Return to Wyldcliffe Heights
Carol Goodman
Harper Collins, 2024, $18.99
What really happened at Wyldcliffe Heights? Once a psychiatric hospital for "wayward" women, it's now the private estate of an aging, reclusive author who recruits young junior editor Agnes Corey to help her transcribe a sequel to her 30-year-old hit novel. Things get very dark indeed as Agnes begins to uncover unsettling secrets about the past and about her own life. Two-time Mary Higgins Clark-award winner Goodman, who teaches creative writing at SUNY New Paltz and the New School, is incomparable at surrounding likable heroines with mind-bending suspense.
The Lonesome Threesome
Hawley Hussey
Nauset Press, 2024, $24.99
"One day, The Husband brought me a present. They were a petite peroxided blonde, with a name that sounded like a condiment." Thus begins the snarky and hilarious saga of a "throuple gone awry" set amid the bright and not-so-bright lights of Los Angeles, delivered in microbursts of sleek, evocative prose and peopled with extraordinary characters. The Husband is fated to become What's-His-Name fairly early on. Hussey lives in Ulster Park now; we highly recommend staying on her better side lest one end up immortalized under a wickedly clever pseudonym.
Collector of Lapsed Times
David Appelbaum
Black Spring Press Group, 2024, $19.95
What are the things we pick up and keep, rattling loose in our pockets or ensconced on a shelf? A collection is a story of sorts, whether it's stones or shells, coins or books—and sometimes, collections seem to form of their own volition. Appelbaum, who teaches philosophy at SUNY New Paltz, illuminates the web that binds the material and the mental, the instant and the eternal, in this collection of poems that slide into the brain like honey and demand to be touched, tasted, and considered.
As True as the Barnacle Tree, Second Edition
Anita M. Smith
Woodstock Arts, 2024, $14.95
Smith, born to a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker family, flung off the socialite life in 1912 and headed to Woodstock to study at the Art Students League, renting a room in a boarding house, hiking out to pretty spots and coming home with impressionist landscapes. She would become an important chronicler of the arts scene and the Herb Lady of the Catskills, founding a successful gardening business. This book, originally published in 1939, pulls together ancient, indigenous, and up-to-the-minute herbal lore and seasons it with history.
Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music
Franz Nicolay
University of Texas Press, 2024, $19.95
Rock stars rely heavily on the side players whose names aren't on the concert marquee or the album cover, but without whom the song would definitely not remain the same. Nicolay, a Bard professor and a keyboardist with the Hold Steady, digs deep into his conversations with them and reveals lesser-known realities of what the life's really like on the road, on the stage and in the studio. He'll be at the Morton Library in Rhinecliff for a book event and discussion with Joe Hagan on September 26 at 6:30pm.
