What Pamela Dorman Is Loving Right Now

I knew from the first page that I was reading a writer who had an unforgettable and incantatory voice. Set in 1964 South Carolina, the story of Lily, who comes to live with three Black bee-keeping sisters, has cast its spell over millions of readers. It was a huge privilege and honor to be the editor who published this modern classic. This is a book that will live on forever.

This story follows an out-of-the-ordinary woman who struggles with social skills and lives the same carefully scheduled life every day. She then meets someone whose big heart helps her mend her own profoundly damaged one. In a book that is both heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting, Eleanor is a woman you won’t forget!

Natalie Baszile’s debut, which was the basis for the OWN TV series produced by Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay, is a magical novel. It brings us to a sugarcane farm in Louisiana that feels like it hasn’t changed in a century or more, and yet, the struggles of a contemporary woman play out against the landscape in a thoroughly modern way.  I loved discovering Natalie’s first novel and am thrilled that her next novel, Good People, will be coming soon from Pamela Dorman Books.

This is a book I recommend to everyone, which I did even before I became John Boyne’s adult publisher.  This unforgettable story of one man’s life from beginning to end, set in post-war Ireland, is about a young man who will take a lifetime to know himself and where he came from — and will struggle to find his true place in the world.  I have not given this to a person who didn’t read it and fall in love with it — this book is a life-changer.

I read this book as a college student, but it remains one of my all-time favorites — a story of doomed love in 19th-century Russia whose brilliance is undiminished today. There are scenes I still think about 40 years after I first read it.  In fact, I made my husband read it before I agreed to marry him!

I fell in love with Yinka, a British-Nigerian singleton whose aunties pray for her to get married, whose work friends can’t understand why she is saving herself for marriage, and whose mother is always shouting, “YINKA, where is your husband!?!”  Yinka is the kind of everywoman with whom we can all identify — someone whose values are very much her own, and who believes that love will find her when the right person comes along.  Writers like Emily Henry, Josie Silver, and more have joined in the praise for the book, and when you want a quirky rom-com that brings to life a different culture as well as a great romance, Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? is the book for you.