If you’re looking for a winter break read, a present for your favorite bookworm, or a gift with some local flavor for your next white elephant exchange, we’ve got you covered. Between our weekly Culture newsletter picks and monthly Read This Now reviews, we’ve spent a lot of time reading books with local and regional ties in 2023. Check out the list below to find recommendations across all kinds of genres, from children’s books to poetry and local travel.
Children’s Books
Stay up-to-date with the local arts scene
Subscribe to the weekly St. Louis Arts+Culture newsletter to discover must-attend art exhibits, performances, festivals, and more.
This powerful reverse immigration story from debut authors and Wash. U. students Vivienne Chang and Eugenia Yoh follows Lily, a young Taiwanese-American girl, as she moves back to Taiwan with her mom.
Clayton High School senior Grace Wolf published her first children’s book, May I Sit at The Table? earlier this year. It follows Abby, a young deaf girl attending an elementary school with no other deaf children. The seeks to teach empathy and encourage friendships among those with differences.
Classics Revisited
It’s been 30 years since local author David Haynes first published his coming-of-age novel, Right by My Side, following 15-year-old Marshall Field. This year, the novel was acknowledged with a Penguin Classics edition featuring a foreword by National Book Award finalist Jamel Brinkley and a new Q&A with Haynes.
Originally published in 1984, this long-out-of-print collection of interviews with Black women writers has reemerged to educate and inspire a new generation of readers. Black Women Writers at Work offers interviews with literary giants, among them two women with local ties: Maya Angelou and Ntozake Shange.
Fantasy
Sir Callie and the Dragon’s Roost
Dive back into the world of Helston with Callie, Willow, Elowen, and Edwyn in this second installment of the Sir Callie series from local author Esme Symes-Smith. Following the events of the first novel, things in Helston are changing for the better—in some ways. But when anti-magic sentiment grows and tolerance wanes, Sir Callie and their friends must make the choice to leave home in order to keep fighting to save it.
In this tale from St. Louis–based fantasy author Emma Mills, a baker’s apprentice named Aurelie discovers a talent for a long-ignored form of magic and soon finds herself trading sugar and flour for new companions and a dangerous quest.
Fiction by Local Authors
Local author Samantha Markum’s first novel, The May End Badly, was perhaps our favorite rom-com of 2022. Markum’s follow-up, You Wouldn’t Dare, is a summertime tale of love and change that balances laughs and angst as it follows heroine Junie Nash.
“Scams, schemes, and the absurdity of the American Dream” are at the center of this queer take on the caper from Southern Illinois University professor Rafael Frumkin.
Local author and pastor Tabitha Caplinger is already the author of The Wolf Queen, and the Chronicle of the Three Trilogy. Her most recent release is a story of “community, healing, and truth” amidst a dystopian setting.
Glamour, intrigue, and the dark secrets of the fabulously wealthy collide in this novel from local author Emily Bain Murphy. This latest work of historical fiction from the author of Splinters of Scarlet and The Disappearances takes readers back in time to 1930 and the estate of Truman Byrd, a golden-age Hollywood magnate with plenty of skeletons in his abundant closets.
In this novel from Andy Mozina, economics professor Mike Kovacs already has some personal tragedies to maneuver through when another problem pops up: He’s just killed two bicyclists while driving drunk near a Michigan beach. Kovacs might just get away with it, too, but when he gets tangled up in the life of his neighbor Claire, who also happens to be the mother of one of the victims, things get even more complicated.
Touch tells the story of a 15-year-old schoolgirl named Ginny who acquires varied talents through the power of touch. Readers of all ages will find connections with the themes of familial relationships, bullying, and anxiety.
Atomic Family captures the lives and dramas of a small South Carolina family living under the threat and pressure of nuclear war. The novel follows the Porter family through a single day where propaganda, protest, and secrecy meet and come to a head.
Fiction with Local Flavor
Author and longtime local columnist Wm. Stage took some inspiration from the epic myth for this latest novel, adding a colorful cast of characters and dropping the story into St. Louis and Southern Illinois for a tale that’s both exciting and familiar.
Set during the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Columbia, Missouri–based author Steve Wiegenstein’s historical novel puts city and country folk on a collision course with disastrous consequences. Land of Joys is the fourth novel that Wiegenstein has written featuring the fictional Ozark village of Daybreak.
St. Louis–born comic Cedric the Entertainer tried his hand at fiction this year with the release of Flipping Boxcars, a crime caper set during the Great Depression and World War II.
