It's hard to believe the first month of 2023 has already passed us by. How did your January go? Did you read any bookish books? I read these four:

I enjoyed all of them, with Dead and Gondola being my favorite of the bunch. It has a fun mountaintop setting, complete with a gondola and a charming bookstore. The mystery is entertaining, too. Of these four, I only managed to review The Blackout Book Club here at BBB, but you can see my quick reviews of each on Goodreads. Hopefully, I'll get at least a couple of these reviewed here in the next few weeks. We'll see.

My goal is to read 2-3 bookish books a month. I rocked it in January. Here's what I'm thinking of reading in February:

Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic is a freebie. My mind is blanking on anything fresh and creative, so I'm going to continue with the author theme from last week. If you missed my post on my Top Ten 2022 New-to-Me Author Discoveries, you can find it here. Today, I'm going to dish about some authors I want to try out for the first time this year. In order to keep the list to just ten, I opted to leave out debut authors and focus on those who've already published at least 2-3 books.

Before we get to that, though, be sure to click on over to That Artsy Reader Girl and give Jana, our lovely host, some love. While you're there, read up on TTT and join in the fun. You won't regret it!

Where I plan to start: Mare's War, a road trip and dual-timeline novel about two kids who learn just how fascinating their eccentric grandma really is, sounds fabulous. I love stories about family history, unsung heroes, and generations learning about each other. 

3. Kimberly Duffy—Several of Duffy's historical fiction titles have caught my eye. They all have gorgeous covers and plot summaries that sound right up my alley. 

Where I plan to start: Duffy's newest, The Weight of Air, is about two female circus performers whose lives intersect in New York in the early 1900s. It sounds excellent.

4. Susan Furlong—Furlong writes cozy mysteries as well as crime fiction and psychological thrillers.

Where I plan to start: What They Don't Know, Furlong's newest, sounds like the perfect way to start. It's about a mother who's frustrated with her son, who has run off to live a party-filled life away from home. When he becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a young woman, she sets out on a desperate quest to find her son, bring him home, and prove his innocence.

5. Kimberly Willis Holt—Holt writes contemporary and historical fiction for young readers. She won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 1999.

Where I plan to start: Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel is a middle-grade novel about a young girl who goes to live with her estranged grandfather at his dilapidated motel after her parents are killed. As she befriends the place's colorful residents, she finds healing and connection. 

6. Lydia Kang—Kang is a doctor who writes science and historical fiction as well as non-fiction with an emphasis on medicine, forensics, chemistry, etc.  

Where I plan to start: Kang has written two non-fiction books with Nate Pederson. Both sound interesting, but I think I'm going to start with Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases.

7. Caroline Lea—A poet and novelist, Lea writes historical fiction set around the world.

Where I plan to start: The Glass Woman, Lea's 2019 debut, is "a gothic thriller set during the Icelandic witch trials." Say no more. I'm in.

8. Kate Quinn—Quinn probably needs no introduction. Her recent war novels have gotten tons of buzz over the last few years, but she actually has a fairly long backlist of historical fiction.

Where I plan to start: Set in 1937 Ukraine, The Diamond Eye is about a studious young mother who becomes a deadly sniper in order to fight the Nazis invading her country. Based on a real person, the story sounds fascinating.

9. Nikola Scott—Although Scott had a career as a crime fiction editor, she writes historical fiction about families and their secrets. 

Where I plan to start: Scott's 2017 debut novel, My Mother's Shadow, is about Addie, a woman whose mind is blown when a woman shows up claiming to be her sister. Addie thought she knew everything about her mother's life, but clearly, her mother was keeping secrets. 

10. Art Spiegelman—Spiegelman is an American cartoonist, comic advocate, and Pultizer Prize winner. He's best known for his Maus books, a graphic novel series about his parents' experience as prisoners in Auschwitz. 

Where I plan to start: I'm not sure there's anywhere else to begin but with Maus, the first installment in Spiegelman's well-known series. 

There you have it, ten authors I want to read this year. Have you read any of them? What do you think? Which authors are you planning to try in 2023? I'd truly love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog.

Although I have a ton of favorite authors whose books are auto-reads for me, I also try a fair number of new writers every year. In fact, of the 200 books I read in 2022, 117 (59%) were by authors I hadn't tried before. So far in 2023, I've read 17 books, 10 of which were written by new-to-me writers. Some of these have been duds, naturally, but others introduced me to some great new authors whom I very much want to read more from. I found more than 10 last year, so I had to narrow it down to the ones who stood out most for me.

Before we get to that, though, be sure to click on over to That Artsy Reader Girl and give our lovely TTT host, Jana, some love. If you want to join in with your own list, all the details about this fun weekly event are on her blog.

1. Jason Reynolds—This iconic children's author was my best find of 2022. He writes contemporary middle-grade and YA books starring Black characters living in urban situations and dealing with everything from ADHD to bullying to gang violence to wrongful arrests. His books are compelling, funny, poignant, and approachable (even to a 47-year-old white woman). I listened to his whole Track series last year. The audiobooks are especially entertaining because of Guy Lockard, Reynolds' long-time friend and a talented actor and narrator. 

2. Tamara Berry—Buried in a Good Book, the first installment in Berry's By the Book cozy mystery series, had me smiling and laughing so much that I knew I needed to read more from her. So far, I've read the second book in the series and the first in her Eleanor Wilde cozy series. Her books are just fun! She also writes romances under the names Lucy Gilmore and Tamara Morgan.

