Dear readers, I recently went on a trip with three of my dearest childhood friends, something we try to do every year. We’ve known each other since age 11, when I arrived as the new girl in a sea of lifers at our K-12 school, and our friendship is bone deep — fueled by the kind of love that can come only from seeing one another through the frizzy angst of adolescence, the triumphs and heartbreaks of young adulthood, the challenges of sick parents and career struggles and everything in between. This was our most ambitious trip yet — three countries in 10 days — and while everything went relatively smoothly, there were a few inevitable hiccups. Confronted by a last-minute flight cancellation or a hammam dress code snafu while alone on another continent, I might be tempted to succumb to the full flush of panic. But together, we tackled these road bumps as a team, finding the humor (“We’ll tell this story for years!”) and silver linings (“What if we used this unexpected layover to tour Rome?”) in the rough patches. It was a reminder of what a gift it is to know and be known so well — to look at someone and see all their quirks and gifts and flaws, all of the people they have been and could be. And it was also a reminder that, when you do find yourself in a sticky situation — whether a travel delay, a haunted mansion or a supposedly impenetrable prison — there’s nothing better than having a few good friends in there with you. —Jennifer “Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts,” by Kate RacculiaFiction, 2019
At the beginning of Racculia’s delightful cozy mystery, friends are not something Tuesday Mooney has in abundance. An admin at a hospital, where she spends her days digging up dirt on potential donors, she purposefully keeps other people at bay. Even her one friend, Dex, finds her hard to read. “Since she wouldn’t take him into her confidence, he could only romanticize her,” Racculia writes. “He could only imagine how she’d managed to get her great heart squashed.” The answer lies in the disappearance of her best friend, Abby, when they were 16. Tuesday’s unresolved grief over that shattering loss has turned her into a shadow, lurking in the margins of her own life and spending more time watching “Twin Peaks” — and talking to Abby’s ghost, the persistent voice in her head — than engaging with the living. But when an eccentric billionaire with an Edgar Allan Poe obsession dies and leaves behind a scavenger hunt through the city of Boston, the winners of which will inherit his fortune (including his super creepy, definitely haunted house), puzzle-loving Tuesday can’t resist jumping into the fray. She joins forces with Dex; her motherless teenage neighbor, Dorry; and Archie, the disgraced scion of one of Boston’s richest families, who is harboring secrets of his own. The book is a perfectly crafted puzzle box of literary allusions and satisfying twists that all click into place for the dramatic finish. But it is also, ultimately, a book about how terrifying and rewarding it is to let people know you — and about the bonds between BFFs that cannot be broken, even by death. Read if you like: “The Westing Game,” by Ellen Raskin; “These Summer Storms,” by Sarah MacLean; “The Fall of the House of Usher,” both the Poe short story and the Mike Flanagan TV series; “Night Film,” by Marisha Pessl; Season 1 of “Veronica Mars.” “Six of Crows,” by Leigh BardugoFiction, 2015
My favorite part of every heist movie is the team-up montage — the slow crescendo as the gang assembles for a quest that requires each of their particular skills. Here, Kaz Brekker, the leader of the Dregs and teenage king of Ketterdam’s underworld, picks each member of his crew with care: Inej, an acrobatic spy; Nina, a magically powered healer; Matthias, a stoic ex-soldier; Jesper, a cocky sharpshooter; and Wylan, a runaway demolitions expert. Together, they accept a seemingly impossible job: breaking into an impenetrable frozen prison and extracting a chemist whose deadly new drug could reshape their world. “Six of Crows,” which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, is one of several entries in Bardugo’s sprawling Grishaverse — which also includes the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the King of Scars duology — and this breakneck fantasy heist novel (along with its sequel, “Crooked Kingdom”) is hands down my favorite. A lot of fantasy books explore the idea of found family, but you will not find a scrappier or more fiercely loyal clan than the crows. As individuals, they are each outcasts who learned from a young age to set aside childish indulgences like trust or frivolity and fend for themselves. But together, they are able to take the bad cards they’ve been dealt and shuffle them into an underdog’s advantage. They may express their love through black humor — their refrain before starting a job is “No mourners, no funerals” — but that mercenary front protects a tender and unbreakable core. No matter what deadly scrapes they get into (and morally questionable tactics they employ to get out), you root for them the whole way. Read if you like: “A Darker Shade of Magic,” by V.E. Schwab; “The Lies of Locke Lamora,” by Scott Lynch; “Oceans 11”; the rest of Bardugo’s Grishaverse (and its short-lived Netflix adaptation, “Shadow and Bone”). We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Friendly reminder: Check your local library for books! Many libraries allow you to reserve copies online. Like this email? Sign-up here or forward it to your friends. Have a suggestion or two on how we can improve it? Let us know at books@nytimes.com. Plunge further into books at The New York Times or our reading recommendations.
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