The original version of this newsletter was sent out on Tuesday, June 17.
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Hello, fellow bookworms!
In some exciting news, All Booked is collaborating with William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, to spotlight some of the incredible books they will be releasing in 2025. We tend to keep things pretty free-form with All Booked, featuring books both new and old, but now we’ll be able to bring you sneak peeks at some of the incredible books yet to be released, and hopefully inspire you to add them to your reading lists!
Her Many Faces by Nicci Cloke, coming July 2025
Four members of London’s most exclusive private club have been murdered — poisoned. The young waitress who poured the drinks has been arrested, and the case and trial have captured the public’s attention. In the wake of this chaotic turn of events, five men question and dissect everything they know about her. Her father, her best friend, her former lover, her lawyer, and a reporter covering the case all have a story to tell about Katherine Cole, but only she knows the truth.
I’ll be honest: As much as the premise intrigued me, I was skeptical at first about a woman’s story being told through the eyes of five men. However, Nicci Cloke handled this beautifully, spinning what could have been the silencing of a woman’s voice into a demonstration of how an individual’s biases, emotions, and limited perspectives can affect how they interpret the world around them and the people they know.
Five very different perspectives of the same woman are presented to the reader — and yet, they feel very believable that they could all exist within the same person. Whitman’s quote about containing multitudes comes to mind, and it perfectly fits the story of Katherine Cole. I really enjoyed this one, untangling the threads of information in my mind and trying to guess at where the story would go next — and the ending still surprised me!
Part murder mystery and part fascinating character study, Nicci Cloke’s Her Many Faces is a fascinating look at the way our perceptions color our reality — and how dangerous that can be.
Now, I’ll turn this over to our amazing Arts, Culture & Community Editor Leslie Dinaberg, who this week is shining a spotlight on author Elizabeth Strout and her incredible characters.
Happy reading!
—Tessa, allbooked@independent.com
Elizabeth Strout is one of those rare writers who has the ability to create such specific, multidimensional, and real characters that you barely even notice how little her stories rely on plot to move them forward. I first fell in love with her writing with her curmudgeonly (and Pulitzer Prize–winning) Olive Kitteridge character, brilliantly embodied on the page in that 2008 collection of interlinked short stories and later on the small screen in the award-winning HBO miniseries starring Frances McDormand.
The irascible Olive has shown up in Strout’s novels multiple times over the ensuing years. Set in the fictional coastal area of Crosby, Maine, and the nearby inland Shirley Falls, Maine, these small towns feature a slew of memorable characters whose lives intertwine.
Tell Me Everything, Strout’s most recent title (2024), revolves around the sweet, semi-retired criminal defense attorney Bob Burgess (of The Burgess Boys) and his friendship and infatuation with his neighbor, the novelist Lucy Barton (of My Name Is Lucy Barton and Lucy by the Sea), who is now living with her ex-husband William (of Oh William!).
Much of the book centers on Bob and Lucy and the seductive and oh-so-relatable power of being with someone who is absolutely enthralled by everything you have to say.
“Tell me everything,” Lucy says to Bob when they haven’t seen each other for a while. “Tell me every single thing. And don’t leave anything out.”
And somehow, even though “everything” is mostly pretty uneventful, until a murder and a suicide creep into the story pretty far in, the writing is so compelling that the dramatic stuff is almost beside the point. Reading Strout’s books feels like you’re eavesdropping in on some always-fascinating, dear old friends. You can pop in on them anywhere and find them enjoyable, but I recommend reading the books in order if you can: Olive Kitteridge; The Burgess Boys; My Name Is Lucy Barton; Anything Is Possible; Olive, Again; Oh William!; Lucy by the Sea; and Tell Me Everything.
Strout also has two standalone novels: Amy and Isabelle (set in Shirley Falls, but without overlapping characters), and Abide with Me. They’re both solid, but not nearly as enthralling as the others.
—Leslie Dinaberg
FROM OUR PAGES
We’ve had some great author visits and interviews recently, so don’t miss out. Here is some of our book-related coverage from the last two weeks! Read all this and more atIndependent.com.
Bloomsday Is Back in Santa Barbara by Leslie Dinaberg
UPCOMING BOOK EVENTS
Below, you will find a few bookish events coming up in Santa Barbara. If you are hosting a bookish event in Santa Barbara, be sure to submit the event to our online events calendar.
Storytime with Taran Collis
Tuesday, June 24, 12:15 p.m. | S.B. Central Library
Montecito Book Club: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Tuesday, June 24, 2 p.m. | Montecito Library
Mystery Book Club: Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes
Tuesday, June 24, 5:30 p.m. | Goleta Community Center
Chaucer’s Poetry Reading: Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond
Tuesday, June 24, 6 p.m. | Chaucer’s Books
The Drunken Library Book Swap
Saturday, June 28, 3 p.m. | Casa Agria
The Magpie Club at the Museum: Alta California: From San Diego to San Francisco, a Journey on Foot to Rediscover the Golden State by Nick Neely
Saturday, June 28, 3:30 p.m. | Solvang Library
Chaucer’s Book Talk & Signing: Ruby’s Revenge by Christine Gallagher
Sunday, June 29, 3 p.m. | Chaucer’s Books
Reading and Book Signing: Max Talley and Cameron Walker
Sunday, July 6, 1 p.m. | Mesa Bookstore
S.B. SPOTLIGHT
We at the Independent get many books sent to us by area authors, sometimes too many! It’s practically impossible for us to read and review them all, but just because we are busy bees does not mean that they aren’t worth the attention. In an attempt to not completely drop the ball, we have compiled a list of books here that are either written by a Santa Barbara author, feature someone in our community, or have another tie to Santa Barbara. I urge you to look through this list. Perhaps you will find your new favorite read!
The following are the most recent titles that have been sent to us.
Then the Phone Rang: My Journey from Hitchhiking Hippie to the Hollywood High Life by Sandy Pearl
Critical Thinking Therapy: For Happiness and Self-Actualization by Dr. Linda Elder
If you are a local author and would like us to feature your book in this section, please email allbooked@independent.com with the subject line “S.B. Spotlight.”
Book Reviews Courtesy of CALIFORNIA REVIEW OF BOOKS*
Thanks to the generous contributions of David Starkey, Brian Tanguay and their team of reviewers at California Review of Books, we are able to provide a steady stream of book reviews via our content partnership. Recent reviews at Independent.com include:
Cheesecake: A Novel by Mark Kurlansky; review by Brian Tanguay
Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky; review by George Yatchisin
*At the present time, all of the Independent’s book reviews are provided in collaboration with California Review of Books (calirb.com).
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