Episode 571 || March 2026 New Release Rundown
This week on From the Front Porch, it’s a New Release Rundown! Annie, Erin, and Olivia share the March releases they’re excited about to help you build your TBR. When you purchase or preorder any of the books they talk about, enter the code NEWRELEASEPLEASE at checkout for 10% off your order!
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 571), or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
Annie's books:
Whidbey by T. Kira Madden
Celestial Lights by Cecile Pin
Upward Bound by Woody Brown
Olivia's books:
Phoenix by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Everyone in This Bank is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson
The Fountain by Casey Scieszka
Erin's books:
Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser
Once and Again by Rebecca Serle
This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum
From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in South Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website, www.bookshelfthomasville.com.
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found below.
Special thanks to Dylan and his team at Studio D Podcast Production for sound and editing and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
This week, Annie is listening to Annie is reading Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester. Olivia is reading Devious Prey by Scott Reintgen. Erin is listening to Escape! by Stephen Fishbach.
If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also support us on Patreon, where you can access bonus content, monthly live Porch Visits with Annie, our monthly live Patreon Book Club with Bookshelf staffers, Conquer a Classic episodes with Hunter, and more. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
Our Executive Producers are...Ashley Ferrell, Beth, Cammy Tidwell, Gene Queens, Jammie Treadwell, Joseph Shorter IV, Kimberly, Linda Lee Drozt, Nicole Marsee, Stephanie Dean, and Wendi Jenkins.
Transcript:
Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.
You want to know who did it, but that was never the question. or it was never the right one. Women are rarely in receipt of what they are owed. T. Kira Madden, Whidby.
[00:00:41] I'm Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. Today I'm joined by The Bookshelf's operations Manager Olivia and Bookshelf floor manager Erin to give you a rundown of our favorite new books releasing in March. Do you like hearing from Olivia and Erin each month? Well what if I told you there was a way to have book selections by Bookshelf staffers like Olivia and Erin delivered to your door each month. Our Shelf Subscription program offers just that. Each month, members of our team select their favorite book of the month to mail out to Shelf Subscribers. There's a local pick-up option too for those closer to home in downtown Thomasville. This year, we're offering two adult Shelf Subscription options. There's the Annie, lots of literary fiction and non-fiction, and the Revolving Shelf Subscription, perfect for the adventurous, eclectic reader. Revolving Shelf Subscribers will receive books chosen by Olivia, Shop Mom Susie, Shop Dad Chris, and Nancy. And this year, if you are more of an audiobook listener, we have you covered with our audiobook subscription offered in partnership with our friends at Libro.fm. You'll receive digital audiobooks selected each month by Bookshelf floor manager, Erin. For more information about our Shelf Subscription program, including kid lit options selected each month by me and my son, Isaac, you can visit bookshelfthomasville.com/pages/shelf-subscriptions. Or simply click Shelf Subscriptions at the top of our homepage. There's a link in the show notes too. This year is the 10th anniversary of our Shelf Subscription service and we're so proud of what literature we send out into the world each month. If you love our tastes here, I suspect you would love them delivered to your mailbox too. And it's a great consistent way to support our indie bookstore. Now back to the show. Hi guys.
Olivia [00:02:36] Hello.
Erin [00:02:37] Good morning.
Annie Jones [00:02:39] I only, when reading that copy, do I realize what a tongue twister Shelf Subscriptions is to really enunciate the multiple S's and shh sounds is cool. It feels like a real test. It reminds me, yesterday I was doing Storytime and I was just trying to riff until like one group had arrived, but the other group was like a block and a half behind. And I was like, okay, what do I need to do? So we just sang the alphabet song and I find myself, especially now that I sing it to Isaac, being very L-M-N-O-P, like that, you can tend to really do that altogether and I found myself really enunciating. L-M-N-O-P just kind of goes altogether. And yesterday I was like, I wonder if these kids notice how I'm really enunciating this.
Erin [00:03:28] That feels like a very theater thing to do, like, L, M, N...
Annie Jones [00:03:32] That's what I felt like. I was like, wow, I'm really leaning in.
Olivia [00:03:35] In their head they're like, wow, she's really good at the alphabet song.
Annie Jones [00:03:38] Yeah, I bet that's what they're thinking for sure. Okay, so we are here to talk about books releasing in March. As we go through these new releases, you can keep in mind that Olivia and our new online sales manager, Perry, every month is something new. They have made browsing our podcast book selections so easy. You can go to bookshelfthomasville.com, type episode 571 into the search bar, and you'll see all of today's books listed, ready for you to pre-order or purchase. You can use the code NEWRELEASEPLEASE at checkout to get 10% off your order of today’s titles. Okay, I'll get us started with a book that actually, Olivia, have you finished this one yet?
Olivia [00:04:24] No, but I just got to the last section. Now it's really picking up.
Annie Jones [00:04:29] So I am going to talk a little bit about Whidbey. This is by T. Kira Madden. It releases next week on March 10th. I really liked this book a lot. This is for fans of Fox and Notes on an Execution. Olivia and I debated via G Chat last week about who was going to talk about this one. I'll be interested, Olivia, to get your perspective. This does feel more literary than traditional suspense thriller. I don't know if that's just in my head.
Olivia [00:04:59] No, for sure. Agreed. There's no parentheses.
Annie Jones [00:05:02] Yeah, there's no quotation marks. There's not quotation marks, she was doing it.
Erin [00:05:08] She's doing it.
Annie Jones [00:05:10] She was doing it. This is video recorded, so they know now.
Olivia [00:05:12] I am very tired, just to quote that.
