The Best Grown-Up Reads of
March 2020
by the Brightly Editors
At Brightly, we’re Reading Through It Together — and that means making space for your reading time, too. Whether your preferred mode of escapism involves historical fiction of the royal variety, a family vacation romp, a matrilineal memoir, or a suspenseful page-turner, we’ve got a book for you.
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Lost Autumn
Available from:In 1920, the famously handsome Edward, Prince of Wales embarks on a royal tour of Australia. Appointed to serve on the royal train, 17-year-old Maddie Bright is exposed to a world more dazzling and complicated than she could have imagined. In the present day, a mystery unfolds as a journalist struggling with her own love life tracks down Maddie to ask about a rumored relationship that began on the tour all those years ago.
(On Sale: 3/3/20)
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The Jetsetters
In the latest Reese’s Book Club pick, a family comes together for forced fun aboard a comically lavish cruise ship dubbed the Splendido Marveloso. Seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins all but dragged along her children - B-list actress Lee, chronically single Cord, and exhausted mom Regan - hoping to mend their fraught relationships. Of course, family vacations have a way of revealing long-buried secrets, and even the Splendido Marveloso won't be able to stall the drama.
(On Sale: 3/3/20)
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Nobody Will Tell You This But Me
When TV writer Bess Kalb was asked to give a eulogy for her grandmother Bobby - her best friend, who died at 90 - Bess found herself instead channeling Bobby's inimitable voice for a light family roast. In this matrilineal memoir, Bess unspools the stories of four generations of women, beginning with her great-grandmother, who escaped the pogroms for America in the 1880s, and ending (in the loosest sense of the word) with the extraordinary bond between Bobby and Bess.
(On Sale: 3/17/20)
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Last Couple Standing
Available from:Jessica and Mitch Butler have what appears, even to them, to be a happy and functional marriage. But when all of their friends start divorcing, they wonder if their union is also doomed - and to save it, they decide to try opening their marriage. By turns sexy, hilarious, and tender, Last Couple Standing is a compulsively readable take on marriage, parenthood, and the vows we break in the name of love.
(On Sale: 3/17/20)
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Darling Rose Gold
If suspense is your preferred escapism, look no further than Stephanie Wrobel's debut. Patty Watts is just out prison, and it was her daughter's testimony that put her there: for the first 18 years of Rose Gold's life, Patty convinced everyone - doctors, neighbors, and Rose Gold herself - that her daughter was seriously ill. Everyone is shocked when Rose Gold agrees to take her mother in, but are her intentions inspired by revenge?
(On Sale: 3/17/20)
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Just Don't Be an Assh*le
Available from:Kara Kinney Cartwright has raised two teenage boys, and in the process created a list of rules to live by in order to not be that guy. In this frank and funny guide, she boils down her advice for boys and young men on how to treat other humans - parents, friends, coworkers, women, strangers online and IRL, and even themselves.
(On Sale: 3/24/20)
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The Glass Hotel
Available from:When word arrived that Station Eleven author Emily St. John Mandel was returning with a new novel, readers delighted - and for good reason. The Glass Hotel entwines two events - the collapse of a massive Ponzi scheme and a woman's disappearance from a ship at sea - by tracing the lives of troubled characters around the world, from Dubai to Colorado to Edinburgh. A story of greed, loss, and interconnected fates, Mandel's new masterpiece builds a sense of unease until the puzzle finally comes together.
(On Sale: 3/24/20)
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