Seating Arrangements: A Novel by Maggie Shipstead
When I read Seating Arrangements in the summer of 2012, I was absolutely hooked. Who was this author? I wondered. Shipstead went on to write the acclaimed novel The Great Circle, but this is my favorite Shipstead novel. A family wedding draws home a cast of characters to the New England island of Waskeke where the patriarch, Winn Van Meter, and his wife, Biddy, host their daughter Daphne’s wedding. I can still hear the screen door slamming and the boards creaking in their kitchen. Daphne, her sister, her bridesmaid, the groom, the best man; everyone is up to something unexpected in this weekend-long escape. The perfect houseguest gift. —Z.O.
Slow Horses by Mick Heron
I dubiously bought this a few years back, when I asked a British bookseller to tell me about a book that he loved that was unknown to Americans. I am not the conventional mystery type, but, like Atkinson and French’s, this delightful book is a thriller packed with nuanced characters. Nominally the story of a band of misfit, burnt-out, washed up, or otherwise problematic former MI-5 employees who have been banished to “Slough House”—a kind of holding pen for officers and agents who are no longer useful to the security service, but who cannot, for various reasons, be released into civilian society. The hero is an officer who suspects he has been sidelined for nefarious reasons, and sees in an unfolding disaster an opportunity to redeem himself. This story became the basis for an excellent Apple TV+ series, but read the book first. You won’t regret it! —C.S.
