The Staff Shelf: Avid Bookshop

When we walk into a bookstore, the first place we go is the staff recommendation shelves—it’s how you get a quick sense of the personality of the store. The very best bookstores are merely a reflection of the eclectic, deeply felt opinions of the book-lovers who work there. As part of our Interview with a Bookstore, we asked the staff at Avid Bookshop what they recommend.

SLIDESHOW: Avid Bookshop Staff Shelf

: FRANKIE RECOMMENDS: So exquisitely written my highlighter ran out of ink from marking passages that I didn’t want to forget. Follow mysterious Karou, a blue-haired teenage art student living in Prague, as she discovers the truth behind her demon family, the tiger-eyed angel she’s falling in love with, and the war that’s tearing their worlds apart.

: RACHEL RECOMMENDS: Stanišić’s work is seamless, rhythmic, and captivating. Anthea Bell makes for a dream translator, perfectly capturing his whimsy and idiosyncrasies. This is not a book to consume once and leave on the shelf to collect dust. Like your favorite fairy tales, Before the Feast is a story to experience again and again, whose charms will enchant you every time it is read.

: WILL RECOMMENDS: Absolutely, 100% engrossing. A story about friendship, purpose, and the peaks and pitfalls of ambition, Innocents and Others unspools multiple threads from its central narrative, the lifelong friendship of two acclaimed filmmakers, and not a single one of them is any less compelling than the last. I could not put Innocents and Others down. Early on, Dana Spiotta has set the bar VERY high for fiction in 2016.

: TYLER RECOMMENDS: Is it a novel? Is it poetry? Yes. It is a book about a father losing his wife, and sons losing their mother, and a crow who helps them through the many subtle shifts her death incurs. If it sounds too sad, it is, or would be in the hands of a writer less talented: Max Porter will surprise you. It’s not a book of huge outbursts, but seismic change felt in small tremors. This is a book about grief to give to everyone you know and read over and over again.

: CALEB RECOMMENDS: The Masked Empire has taken everything from her — can she take everything from them without losing herself?The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a game of political chess. It’s a rags-to-riches story (sort of.) It’s a tale of revenge. It’s an economic thriller with one of my favorite characters from anything, ever. It’s an examination of the stories society tells, and how those stories are used to shape and destroy us. This book is so many things, and they’re all good. If you have even a minor interest in court intrigue or in reading about A BRILLIANT MATHEMATICIAN WOMAN TEARING DOWN AN OPPRESSIVE CULTURE FROM THE INSIDE, then like, oh my god, where have you been, this is your book. And there are more coming!

: JANET (OWNER) RECOMMENDS: Lindstrom is fascinated by the tiniest details, the seemingly unimportant factors that seem innocuous at a glance but actually reveal a great deal about why humans behave in the ways that they do. His talks are interesting and provocative, but you really should read Small Data to get a stronger grasp on his fascinating methodology. A must-read for entrepreneurs with retail businesses.

: HANNAH RECOMMENDS: Friendship, like bravery, can make its appearance at the most unexpected times. Kate DiCamillo’s new yarn is one to treasure. Light and jocular on the surface, Raymie Nightingale belies a deeper, truer, more aching heart than at first it might seem, beating its broken rhythm with absent parents, poverty, and loss. Raymie, our spunky heroine, finds friendship among two girls who are battling the familiar childhood foes of loneliness and powerlessness. These “Three Rancheros” light the way through their individual struggles, their solidarity aglow like Florence Nightingale’s lamp or Mrs. Sylvester’s sunlit jar of candy corn, rescuing each other from the darkness. DiCamillo has a magic way of noticing all the little nuances who make us what we are, creating characters that are equal parts weird and relatable, and her skillful intertwinement of humorous and heavy weaves pure poetry out of the ordinary. This book is one huge good deed that is destined to become a classic.

: RACHEL RECOMMENDS: From the description of the peeling paint around the drain of the baptismal pool to Elvis Presley’s stepbrother (Reverend Rick) preaching out a youth revival, Beaver’s memoir as a Southern Baptist is also my story. I hadn’t thought of attending SuperWOW! (just like Beaver) and Rev. Rick’s platinum-blonde hair in thirty years. You belong to a special tribe if you were a Southern Baptist kid in the 1970s-1980s. Thanks to SUBURBAN GOSPEL for validating my memories and all the crazy.