As we approach the conclusion of 2023, it’s not just the turning of a calendar page—it’s a moment of reflection. Today, I invite you to step into my literary sanctuary as I unveil a curated selection of my favorite books from this year.
Shielding herself from the world behind the safety of her camera lens, photographer Ayah Fleming is pulled into the past when she returns home and uncovers the truth about her descendants with the help of a man who makes her long for a brighter future.
Sent into an arranged marriage, Tan Yunxian, forbidden to continue her work as a midwife-in-training as well as see her forever friend Meiling, is ordered to act like proper wife and seeks a way to continue treating women and girls from every level of society in 15th-century China.
From the best-selling and critically acclaimed author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace comes a look at the school-to-prison pipeline and life in the juvenile “justice” system.
Drawing on 30 years of experience, a renowned cat behavior scientist references historical records and examines modern scientific studies of cat-human communication to reveal previously unexplored secrets of how cats all over the world have learned to talk to us.
In 1974, Paris perfumer Radha, on the cusp of a breakthrough, travels to India where she enlists the help of her sister and the courtesans of Agra, who use the power of fragrance to seduce, while finally confronting a past secret, which threatens her already vulnerable marriage.
Based on a true story and a five-million-word secret journal, this extraordinary work of fiction follows an orphaned heiress, banished from India to England, and a brilliant, troublesome tomboy who meet at the Manor School for young ladies in 1805 York where they fall secretly, deeply and dangerous in love.
Accused of murder, an enslaved woman goes on the run with an abolitionist schoolteacher in the fall of 1863, dodging constables and slave catchers, in the new novel by the New York Times best-selling author of If I Disappear.
In the years before the Civil War, Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, struggles through the miles-long march, seeks comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother, opening herself to a world beyond this world.
In 1921 Penang, when Willie, a famed writer and old friend of her husband’s, arrives for an extended stay, Lesley, as her friendship with Willie grows, makes a dangerous decision to confide in him about life in the Straits, including her relationship with a charismatic Chinese revolutionary a confession that has devastating consequences.
As WWII ends, Elise returns to Paris to reunite with her daughter only to find her friend Juliette, the woman she entrusted her daughter with, has seemingly vanished without a trace, which leads Elise on a desperate search to New York and to Juliette one final, fateful time.
~Semanur
Read it or Weep 