Annie Jones [00:05:17] Yeah, there's no quotation marks, which I forgot. Once you get the rhythm of it, you forget that, but it was the first thing another reader mentioned to me. And I was like, oh, you're right. There's no quotations marks. It's also just slower paced in my mind than what I would consider a typical genre suspense or thriller. If you're not familiar, so this is a book, it is told in three-ish different perspectives. You have Birdie, Linzie, and Mary-Beth. Birdie is kind of at first, at least kind of our main protagonist. She's a young woman moving to Whidbey, which is an island off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, I think off the state of Washington. And she is going and you get the sense she's going to kind of retreat, hide for a bit. Turns out she is the victim of childhood sexual abuse and assault. And she definitely has some PTSD and some issues from that childhood trauma. She also recently has discovered a new bestselling memoir by the woman we know as Linzie. Linzie was also a victim of childhood sexual abuse and assault. The same perpetrator of those crimes abused both Berdie and Linzie, but Linzie has written like this bestselling tell-all memoir about it. And so Berdie is kind of surrounded by Linzie's perspective. Linzie was also an older victim, which kind of is an interesting thing that maybe I had never thought about before, but kind of to unpack. And so, Berdie feels like she needs to retreat because everywhere she goes is Linzie being interviewed, Linzie's book on the airport shelves, et cetera. And then while we get those victims' perspectives-- and they're both of them dealing with that in very different ways, which I appreciated-- we also get the perspective of Mary-Beth and Mary-Beth's son is the perpetrator of the crimes against Berdie and Linzie.
[00:07:19] And so certainly you get, you feel, I think some-- I won't quite say camaraderie that's not there, but I do think you're trying to understand Mary-Beth's perspective as she grapples with what her son has done. Can she admit what her son has done? Can she understand the victims, et cetera. So we get these three pretty unique perspectives. And then maybe underlying it, the truest part or the part that most suspenseful to me, or that propels the plot-- because it's really quite character driven. But what's propelling the plot is that Mary-Beth's son has been found dead after a hit and run. And he's been living at kind of this halfway house, but he's found dead. And they're trying to figure out, was it an accident? Was it somebody who's like a victim of his crimes, et cetera. I liked that a lot because anytime I felt bogged down in the details of this book-- and to me, this book was very heavy. Olivia and I talked in person last week, I guess. To read this at the same time as the release of the Epstein files, it was very heavy and weighed on me far more than Fox did, which I think was interesting. The Joyce Carol Oates novel that came out last year. So this one was really heavy and it took me a long time to get through it because it was so heavy. It wasn't a book I was like, ooh, can't wait to get home and read that. That is not how I felt. But that underlying mystery element did help propel the novel forward. I do think this novel is beautifully written. I also think it would be a great book club conversation in that you're kind of unpacking the criminal justice system. Is rehabilitation possible? I mean, those are some questions this novel is grappling with. And then what are the effects of trauma on different people? Is one reaction to trauma fairer than the other? Anyway, lots of kind of heavy questions at the root and heart of this book, but I really did like it. That is Whidbey by T. Kira Madden. It comes out next week.
Olivia [00:09:32] I will say, along with figuring out who actually killed Calvin, what's keeping me going to is the Mary-Beth storyline, because at first, I think I was a little nervous about it because I was like I don't want to feel bad for her. I mean, she lost a human. That's hard. But like that's human, that's also hard. And so, you're waiting for her to just make some sort of acknowledgement of what her son has done. And I currently am still waiting.
Annie Jones [00:10:02] Yeah, I think that's what's so interesting. And it is weird to read now. I have not noticed my reading life change very much post-Isaac, but it is interesting to be reading this book now as the mother of a son and to think, how far would my love extend? Like, or understanding. Perhaps it's not even love, but understanding. Like at what point would you acknowledge, oh, my son is in the wrong?
Olivia [00:10:29] Yes.
Annie Jones [00:10:30] It's like he did something wrong. And to what extent are you responsible for that? Which I think this novel does deal with. I don't know that Mary-Beth is dealing with it, but the novel deals with it.
Olivia [00:10:40] Well, and she's clearly very close with her son.
Annie Jones [00:10:44] Yes, still.
Olivia [00:10:45] Yes, they are very close, which is also super interesting, because I don't know, I just would have [blamed] myself a little bit maybe.
Annie Jones [00:10:53] Yeah, I'll also say the Calvin doesn't so much get a storyline, but you get his storyline through Mary-Beth more or less. But even like the criminal justice aspects, I did kind of fact check. I think I said this maybe in store, but I fact checked some of this with Jordan because there are places and names referenced that I wondered is this a fictional name? Is this a fictional halfway house? And Jordan was like, oh no, all of that is real. Like Jordan doesn't deal a ton with the criminal justice system. He more deals with civil justice in the work that he does. But he was like, no, that's a recognizable name. That person lobbies the legislature. He recognized that and I appreciated that level of detail because there were a couple of times where I was like is this true? Like do sex offenders really live under a bridge in Miami? And the answer is yes. Like, yes, they do. Anyway, I found that to be really interesting, especially as it relates to Mary-Beth and we also get some from Mary-Beth's sister's perspective, which I think is interesting a little bit later in the book.
Olivia [00:11:58] I want to know if the gas station that's Christmas themed that Mary-Beth works at is real.
Annie Jones [00:12:05] Do you want to go?
Olivia [00:12:06] She dresses like an elf every day.
Annie Jones [00:12:08] It is such a weird detail. Do you think that detail's in there just to lighten the mood?
Olivia [00:12:13] Did it lighten it enough?
Erin [00:12:14] No, it did not.
Annie Jones [00:12:16] This book is so dark.
Olivia [00:12:17] It's real dark.
Annie Jones [00:12:19] It's so dark.
Olivia [00:12:20] But is it real?
Annie Jones [00:12:21] I don't know. Now I'm curious. That's the one detail, Olivia. I didn't fact check.
