20 Sexy Book Recommendations at BuzzFeed Books

Over at BuzzFeed Books, I recommended 20 sexy books to heat up your winter. If you're looking for hot reads, I suggest checking out any that pique your interest. Photos of 16 of them below, but read the article for all 20 covers and to see what I had to say about them. I hope to write more listicls like this again, provided I carve out more reading time!

Mystery, coffee and tech fans, your new fun read is Billionaire Blend by Cleo Coyle

Cleo Coyle's coffeehouse mystery series just might be my favorite series, and I read a lot of them! It's set in a New York coffeehouse and manages to stay relevant, timely, fun and fascinating. This latest one, Billionaire Blend, is special in that it's partly set in New York, and partly set all over the world. It's a great read and makes a great gift. My review is below. And the blue roses on the cover do play a role in the mystery! Find out more at get recipes (I'm making skillet lasagna from the book tomorrow!) at coffeehousemystery.com. And I link to Amazon, where you can also get the Kindle ebook edition, because I get a small kickback, but I encourage you to buy books from your favorite bookseller, and use your local library. Want to help your favorite authors? Request their books from your local bookstore. It shows them that there's demand.

Cleo Coyle has done it again with an intricate, page-turning mystery, romantic drama between Village Blend owner Clare Cosi and her now-living-in-DC cop boyfriend Mike Quinn as well as that between Clare's daughter Joy and her cop boyfriend, Emmanuel Franco, and techie drama galore. While billionaires seem to be a dime a dozen ever since Christian Grey rolled onto the scene (don't miss the great Fifty Shades joke embedded in Billionaire Blend), this one is different.

Eric Thorner is a tech whiz billionaire who wants the best, including the best coffee. He's used to getting his way, and he wants Clare's coffee expertise--as well as her body. When he almost dies in an explosion outside her coffee shop, he tries to sweep her off her feet and makes her an offer that neither she nor her ex-husband and current business partner Matteo (Matt) Allegro can refuse. Together the three travel the globe, which is a new twist for this series; usually we only hear about Matt's coffee sourcing exploits when he's returned. While one of the things I love best about this series is its New York-centered view and tidbits of history about the city, it was fascinating to see Clare get out of her familiar settings and to learn about how coffee affects people in various locations.

There's always been a nod to the old-fashioned way of doing things in this series, even though it's firmly set in modern times. From Matt's mother's elegance to the Village Blend's sense of artistic and Big Apple history, Clare's family and business have never been about doing things faster and speedier. So the fun technological prowess of Thorner and his company, from bathroom holograms to very smart phones to the seemingly omniscient Miss House, who gives Clare directions and seems to have eyes everywhere, is a treat.

This is one of the most tightly plotted series I've read. I do recommend reading them in order, though technically you don't have to. There are so many little clues and red herrings and references here that make this book both a page-turning mystery and simply a fun read. Even after you're done with the whodunnit, there are recipes galore, including skillet lasagna, which also give a bit of backstory to the characters and when/why they've made each recipe. Coyle adds depth to all the ongoing relationships in the series, romantic and familial--the sideline about Joy's restaurant job in France and the unexpected opportunity to cook for fancy billionaires is a delight--and lets Clare's smarts shine through while never making anything easy to guess. Enjoy this with your favorite cup of coffee, and be prepared to keep refilling it as you stay glued to the story.

2 books I recommend: Rad Dad and It's Hard Not to Hate You

Two books I recommend - the new Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood anthology (click here for tour dates!) and the new Valerie Frankel memoir on friendship and jealousy, It's Hard Not to Hate You. Crazy deadline week/month but when I have some time I'll write a bit more, but if you're interested in politics and parenting, Rad Dad is great, and Frankel's book is funny but extremely memorable and tackles questions like how many friends should you have/do you need, what to do about professional jealousy (you can play "figure out the chick lit author she's talking about;" it only takes a wee bit of Googling) and bitchy neighbors and more.

