June Recommended Reads
THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET, Jennifer Sklias-Gahan
In The House in the Middle of the Street, Jennifer Sklias-Gahan conjures a haunting modern fairy tale of inheritance, secrets, and the creatures we invite into our lives.
When Rebecca and her husband inherit a stately old home, they imagine it as the perfect place to build their family. But as the seasons turn, shadowy visitors begin to arrive—children who are not what they seem, guests with appetites beyond bread. Bound by ancestral debts and ancient instructions, Rebecca and her descendants are drawn into a chilling cycle of desire, duty, and haunting.
With prose that shimmers like a spell and imagery as vivid as a fever dream, Sklias-Gahan offers a dark winter tale that recalls the cautionary power of the Brothers Grimm while speaking directly to the anxieties of our time.
The House in the Middle of the Street is a gothic exploration of legacy, survival, and the perilous cost of letting others in.
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THE RELIABLE NARRATOR, Grace Sammon
Darby Small has made invisibility an art. As one of New York’s most sought-after ghostwriters, she tells other people’s stories so seamlessly they forget she was ever there. In an age of AI-generated prose, she is prized for what machines cannot do: capture a voice so authentic it feels lived-in. For Darby, disappearing into other lives is both her superpower and her refuge.
Then comes a late-night message from Phoebe Zaslove, Darby’s truest friend—fearless, magnetic, and now terminally ill. For reasons Darby cannot name, the women have not spoken in a year. But Phoebe is running out of time and makes one final request: Write my story.
Set between the wooded banks of New York’s Hudson River and Albuquerque’s lush North Valley, The Reliable Narrator is a layered, emotionally charged novel about the unbreakable bond between friends, the legacies carried from mothers to daughters, and the truths we bury to survive. As Darby walks Phoebe into the last chapter of her life, she is forced to confront her own traumas, her family’s silences, and the realization that fragments of her truth have been hiding in plain sight in every book she has ever ghostwritten.
With piercing insight and lyrical prose, The Reliable Narrator asks:
What stories do we inherit? Which do we dare to tell? What is the price of silence?
Because some truths aren’t hidden, they are simply waiting to be claimed.
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THE CONFESSION ARTIST, Christine Carbo
A Montana ex-cop becomes the target of a vengeful killer’s viral guessing game in a propulsive novel of suspense by a bestselling and award-winning author.
A killer dubbed the Confession Artist is posting sketches of potential victims on social media. And paranoia spreads as strangers across the nation admit to their sins—fearing the consequences: You have six days to confess or die.
Then former cop and first-year PI Crosbie Mitchell sees a sketch that bears a striking resemblance to her. How can that be? She’s a nobody from Flathead Valley, Montana. Crosbie dismisses it as an unnerving coincidence. If not for one unmistakable detail that makes the threat hard to ignore. When the FBI is contacted, they are convinced that Crosbie is the next target. So is she.
Crosbie has six days left to fess up online to something plaguing her conscience. But even if she wanted to play the killer’s game, she has more than one secret. And if she ever dares to expose them for the world to see, the truth will destroy her. That’s exactly what the Confession Artist wants.
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MEMPHIS, Holly May Cormier
A woman on the run. A family with secrets. A past that refuses to let go.
A woman’s desperate bid for freedom from her abusive marriage sparks a cross-country odyssey of self-discovery, love, and reckoning with the family secrets that have held her captive.A run-down suburb of Nashville, Tennessee is home to the Freedman family – a tight-knit clan of hard-drinking men who grind their women to dust beneath their boots. From the first moment she meets him, Memphis Monroe, a soft-spoken choir-girl, is overwhelmed by Johnny Freedman’s attention and reputation.
Her mother, Doris, who partied with Johnny’s old man back in the day, wants to secure a future for her daughter outside of the trailer park and pushes Memphis to marry him. When the novel opens in the late 70s, Memphis has been married to Johnny for ten long years, and is too worn down by his drinking and violence to hope for a brighter future for her and her son, Michael. Until, that is, the day Johnny goes too far and Memphis is faced with a choice: live as a lion for one day or a sheep for a lifetime.
With her son beside her in her husband’s prized Mustang Shelby, Memphis escapes and embarks on an epic journey from Nashville to Los Angeles in search of shelter and safety. What she finds instead is the voice she’s quelled for so long, a new love, and answers to questions that have plagued her her whole life.