Olivia [00:12:27] All right. Well, if you could get on that, that would be great.
Annie Jones [00:12:30] I'll let you know. I'll report back.
Olivia [00:12:33] Okay. We'll take the sharpest turn we can. My first book is middle grade.
Annie Jones [00:12:40] Already? So different.
Olivia [00:12:42] If we're going by release order, this is the one that I have to do first. I am so sorry for this turnaround. But this is Phoenix by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.
Annie Jones [00:12:53] Also a tongue twister.
Olivia [00:13:00] You guys might know her though. She's the War That Saved My Life. And she wrote another one that I read too. She does a lot in like World War II era. This is not that. This is a horse girl series, which you might be like, Olivia, are you a horse, girl?
Annie Jones [00:13:19] Yeah, were you ever?
Olivia [00:13:24] No. Still not. I have no strong opinion about horses whatsoever. But I thought I'd give this a try in the vein of like Saddle Club and like Horse Diaries. I was just like, why not? I mean, kids love this stuff. And it was so good because I also trust this author. So it was really good. This is about an 11-year-old girl named Harper. And I'm going to preface with this middle grade book. It's probably 10 and up just because of the plotline that I'm about to tell you. But she had a semi-traumatic experience at school where she went to school one day and found out that her dad was having an affair with her best friend's mom.
Annie Jones [00:14:01] Oh no.
Olivia [00:14:01] Who lives across the street from her.
Annie Jones [00:14:04] Oh, no.
Olivia [00:14:05] And she's pretty sure it was her best friend that told everybody because her best friend is completely avoiding eye contact, won't sit near her, won't t engage at all. And so it was a pretty horrendous day for her. And she goes home to her mother and was just like, I can't go back to school. And her mom was like, okay. So they pack a couple of bags and they go rent this little tiny house that's right on the cusp of a horse stable where this woman does like horse riding lessons and she trains horses and raises them and whatnot. And so her mom and her just kind of retreat a little bit. They'll like sit on their back porch and watch the horse lessons with the kids while eating their sandwich.
Annie Jones [00:14:48] Sounds delightful. Sounds ideal, honestly.
Olivia [00:14:53] Right? She has always claimed she didn't like horses because her best friend didn't liked horses. And now she's finding out that she actually does like horses. And then a horse is dropped off on the farm when everyone's away for this competition. And she claims that it's hers now because she's very headstrong about certain things. You can tell that she like needs some control in her life. And this horse that was just dropped off because it was like on the verge of like dying is now hers. Like she literally had the men in the truck who dropped off the horse had them write a note that was saying this horse is hers.
Annie Jones [00:15:29] Aw, spunky.
Olivia [00:15:31] Yes, exactly. We like Harper a lot. And so now she's trying to rehabilitate this horse while also cautiously making friendships because she's not sure if she's going to stay here and she's a little bit nervous about just getting hurt again by other people and she hasn't really told anybody what's going on. And so a lot of things come to head at the end of the book. Like a new girl comes to the horse stable. Which I can tell that's going to be the next book is like her story. But it was really well done because it was dealing with such deep themes, and you just feel for Harper, but she's such a real kid in that she makes mistakes, she says some hurtful things occasionally, but she knows how to go back and be like that wasn't the best form of me, let me take that back. It was really, really good, and it was so short. It went by so fast, which was both fun and sad because I would have had more of that. But there's more to come. It's the first in a new series. So, yeah, it was very fun. It was called Phoenix by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley and it's out March 3rd.
Erin [00:16:42] Was Phoenix the name of the horse, or do we have to read it to find out?
Olivia [00:16:46] No, I'll spoil it for you. Yes. She named the horse that because phoenixes get reborn and the horse is on the verge of dying when she finds it. And so she wants to give it a new life.
Erin [00:16:59] I love that. Do you think a horse girl is a personality or does it really have to involve horses? What do we think? You think it literally needs to be a girl that has to involve the horses?
Olivia [00:17:11] I think it has to involve the horses. Yes.
Annie Jones [00:17:11] I think it has to involve horses too. I think what's interesting is like I read Saddle Club and like sometimes I'm like, oh, was I a horse girl? And I definitely liked horses. I don't know. My dad, my grandparents were from Kentucky. I was interested in that, but then in high school or middle school, I wasn't anymore. And there was a girl who really was a horse. Who owned a horse and rode horses and like wore her cowboy boots to school. Like that's horse girl.
Olivia [00:17:44] Well, and to be fair too, if you own a horse, it's a lot of work. You have to be a horse girl.
Annie Jones [00:17:52] Yeah. And she really did.
Olivia [00:17:54] Saddle Club was like we were there for the drama.
Erin [00:17:56] Not the horses.
Annie Jones [00:17:57] Yeah. I was there too. It was like Babysitters Club where it was, like there are four different girls with each with a distinct personality type. I'm a Stevie. Like that's what it felt like. Like it was just like, which one are you?
Olivia [00:18:14] You remember the name of the one of the babysitters.
Annie Jones [00:18:17] Stevie. Totally.
Olivia [00:18:17] I should've known. I should have known. Everyone remembers their childhood so well.
Annie Jones [00:18:23] I'm a Stevie for sure.
Erin [00:18:25] I've just always wondered, like, could I be a horse girl even though we did have a horse growing up, but I don't think I could be called a horse girl.
Olivia [00:18:33] You had horses growing up?
Annie Jones [00:18:34] Where did you keep your horse?
Erin [00:18:35] It was my sister's. We had a little stable thing for it out in the backyard.
Annie Jones [00:18:41] Why have I always pictured even childhood Erin living in her current house? It never occurred to me that she's lived anywhere else in Thomasville.