Local author (and former Left Bank bookseller) Mark W. Tiedemann’s most recent novel is set in the aftermath of the 1780 Battle of St. Louis. Carolyn Ives Gilman, author of Dark Orbit and Lewis and Clark: Across The Divide, has called it “a hard book to put down.”
The Unstoppable Eliza Haycraft
Former TV news reporter Diana Dempsey put her research skills to work to craft the story of Eliza Haycraft, who clawed her way from destitution to become one of the wealthiest women in 19th-century St. Louis, with plenty of adventure and scandal along the way. Indie Reader calls the novel “a beautifully written, compulsively readable tale that gives voice to this fascinating, larger-than-life figure from a neglected corner of history.”
The St. Louis–born author Marian O’Shea Wernicke has spent much of her time over the past decades in Florida and Texas, but she took inspiration from her family’s local history when writing her latest novel, Out of Ireland. The author of Toward That Which Is Beautiful and Tom O’Shea: A 20th Century Man already has plenty of experience crafting stirring historical narratives, but in Out of Ireland, Wernicke drew from the life of her own great-grandmother in creating protagonist Eileen.
History
Explore the complete story of Trans World Airlines, the once-popular airline that had roots in both St. Louis and Kansas City, with this release from the Missouri History Museum. In Come Fly with Me: The Rise and Fall of Trans World Airlines, authors Daniel Rust and Alan Hoffman tell the tale of how Charles Lindbergh, Howard Hughes, and Carl Icahn shaped an airline and an era.
A. A. Fischer’s St. Louis Streetscapes
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Fischer built hundreds of homes and apartment buildings around St. Louis and University City, many of which still bear his trademark broken frieze. In this first biography of Fischer, author Nancy Moore Hamilton explores the life, work, and legacy of the builder alongside more than 400 images and a full-color map of Fischer’s homes.
Growing Up St. Louis author Jim Merkel has also written such titles as Beer, Brats, and Baseball: St. Louis Germans and The Colorful Characters of St. Louis. In this collection, Merkel gathered together fascinating essays from St. Louis natives.
Places to Pray: Holy Sites in Catholic Missouri
Local author Patrick Murphy explores the state’s large collection of Catholic churches, shrines, convents, and monasteries. This exploration of regional architecture and religious history is presented alongside beautiful photography and archive images.
Local Travel
Reedy Press’ 100 Things to Do Before You Die series
If you’re planning a road trip, Reedy Press is likely to have a bucket list guide to help fill your days with fun things to do. For quick trips to the lake or across the river, check out 100 Things to Do at the Lake of the Ozarks Before You Die and 100 Things to Do in Illinois Before You Die.
Non-fiction
Drawing on the ideology of antiracism, educator and expert on race, class, and gender inequality in the workplace Dr. Adia Harvey Wingfield breaks down ways in which racism persists there and offers solutions in service of a more equitable future.
In Twice as Hard: The Stories of Black Women Who Fought to Become Physicians, from the Civil War to the 21st Century, author and Washington University in St. Louis alumna Jasmine Brown traces the historic accomplishments of nine Black women doctors in the United States.
Weaving Ourselves Whole: A Guide for Forming a Transformational Expressive Arts Circle
The six authors of Weaving Ourselves Whole have met consistently for 12 years, and in their engaging guide, they hope to help others replicate the transformational experience of embracing creativity together.
Edited by Amanda L. Izzo and Benjamin Looker, this collection chronicles the Black freedom struggle, lesbian and gay liberation, the peace movement, environmental and feminist activism, and other progressive initiatives in St. Louis.
Washington University professor emerita of biology Ursula Goodenough blends the scientific and spiritual in this book that has been called “beautiful, lyrical, fascinating, and outstanding.”
Herbs Around the Mediterranean
The St. Louis Herb Society—the 82-year-old group responsible for maintaining the Missouri Botanical Garden’s herb garden—used their expertise to craft this exploration of the regional herbs of the Mediterranean, from France and Italy to the eastern Adriatic and beyond.
Poetry
The Ferguson Report: An Erasure
From an ugly chapter of our city’s history, award-winning poet Nicole Sealey has distilled beauty. Her new collection of poems, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, takes the Department of Justice report detailing the killing of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson and redacts it to craft poignant verses from bureaucracy and brutality. An excerpt from the collection was previously awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2021.
Then The War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020
Washington University in St. Louis English professor Carl Phillips earned the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for this collection that “chronicles American culture as the country struggles to make sense of its politics, of life in the wake of a pandemic, and of our place in a changing global community.”