Hell House comes alive in YA novel Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

This book is so so good. I think the trick to writing a YA novel like this is you can't come across like you have all the answers (okay, any novel, really). You can't make fun of your characters. You can condescend to them. You have to live them, you have to make the reader empathize with them even if they don't know what they're talking about. I didn't grow up in a tiny town with nothing to do and had no idea what Hell House was until a few years ago when Julie Klausner acted in the play (make of that what you will, you don't learn a lot about these things in Teaneck or Berkeley). But Lacey wanting to play "Abortion Girl?" I'm so with her. I like Lacey Anne Byer as a character a lot. The first paragraph I quote below, if we take it away from the context of Hell House, well, what teenager hasn't wanted the spotlight? What adult for that matter, whether on a small scale or a big one?

Melissa Walker nails a lot of things, and one of them is teen alienation, even for good girls. It's gripping and I'm only sad I don't have more time to devour this ASAP. Here's the review in the New York Times, which they wisely gave to Carlene Bauer, author of Not That Kind of Girl, who could bring her evangelical upbringing into it.

See also: USA Today, "Young adult novels explore religion:"

The novel was inspired by an article Walker did for ELLEgirl magazine on Hell Houses, haunted houses often run by fundamentalist Christian churches. Their emphasis: people who don't accept Jesus as their savior are condemned to hell.

Also, the heart in the apple on the cover? Genius. Read it!

From Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker:

Last year I watched Julia Millhouse play a pregnant teenager. When the lights went up in the nursery, where they staged her scene, she said her lines with so much emotion that people in the audience started to cry. I'd see them come through the lobby after the show and hear them talking about her performance. I want that spotlight. I want to be able to affect people that way too.

I've grown up with Hell House all my life, but Dean's cousins in the next county over think it's something weird that religious nuts do. It's not. It's a way to show people the right path. My dad always plays the devil--he thinks it's funny to be the children's pastor and the Antichrist. And Pastor Frist's Jesus bathes Hell in white light at the very end, leading the audience into Heaven (also known as the church library, all done up in white sheets and cotton clouds), where they get decision cars. Most people fill out the cards and agree to at least explore a Christian life. It's a magical weekend and an incredible outreach, especially for young people who don't have a path to Christ like I've grown up with. Mom always reminds me how lucky I am to have that.

I'm sitting with Starla Joy and her sister, Tessa, who's finger-coming her wavy brown hair as we wait to hear about this year's production. Tessa played and EMT last year in the drunk driving scene, and she got to say, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Kerner, your daughter is dead." Everyone thinks she'll get a big part this year since she's pretty much the senior girl with the most rank here. Even in church--especially in church--there's a social hierarchy.

Bob Smith's gay time travel novel Remembrance of Things I Forgot

Bob Smith has read at In The Flesh and is wonderful and hilarious. I highly recommend his novel Selfish and Perverse and the few pages I've read of his new one, Remembrance of Things I Forgot, are wonderful. Here's the first sentence:

It's safe to say your relationship is finished if the only way you can imagine solving your problems is by borrowing a time machine.

I also liked this sentence:

Powrerful forearms always get me; there's something irresistible attractive about a man who looks as if he could break my heart with his bare hands.

I will warn you that if you're a Republican, especially a Log Cabin Republican...you might not love your portrayal in this book. And hopefully that is actually an endorsement for most people reading this blog!



And you can hear Bob read tomorrow night free at Drunken! Careening! Writers! For so long I couldn't attend because my night and DCW were the same, but now I can attend. And I'm reading in November!

Drunken! Careening! Writers!

Isa Coffey

Joel Derfner

Jenifer Levin

Bob Smith

"Glitter and Be Gay"

Thursday, June 23, 7pm

KGB Bar

85 E. 4th St., NYC

FREE

My book recommendations video from Booksmith

How much do I love San Francisco indie bookstore Booksmith? They took me around their store and I blabbed about which books I love...and hate. And they wound up giving me the copy of Kemble Scott’s novel SoMa for free! Check it out, just in time for Valentine’s Day (a holiday I’m trying to remain as oblivious to as possible).