Erin [00:18:49] We lived a lot of places, but when I was a teenager and my sister was like a tween, we had a horse and it was really my sister's, but it was there. So I'm like does that make me a horse girl? I don't think so.
Olivia [00:18:59] I mean, did you take care of it?
Erin [00:19:01] No.
Annie Jones [00:19:01] Did you ride it?
Erin [00:19:02] I mean, someone took care of it. It just wasn't me. No.
Olivia [00:19:04] So maybe you were like horse girl adjacent. I was horse girl adjacent. Yeah. But I don't even think my sister was a horse girl and it was her horse, so.
Annie Jones [00:19:14] I mean, I do think that's the thing, right? It's a very specific personality.
Erin [00:19:17] It's like a lifestyle.
Annie Jones [00:19:18] Yeah, it's a lifestyle.
Erin [00:19:17] I think it's a whole lifestyle. Yeah. Not just because you have a horse. Anyway, I was just curious.
Annie Jones [00:19:24] Just throw that out there to the crowd.
Erin [00:19:27] Okay. My first book is called Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhouser. It's actually out already March 3rd. Honestly, I didn't realize that this is what it was until I was about a fourth of the way in and then I felt stupid. I didn't see it before, but it's a reinventive imagining of like the Cinderella wicked Stepmother story, but it's from the point of view of the wicked stepmother, who is Lady Tremaine. Her full name is Lady Ethel Drita Verity Isold Tremain Bramley. I know, talk about tongue twisters. She's had a wonderful life. She had a wonderful upbringing. She was married to her first love and they had two beautiful daughters. And then he passed away. And of course, being the time period that it was, they don't give the time period, but it's like sort of understood it's just when women had no rights and were basically just only had titles and names if they were married to someone who had those. A man who had them himself. But when he passes away, they're sort of left with all these bills and his parents are like, hey, you can't stay here. You've got to go. Basically leave this house and go fend for yourself because he didn't leave you any money and all stuff. And so she in a moment of both care for her daughters and desperation, finds another man to fall in love with, doesn't really love him, but she realizes this is just for money and protection. But he has a young daughter about the same age as her daughters. And then, of course, as the Cinderella story goes, he passes away and she's left with her own daughters and then a stepdaughter who doesn't like her. And we meet her when the girls are all teenagers and coming of age and are of marriageable age. She's determined to help them find good husbands.
[00:21:20] One of her daughters meets the prince and it's all looking great. Like, yay, she met the prince. This is going to be their salvation. But in a very weird and bizarre turn of events, he just forgets that daughter and then starts to court her stepdaughter, which is the stepdaughter is like awkward and weird. And no one understands why he all of a sudden is like falling in love so deeply with the step daughter. So she becomes suspicious, this is Lady Tremaine. She becomes suspicious and starts to investigate by asking around and putting clues together why this prince might have fallen so quickly and so hard for this girl. And it turns out that she goes to see the queen who is actually someone that Lady Tremaine has known her whole life, it's a girl who she sort of had to compete with for the love of her first husband and Lady Tremaine won. But the girl who then becomes queen has never forgotten it. And they sort of have this big beef between them. But she goes to see the queen and it turns out that there are, and I won't spoil it, but there are some really dark sort of family secrets that the queen is trying to cover up by specifically having the prince married to the stepdaughter. So again, that's all the story I'll tell. But the tale itself, like I said, it's as old as time, it's the wicked stepmother. But it's not the typical scheming. The stepdaughter in this story is not the star. It's Lady Tremaine. She is resilient.
[00:22:53] They really fully fledged her out as a character. And she is someone that you can see truly cares for her daughters and just wants the best for them. Not unlike a I've got to get you married off scheming kind of way, but just like I truly want you to find love and to be safe and to happy. And she'll do whatever it takes to make sure that that happens for them. Even if it ends up not being that they don't marry someone, she wants them to be happy. So she's bold. She know what she wants and it was just really good. I've talked to a lot of people about this since I posted about it and I read it. A lot people are like the ending was kind of cuckoo. Like the ending is a little bit crazy. It's like this whole story then at the end there's like a lot stuff that happens that you're kind of like, whoa, what just happened there? But I listened to it on audio book. It's a great audio book and this book got a Kirkus starred review. So kudos to Rachel for writing this story in an inventive way that subtle enough that you could read it and maybe not even see it as a Cinderella retelling. But if you do see that, then I think you can see how different it is from that type of story and enjoy it for what it is. So that's Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhouser. It is out already.
Annie Jones [00:24:06] I'm so glad you talked about this one because I've been seeing it a lot of places, but I honestly couldn't tell what it was about. Like I couldn't, is this like a British royalty story, like what is this?
Erin [00:24:16] I went into it with very low expectations too, not knowing what it was about.
Annie Jones [00:24:20] I think because weirdly like Laura Tremaine, the author, like that's who I kept thinking. I was like, what is the connection here? And obviously there's not one. But I was very curious about it, so I'm glad to know. And could be fun for people. I guess by the time this comes out, I will have finished Bridgerton season four.
Erin [00:24:39] I just finished last night the first four episodes. Yes.
Annie Jones [00:24:42] I loved it. I'm loving it. I don't think critics are liking it, but I'm loving it. Okay, my next book is also one, Olivia, I don't know yet, because I haven't read it, but I do wonder if this one will be for you as well. I can't tell.
Olivia [00:24:55] I know what one you're going to talk about and I already have the art because I pulled it because I was like, space?
