15 Great Books on the Gift List at Bronx River Books

A book is a holiday gift you can open again and again. Jessica Kaplan and Mark Fowler, owners of the local independent bookstore, Bronx River Books at 37 Spencer Place in Scarsdale Village, recommend these season’s readings:

Percival Everett is surely having his moment. Last year’s Academy-Award-nominated film American Fiction was based on Everett’s novel Erasure. And this year, James, his satirical and terrifying response to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, will deservedly make many 10 Best lists. It’s eminently readable and worthy of discussion – the perfect book group choice.

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s An Unfinished Love Story revisits the memorable events in the Kennedy, Nixon, and LBJ years, as the much-admired historian recounts her husband’s and her own “we-were-there” stories. Those who avoid history because they fear it may be too dry should make a point of reading this vivid account of the 1960s.

Easily the buzziest novel of the year is All Fours by Miranda July, a droll, explicit, adulterous romp about midlife reinvention. The protagonist, a quirky “semi-famous” artist, plans a cross-country LA-to-NYC road trip, which abruptly ends in a nondescript motel room in a Southern California suburb just a few miles from her point of departure, where she pursues sexual and creative freedom. The prim and proper reader should beware.

Another funny, shocking novel is Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles. Here, too, some readers may be put off by Margo’s occupation (a single mother supporting her baby as an OnlyFans performer), but it’s a book with a good heart and, interestingly, a strong moral compass. Highly praised by the authors Kevin Wilson and Nick Hornby.

The football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, a state-run school with only 168 high school students, had endured 51 losing seasons. But suddenly, with a new coach in 2021, it was having an undefeated season. The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory, by Thomas Fuller, dramatically explores “the mechanics and the mysteries of successful teamwork.” A GOAT nonfiction sports book.

Cornelia Funke, the terrific author of three middle school fantasies that began with Inkheart (2005), has finally written a fourth book, an addition to her trilogy, that is well worth the wait. The New York Times calls Inkworld The Color of Revenge “beguiling” and the Kirkus Review says its “a true feast for anyone who has ever been lost in a book.” Her earlier books, Thief Lord and The Dragon Rider series, are delicious as well.

Although Robert Munsch’s classic picture book, The Paper Bag Princess, for children ages four to seven, is not a new tale, its women’s liberationist message remains as important today as it was in 1980, when it was first published: Smart, strong, determined girls can rely on themselves and don’t need saving.

In Leaving, Roxana Robinson writes poignantly about college lovers who reunite decades after marriages to others, families, and careers. A mature, hauntingly memorable novel.

Perhaps 2024’s most discussed and most controversial book on public policy is The Anxious Generation by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (the co-author of the equally controversial 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind). Haidt explores the causes of the rising rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide among adolescents, focusing on the decline of play-based childhood and the rise of social media. A must read for parents.

For the reader who is all business, there is the Atlas of Finance, by Dariusz Wojcik, which explicates everything from the emergence of money to today’s high-frequency trading and cryptocurrency with scores of stunning graphics and maps.

House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng is a transporting novel set in colonial Malaysia and South Africa, an exotic tale of love, betrayal, revolution, and redemption. Read it together with the short story "Rain" by Somerset Maugham, who is a character in House of Doors.

At last Americans are discovering Katherine Rundell, the renowned British scholar and writer of children’s literature, that The Washington Post has called “this generation’s Tolkien.” Her new fantasy novel Impossible Creatures is great, but her earlier book for young readers, Rooftoppers may be even better. Rundell is astonishingly multi-talented, also writing adult non-fiction, such as the superb biography of the poet John Donne, Super-Infinite, and this year’s Vanishing Treasures a beautifully written homage to the world’s most extraordinary animals.

Do not read Liz Moore’s thriller God of the Woods while your kids are at summer camp. In Chapter 1, 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar goes missing, and she is not the first child in her family to vanish from her camp in upstate New York. This story will keep you on tenterhooks.

Finally, The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradly, blends history, romance, and sci-fi. A time-travel story with a satisfying twist at the end. And it’s funny: shortlisted for the P.G. Wodehouse award for the year’s best work of comic fiction.