On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Seeing a new work on the shelf written by an author you love can feel like winning the lottery. Shirley Fergenson of The Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore, Md., remembers being absolutely captivated by Daniyal Mueenuddin’s 2009 short story collection “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

This year — 17 years later — he’s published a new work of fiction, entitled “This Is Where the Serpent Lives.”

Fergenson says when she saw it, she “practically jumped up and down. I took it home, I read it, and I fell in love with it. It's the same voice. I loved it then, and I love it still.”

“This Is Where the Serpent Lives” is a sprawling work set in Pakistan over several decades, starting in the 1950s. It’s being marketed as a novel, but Fergenson says it’s actually three short stories and a novella with interlinking characters.

“It sort of feels like ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ with a little bit of ‘The Godfather’ thrown in,” she says.

“There are rich landowners, there are servants, forbidden Love, ambition, corruption. There is moral compromise and fluid loyalty. It is a class-and-cast panorama of amazingly rich characters. Each one could have a whole story written about them. They're so full of life.”

“The main reason to read this book is the exquisite writing, but if you need a story that is one story arc that takes you from the beginning to the end, this is not your story.

There are linkages, but they're literary, and they are so beautifully told that even in the bleakest, darkest setting, every detail feels like a photograph through an artist's filter. And the final novella is so powerful that it feels like its own full novel.”

Listen to an NPR interview with the author: Daniyal Mueenuddin discusses his debut novel, 'This Is Where the Serpent Lives' : NPR

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Lauren Groff’s novels and short stories have been finalists three times for the National Book Award, and now she’s out with a new collection of short stories entitled “Brawler.”

Maire Wilson of Huxley & Hiro Booksellers in Wilmington, Del., says this work is just as strong as her others.

Unlike Groff's earlier short story collection, “Florida,” the nine stories in “Brawler” vary their locations as well as time periods and life circumstances.

In “What’s the time, Mr. Wolf?,” the longest piece in the book, a young man struggling with alcoholism retreats to his family’s estate to grapple with the ways his life has fallen short of his expectations. “The Wind” is the story of fleeing domestic abuse, passed from mother to daughter.

In each story, Wilson says, “everything is so elegantly simple that it's almost like maintaining a conversation with the person across from you, or just kind of listening into this life story. I feel like I'm in the room.”

Wilson loves Groff’s “attention to the liveliness of the surroundings” in each story, adding that she comes out of Groff’s novels and short stories "just kind of feeling full” and satisfied.

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Charlotte Glover of Parnassus Books and Gifts in Ketchikan, Alaska, recommends a novel that will immerse you deeply in the Pacific Northwest.

She appreciates the lovely characters, focus on nature, and beautiful writing of Eileen Garvin’s novel “Crow Talk.” Garvin gained national attention for her novel “The Music of Bees,” and her new novel “Bumblebee Season” comes out April 21.

For Glover, it was the mention of crows in the title that first drew her to “Crow Talk”: crows and ravens are of huge importance across the Pacific Northwest, from her bookstore’s location in the Alaskan panhandle to the novel’s setting in the Hood River area of Oregon.

The story follows Frankie, an ornithologist who has retreated to a small family cabin by a lake to mourn the loss of her father and figure out a path to finish her dissertation on spotted owls. It’s autumn, and the only other residents are a family, Anne and Tim and their five-year-old autistic son, who isn't speaking.

As Glover explains, these lonely, wayward characters find each other and converge over caring for a baby crow. Frankie and Anne forge a friendship as they care for both the bird and the boy.

“Nature is a huge character in this book,” says Glover, “It’s a book that you can touch, smell, feel, taste, and hear. That's always what I'm looking for in a book is an immersive experience.”

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

A book can be a vehicle of empathy, inviting us to walk around in someone else’s world for a while.

Elizabeth Mattson of Henry's Books in Spearfish, South Dakota, says her top pick for novels in this category is "Theo of Golden" by Allen Levi.

Here’s the scenario: In the southern U.S. city of Golden, there’s a bustling coffee shop called The Chalice with 92 pencil-drawn portraits of townspeople, created by a local artist.