Annie Jones [00:24:59] Okay, yeah, so I pulled this as well. The publisher must have sent a couple of copies because I think I got a physical ARC as well. So this is Celestial Lights by Cecile Pin. This releases on March 24th. It looks fantastic. I'm going to tell you about it, but I will say I do not understand how this author packed all this in under 300 pages. Part of the reason it was appealing to me is because it is so short looking. I don't remember if they're starred reviews, but it has gotten positive reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. And then Cecile Pin was long listed for the Women's Prize for Wandering Souls. So the Challenger exploded January 28th, 1986. That was a few days before I was born. And so soon after that launch, The Challenger falls into the sky. I mean, it was this devastating event. Children everywhere were watching it live on TV. And it is the day that Oliver is born. So Celestial Lights really is all about Ollie. Ollie spends his childhood in England. He kind of feels like because-- I mean this is kind of odd, but honestly I think it's how kid’s brains work. Like The Challenger exploded on his birthday and he now is obsessed with space and that is his personality. He almost feels like fated for it. So his room is covered in glow in the dark planets and stars, and he becomes an astronaut.
[00:26:24] And then a billionaire asks him to lead a mission to a distant moon. And so Ollie has to make this choice that not only affects him, but could affect the whole world as he kind of trains for this mission. And then it goes back, my understanding is that the story then kind of goes back into his past, follows him on his trajectory to becoming an astronaut. And so I don't know, part of me, I've been seeing a lot of previews for Project Hail Mary, which I'm very excited about. So part of me was like I don't know that it is going to be full suspense like sci-fi vibes. I can't tell from the book's description if it skews more literary fiction because it's about Ollie himself. But I wonder if it'll be like Aja Gabel Lightbreakers where there's like a sci-Fi component at the heart of the novel, but then the novel is kind of about this character and the decisions that he makes. I am super intrigued by this. Again, I do not understand. I think I looked it up and I pulled it off my shelf. It's not long. It's like 280 pages, which this is a lot to cover in that span of time.
Olivia [00:27:33] It is small. Like it's not a trade paperback size. Like it's just small.
Annie Jones [00:27:39] Yeah. So I will be interested to see how she does this, but I was like, oh my gosh, I think this could be potentially an Annie and Olivia and Erin maybe there are some books that like all three of us I think really like. And the Aja Gable comp was at least what I came up with based on what I'm reading about this book. But I've pulled it. I will report back on what I think that is Celestial Lights by Cecile Pin.
Olivia [00:28:02] It's one of those that I'm like I'm worried is there enough space for me? I don't know. That's how I felt about Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I was like I don't know that there is enough space.
Annie Jones [00:28:13] Yes.
Olivia [00:28:15] And that's okay. Not every book is for me. But this next one is. It's Everyone in this Bank is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson.
Erin [00:28:24] Yay. We've been waiting for this.
Olivia [00:28:26] I know. This is Ernest Cunningham, number four.
Annie Jones [00:28:30] Oh my gosh. That was fast.
Olivia [00:28:33] Yes. Well, because everyone in my family has killed somebody. Everyone on this train is a suspect. And then I think it's everyone this Christmas has a secret.
Annie Jones [00:28:42] Oh, right. It's a holiday one.
Olivia [00:28:44] Yeah, it is a Christmas novella. But Benjamin makes a note that it is still technically the third in the series, even though you don't normally count a Christmas Novella. This, just like the other ones, has that fourth wall break. Which I just think is so well done in this particular series because it's so clever and it's hilarious. There were moments where I was laughing out loud. In this one, Ernest is going to a bank because he's trying to get a loan from the owner of the bank to start his own detective agency, which he's there with his wife and we're all kind of like is that a great idea, Ernest? Because you almost die every time you try to solve the problem.
Annie Jones [00:29:29] Every case.
Olivia [00:29:31] And while he is there, the owner of the bank is basically like, okay, we'll talk more about this loan if you can solve the mystery of where my brother went because he's been gone for like a couple of days now. And Ernest can't resist.
Erin [00:29:46] Convenient.
Olivia [00:29:47] Convenient. A lot of things in this book are convenient, and Ernest does note that. But shortly after that conversation, a bank robbery starts and everyone is held hostage. And Ernest in his true Ernest self is like, hmm, there's something at hand here. And there is multiple things at hand here. This is one of those, and also Ernest is writing this book from a safe that he is currently locked in and like slowly running out of air. So he's writing this to also help him process and figure out what's going on and who did what. So you're figuring it out yet again at the same time as Ernest, who is an honest and reliable narrator. And it's just so much fun. Again, I laughed out loud at multiple times. There were two cases of spontaneous combustion.
Annie Jones [00:30:43] Like in Bleak House. Fascinating.
Erin [00:30:48] I didn't know there was spontaneous combustion in a Bleak House.
Olivia [00:30:50] I'll leave it there everybody because I think from here on you're going to want to read this book.
Annie Jones [00:30:56] That's enough. That's your hook.
Olivia [00:30:58] The only downfall that I could find with this book is that Uncle Andy, who you might know from the first two books, was nowhere to be found here. And I love Uncle Andy so much. I would read an Uncle Andy book. I think he's so hilarious.
Annie Jones [00:31:11] Maybe he'll do a spinoff.
Olivia [00:31:12] Yeah. Benjamin, if you're listening, I request Uncle Andy.
Erin [00:31:19] I just love when the whole premise of these books is that it's a locked room mystery. So you've got to keep figuring out places that people can be stuck together. So I'm always just like where will it be next? The grocery store or the dentist office.
Olivia [00:31:34] He does address that he's like this is wild that this has continued to happen to him.
Annie Jones [00:31:39] That's what I like. It's very tongue-in-cheek. It's like an acknowledgement of the tropes of the genre. Yes, exactly.
Erin [00:31:46] Isn't it like Murder She Wrote, which I never watched, but it's like all these murders keep happening in this very, very small town that she's got to solve. And you're like, why are there so many murders per capita in the city that she lives? Okay. I can't wait to read that one. If you have the ARC and when I have time, you can share it with me and I'll read it. No ARC? All right. I'll find it myself.
