to California in 1846. As misfortunes mount, many look at Tamsen Donner with blame. While they explain things away by labeling her a witch, they also can’t shake the feeling that there is something stalking them. As they try to endure the harsh conditions of the journey — from sand-boiling heat to immense cold — a growing evil begins to grow and fester. Around and within them.

As I understand it, the cause of the apocalypse that happens in Moon of the Crusted Snow isn’t explained, only felt one day, when a small northern Anishinaabe community suddenly loses cell service. Electricity is the next to go, which spells grave trouble as a harsh winter approaches. As the town tries to ration out its supplies and hold on, a stranger arrives, having escaped from the south, throwing what little order was left into chaos. As more die and become hopeless, tensions harden, but one person emerges as a leader. Young father Evan Whitesky leads a group of young friends back to the old Anishinaabe ways that looked to the land. This may be the solution to dissolving the chaos, but they aren’t out of the storm yet.

There’s a sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow that just came out titled Moon of the Turning Leaves, for once you’ve read this one.

This book has beaucoup reviews on Goodreads, which can be good if your book club likes to read books that a lot of other people have read to be part of the conversation. It follows a marriage hanging on by a string. Adam and Amelia are Mr. and Mrs. Wright (I know), a British couple who have decided to go on a trip to Scotland they’ve won, thinking it might fix their marriage. But it’s kind of the worst thing ever. The place they arrive at is a church that’s still mostly in its original form, freezing cold, and has a caretaker who…spies on them a bit. As a snowstorm rages on, their dog goes missing, and, through a narrative that shifts between Amelia and Adam, we find out about their usual traditional anniversary gifts to each other — paper, cotton, pottery, tin — and how Amelia writes a letter to him each year that she doesn’t let him read. Until this year. The year that one of them is lying and 10 years of secrets will finally come to a head.

Side note: but I didn’t understand what was meant by “traditional anniversary gifts,” and looked it up. Apparently, it’s been around since the Victorian era??

Y’all. I stumbled upon some “chocolate hazelnut” (Nutella, basically) beignets at Whole Foods, and they had me trembling for a whole week. The cheat code was spraying them with a little cooking spray and putting them in the air fryer for five minutes. Oowee.

So here I am trying to find another, more cost-effective way to get my Nutella-filled beignets. Thank you for accompanying me on this journey. You’ll need:

Donut stuff: yeast, sugar, flour, egg, salt, half-and-half, coconut oil

Nutella (obvs)

Powdered sugar and cinnamon (if you want)

Full list and instructions on The Frayed Apron.

When theater teacher and hopeful playwright Meghna Raman’s writing partner and secret crush Seth becomes engaged, he asks her to be his best man. And she agrees! In an effort to move on (while still planning some of Seth’s wedding activities), she agrees to be set up by her parents and meets the grumpy engineer Karthik Murthy. He agrees to stage a fake engagement with Meghna to keep both their parents at bay but doesn’t bargain for the vibrancy that Meghna brings into his life.

Fate and love collide in this rom-com based on the Chinese legend that says that everyone is tied to their true love by a red string. Artist Rooney Gao believes this legend so strongly that she’s even incorporated red string into her artwork. But once she starts experiencing artist’s block, she starts questioning everything. A perfect date with a new guy in her life, Jack Liu, reinvigorates her, and she thinks she’s found her one true love. Thing is, Jack isn’t a believer, and she’s not even sure they’ll see each other after their magical date.

In 4 BCE, a courtier is made to seduce a young emperor, which sets off a love story that echoes through centuries. Years later, in 1740, an innkeeper helps a mysterious visitor, and finally, in modern-day L.A., a college student is coaxed out of the closet by an enigmatic artist. Across these lives is a love that is reborn, relived, and timeless.

Emily Henry’s joints are always popular, and I understand why. She takes common romance tropes and puts her own little spin on them. On top of that, her characters’ often undergo some meaningful growth. With Funny Story, we’ve been gifted an opposites-attract, fake-dating story that starts off a bit messy. Daphne’s fiancé Peter leaves her for Petra, and Petra leaves her fiancé Miles for Peter. Then, these two Messy Melindas invite both their exes to their wedding. So, naturally, Daphne and Miles decide to fake date and attend the wedding. But practical children’s librarian Daphne may find more than she bargained for in the chaotic Miles.

I don’t know what time of day you hold your book club meeting, but if you ever want to have them during prime brunch hours (or in the evening; I’m a breakfast-as-dinner girl myself), these fluffy soufflé pancakes would be perfect.

