Whistler

Whistler
by Ann Patchett
Harper, 2026. 295 pages. Fiction

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn't seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Ann Patchett's books offer such a comforting ambience to me. She writes of people sharing quiet, intimate stories with each other and explores the way small incidents and connections can change lives. While describing the story this way might make it seem slow-going, for me the story was compelling. Reading Patchett's books feel like catching up with a good friend you haven't seen in a while. Or in the case of this plotline, that favorite distant family member you haven't seen in a while.

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June Baby
by Shannon Garvey
Random House, 2026. 341 pages. Fiction

At seventeen, Ruth lost her mother to cancer, and her father, unable to handle his grieving daughter, shipped her off to Block Island with nothing but a name scribbled on the back of a receipt: Diana Beckett. Diana, a renowned photographer, took Ruth in for the summer, and Block Island became Ruth's refuge. Now, at twenty-seven, Ruth has spent the last ten summers living and working among the lucky few who get to vacation in this wealthy beach town, and the rest of the year just scraping by, yearning to return to the place where she feels safe and unburdened. But then Ruth's world is upended by tragedy again. Desperate for an anchor, she reaches for the person she's been pining for since she met him—Diana's son Charlie—who has his own startling revelation to share. And when another surprise comes in the form of a box left to Ruth by Diana, its contents raise questions about just how well she knew the two women who raised her.

Family Family
by Laurie Frankel
Henry Holt and Company, 2024. 386 pages. Fiction

While promoting her most recent project, a film about adoption, famed actress India Allwood does what you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it's a bad movie. Like so many movies about adoption, it tells only one story, a tragic one. But India's an adoptive mom herself and knows there's so much more to her family than tragedy. Soon she's at the center of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and the paparazzi, from protesters on the right and advocates on the left. Her daughter Fig knows they need help—and who better to call for help than family? Because India's not just an adoptive mom. She also had a baby she gave up for adoption her senior year of high school. That baby is now sixteen, excited to meet her birth mother and eager to help, but she also has an agenda and secrets of her own.

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