The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
This heartwarming, hopeful and delicious novel will give you all the feels as you enter Lillian’s restaurant during a monthly cooking class where eight students gather to learn about food—and life. Each bringing their own pasts and insecurities, unlikely friendships are formed and the power of food brings small doses of healing.
The Women by Kristin Hannah
To her parent’s chagrin, Frances “Frankie” McGrath, a young woman from a wealthy society family in California follows her brother to Vietnam by joining the Army Nurse Corps as a combat nurse where she is thrown into the haunting catastrophe of war. Frankie meets lifelong friends Barb and Ethel living in their cramped, hot, flooded, muddy hooch and operating on wounded and dying men. When Frankie returns home, she suffers from PTSD, grief, betrayal and addiction. An ode to the forgotten nurses that served in Vietnam, this is a story of courage, resilience, heartbreak, the horrors of war and the astounding power of female friendships. Women, too, are certainly heroes.
For Kids: Thanksgiving in the Woods by Phyllis Alsdurf
For Middle-Grade: The Adventures of Geraldine Woolkins by Karin Kaufman
For YA: Beyond the Bright Sea by Lauren Wolk
Casie Leigh Lukes is a Minnesota-based writer, editor, and owner of Cocoa&Champagne—creator of custom library curations. You can find her on Instagram @cocoaandchampagne.
