This week, we feature an oft-quoted classic from ancient China and a spirited novel about strong Texas women and the ties that bind them.
Fiction
‘A Family of Good Women’
By Teddy Jones
After her mother’s death, Imogene Good left Burkburnett, Texas, to open a boarding house in Borger, a Panhandle Texas oilfield boomtown. She needed a fresh start. Serving meals to local working men in the 1920s isn’t teaching, but teaching jobs are scarce. Borger is dangerous, with plenty of organized crime. It’s hard for a single woman to navigate the town alone. In this warm-hearted novel, Imogene soon gains family, friends, and allies to help her, while she uncovers family secrets in her grandmother’s journals.
Stoney Creek Publishing Group, 2025, 354 pages
Nonfiction
‘Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World’
By Maryanne Wolf
In a series of letters addressed to “My Dear Reader,” Wolf, an expert in reading, its history, and its interaction with cognition, seeks to understand what the reading brain may become in a digital world. Wolf brings to her investigation her reading of literature, personal anecdotes, and massive research, both her own and that of others. Though she fears a digital short-circuiting of the reading brain, she’s also hopeful that some of us will preserve the reading mind and the wisdom that accompanies it.
Harper, 2018, 272 pages
Space
‘Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race’
By Christian Davenport
The commercial space market exploded in the first quarter of the 21st century. This book focuses on the race between Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX for commercial space supremacy in this century. It highlights the different approaches the two men took, the results each approach yielded, and their successes and shortcomings, placing the two companies in context with other commercial and governmental efforts. This is a wonderful look at the necessary steps to achieve results in a cutting-edge technology.
Crown Currency, 2025, 384 pages
History
‘Bruce Catton’s Civil War: The Army of the Potomac Trilogy’
By Bruce Catton
Considered a Civil War historian of the highest rank, Catton produced a vast quantity of volumes on the War Between the States. For those wishing for a solid introduction to the war with plenty of detail, this three volumes in one is a splendid selection. This volume, which allows readers to traverse through the years of the war from beginning to end, includes “Mr. Lincoln’s Army,” “Glory Road,” and “A Stillness at Appomattox”—the last of which earned Catton a Pulitzer Prize.
Library of America, 2022, 1,296 pages
Classics
‘The Art of War: A Norton Critical Edition’
By Sun Tzu, edited and translated by Michael Nylan
Here is a book we hear much about, but less often read. This new translation by history professor Michael Nylan seeks to capture the poetic beauty of the original. In addition, Nylan’s 26-page introduction concisely covers the historical importance of this classic of warfare. It then explains how readers can apply these stratagems to business, relationships, and more. Nylan also points us to the book’s advocacy for the “politics of the common good,” wisdom badly needed in our own day.
W.W. Norton & Company, 2022, 280 pages
For Kids
‘Bear Feels Scared’
By Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman
In this edition of the beloved Bear books, Bear is still trying to make his way home through the woods when a storm whips up and the sun sets. Noises and darkness and wind give Bear a fright and he loses his way. In the den, his forest friends worry about him and decide to launch a search party. A sweet story of friendship, caring, and the emotion of fear.
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2008, 40 pages
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