You’ll need: eggs, sugar, cake flour, baking powder, salt, milk, vanilla extract, and butter. You’ll mix all ingredients with a hand mixer at different intervals, which the full recipe and instruction list on Kristen’s website tells you about.

For some video guidance, check out her clip on Instagram. Top with cream or Nutella!

RuPaul had already made a name for himself as a premier drag queen and entertainer before the first episode of Drag Race. But since the show started, he’s become even more iconic, even ushering in a new era of Drag. Here, he offers a more intimate side of himself, detailing his life growing up as a queer Black kid in California, his time as a punk in Atlanta and New York, and how he found self-acceptance.

McCullers is one of my favorite Southern writers, and just writers ever. I remember being amazed at how well she could write from the perspective of those who had experiences so outside of her own at such a young age (23, if we’re thinking of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter). This is the first biography of the genius author in the last couple of decades, and it details her life — from the time she thought she’d be a concert pianist to her inherent queerness — referencing materials unavailable until the last decade or so.

Though this is a collection of essays rather than a straight memoir (the author does have a memoir as well: Red Paint), it still gets into LaPointe’s experiences as a queer Indigenous woman. With a very punk spirit (and the help of her family archives and her great-grandmother’s anthropological work), LaPointe picks apart narratives surrounding Indigenous people, analyzes cultural displacement, and critiques environmental destruction.

Carrie Sun has always worked hard. She excelled in school, graduated early from MIT, and entered the corporate world, all in the name of the American Dream her parents wished for her when they immigrated to the U.S. from China. But once she hits 29, she starts feeling like something’s missing. So, she drops out of a master’s program and quits her job. When she gets the opportunity to work for one of the most respected hedge funds in the world, she jumps at it. Soon, luxury and privilege like she’s never known are opened up to her, but it also starts to swallow her whole.

Listen, I believe in year-round pumpkin activities, and these look amazing.

For the batter, you’ll need the usual baking supplies, in addition to dark brown sugar, maple syrup, vanilla bean paste, pumpkin purée, and pumpkin pie spice. For the frosting, you’ll need cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, milk, and the spices from the batter. After baking at 350 for about 20 minutes, you can let them cool and frost those bad boys.

For a full list of ingredients and instructions, you can look at this Instagram video.

There is a lot going on here. In the best way. In a future Botswana, technology and folklore collide. Nelah’s consciousness currently resides in a body that is microchipped and controlled by her husband. Still, Nelah is able to rebel and have an affair, which leads to an accidental death that she tries to cover up. A murder cover-up goes about as well as you’d expect, and soon, Nelah is being haunted by the ghost of her victim — one that wants vengeance paid in blood.

Food is so heavily tied to language and culture, and I always love reading about how the three are intertwined in Black American history because so much of our history isn’t widely taught. I think any other lover of history and food will appreciate how Wilkinson does that here, as she writes out the history and fortitude of Black Appalachians through recipes passed down from the women in her family. Part memoir, part cookbook, I think this is a perfect book club read.

Here’s another book that has a lot going on. I also suspect it’ll be one of the major releases of the year. It follows Ricki, the outsider of her socialite family, who decides to move from Atlanta to Harlem to open a flower shop. It’s tough going for a while, but then she meets the enigmatic Ezra, and magic seems to unfurl around them. There’s a secondary timeline that takes place during the Harlem Renaissance that gives some context to Ezra and the huge secret he’s harboring.

In this genre-blending memoir, McCalden explores what grieving the loss of her parents to AIDS was like during the ’90s. Turns out, there are some parallels between the development of the internet and the development of AIDS, and here, McCalden scours through scientific papers, shows, and various internet histories to detail the double meaning of “going viral.” This is both a meditation on grief and a look at how we connect to each other in this new age.

Reading Bardugo at the top of the year is becoming somewhat of a tradition for me. Last year, Ninth House and Hellbent were a couple of the first books I read in January, and they had me gasping. As a longtime lover of fantasy, I really appreciate Bardugo’s brand of adult fantasy — there’s something about it that feels very real and relatable, even as there are literal demons coming out of the depths of hell.

Here, Bardugo takes that relatability to the Golden Age of Spain. In the 16th century, Luzia is a lowly kitchen servant who can perform light magic. When her mistress realizes her talent, she tries to exploit her to the benefit of bored nobility. But this leads to Luzia gaining the attention of Antonio Pérez, who is trying to get back in good with the king after a disgrace. As Luzia gets deeper into the world of miracle workers, seers, and alchemists, she becomes more known and therefore, more in danger if the fact of her Jewish heritage were to get out. But there is a familiar, Guillén Santangel, who could help secure her future…even if their secrets may be worse than hers.