Catherine Newman is the author of the kids' how-to books How to Be a Person and What Can ISay?, the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night, and the food and parenting blog Ben and Birdy, and she edits the non-profit kids' cooking magazine ChopChop. She is also the etiquette columnist for Real Simple magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Boston Globe, and many other publications. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her family.
Proof of Progress (2026) Elizabeth Castellano "I loved this book, filled with deliciously nutty, bite-sized vignettes that go down so easy. Like Grace Paley, Elizabeth Castellano is a master of low-key humor refracted through an eye for the absurd. Her voice is cynical without turning hopeless, comedic but never straying into satire. Pure pleasure."
Sophie, Standing There (2026) Meg Mason "Sophie, Standing There unfolds like a strange origami crane in reverse - so achingly tender and so brilliantly subtle that I could never put it down. The loneliness of our inner world and the quiet movement towards connection - nobody evokes it as breathtakingly as Meg Mason. And by 'it', I guess I mean simply being a person. Dazzling,"
The Seekers of Deer Creek (2026) Thao Thai "The Seekers of Deer Creek is a beautiful book: a kind of ghost story wound through with artistic passion, a legacy of violence, and the indelible intimacy of sisterhood. Thao Thai explores familial inheritance in a way that illuminates the inevitability of its contradictions: a crushing burden; a magical gift."
People in Love (2026) Claire Daverley "People in Love is pure heartache, pure poetry, pure, brilliant moonbeam Claire Daverley. The revelations in this novel glow like opals: fiery, clear, milky, the way life is. I couldn't wait to see what would happen, even though I never wanted it to end."
Take Me With You (2026) Steven Rowley "Only national treasure Steven Rowley could blur the otherworldly with the everyday and turn all of it into heartache-flavored comedy."
Dolly All the Time (2026) Annabel Monaghan "I have fallen in love with Dolly. And with funny, fizzing Annabel Monaghan. And with love itself! This book is like a spicy margarita or a magic ice cream cone, the way it's sweet and a little salty and tart and hot and just the tiniest bit bitter. And then also deeply, surprisingly nourishing. What anabsolute treat is what I'm trying to say. I wish I could read it again for the first time. (Lucky, lucky you!)."
The Last Letters of Sally and Walter (2026) Cammie McGovern "The Last Letters of Sally and Walter is a funny, tender, deliciously nerdy, wildly romantic love story. Nobody celebrates oddballs and second chances like Cammie McGovern. Nobody better understands the body's inevitable failings and the heart's indomitable courage. It's so good it made me get out my Scrabble board and invite my husband to play, just so I could live in Sally and Walter's world a little longer. It's so good I cried when it was over."
In the Family Way (2025) Laney Katz Becker "In the Family Way bursts with the complexity, drama, and warmth of Call the Midwife, but set at the canasta and kitchen tables of 1960s suburban America. This timely, timeless novel captures not only the reproductive horrors of that era but also political awakening and a kind of nostalgic hope: it's a changing world, and Roe, behind us now, was glimmering on the horizon then. Laney Katz Becker so beautifully reveals that where there are women's hardships, there is consolation to be found, then and still, in each other's company and care."
Girls Girls Girls (2025) Shoshana von Blanckensee "Girls Girls Girls floored me - the nostalgic angst and agony of it, the heat and beauty and tenderness. Shoshana von Blanckensee puts it all on the page so viscerally: lust, hunger, death, sex, grief, love and every other thing a human body is and does. It's completely extraordinary."
The Best We Could Hope For (2025) Nicola Kraus "For anyone who grew up with Kramer vs. Kramer and MTV, Kraus perfectly captures the ache and stretch of adolescence, the grief and rage of middle age, and the loss and doubt that form the drumbeat beneath it all. Consistently surprising in all the best ways, this book is a beacon!"
The Road to Tender Hearts (2025) Annie Hartnett "A feel-good, feel-sad, warm, dark, and funny road-trip story, in the grand tradition of Little Miss Sunshine . . . I fell in love with the characters individually but also as one big, messy family, which is what this tenderhearted book is all about."
All That Life Can Afford (2025) Emily Everett "All That Life Can Afford absolutely sparkles. It's somehow completely romantic even as it plays with the conventions of romance; it's luminous while questioning luminousness; and it's a book with the tenderness of grief at its heart. Emily Everett is a massive talent. I can't wait to read more."
Fundamentally (2025) Nussaibah Younis "Tart, tender, trenchant, and hilarious, Fundamentally is a brilliant novel about faith and friendship that refuses to be any one single thing - because it is EVERYTHING. Nussaibah Younis is a genius."
Goodbye Birdie Greenwing (2024) Ericka Waller "Oh, the exquisite, tender misfits in Goodbye Birdie Greenwing! I love them all. I love the way loneliness is gathered up into such a delightfully odd community. I love the entire book."
Blank (2024) Zibby Owens "This is a sunny rom-com with a deep, dark heart - comedic and sad in equal measures. Yes, it's a meta-satire about the publishing industry, but it's also an authentically serious story about the pressure to be everything to everyone. Or, in other words, about what it means to be a woman."
Significant Others (2024) Zoe Eisenberg "Significant Others is so intimately raw and hopeful, I couldn't put it down and when I finally did, because I'd finished it, I had literal goosebumps. To write this way about families and friendships made and remade, about the push and pull of love and the way we're all just crazy puzzle pieces floating around, trying to understand what the whole picture might look like and how beautiful it might be - amazing"
Piglet (2024) Lottie Hazell "Piglet is luscious and disturbing and propulsive, and I completely devoured it. It's a book about hunger and secrecy and women made small by convention. And it's a book that tears at the surface of things to reveal the vast, messy truth of a body with a beating heart."
Welcome Home, Stranger (2023) Kate Christensen "A fantastic study in loss - the grief kind and the yearning too, oh my god the yearning! Plus menopause. Plus Portland, Maine. I loved it."
My Last Innocent Year (2023) Daisy Alpert Florin "I tore through this sparkling and gritty coming-of-age novel, nodding the whole time. Yes, desire is messy. Sexuality can blur into violence. All the difficult, gray truths don't resolve into black-and-white clarity just because we wish they would. Yes, yes, yes. Daisy Florin is an astonishing writer and My Last Innocent Year is a remarkable book."
