Author: Erica Ezeifedi

Rebecca Schinsky, Book Riot’s Chief of Staff, shared a ridiculous-looking recipe for braised short ribs, and though I haven’t tried it yet, I don’t see how it could miss.

You’ll need bone-in short ribs and potatoes, obvi, as well as onion, garlic, chili de arbol, cumin seeds, fennel seed, coriander seed, ground cinnamon, tomato paste, white wine vinegar, beef or chicken broth, lemons, and cilantro.

For a full list of ingredient amounts and instructions, visit Alison Roman’s page.

I do love a honeyed biscuit, and these look ridiculous. Listen, these may even replace rolls for tomorrow…

You’ll need:

all-purpose flour, unsalted butter, frozen and grated, baking powder, salt, honey, very cold buttermilk, Honey butter, butter, and honey.

For exact ingredient amounts and instructions, go to homeandbelly’s IG page.

I’m sure you’ve heard about this one in the last month. It’s definitely one of the memoirs to get this year, if you get any of them at all. Or, maybe I should say it’s the audiobook to listen to — if you haven’t heard, Britney Spears recorded most of the audiobook, with Michelle Williams stepping in to do parts that were too traumatic for Britney. And let me tell you, William’s impersonation of JT will have you gagging. If I were him, I’d leave the country.

As far as the contents of the memoir go, it covers about what you would expect: Britney Spears’ life of fame, motherhood, relationships, and more. I grew up listening to Britney and remember trying to learn the choreography of her music videos with my older sister in the early aughts. After her conservatorship, I’m glad to see her have a win.

Now I know a collection of poetry as a gift is not for everyone — even some readers — because a lot of people are still not used to reading it regularly. But even if someone has just an inkling of interest in poetry, I think this National Book Award finalist would make a great gift. Olivarez explores the many forms of love — from romantic to familial and platonic — and how aspects of society complicate it. Even as he examines race, identity, and culture, he still goes back to love, and poet David Ruano provides a Spanish translation to accompany Olivarez’s poems.

Another celebrity memoir! I don’t read many memoirs throughout the year, but I feel like they make great gifts if you’re looking for bookish things. I’ve noticed that whenever my non-reader friends ask about books, they usually are more interested in memoirs, so maybe that’s why. In any case, Sir Patrick Stewart’s story starts in Yorkshire, England, and continues to the top of Hollywood — where he starred as Captain Picard in Startrek and Professor Xavier in X-Men — and a knighthood in 2010.

Here’s a fun holiday romance that takes place when Ramadan, Hanukkah, and Christmas overlap. It follows Maryam Aziz and Anna Gibson, strangers sitting next to each other on a plane. Maryam is on her way to her sister’s wedding, and Anna to her boyfriend’s wealthy family’s place for the holidays. When the plane experiences severe turbulence, it shakes the women (ha) into confessing some of the things they’ve been holding close to them. An emergency landing leaves them snowed in in the picturesque town of Snow Falls, where the actor Anna has a crush on just so happens to be filming a romance movie. Now, if the two women could just realize what’s in front of them…

Books about books just hit different in winter, I think. Here, 25-year-old Takako finds out her boyfriend is marrying someone else and takes up her eccentric uncle’s offer to stay in a small room above the used Tokyo bookstore that’s been in their family for generations. Takako has never been much of a reader, but the books of Morisaki bookshop turn out to be excellent tools for mending broken hearts.

I love a good, cozy mystery series during the winter, and this is the third book in the food-centric cozy series Caribbean Kitchen (you don’t need to have read the first). Here, Miriam keeps getting called away — first to her parents’ in the Dominican Republic, where she investigates a possible property vandal, then to Puerto Rico to film a special for Three Kings Day. Two of her friends keep her company in Puerto Rico, but there are mysteries surrounding their boyfriends — one is a telenovela heartthrob who goes missing, and the other is an image of perfection…with a suspiciously large duffle bag of cash. Through pages of delicious food descriptions and African drumming, Miriam will sleuth her way to tying everything together.

The name of this alone sounds ridiculous. For this, you’ll need a lot of the usual cake-baking ingredients, as well as ripe bananas, coconut oil, chopped nuts, maple syrup, honey, lemon juice, and powdered sugar.