3. Fredrik Backman—Backman's been a popular author ever since A Man Called Ove came out in 2014. His books didn't really seem like my kind of thing, so I avoided them until someone in my book club suggested we read Anxious People. I wasn't looking forward to it, honestly, but once I got started, I couldn't stop. What a delightful read! I loved it and now I want to read more by this beloved Swedish writer.

4. Stacy Willingham—I just finished Willingham's second novel, which I liked even more than her debut, A Flicker in the Dark, which I read last year. Her books are engrossing, twisty, and compelling.

5. Sulari Gentill—Although this Australian author has published a number of books, I didn't hear about her until 2022 when The Woman in the Library came out. It's a fun, clever novel that made me want to read more of Gentill's mysteries.

6. Eleanor Brown—Any Other Family was one of my favorite reads of last year. Brown has penned a couple other novels, plus some non-fiction. I'm not really interested in the latter, but the former? Definintely!

7. Lisa Yee—I read a lot of middle-grade novels last year for a few different book awards. Lee's Maizy Chen's Last Chance was considered for the Cybils Awards and while it didn't ultimately make the cut to be a finalist (although it was a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature), I very much enjoyed it. I'll for sure be checking out Yee's backlist for more gems.

9. Serena Burdick—The Girls With No Names broke my heart and made me a Burdick fan. I'm planning to read more of her hist-fic this year.

10. Kimi Cunningham Grant—I've read two of Grant's books, one a non-fiction account of her grandparents' experience in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, the other a contemporary novel about an isolated father and daughter whose secretive lives are interrupted by an unexpected visitor to their remote cabin. She's only published one other book, which I will hopefully be able to read in 2023. 

There you are, ten new-to-me authors I found in 2022. Have you read any of them? What did you think? Which writers did you discover in 2023? I'd truly love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog.

If you know anything about Nellie Bly, it's probably that she was an intrepid newspaper reporter who went undercover at a mental institution on Blackwell's Island in New York City in 1887. That stunt alone was enough to make her famous. It also says a great deal about who she was, what she cared about, and how far she was willing to go to not just make a name for herself but also to create a better world for those she considered underprivileged and underserved. Just from this scant amount of information, it's easy to see that Bly was a fascinating person who lived an interesting life. No wonder I wanted to know more about her!

When I first heard about Madwoman by Louisa Treger, I thought it was a biography of the well-known journalist. Turns out, it's a novel—just one that feels very much like a biography. I don't have a problem with either genre, of course, but I would have preferred to read either a novel or a biography, not a mash-up of both that left me wondering what was true and what wasn't. Despite Madwoman's rather lackluster storytelling, though, I did find myself hooked. Bly's story is that compelling.  

Although Treger spends a few chapters on Bly's upbringing (which was fairly uneventful until her beloved father died and her mother married an abusive alcoholic), Madwoman focuses almost entirely on the reporter's experience on Blackwell's Island. The events leading up to her investigation show her pluck and her determination to be something extraordinary—a female journalist writing hard news—at a time when women reporters were almost unheard of, even in New York City. Those who were in the industry wrote only about safe, feminine subjects like cooking, cleaning, and fashion. Bly wanted more. By using courage and ingenuity, she infiltrated an esteemed institution almost entirely on her own, ushering in an era of bold, creative investigative reporting that hadn't been seen before. Her experience at the asylum was harrowing, naturally, but her observations of how cruelly patients were treated there helped change the way mental institutions cared for those confined within. 

Treger's prose is matter-of-fact and rather flat, but as I said, I still found myself caught up in Bly's story. Even though I knew she only ended up spending ten days in the asylum before her rescue was organized by executives at the New York World newspaper, I nevertheless worried for her. Treger did an excellent job of making her days in the grim institution feel as endless, dangerous and hopeless as they no doubt were. 

Madwoman is wrapped up with a few chapters about the aftermath of Bly's incredible stunt. Not only does Treger describe the public's eager fascination with Bly's resulting articles, her subsequent fame, and the change that was wrought because of her investigation, but she also talks about the toll those ten days in the asylum took on Bly both physically and emotionally. "She had faked madness to get into the asylum," writes Treger. "Now she was out of it, she must fake sanity" (234). The question at the heart of Madwoman is clear: How can anyone, no matter how sane or insane they are upon entrance, leave such a place after having been treated so horribly, with their mental faculties intact? 

I found Madwoman fascinating, but it did leave me wondering which parts of the story were true and which weren't. I also wanted to know what happened to Bly next. Did she continue taking on (or inventing for herself) dangerous assignments? What else did her long career in journalism accomplish? These questions led me to Ten Days a Madwoman by Deborah Noyes, a biography intended for middle-grade readers that covers Bly's whole life in 122 focused, informative pages (the title is misleading since the book only spends a few chapters on Bly's experience in the asylum). Honestly, since I got the information I wanted from Ten Days a Madwoman, I probably could have skipped Madwoman altogether, although it was interesting to compare/contrast the two books. Despite reading both, my desire to know more about Bly has not been entirely satiated. At some point, I still plan to read The Mad Girls of New York by Maya Rodale, Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman, and Ten Days In A Mad-House by Nellie Bly herself. 

(Readalikes: Reminds me of Ten Days a Madwoman by Deborah Noyes and The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore as well as novels about mental asylums in 19th Century America, like Girl 99 by Greer Macallister, A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis, etc.)