When Theo, an elderly man from Portugal, arrives in Golden and decides to settle there, the portraits speak to him. He begins purchasing them one by one and gifting them to the individuals depicted in the portraits.

These acts of conversation, connection, and generosity ripple outward through the community.

Running through the story is a question: Who is Theo, and why is he there?

For readers who prefer to listen to their books, Mattson also says the narrator in the audiobook is excellent.

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Do you love a good villain story? 

Sarah DiMaria of Cavalier House Books in Denham Springs, Louisiana, does, and she’s raving about Rachel Hochhauser’s debut “Lady Tremaine.” This retelling of Cinderella from the point of view of the stepmother is being marketed as “Bridgerton” meets “Circe.”  

Lady Etheldreda Verity Isolde Tremaine Bramley finds herself in charge of two daughters and a step-daughter in a dilapidated house. As her frustrations and worries mount, she supports her family by hunting with her peregrine falcon. 

DiMaria particularly appreciated the way the bond between the protagonist and her fierce, predatory partner is written. 

Lady Tremaine is determined to see her daughters married well so that her family can have financial security. But at what cost? Especially when she discovers the prince’s family is not as charming as it seems on the surface... 

What unfolds, DiMaria says, is a story rooted in female relationships and forging your own path in the world. 

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Coco Casey of Buxton Books in Charleston, S.C., recommends a favorite author local to her store: horror master Grady Hendrix. His novel, “Witchcraft for Wayward Girls,” is out in paperback. 

The novel follows a group of pregnant teenage girls in a maternity home who discover a spell book that pulls them into the world of witchcraft and the supernatural. The horror in this book, however, lies in the girls’ real-life situation, which is historically based. 

The book is set in what’s called the Baby Scoop Era, from the 1940s to 1973, before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal and Title IX protected pregnant students from discrimination.

The girls were brought to his home to hide their pregnancies; they were given false names and strictly monitored, with the expectation that their babies would be given up for adoption. 

"In a world where they have very little control over their own bodies and their own fates, they are given this tool to have control in other realms that they didn't know was possible before,” Casey says. 

She says this novel, set in 1970, is “on the lower end of fear factor” for Hendrix’s books, though there is body horror, and the birth scenes are not for the faint-of-heart. She calls the books’ antagonists well-written and “very scary,” mostly because such situations exist.

Casey recommends reading the afterward as well. 

"The afterword and the notes are fascinating. He did a lot of research into covens and their lineages, into the medical side of these stories, and into the legal side of these stories. And it's very hard to find accurate historical research for a lot of this, because the point of these homes was that there was no documentation and that it was all buried.” 

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Sometimes, you just want to escape into a book.

For those who enjoy a cozy romance, Marissa Mills of Luminary Books in Gardnerville, Nevada, says her recent favorite is the novel "If it Makes You Happy" by Julie Olivia.  

Think “Gilmore Girls” meets “When Harry Met Sally.” Set in a small town (of course!) in Vermont in 1997, this friends-to-lovers novel is a sweet story with a bit of spice.

Michelle is taking over her mother’s bed and breakfast. Cliff, the single dad next door, is a baker who starts teaching Michelle how to bake so she can handle the breakfast part of her new venture.

Mills says the book has grumpy/sunshine, black cat/golden retriever energy. She appreciates that Cliff’s daughters are key characters in the book, as is Michelle’s dog, Rocket. 

It’s not a coincidence that the cover, with its couple strolling near a town-square gazebo, evokes “Gilmore Girls." 

Julia Olivia has many romance titles to her name, but “If It Makes You Happy,” published by  Penguin Random House, is her first break into major bookstores. 

Bookseller Mills says that after their store book club read it, “they fell in love with the author and her writing, and they went back and started reading all of her other works.” 

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

More than 10 weeks after the federal immigration enforcement surge began in Minnesota, Border Czar Tom Homan announced this week that federal agents would be drawing down and Operation Metro Surge was coming to an end, though he stressed that immigration enforcement would continue. 

In that environment, Minnesota’s indie bookstores remain a source of books for those seeking both to understand what’s happening in this country and to escape from it. 

