To Be Read November Edition 2025

Click the book covers to open them in our catalog.

Celebrate Children’s Book Week with Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man and Friends!

"I think if you can show a kid that reading can actually be fun, it can make you laugh, inspire imagination - that can make a huge difference, that can help a child who's struggling with reading to really look at it differently." - Dav Pilkey

When Dav Pilkey was a kid, he was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. Dav was so disruptive in class that his teachers made him sit out in the hallway every day. Luckily, Dav loved to draw and make up stories. He spent his time in the hallway creating his own original comic books — the very first adventures of Dog Man and Captain Underpants. In the second grade, Dav’s teacher ripped up his comics and told him he couldn’t spend the rest of his life making silly books. Fortunately, Dav was not a very good listener. Here are some of our favorite Dav Pilkey books!

Thanksgiving Picks

Get creative with cookbooks, recipes and foodie fun for the whole family!

For this stunning collection, the editors of Gourmet delved deep into their archives and selected the most delicious cookie for each year of the magazine’s sixty-eight-year existence.

After marathon testing sessions and winnowing from thousands of recipes–many sent in by readers–they chose an amazing array, from the almond-scented French-style Cajun Macaroons, from the magazine’s beginnings in 1941, through Mocha Toffee Bars (1971), to the contemporary Glittering Lemon Sandwich Cookies. The enticing assortment includes

Cookies of every type and description, from the homey (Aunt Sis’s Strawberry Tart Cookies) to the exotic (Grand Marnier-Glazed Pain d’Epice Cookies), including balls, bars, refrigerator cookies, drop cookies, even deep-fried cookie confections.

Cookies from around the world: from Dutch Jan Hagels to Irish oatmeal sandwich cookies filled with cream and Irish whiskey, to Scandinavian Rosettes.

Dozens of Christmas cookies: Old-Fashioned Christmas Butter Cookies, star-shaped Moravian White Cookies, Chocolate Peppermint Bar Cookies.

Printed exactly as they originally appeared in the magazine, with abundant tips and recipe notes from Gourmet’s test kitchen, and with headnotes describing their cultural context, the recipes present a fascinating bite-by-bite history of how our appetites evolved.

Harvest is divided up by season, showcasing more than 180 delicious recipes using produce when it’s at its best.

Accompanied by stunning photographs and evocative watercolor illustrations by Emilie Guelpa, the recipes are simple yet sophisticated. Embrace the summer sun with Seared tuna with fennel confit, or Butterflied king prawns with mango; watch the leaves fall while indulging in Chestnut risotto with sage and pancetta or Five-spiced duck with pomegranate salad; snuggle into winter with some Chipotle-braised beef ribs with spicy baked pumpkin or an Apple and quince pie; or celebrate the freshness of Spring with Moroccan broad bean salad with yogurt and crispy breadcrumbs or Blood orange and dark chocolate trifle. Harvest will inspire you to build delicious seasonal feasts for any occasions in the year.

As a young girl eating and cooking with her father, Bruce Paltrow, she developed a passion for food that has shaped how she lives today and strengthened her belief that time with family is a priority.

Now in My Father’s Daughter, Paltrow shares her favorite family recipes along with personal stories of growing up with her father, Bruce Paltrow. She discusses how he has influenced her in the food she loves, how she involves her kids in cooking, and how she balances healthy food with homemade treats. And, for the first time, Paltrow offers a glimpse into her life as daughter, mother and wife, sharing her thoughts on the importance of family and togetherness.

Complete with 150 delicious ideas for breakfast, sandwiches and burgers, soups, salads, main dishes, sides, and desserts, this beautifully illustrated book includes full-color photos throughout, many featuring Paltrow at home with her family and friends. My Father’s Daughter is a luscious collection that will inspire readers to cook great food with the people who mean the most to them.

Staff Picks

Read ahead for upcoming events and see what our staff is reading this month.

Author K.L. Borges shares her debut novel November 15th at 1 pm. Helena, Montana. Kelly Boyd, long time high school math teacher has hung up her chalkboard and joined RogerDog Rescue working alongside the gruff founder, Betty Mills and quickly became second in command at the shelter. Rescue is full of frequent surprises, and at first it seems like business as usual when hikers bring in a dog found wandering in the Crazy Mountains. Normal goes out the window, though, when the dog is discovered to be sporting suspicious wounds.

How was he hurt? Why was he in the Crazies? What does this mean for his missing owner? Kelly and Betty team up to investigate alongside ex-Army Cici Vargas who sees the dog as a major clue in the disappearance of her fellow veteran, Brianna Norwood. Not everyone wants them to dig up answers, though. The police warn them off, while a shadowy character would go to any lengths to keep his secrets buried. Can the trio stay out of jail and safe from harm long enough to solve the mystery?

Our Short Story Club will review “The Hunter’s Wife” from Anthony Doerr’s short story collection on November 20th at 10 am. The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr’s debut collection, The Shell Collector, takes readers from the African Coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape.

Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties–metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts–conjuring nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of the characters in these stories contend with hardships; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the ravishing universe outside themselves.

A stunning and unforgettable debut, The Shell Collector established Doerr as a master of literary short fiction, making it a must-read for fans of Best American Short Stories, environmentally rich fiction, and character-driven storytelling.

Ms. Marguerite is reading Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong.

Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.

By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Our Wives Under the Sea is an exploration of the unknowable depths within each of us, and the love that compels us nevertheless toward one another.

Ms. Jennifer is reading My Friends by Fredrick Backman. Most people don’t even notice them–three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.