For a full list of ingredients, visit dessertribe’s Instagram page.

In these essays, Good tells the truth about the Indigenous experience in Canada. Looking at both historical and contemporary issues, she speaks on everything from unhonored treaties to cultural appropriation, to flat-out racism. Canada’s current treatment of its Indigenous population and how it values their lives are explored, as well as how to right the wrongs of the past and the present.

I don’t know who needs to read this, but this has to become a docuseries on Netflix. It tells how Officer Jeff Babauta infiltrates the world of illegal alligator poaching by — get this — becoming a Florida Man. He develops a pony-tailed, whiskey-laden alter ego and gets in good with people who deal in glow-in-the-dark alligators and other Florida-specific things I’m sure you didn’t realize you’d be reading about today. But as Officer Babauta soon learns, many of the so-called criminals he’s gone undercover to catch are really just trying to make ends meet under the crushing weight of capitalism.

Propelled by feminist movements around the world, Cristina Rivera Garza wrote a request to the attorney general concerning her sister Lilian, who was murdered 29 years ago in Mexico City. Garza’s family is certain her sister’s abusive boyfriend was the culprit, but he was never brought to justice. Here, Garza brings her sister’s last summer back to life while also confronting the culture that normalized violence against women, allowing for such a tragedy.

For the longest time, people thought of autism as only applicable to boys. Times have changed, and people’s understanding has gotten a lot better, but there is still a ways to go. In The Autists, Törnvall hopes to help people see another side of autism, specifically another side of women on the spectrum. She uses her own experiences as an autistic person to explore things like pop culture, myth, and society through the lens of autistic womanhood. In doing so, she shows all there is to gain from stepping outside of the neurotypical perspective.

Dumplings and wontons are such satisfying comfort foods, and I imagine a grandma’s recipe will be the most comforting. Maxine’s granny’s wontons look delicious and her Instagram page includes vegan modifications.

You’ll need: ground pork or tofu, shiitake mushrooms, ginger, water chestnuts, soy sauce, sesame oil, cornstarch, and wonton skins.

For a full list of ingredients and instructions, visit her Insta post.

This is the second book in a series that has an award-winning first book — Clark and Division — but I don’t think you need to have read the first to appreciate this one. It’s 1946, and the Ito family has been released from the Manzanar detention center and allowed to return to their home state, California, like many other Japanese Americans who were forced into incarceration camps. Aki Ito returns to life as a nurse’s aide and comes across an abused elderly man who turns out to be the father of her husband’s best friend, Shinji Watanabe. The case has her wondering if her husband’s friend could really be guilty of elder abuse, but then a shooting sets her on the path of answering even bigger questions.

This is another second book in a series that you don’t have to read the first one to enjoy. Here, Detective Inaya Rahman is caught between two cases that deal with deeply embedded racism and prejudice. In one case, officer Harry Cooper is following up on a report of vandals in Blackwater Falls, Colorado, when he comes across a young Black man who he said was armed. But the alleged gun was actually a spray paint can. Then, in Denver, a Latine teen is killed during a drug raid that goes south. As people protest on both sides of the cases, Rahman gets a visit from Officer John Broda, a man who assaulted her when they worked together in the past. His son Kelly is the cop who shot the teen during the drug raid, and he wants her help in exonerating him.

Here’s another example of our fascination with serial killers, but from a refreshing perspective. This time, the tragedy is told up front, and the lives of the victims and those they cared about are expanded upon rather than the inverse. In 1978, while the news of a serial killer terrorized the Pacific Northwest, the young women of a sorority at Florida State University’s Tallahassee campus are preparing for an exciting night. What they don’t know is that that same killer from the other side of the country will visit them and that Pamela Schumacher’s decision to stay home will make her the sole survivor of something terrible. Meanwhile, back in the PNW, Tina believes her girlfriend Ruth was a victim of the same person responsible for the Tallahassee Tragedy. Both Pamela and Tina are set on a course to uncover the truth that sends them hurdling towards each other.