When Johnny and Doris track her to Los Angeles, Memphis finds herself caught in a web of lies spun long before she ever met her abusive husband – leading to a final, harrowing encounter from which there can be no turning back. Memphis explores the generational impact of alcoholism and violence on families, and the early days of abortion rights in America.
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Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood, Julie McGue
Growing up as an adoptee and identical twin, Julie McGue will take you on her journey for identity and individuality, searching for answers through tragedy and adversity.
“A heartfelt exploration of connection, community, and the unbreakable bond between sisters . . . Her journey beautifully reminds us of the strength we find within ourselves as we seek to uncover where we truly belong.”— Simone Knego, author of The Extraordinary UnOrdinary You
In this coming-of-age memoir, set in Chicago’s western suburbs between the 1960s and ’80s, adopted twins Julie and Jenny provide their parents with an instant family. Their sisterly bond holds tight as the two strive for identity, individuality, and belonging. But as Julie’s parents continue adding children to the family, some painful and tragic experiences test family values, parental relationships, and sibling bonds.
Faced with these hurdles, Julie questions everything—who she is, how she fits in, her adoption circumstances, her faith, and her idea of family. But the life her parents have constructed is not one she wants for herself—and as she matures, she recognizes how the experiences that formed her have provided her a road map for the person and mother she wants to be.
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“Haunted by guilt after her sister’s tragic death, a young woman seeks a fresh start as a caregiver in North Carolina and gradually finds the healing she seeks-but unexpected love and a life-threatening storm will test her strength all over again!” —Cam Torrens, award-winning author of the Tyler Zahn mystery/suspense series
I am the reason my sister is dead.
Jolie-Mae Buckley doesn’t think her heart can ever heal. Two years ago, she graduated from college summa cum laude and was on track for medical school. Drowning in guilt after a disastrous mistake turned deadly, she’s unable to move forward.
When she answers an ad for a live-in nanny four hours away in Western North Carolina, on Elizabeth’s Mountain, Jolie knows this is her opportunity to start her life anew.
As details of Jolie’s misfortune emerge, her new employers, Jesse and Amanda Taylor, detect a nefarious undercurrent in her story. Jesse’s protégé, Brody, gently persuades Jolie to revisit that awful day when a perfect storm of events destroyed her world. In the meantime, Hurricane Helene is barreling toward Asheville, where survival becomes paramount, exposing the fragile line between hope and terror. In the aftermath of Mother Nature’s chaos, and with Jolie’s heart hanging in the balance, the truth about that fateful night breaks free like the floodwaters no one predicted.
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LEARNING TO WHISTLE, Tess Perko
For fans of Sue Monk Kidd and Joyce Manard, a debut contemporary women’s fiction novel about a recently bereft daughter who journeys to South America to run away from her grief—and instead finds self-discovery and healing.
When she is supposed to be having the time of her life in college in California, Leonie loses her mother to breast cancer. After taking her last college course in Buenos Aires, she cashes in her return flight ticket and refuses to go home, erroneously believing that her grief will subside if she avoids her family. Narrating in her own grief-stricken voice, Leonie travels across Argentina, makes friends, and falls in love. She discovers her vulnerability and strength while working at a winery in Mendoza, riding over the treacherous Andes Mountains, and hiking the ancient pilgrimage to Machu Picchu—and, in doing so, slowly begins to heal.
Vividly rendered and full of heart, Learning to Whistle will resonate with every person who has ever been forced to venture into the world when they didn’t feel ready for it—with or without the guidance of a parent.
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THE DIARY OF DEREK DRUMMOND: THE STORY OF MY CURSED LIFE, Katelyn Emilia Novak
An immortal soul. A forgotten curse. A love that rewrites fate.
Once a proud Scottish nobleman, Derek Drummond has spent 124 years caught between day and night, hiding from the world — and from himself. A shadow among shadows, he has watched time unravel, love vanish, and hope fade into myth.
Until Megan MacKenzie looks at him — and sees more than she should.
With haunted eyes and a quiet, stubborn kindness, she stirs the man he used to be. But the past never stays silent. Some curses won’t break. And some ghosts refuse to let go.
Told entirely in Derek’s voice — darkly poetic, sardonic, and painfully human — The Diary of Derek Drummond is a gothic fantasy of redemption and reckoning.
From the storm-lashed cliffs of northern Scotland to the rain-soaked rooftops of London, it is a story of immortality, forgiveness,and the terrifying hope of being truly seen.
If you believe in second chances — even after death — open the diary.