Annie Jones [00:32:10] Publishers, if you're listening. Hear the quiet desperation in our voices. Sold so many of those books.
Erin [00:32:18] Okay, my next book is called Once and Again by Rebecca Serle. It comes out March 10th. I loved her previous two books, which were Expiration Dates and One Italian Summer. She has other books, but that's where I started with my Rebecca Serle journey. I love her books. They always involve some sort of magical elements, and that's also what you get with this book, but in a new way. Like expiration dates, the story was like she has these papers that tell her when she meets a new man, how long their relationship is going to last. So that's magical. One Italian Summer, a girl travels to Italy with her mom, and then ends up going back in time and meets her mom as her younger self. So I love that book too, but this is about Lauren. She's a 37-year-old wife to Leo. She works as an accountant and they're struggling with infertility. But the thing about Lauren is that her and her mother and her grandmother all have this secret, which is when they're born, they receive a little box and it has a silver ticket in it. And they are allowed to use it once in their life to go back and change anything they want. Like they can use it for anything they want. They can just use it once to go back and changed something. So we know pretty quickly at the beginning of the book that Lauren's mom used it to save Lauren's dad. Lauren's Dad died in a car accident and her mom used the ticket to go back, change the day where he stayed home safe. And the only people that know about that are Lauren's mom, Lauren's grandmother, and now Lauren now that she knows about the secret.
[00:33:58] So she's been holding the secret her whole life that her dad really wasn't supposed to be there but he is because of this ticket. And so now she's got the same burden on her which is when do I use this and why do I use this? And so there is a little bit of romance. Her husband, Leo, works in film and he gets this job in New York. So he moves there and while he's there, she moves in with her parents and her grandmother. And while she's there she makes some questionable decisions with an ex-boyfriend of hers who lives there. I think they're living on the California or the West Coast somewhere. But, again, she's grieving the infertility so it causes her to kind of not be the person she wants to be while she's there. But what I love about this book is I'm only about halfway through, but it's a fast read and it is short. I think it's about 250 pages, maybe 260. But there is a romance plot line. So if you are someone who likes a romance plot line, but you don't want it to just be romance or you're someone who like some magical realism, but you want just that, this is a great combination where you get a little bit of both. You get a lot of character development while also getting a pretty heavy plot as well. So it could just have gone into the genre of just, oh, they have this ticket and isn't that a fun plot line, but it is really about how does that feel and it kind of shows the point of view from her grandmother, her mother, and now Lauren, how they've all had to deal with this weight, the joy, but the weight of having this ability to go back and change things that could change their world and also change the world at large. So it's a really good book. I can't wait to finish reading it. It's called Once and Again by Rebecca Serle.
Annie Jones [00:35:49] I like the sound of that. It almost feels like some of her other books where it's almost like the measure or something because then you can ask yourself, well what would you do? Like it's a good kind of book club hook too.
Erin [00:36:01] It feels sort of like in the vein of like The Measure by Nikki Ehrlich, but like without being as sci-fi as that one is.
Annie Jones [00:36:11] Okay, my next book I loved. This book releases on March 31st. It is called Upward Bound by Woody Brown. I started this months ago and loved it. I loved the first chapter so much that I put it down because I was like I'm going to read this closer to the release date so I can talk about it accurately. First of all, I think what's important for you to know is that Woody Brown, the author, is the first non-speaking autistic graduate from UCLA. And so this book, Upward Bound, is all about fiction, all about an adult daycare center. And it houses Los Angeles' disabled community. It is, for most of the inhabitants, not a place they really want to be. Like some other books I've read this year, which this is interesting, I don't know if this is a publishing trend or what, but this is collection of connected short stories. So it's a novel about Upward Bound, but each chapter is told either from one of the client's perspectives or one of the caregiver's perspectives. And I loved it. I just was so intrigued and curious. And then in all of some of these characters, there is a non-speaking character. And so I think Woody Brown is really trying to let you know what it's like to inhabit and to have that experience where you definitely can communicate. You definitely can think for yourself, you can make decisions for yourself but you're not able to speak it. And that was something I had not really given much thought to. And so this is my favorite kind of fiction where it kind of makes you put yourself in another person's shoes and makes you think, oh, what would that be like?
[00:37:56] The center itself, this Upward Bound facility is kind of dreary, kind of drab, but you also get the perspective of It's almost like reservation, right? Where you get this perspective of, okay, like who's running the ship? Why is it kind of this way? Oh, right, they're beholden to financial burdens or whatever. So you get a variety of perspectives and thoughts and feelings. There's a wonderful character named Tom who has cerebral palsy. And he also has all these beautiful thoughts and feelings, but he cannot articulate them in the traditional ways we articulate things. And he kind of has a crush on Anne, who's this new summer lifeguard at the facility. Ultimately, you get Anne's perspective. I thought this was so beautifully written, first of all, and then just opened my eyes to a community and a world that I don't think gets a lot of attention and at least doesn't maybe get a ton of literature where you get a variety of different perspectives. I think sometimes the book The Maid or something where you got one character's perspective, but this was fascinating because you get a look at some different disabilities and what they mean for communication, emotions, emotional depth. I will say this is a gut punch of a book. There are some things that happened where I was startled because it is a feel good novel, but there are also tragic components. There are comedic components. So I felt a lot of things while reading this book. So I'm not going to spoil any of it, but there is a lot to unpack in a pretty, again, short novel told from all these different perspectives in the short story collection. And I loved reading about Woody Brown. I kind of went not a full deep dive, but I Googled about him because I was like, this is fascinating. And his acknowledgments were really interesting like how he wrote the book and the teachers that paid him attention and kind of helped him hone his craft. Anyway, Upward Bound by Woody Brown. This releases on March 31st. I loved it.