To be cute, I thought I’d add in a book that mixes in some fantasy. This is described as “Stranger Things meets the Golden Age of Detective fiction” and follows Artie Quick, a young Bostonian woman living in 1909. During the day, she’s a regular ole salesgirl of women’s accessories, but at night, she dons men’s clothing and explores her interest in criminal investigation by taking classes at the YMCA’s Evening Institute for Younger Men. In a bid to apply her learning, she and her bestie Theodore, a well-off young man interested in the occult, investigate a number of violent abductions that lead them to those in power.

Orange cookies are something I’d never thought of, but they sound so right. The recipe also looks pretty simple! You need the usual cookie fare: baking soda, sugar, butter, flour, egg, and salt, but add orange zest, orange juice (obvi), and powdered sugar (for the icing).

For full instructions and ingredient measurements, go to the Preppy Kitchen site or follow along with the video.

This fiction debut from the award-winning Porter follows generations of Métis women and the bison that lived around them as everyone tries to figure things out. Young mother Carter is trying to find out more about her heritage, even as she struggles to balance her emotions, while her mother is trying not to make the same mistakes as Carter’s grandmother. This is all while Geneviève struggles with internal demons, and Mamé, who is in the Afterlife, sees her legacy being realized in her descendants but must cut her ties to the land of the living and let them forge their own path into the future.

Here’s a murder mystery set in a place I don’t usually see with murder mysteries: Nigeria. Philip Taiwo starts working on a case based around a megachurch in Ogun State, where a bishop’s wife was murdered, and a young woman went missing. As Taiwo will soon learn, there are secrets that, if uncovered, will threaten the entire church.

The Pulitzer-winning author of The Hours serves up a meditation on the complexities of family. Dan and Isabel are married and also both “a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie” (I haven’t read the book yet, so I am also curious what this means). When the pandemic hits, each family member’s anxieties manifest in different ways: young Violet obsesses over her family’s safety, while teenage Nathan focuses on breaking rules. Meanwhile, Isabel and Dan are having communication issues, and Robbie is stranded in Iceland with little more than his secret Instagram life as solace.

Smith is another Pulitzer winner but for poetry. In To Free the Captives, Smith explores the questions: “Where are we going as a nation? Where have we been?” Using both personal and collective history, she looks at how we as a country have related to each other, how this has influenced our current state, and what the future may hold for us. She contends with the dichotomy of being a successful Black person in America — her father returned from WWI as a hero but with no job prospects as a Black man, for instance — and she looks to our ancestors for sources of hope.

I’m in my comfort food era. Can y’all tell? I think the algorithm knows because it’s basically all that I’m getting recommended food-wise on my socials. But listen, I’m not complaining!

For this particular recipe, you’ll need:

Self-rising flour, baking powder, baking soda, light brown sugar, milk, vinegar, yogurt, vegetable oil, and cinnamon for the sponge cake.

For the filling: Granny Smith apples, sugar, cinnamon, cornflour, water, and brown sugar.

Finally, the glaze gets: powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla extract.

For a full list of measurements and instructions (plus a video), visit Rosie’s page.

Council of Dolls, by PEN Award-winning Power, follows three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women and the dolls that have guided their lives. Cora, born in 1888 during the “Indian Wars,” gets sent to a school by white men to have her identity stripped from her. The teachers burn her beaded buckskin doll Winona, but the doll’s spirit may live on. In 1925, Lillian is born, and she too will suffer through a residential school but resists the abuse of the nuns there. Her doll, Mae, defends her and her sister, Blanche, when they need it most. Finally, there’s Sissy, a child of the ’60s, whose doll Ethel may actually save her life.

The unsettling stories in this collection begin with the belief that many Indigenous people share — that whistling at night can not only summon evil spirits but invite them to follow you home. The stories of these evil spirits, ghosts, curses, hauntings, and more are told by an amazing cadre of both well-known and emerging Indigenous authors, from Rebecca Roanhorse to Cherie Dimaline to Richard Van Camp, and more. Monstrous manifestations from Indigenous mythology intermix with social horrors like the effects of colonialism to paint a viscerally terrifying picture.