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EVERY PRECIOUS AND FRAGILE THING, Barbara Davis
A mother and daughter try desperately to reconcile just as a decades-old secret threatens to shatter their relationship forever in this powerful story from the bestselling author of The Echo of Old Books.
For social worker Mallory Ward, working with at-risk youth is a calling. But when one of her clients is tragically killed, she finds herself at a crossroads. Despite long-held resentments toward her distant mother, Mallory retreats to her childhood home on the Rhode Island coast to contemplate her future. Instead, she’s confronted by her past, not only in the renewed tensions with her mother but in the unexpected appearance of a familiar face—and the wrenching losses that drove her away a decade ago.
Helen Ward’s home is filled with precious keepsakes from her patients, a testament to decades spent caring for the terminally ill. Her work has always come first, though, leaving little time to connect with her daughter. Over the years, the rift between them has become a chasm, so when Mallory appears unannounced, Helen sees it as an opportunity to repair their broken relationship.
But hidden among Helen’s mementos are the keys to her past…and a terrible secret that threatens to destroy the fragile new trust between them forever.
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EVERYTHING SHE MOST ADMIRED, Deborah Kalb
Lauren Green never expected to be a suspect in a murder investigation on her first day at D.C.-based Lens magazine. But then again, nothing had been going well lately.
Dumped by her fiancé, her academic career floundering, and her living situation up in the air, she’s barely holding things together. She knows she didn’t kill reporter Tony Mandel. But who did?
Surrounded by murder suspects-including one whom she finds surprisingly intriguing-Lauren tries to piece the clues together, not only about Tony Mandel’s death but also about her own life.
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SUCH A PRETTY PICTURE, Andrea Leeb
USA TODAY BESTSELLER
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy and The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, a candid and heart-wrenching memoir about child abuse, family secrets, and the healing that begins once the truth is revealed and the past is confronted.
Andrea is four and a half the first time her father, David, gives her a bath. Although she is young, she knows there is something strange about the way he is touching her. When her mother, Marlene, walks in to check on them, she howls and crumples to the floor—and when she opens her eyes, she is blind. Marlene’s hysterical blindness lasts for weeks, but her willful blindness lasts decades. The abuse continues, and Andrea spends a childhood living with a secret she can’t tell and a shame she is too afraid to name.
Despite it, she survives. She builds a life and tells herself she is fine. But at age thirty-three, an unwanted grope on a New York City subway triggers her past. Suddenly unable to remember how to forget, Andrea is forced to confront her past—and finally begin to heal.
This brave debut offers honest insight into a survivor’s journey. Readers will feel Andrea’s pain, her fear, and her shame—yet they will also feel her hope. And like Andrea, they will come to understand an important truth: though healing is complicated, it is possible to find joy and even grace in the wake of the most profound betrayals.
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Owls in the Ginza: (and other stories from a life in Japan), Suzanne Kamata
Thinking of leaving the country? Does the life of a digital nomad beckon to you? Suzanne Kamata has been there, done that, and is still doing it. Living in Japan for most of her adult life, she has a husband, two children, and a string of books to her credit.
Her latest, Owls in the Ginza, is as close to a memoir as this private lady will probably ever write—and it makes for enthralling reading. Essays about her travels in her chosen country, often alone, occasionally with her daughter, give insights into Japanese culture, its island countryside, and its domestic landscape. With humor and the observation skills of an artist, Kamata hints at the challenges and the deep joy that comes with the expat life.
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MAYHEM IN THE MOUNTAIN, Jane Loeb Rubin
1924 in the Catskills sizzled with chaos. The region’s turbulent history during that era could easily have erased any trace of the Borscht Belt’s grand hotels.
Prohibition fueled bootleggers and whiskey stills—Dutch Schultz ran an underground distillery in nearby Ulster County. Meanwhile, the Ku Klux Klan stormed north after WWI, targeting new immigrants they viewed as threats to the American way of life.
Amid the turmoil, the Isaacson family stood their ground, fiercely defending their land, livelihoods, and each other.
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VAMOOSE: STORIES, Kathy Anderson
“In these amazing stories, told with such fierce humor and control, characters reckon with the end of things, the fallout, the cleaning up, but Anderson knows how that loss, that untethering, can create a feeling of ascendancy. That’s how I felt reading these stories, lifted up toward something I hoped I’d find.” Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here
Two lesbian librarians launch a life-changing friendship in the back of a pickup truck at Texas Gay Pride in 1989. The Queen of the Stilt Walkers fights off her larcenous brother to keep her home. A lesbian former foster child endures Kundalini yoga class in her quest for love. A murderous nun takes revenge on her mother for forcing her into the convent. Dogs keep biting a new lesbian couple and they don’t know why. Sisters fight off an invasion of mice in the room where their mother is dying.
