New Year, New Books!
Did you know that readers can anticipate not just one but TWO new Kathy Stinson books this year? (If You Were Here in the Spring and Levi’s Violin in the Fall.) More on those later.
For now I’d like to tell you about three early-in-2025 releases by authors I’ve read before that I’m eager to get my hands on.
Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams by Katherine Paterson
Is the name Jella Lepman familiar to you? Maybe because you’re a member of IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People) which Jella founded. Or maybe because you’ve read The Lady with the Books, which came out in the early days of the pandemic, subtitled A Story Inspired by the Remarkable Work of Jella Lepman.”
Katherine Paterson’s book has a more explicit and enticing subtitle: The Woman Who Rescued a Generation of Children and Founded the World’s Largest Children’s Library. I like how well its cover illustration captures what the book is about, too. It will, I’m sure, expand greatly on the back matter that follows, in The Lady with the Books, my story of an imagined child in post-WWII Germany, on whose life one of Jella’s first book projects has an impact.
Memorial Days: A Memoir by Geraldine Brooks
If you’ve read my December blog post and/or The Rock and the Butterfly you’ll know that grieving is a subject that interests me. In part, because I’ve so thoroughly enjoyed several of Geraldine Brooks’s novels, I’m interested in her experience with grief and in her musings on the various ways in which different cultures grieve.
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
As if the stories of the four Nigerian women whose lives Chimamanda Adichie’s new novel is about don’t sound enticing enough (and they do!), the book, according to its publisher, “pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations of the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power.”
If you received this post by email, please click the link to find it on my website and leave a comment, telling me about a book you’re looking forward to reading this year.
Share this post:
Kathy Stinson is the author of the classic Red Is Best and the award-winning The Man with the Violin. Her wide range of titles includes picture books, non-fiction, young adult fiction, historical fiction, horror, biography, series books, and short stories. She has met with her readers in every province and territory of Canada, in the United States, Britain, Liberia, and Korea. She lives in a small town in Ontario.
Wonderful! I look forward to reading your new books and I truly appreciate the outstanding work you do. About grieving…I have a story to tell if we can ever get together somehow to talk about it. Thanks so much.
Thank you, Wendy. You’re always such a great supporter.
Stories of grief are difficult to tell. You’ll know when you’re ready.
trying again.
It’s okay, Wendy. Your comment came through the first time.
In addition to your new books, I’m looking forward to Cold as Hell, the next installment in Kelley Armstrong’s Haven’s Rock series.
Janet, This sounds like an appropriate title for our current weather!
You’re right, but I think the weather is much worse in the book, which takes place during a blizzard. Brrr!
If you’re in the mood for another blizzard story, I highly recommend Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice, if you haven’t already read it. Excellent, and I liked the sequel, Moon of the Turning Leaves even more.