For those who are leaning in, Makkah Abdur Salaam of Black Garnet Books in St. Paul recommends a collection of down-to-earth letters designed to meet you where you are. It’s called “Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis,” edited by Kelly Hayes. 

The letters come from contemporary activists and writers from all walks of life whose work focuses on a variety of issues. The letters are titled to help you find what you need in the moment.

There are titles like “Read this if someone you loved has killed themselves or wants to, and maybe you want to, but you also want to survive.” Or, "Read this if you've been assaulted. I believe you.” Or, “Read this if you are panicking about collapse.” 

Overall, Abdur Salaam says, the letters offer advice for those who are in it for the long haul. 

“It talks a lot about sustainable activism and how that requires mutual aid, collective work with your community, and mutual care. And it also talks about how hope is a practice: it's something that you have to contribute to each day and figure out how that looks for you. [The collection talks about] how conflict is inevitable in any movement, and how to basically navigate that, and how it takes very thoughtful and purposeful action to work through that. That’s how movements survive and stay sustainable.” 

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

With the surge of ICE operations in Minnesota now in its third month, indie bookstore owners in the Twin Cities and beyond say that customers are coming in looking for three things: community, books to help them understand what's happening and books to help them escape.  

Rima Parikh, owner of the science-first bookstore The Thinking Spot in Wayzata, with some of her recommendations for leaning in. 

For a fiction read, Parikh says the classic novel “1984” by George Orwell has been popular. Set in a dystopian future where Big Brother is always watching, the novel describes a world where language is censored, history is changed, and the party in power tells people to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. 

For a historical perspective, Parikh recommends the nonfiction book “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America” by historian Heather Cox Richardson. 

“There are many books that try to explain the moment, but she goes way back. She goes back to the founding of America and goes through every twist and turn of our meandering history,” Parikh says. “[She] has a coherent narrative through the whole thing explaining how we got here. And essentially, her theme is that a small group of wealthy individuals have weaponized language and promoted false history, which has led us into the state of authoritarianism.”  

For a book to spark conversations among children and adults alike, Parikh recommends a pair of books, “An Illustrated Guide to Bad Arguments” and “An Illustrated Guide to Loaded Language” by Ali Almossawi. These short, illustrated books introduce logical fallacies and other ways language is used to mislead others.  

She offers this example in the book of a false equivalence: 

“It says, yesterday's violence left 12 rabbits with lost limbs and one badger with slight shoulder pain. And the response: ‘We urge both sides to show restraint.’  

“Taken as itself,” Parikh says, “urging both sides to show restraint, yes, [that’s] perfectly valid. However, in this particular context, both sides are not equivalent.” 

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Minnesota is in the national spotlight as the massive federal ICE operation continues. It can be a challenge to know how to talk to children about this issue, and books can be conversation starters for families, as well as sources of comfort.

Timothy Otte of Wild Rumpus Books in Minneapolis says his bookstore, which focuses on books for children, is getting requests for books about community and social justice. And while there is no one perfect book to speak to this moment, he finds himself regularly thinking about a picture book by Oliver Jeffers entitled “Begin Again: How We Got Here and Where We Might Go — Our Human Story. So Far.”

Jeffers grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the politically turbulent 1970s and 80’s, and his picture books often focus, in gentle ways, on how we treat each other and live together on one planet.

"Begin Again” is a book that Otte says feels appropriate for children and adults alike.

Here’s how Otte describes the book:

“It is about what we can do and what we can build together.

“In the book, Jeffers has a little essay describing the inspiration for the book, and in it, he says that he no longer asks people what kind of world they want, because what people say is in the negative.

“They say, ‘This is the kind of world I don't want.’ So now he asks, ‘How do you want to feel?’ And I think that's such a brilliant question, because we can build a world in which we all feel safe, we feel in community, we feel held. We want to have a place to live and food to eat and a group to be in, whether that's a family or a larger community.

“This book is a great place to find inspiration for how to make that world a reality, and the kinds of questions that we need to ask both ourselves and the people around us if we want to build that world.”