Filled with crackling humor and surprising loves, Vamoose is a propulsive collection of fifteen stories of women leading lives of self-determination, small triumphs, and subversive pleasures.
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NIGHT OF THE HAWK: POEMS, Lauren Martin
When I have wandered long enough what am I still beholden to?
Ifá. Nature. Illness. Love. Loss. Misogyny. Aging. Africa. Our wounded planet. In this sweeping yet intensely personal collection, Lauren Martin tells the untold stories of the marginalized, the abused, the ill, the disabled—the different. Inspired by her life’s experiences, including the isolation she has suffered as a result both of living with chronic illness and having devoted herself to a religion outside the mainstream, these poems explore with raw vulnerability and unflinching honesty what it is to live apart—even as one yearns for connection.
But Night of the Hawk is no lament; it is powerful, reverential, sometimes humorous, often defiant—“Oh heat me and fill me / I rise above lines”—and full of wisdom. Visceral and stirring, the poems in this collection touch on vastly disparate subjects but are ultimately unified in a singular quest: to inspire those who read them toward kindness, compassion, and questioning.
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ONCE WE FORGET, Elise Geither
As Momma descends into the darkness of dementia, Rose is suddenly obsessed with forgotten images from a distant past … and a young girl with golden hair. Who was Lily?
Something terrible must have happened.
But what if the memory is forever lost?
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FINDING SUTTON’S CHOICE, Brenda Haas
It’s been ten, long years since her abrupt departure, and, with a cryptic voicemail, 28-year-old writer Charlotte Sutton finds herself back in her hometown of Lakeside, Ohio. Only this time, her estranged father doesn’t recognize her, and a surprise half-sibling has taken her place.
Chuck Sutton-newspaper editor, retired baseball player, and the town’s most beloved celebrity-is thought to have Alzheimer’s disease. The community newspaper is also on the verge of closure, and a childhood friend holds a decade-long grudge. Despite all this, there is Lakeside. The quaint waterfront community, flush with ivy-covered cottages and vintage charm, hasn’t changed even as everything else in Charlotte’s life has shifted. She intends to stay only long enough to get her father’s affairs in order.
But, to reconcile her past and unearth family secrets, Charlotte must reconnect with Chuck through his Alzheimer’s diagnosis and reevaluate her own misconceptions about growing up in the small Ohio town that still holds her heart.
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FALLING STAR: Book Three in the Rise and Fall of Dani Truehart Series, Michele Kwasniewski
Minutes before her scheduled performance at the party for her third album, sixteen-year-old pop sensation Dani Truehart regains consciousness amid the smoking wreckage of a car accident, the crumbled body of a cyclist splayed on the ground. Moments after the accident, Dani’s manager, Jenner Redman, reaches the scene and his impulsive decision sets in motion a chain of events that will have catastrophic consequences for everyone in the starlet’s orbit.
Later, when scandal threatens to destroy the dazzling career of the world’s most beloved pop star, Dani must choose between accepting responsibility for her disastrous choices, possibly destroying her fame and fortune, or sacrificing those who made her famous and everyone she loves to preserve the stardom she has spent her entire life working to achieve.
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THE WITHERS, Lee Upton
In the aftermath of a devastating epidemic, bodies marked with eerie patterns called withers become symbols of a painful past— a past many want to forget. Riatta, one of the marked, finds herself cast out, a survivor of controversial surgeries that saved her life but cost her everything else. Seeking refuge, she recovers in the home of a surgeon who once saved her.
But when she learns his wife is pregnant, a shadow falls over this fragile sanctuary. Ruthless organ traffickers roam the streets, and Riatta is drawn into a desperate fight to protect the unborn child and her friends. With what Lisa Gornick calls “ the creeping terror of a Grimm’ s fairy tale,”
The Withers is a haunting exploration of obsession, loss, loyalty, and the fragile threads of memory. In a world plagued by betrayal, can trust ever be reclaimed?
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The creators represented in A Secret Chord are a testament to the power of transforming pain into poetry, silence into song, sorrow into art, and isolation into community. These teens write searingly of this historical moment, some anonymously and some in their own names.
