Every December, Patty has a tradition of looking at the year in books with Joanne Berg and Jayne Rowsam of independent bookstore Mystery to Me. Today on the show, they talk about some of their favorites in mysteries and other fiction, non-fiction, children’s and YA literature, cookbooks, and more.

They also touch on Mystery to Me’s bilingual book club, the explosion of local authors, and the impact of shopping local.

Joanne and Jayne just launched a monthly podcast called Open Books. You can subscribe here or listen on SoundCloud here.

Books Mentioned

The Odyssey, new translation by Emily Wilson

Circe by Madeline Miller

Metropolitan Stories by Christine Coulson

The Witches of St. Petersburg by Imogen Edwards-Jones

Drag Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (co-winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature)

Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future by Kate Brown (listen to our interview with the Kate Brown here)

The Satapur Moonstone and The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

A Match Made for Murder by Iona Whishaw

Books by A. D. Scott

Books by Laurie R. King

Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

The Overstory by Richard Powers

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (co-winner of the 2019 Man Booker Prize)

La casa de los espíritus (The House of Spirits) by Isabel Allende

Bad Axe County by John Galligan

Fiddling with Fate by Kathleen Ernst

Resistance Women by Jennifer Chiaverini

Country Music USA by Bill Malone

The Second Home by Christina Clancy

A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father by David Maraniss (listen to our interview with the David Maraniss here)

Cover photo by Claudia Wolff on Unsplash / text added