These classic remixes have been amazing so far. Before this retelling, there was My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix by Kalynn Bayron, Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix by Anna-Marie McLemore, and others. Here, Dimaline writes a queer and Métis take on The Secret Garden. Mary Lennox is orphaned at 15 and sent to live with an estranged uncle in the Georgian Bay. Where she expects to find a cold, aloof household, she instead finds one with welcoming people, many of whom are Indigenous. She also finds her cousin, Olive, who has been kept away in an attic for years because of her “condition.” Once the two girls become besties, Mary will go up against Olive’s ill-tempered stepmother as she tries to free her cousin from something that seems sinister. She realizes that to do so, she may need to explore the locked away and overgrown garden that she found.

If the phrase “battle of the brujas” resonates with you, this is one for your TBR. When Damien’s brother Kai vanished, swallowed by the river, Damien was swallowed by grief. He literally tries to run from his despair by traveling as far away from his small town as he can until he reaches a village totally new to him. But the day he arrives, another’s sibling was being laid to rest, and Damien’s status as an outsider leaves him ignored by all except the mother of the dead girl, Ana Maria. Now, Ana Maria has her own darkness hovering over her — there are those who suspect that she was involved somehow with her daughter’s death — and soon, the tension between her remaining daughters and her will result in that battle of the brujas I mentioned earlier.

This big, beautiful book is one of the ones I saw on display in the children’s section. It’s so eye-catching. It’s a middle grade collection of poems and illustrations that introduces readers to Indigenous leaders through the ages. We learn about everyone from Peacemaker, who lived in 1000 A.D., to current-day Maria Tallchief and Cherokee chief Wilma Mankiller.

I haven’t tried this yet, but it sounds like an interesting twist on a favorite. You’ll need:

caramel vodka, apple cider, lime, ginger beer, cinnamon sticks, and apple slices for garnish.

For a full list of measurements and instructions, go here.

This funny and insightful memoir follows Chin, a gay American-born Chinese kid growing up in Detroit in the ’80s. Though the city has its issues — like segregation, for one — the Chinese restaurant his grandfather opened is a safe haven for many. All of Detroit — from drag queens to the city’s first Black mayor — are welcomed and gather around Chin’s family’s sweet-and-sour pork and scooch into their vinyl booths.

True crime lovers! I know I don’t usually have many suggestions for you, but today I’ve got you. Host of the true-crime podcast The Fall Line, Norton guides us through the vast world of forensic science, taking us from its (first recorded) beginnings with the ancient Roman death masks to our modern-day 3D facial reconstruction technology. We’re also walked through a case she solves in real-time alongside forensic anthropologist Dr. Amy Michael.

Two women undergo IVF, but only one conceives. Katherine, with her type A personality, finally has the perfect life once she has a baby. Thing is, the baby’s complexion is a little too different from her own, and it’s throwing her off…Then there’s Tess, who visited the same fertility clinic as Katherine but whose baby was stillborn. Two years later, she’s struggling with depression and a dead-end job, but a call from the clinic puts things on the upswing for Tess: they tell her that her and Katherine’s eggs were switched.

All of the people in Iris Kelly’s life are in love. Her parents, her friends, her siblings, and she really hates — *is happy for them*. Truly. Tear-soaked Lyft rides home notwithstanding. Her lack of love is especially confounding since she’s a romance writer, and it’s probably partially why she’s been out of ideas since her debut. To distract herself from her pitiful state, she goes out to a bar and hooks up with the sexy stranger Stefania. Only, the one-night stand has made the hottest of messes when vomit and crying both make appearances. To distract herself from that, she tries for a local play and meets Stefania, or Stevie, again, who wants Iris to play as her fake girlfriend for reasons. Of course she goes along with it, and sparks fly, but neither is trying to make the first move to make it official.

Due has been killing the Black horror game for a minute now. In her latest, 12-year-old Robbie Stevens is sent to the Gracetown School for Boys reformatory in Florida in 1950 for defending his sister from a rich white kid. If you got shudders thinking of a Black kid being sent to a reformatory in Florida in the ’50s, I did too. The horrors are just as real as you’d think, and the haints (ghosts) Robbie sees show him the terrors that were met upon the boys who have gone missing from the reformatory and worse things that have yet to come. Hopefully, his sister Gloria can get him out before it’s too late.