Erin [00:40:10] That sounds good.
Olivia [00:40:11] I'm glad you just read it because I had just glimpsed the cover like a couple of times now and I honestly thought it was nonfiction.
Annie Jones [00:40:19] Yes, short stories fiction. But I think probably maybe at least slightly autobiographical, particularly in the case of one of the characters. I definitely think is perhaps supposed to be a stand in for Woody himself.
Olivia [00:40:29] Short stories that all relate to each other.
Annie Jones [00:40:33] Yep, I loved it.
Olivia [00:40:35] Okay, you might like the next one that I talk about.
Annie Jones [00:40:38] Okay, I'm curious about this. I saw this.
Olivia [00:40:40] It's for sure literary and it is character driven, but I will say I didn't notice that it was character driven until the very end of the book. And I will get to that point. But this is called The Fountain by Casey Scieszka. I did look up how to pronounce that name because the spelling is...
Annie Jones [00:40:57] The spelling is hard.
Olivia [00:40:58] There's a lot of consonants, not a lot of vowels. Yes. But this is about a girl, a woman, named Vera, and she is immortal along with her brother and her mother. They are all immortal. And that's about as far into fantasy as this book goes, just the fact that they are immortal. It happened at some point in their lives-- they don't know when-- they're born in the late 1800s, but one of them they would get injured and immediately heel and they were like how far does this go? Things happen for them to find out that they could die and not die. But essentially, now we're in the present day and Vera is basically like I'm ready for this to be over. It's been too long.
Annie Jones [00:41:46] I'm tired.
Olivia [00:41:47] Yeah. When you have to move around so much and she's not making permanent connections with people. Their mother went MIA with people a long time ago. And at this point, her and her brother live such separate lives. They have one day a year that they call each other and catch up on what's been going on. So Vera decides that she's going to return back to the town where she was born and figure out what made her immortal. Like they think that it was some sort of creek or spring that they either like bathed in or drank from that it was just the three of them that this happened. So she's going around and testing all of this water to see if it makes her mortal again, basically if she ingests it. But while she's there, she also like finds home with these people. She lives in a small house that's connected to her childhood home, which this couple now lives in and they're very nice. This is like upstate New York. They're from the city. They're starting a cidery. And they befriend her. She befriends like a lot of the locals, like Janet is the postal service woman. Like, it's really fun. This is very like small town antics. The point in which I realized that this was literary fiction was when I...
Erin [00:43:07] You were too late gone by that point.
Annie Jones [00:43:08] Too far gone.
Olivia [00:43:10] Too far gone and too far invested and cared too much. I am like three chapters, maybe two chapters away from the end of this book, and they are still talking about starting this cidery. They have been building it, this whole book, I am like this has nothing to do with her being immortal. Why are we still on about this cidery? And it's because it's character-driven and we're looking at the lives of small-town people and how she found home with them. And it is beautiful. It is very intriguing, very well done. When she moves to town, the big momentous plot point is that this company has moved in as well and they're starting to buy up land and housing areas, and they are called the Fountain youth. And so now she's like this obviously has something to do with what happened to me. And she's also trying to stay like covert about what's going on and who she is and that she's actually from here and that's she's immortal as well. And so stuff starts happening with that. But it is so good and so intriguing. And again, it doesn't feel fantasy at all. It feels highly literary, but in a way that I am able to understand what's happening. I am not lost. I am there for it. I'm having a great time, even though I am pretty sure that this book is going to have some sort of ambiguous ending. And I'm here for it.
Annie Jones [00:44:41] The true mark of literary fiction. It just leaves you right there.
Olivia [00:44:45] Exactly. And I will be okay with that because I have enjoyed this book so thoroughly.
Erin [00:44:49] Wow, that's high praise.
Annie Jones [00:44:50] Okay. I think I have the arc of this one, so I'm going to, thank you, I will move it up my list because I was curious about it, but I didn't know if it... The cover is kind of odd and it made me think it wasn't for me.
Olivia [00:45:01] Yeah, the covers looks dark. And I don't think that this book is very dark. Because it's not that she wants to immediately die. It's that she just wants to live out the rest of her life.
Erin [00:45:14] In a normal fashion.
Olivia [00:45:15] Yeah, just like everybody else.
Annie Jones [00:45:19] I know this isn't the conversation to have at 45 minutes in, but I do just want to say that one of my questions about the genre like the tuck everlasting genre, if you will, is if you can't die, can you age?
Olivia [00:45:33] She does not age.
Annie Jones [00:45:35] So it's the point at which she bathed in this or whatever, like that's the at which point she stopped?
Olivia [00:45:41] Yes, correct.
Annie Jones [00:45:42] Interesting. Okay.
Erin [00:45:43] Think about Edward Cullen, you know?
Olivia [00:45:46] Her mother was dealing with some arthritis when this happened to her and all of that went away because her body just healed itself. So they can't even get tattoos because their skin just heals itself.
Annie Jones [00:45:59] Fascinating. Okay.
Olivia [00:46:00] Yeah, so would you do it? I would.
Annie Jones [00:46:03] No.
Erin [00:46:03] No.
Olivia [00:46:04] Okay, all right. That's fine.
Erin [00:46:09] Again, maybe not a conversation at 45 minutes, but I think I would be like her. I'd be like this is not fun anymore. Like it's fun for a little bit. Like if you're a kid and your parents say you can eat as much candy as you want and then you do and then, you're like, I immediately regret that.
Annie Jones [00:46:25] I think what would be hard is watching everyone else die, which I'm sure is what she talks about. But I would be like wait a minute, where are my people? They're gone. Also, aren't you tired?
Erin [00:46:37] Right, I think she is.
Annie Jones [00:46:39] I don't want to meet new people.
