If you’re reading this, it’s safe to guess you’re fond of books, reading, and being transported to different times, places, experiences, and viewpoints. We invite you to check out what others are reading and share your recommendations of favorite titles with us. To see the complete list of books from 2019, 2020, and 2021, go to the Tidelines website here.
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
When her husband of a year disappears, Hannah quickly learns he is not who he said he was and is left to sort out the truth with just one ally- her husband’s teenage daughter, who hates her. (2021, 306 pgs; Fiction)
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
It is 1953. Thomas Wazhushk is the night watchman at the first factory to open near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a prominent Chippewa Council member, trying to understand a new bill that is soon to be put before Congress. The US Government calls it an ’emancipation’ bill, but it isn’t about freedom – it threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land, their very identity. How can he fight this betrayal? (202, 451 pgs; Fiction)
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
Set in 1950s America In June 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction– to the City of New York. (2021, 576 pgs; Fiction)
The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz
“You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late . . . ” These, heard over the phone, were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, found bludgeoned to death in his bachelor pad with a bottle of wine – a 1982 Chateau Lafite worth 3,000, to be precise. Odd, considering he didn’t drink. Why this bottle? And why those words? And why was a three-digit number painted on the wall by the killer? And, most importantly, which of the man’s many, many enemies did the deed? (2019, 373 pgs; Fiction)
The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú
A beautiful, fiercely honest, and nevertheless deeply empathetic look at those who police the border and the migrants who risk – and lose – their lives crossing it. In a time of often ill-informed or downright deceitful political rhetoric, this book is an invaluable corrective. (2018, 250 pgs; Nonfiction)
Carolina Moonset by Matt Goldman
Joey Green has returned to Beaufort, South Carolina, with its palmettos and shrimp boats, to look after his ailing father, who is succumbing to dementia, while his overstressed mother takes a break. Marshall Green’s short-term memory has all but evaporated, but, as if in compensation, his oldest memories are more vivid than ever. His mind keeps slipping backward in time, retreating into long-ago yesterdays of growing up in Beaufort as a boy. At first, this seems like a blessing of sorts, with the past providing a refuge from a shrinking future, but Joey grows increasingly anxious as his father’s hallucinatory arguments with figures from his youth begin to hint at deadly secrets, scandals, and suspicions long buried and forgotten. (2022, 262 pgs; Fiction)
Horse by Geraldine Brooks
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history. (2022, 401pgs; Fiction)
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from an island off Vancouver in 1912 to a dark colony of the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and planets, (2022, 255 pgs; Fiction)
French Braid by Anne Tyler
Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close–yet how unknowable–every family is to itself. (2022, 243 pgs; Fiction)
Water from My Heart by Charles Martin
Charlie Finn had to grow up fast, living alone by age sixteen. Highly intelligent, he earned a life-changing scholarship to Harvard, where he learned how to survive and thrive on the outskirts of privileged society. That skill served him well in the cutthroat business world, as it does in more lucrative but dangerous ventures he now operates off the coast of Miami. Charlie tries to separate relationships from work. But when his choices produce devastating consequences, he sets out to right wrongs, traveling to Central America where he will meet those who have paid for his actions, including a woman and her young daughter. Will their fated encounter present Charlie with a way to seek the redemption he thought was impossible–and free his heart to love one woman as he never knew he could? (2015, 363 pgs; Fiction)
Ancestors: The Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials by Alice Roberts
By using new advances in genetics and taking us through important archaeological discoveries, Professor Alice Roberts helps us better understand life today. ‘This is a terrific, timely and transporting book – taking us heart, body and mind beyond history, to the fascinating truth of the prehistoric past and the present’ Bettany Hughes We often think of Britain springing from nowhere with the arrival of the Romans. But in Ancestors, pre-eminent archaeologist, broadcaster and academic Professor Alice Roberts explores what we can learn about the very earliest Britons, from burial sites and by using new technology to analyze ancient DNA. (2021; Nonfiction)
We look forward to hearing about the books you or your book club recommend.
- Include your name (although it will not be published), the title, and the author of the book you are recommending, and email this to Tidelines at seabrookislandblog@gmail.com. (You may be able to click on the email address to open a new message.)
- For audiobooks, include the name of the narrator.
- Tidelines editors will provide a blurb to tell a little about the book and add the book jacket image.
- Publication is at the discretion of Tidelines editors.
–Tidelines Editors
(Image and bibliographic credit: CMPL)