Reading Recommendations Full of Love, Wit and Wonder: An Exclusive Guest Post by Mary Bly, Author of Lizzie & Dante

We fell head-over-heels for Mary Bly’s Lizzie & Dante, a wonderful, charming story of love and hope and possibility that reminds us of two of our most favorite novels about love, Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter and The Vacationers by Emma Straub, that’s perfect for reading at the beach, in a park, or in a favorite chair. You may not know that Mary is both a Shakespeare scholar and a romance author (writing under the name Eloisa James), but you’re about to learn she’s great with a book recommendation. Mary writes: “If you are longing for a book that will sweep you from your couch into a world of witty, intelligent conversation, I have your next read! For this list, I’m drawing on both sides of my double life: books recommended by a Shakespeare professor and a romance author. Plus one cookbook, because we should all have ambition.”

Pip Williams’s The Dictionary of Lost Words is a fantastic debut about a young girl who hides under the table while the first Oxford English Dictionary is being compiled by a team of male scholars, catching discarded words such as “bondmaid” (an enslaved woman). Eventually, she makes her own collection. The writing is beautiful, and the subject engaging and timely.

When my mother was in hospice, I saved a Lisa Kleypas novel to take me through the long nights because they are that good. Grounds for rejoicing: Devil in Disguise comes out July 27. It’s about a Victorian-era strong-willed young widow and a Scottish whiskey distiller; if you’re in Bridgerton withdrawal, this book will make you happy.

We’re supposed to eat more vegetables, eschew meat, stay healthy: easier said than done. Eric Ripert’s Vegetable Simple can help. I love his sweet pea soup recipe (using frozen peas: thank you!). Watermelon pizza with feta? Fantastic. If even the pandemic led you to hate your own kitchen, this book will inspire.

Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day is a brilliant rendition of The Tempest set on the all-Black island of Willow Springs off the Georgia Coast. This is the kind of story that sinks hooks into your imagination and doesn’t let go: you’ll still be thinking of it years later.

If The Tempest isn’t your cup of tea, how about Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, re-imagined as Incense and Sensibility, part of Sonali Dev’s Austen series? Dev’s series follows a family of Royalty-descended Indian Americans living in San Francisco. Yash Raje is a brilliant, ambitious politician who survives an assassination attempt; India Dashwood is the stress management coach his family hires to keep him calm. Ha! It’s an impossible task and so much fun to read.

I loved the group of intrepid young women from Smith College who risked their lives at the height of World War I in Lauren Willig’s Band of Sisters. Based on a true story of Smithies who took over a French chateau to bring medicine and aid—despite shelling, secrets, and squabbling. Not only entertaining but thought-provoking.

Also based on a true story, Vanessa Riley’s Island Queen brings to life an enslaved woman, Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, who buys her freedom to become one of the most wealthy landowners in the West Indies. Doll defies all authority and morality; her struggles to balance her business and family are both fascinating and familiar.

Susan Elizabeth Philip is one of the funniest authors I know, and When Stars Collide is one of her best. During a one-month publicity tour, a sardonic football player with a deadpan delivery is crossing the country with a gorgeous opera singer whom he labels “the Diva.” Olivia’s favorite term for him? “Vermin!” One of the best enemies-to-lovers I’ve read in ages.

In the last year, I dreamed of escape from New York—and found my way to Greece by way of the ecstatically written My Family and Other Animals 9780142004418 by Gerald Durrell. Like any book from the 1950s, it shows its age occasionally, but I found this lyrical, true story of a child’s five years in Greece to be wondrous. Even better than All Creatures Great & Small.

If I was truly able to escape, I’d like to go to space—in particular, the version dreamed up by Becky Chambers. She has new books coming out, but in case you missed her debut, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, leap on it! This is space opera with a Star Wars twist and far more humanity than many war-oriented books set in outer space.