As the executive director of The Pathfinder Network, Leticia Longoria-Navarro, reminds us, expression is power, and even the softest voice, uttering truth, can shake the world. These young people “are not simply telling stories; [they] are rewriting what is possible.”
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OTHER PEOPLE’S KIDS, Kim Culbertson
SOMETIMES, LIFE DOESN’T FOLLOW A LESSON PLAN…
After being attacked by a disgruntled parent in the parking lot of the private San Francisco Bay Area high school where she has taught English for the past twelve years, traumatized Chelsea Garden flees to her hometown of Imperial Flats in the Northern California foothills. When Chelsea meets beleaguered principal of Imperial Flats High School, Nora Delgado, the two realize they might have found each other at an essential crossroads. To complicate matters, her former classmate and messy first love, Evan Dawkins, has also recently joined the faculty at IFHS to teach music. And he wasn’t expecting Chelsea to walk back into his life. Other People’s Kids follows three educators: one at the beginning of his career, one in the middle of hers, and one on her way out.
A story about teaching, hometowns, and risking change in midlife.
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PATCHES OF RED
He’s handsome but can’t even remember her name. She’s pretty, but her finickiness drives him crazy.
After twenty years as a nurse practitioner in the same practice, Ellie Wentz gives notice. When office politics interferes with her job, it’s time to get a new one. When her son and daughter-in-law buy her house and she has sold and given away everything else that’s not attached to her heartstrings, she packs up what remains and goes to Harper Loch to spend time with her best friend. She’ll decide what to do and where to go from there. No matter how much the handsome friend of her friends annoys her.
Jesse Grant comes to Harper Loch to help out his niece for a few weeks. He’s retired from the navy, his boys are grown, and he’s at loose ends. But he really likes the little lake community in Michigan—he thinks he might stay. Long widowed, he has no interest in getting married again, and neither does the redhead he can’t seem to avoid. And yet …
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CHARRED, G.P. Gottlieb
Murder is on the menu-served warm with muffins and lattes.
At the Whipped and Sipped Café, Alene Baron knows how to handle a kitchen fire-but this blaze may burn far beyond her control.
When a suspicious fire draws Alene, her loyal friend Kacey, and Kacey’s boyfriend Kofi to a charred property in search of salvaged wood, they expect nothing more than a little trespassing and a lot of soot. Instead, whispers of arson swirl through their tight-knit community-and before long, a body turns up amid the ashes.
Kofi fears the police will come knocking. Kacey fears someone saw them. And Alene is caught in the middle, torn between protecting the people she loves and telling the truth to her partner, homicide detective Frank. Shaw Because in this town, secrets don’t stay buried. They smolder.
As suspicion spreads and tensions rise, Alene must sift through half-truths, family loyalties, and long-simmering grudges to uncover what really happened the night of the fire. With her café bustling, her children and father offering heartfelt (if sometimes chaotic) support, and a community on edge, she’ll need every ounce of patience-and every recipe in her arsenal-to keep things from going up in flames.
Rich with mouthwatering dishes, sharp dialogue, and emotional depth, Charred serves up a mystery that’s both frightful and fun-complete with a twist that will leave readers deliciously stunned.
Book 3 in the Whipped and Sipped
Cozy Culinary Mystery Series
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WHEN THE FOREST DREAMS. Andrea Ezerins
For fans of L. M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, a contemporary retelling of the beloved romance that follows a sheltered young woman’s quest for love in New York City—and her search for a rare and elusive bird in the deep Arkansas forest.
What if the life you were meant to live was waiting just outside your door?
New York City, 2013. Emma Jablonski’s life is as dry as the day-old bread at her family’s bakery. Living with her parents and grandmother, she clings to the only escape she knows: a recurring dream that feels more real than her waking world. But when Emma’s eyes are open, she’s reminded of what’s out of reach—Jake, the enigmatic boy-next-door.
After a life-changing diagnosis forces her to face her fears, Emma decides it’s time to truly live—before it’s too late. With Jake and his vibrant friend Vee, she dives into a whirlwind of experiences: a fake engagement, dazzling parties, and an obsession with the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird that may not even exist.
But as her daring adventure is coming to an end, Emma begins to embrace a future she never thought possible. Dreams and reality aren’t supposed to mix . . . are they?
A modern retelling of L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, this gentle story of love, resilience, and the beauty of the unknown reminds us to seek joy in the most unexpected places.
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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing
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