Erin [00:46:44] Well, like Olivia said, you have to move.
Olivia [00:46:45] The amount of lives that you could live.
Annie Jones [00:46:47] That's true. You could live a lot of lives. You could make a lot of different decisions, which that would be the plus. But again, as Erin alluded, maybe just sitting here today, would I want to keep living forever? Not after the week I've had, guys.
Erin [00:47:05] And that's fair.
Annie Jones [00:47:09] Well, I'm going to move this one up my list. It does sound really good.
Erin [00:47:12] I know. What I love too is that you say, Olivia, you're not a character- driven person, but I do feel like the middle grade in chapter books you read are usually highly character-driven and you really enjoy those. So give yourself credit for being more of a character-driven person than you think.
Olivia [00:47:27] That's very fair. Thank you, Erin.
Annie Jones [00:47:28] That's right. Therapy with Erin.
Erin [00:47:33] My last book is one Annie's also read too. It's called This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crumb. To be fair, I had another book I was going to talk about and I just could not get through it. I won't mention what it is because it's a highly popular author. I had to pivot back to this one because I love this one so much. I will say what format I listen to it at the end because the story itself is still good. This is about longtime best friends, Joy Moore and Benny Abbott. They've been platonic, sort of will they, won't they? But they've been platonic friends and decided to start this podcast together. It's a podcast with the same name. This Story Might Save Your Life. It's like a comedy survivalist podcast. Like they talk about different scenarios. Like, how would you survive if you were locked in a safe in a bank where there was a [crosstalk].
Annie Jones [00:48:23] When you listen to this or read this, didn't you think, oh my gosh, this is a podcast that was made in Olivia's like fever dreams.
Erin [00:48:34] It's got the flavor of like how to do everything like the ones that you like to listen to. They probably get into the nitty-gritty of like how would you survive being eaten by a bear or whatever. So we wouldn't survive that, but you know what I mean. Things started to happen. They're on the brink of signing a deal with this major podcasting network. They are like right at the cusp of their popularity. And Joy comes to Benny and says, I need to take a break from podcasting like suddenly. And then the next day she's missing. And so Benny is obviously like, okay, something is up here. This is not like her, and her husband is also missing too. He starts to investigate, police get involved. And so you get this story as it unfolds from Benny's current point of view, like from the point that Joy goes missing and forward. And then you get Joy's point of you from these chapters of this yet unpublished memoir that she's writing with Benny about their rise to podcasting fame and how they've dealt with it and all that. So you're getting a lot of backstory about their friendship and their relationship through those chapters. So it's not like a murder mystery, but there is a mystery aspect to it where you don't know where Joy went. You don't who's responsible for it. There's a lot of clues and Benny's trying to unravel it. There was also a Joy had a stalker at one point. So there's like multiple suspects about who it could be.
[00:50:08] But I really enjoyed the twists and turns. At the end of the day, I think Annie would agree. They sort of have to wrap it up quickly at the and some things kind of feel like, really, that's how you wanted to finish it? But I will say that I listened to this on audiobook. And now friends, we are a print bookstore, so I do want you to buy this book. But if you get the chance and go to our friends at Libro.fm and purchase this audiobook too, because the audio book experience for this because it is a podcast based storyline, they have excerpts from like as if there really is a podcast that they're doing. And their vocal chemistry was so good that I believe that these were two people literally who were friends who had a will they won't they who, really genuinely liked each other. And it was a podcast I would listen to. I was like make this podcast. I'll listen to this with these two people. I think it's Julia. Am I wrong? Was it Julia Whelan?
Annie Jones [00:51:11] It's Julia Whelan.
Erin [00:51:13] And then the guy also sounded it was pretty recognizable voice.
Annie Jones [00:51:17] His voice was recognizable too, yeah.
Erin [00:51:19] Yeah. He had a really great voice, but it's a great audio book. Again, it's not like probably going to win any sort of awards, but it kept me reading. And, to me, that's the mark of a good book. So it kept me wanting to know what's going to happen. Where is Joy? Are she and Benny ever going to get together? There's a little bit of romance, but I wouldn't call it a romance book either. It's really more about the podcasting and their friendship. And then, of course, the disappearance. So I really enjoyed it. It makes a great audiobook and it comes out March 10th.
Annie Jones [00:51:53] I thought it was great. It reminded me in some ways of that one-- didn't we all three do Listen for the Lie?
Olivia [00:51:58] Yeah.
Erin [00:51:59] Yeah.
Annie Jones [00:51:59] It reminded a little bit of that. I loved this one. I had some qualms with the ending. But the reading experience was fun. Like I was hooked. I wanted to know what happened. I really liked it. Okay, those are some good books. You'll both be pleased to know after last month's episode, I read Warning Signs, which was an Olivia pick. And I read The People [inaudible] which was an Erin's pick. And so this month I'm like I think I'm going to read The Fountain and Once and Again. So stay tuned. As we said at the top of the episode, if you are interested in any of these March new releases, you can go to bookshelfthomasville.com and type episode 571 into the search bar, and you'll see all today's books listed. You can use code NEWRELEASEPLEASE at checkout to get 10% off your order of any of today's titles. This week, I'm reading Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester. Olivia, what are you reading?
Olivia [00:53:00] I am reading Devious Prey by Scott Reintgen.
Annie Jones [00:53:03] And Erin, what are you reading?
Erin [00:53:06] This week I'm listening to Escape by Stephen Fishbach.
Annie Jones: From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website:
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Special thanks to Studio D Podcast Production for production of From the Front Porch and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
Our Executive Producers of today’s episode are…
Cammy Tidwell, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Stephanie Dean, Ashley Ferrell, Gene Queens, Beth, Jammie Treadwell…
Executive Producers (Read Their Own Names): Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins
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