Reading, watching, listening, and gaming recommendations from the staff of the American Writers Museum.
We can’t recommend these books, films, shows, plays, albums, and games highly enough! Check back every month for more entertainment recommendations, from classics that we revisit over and over to new favorites. If you’re looking for your next book or movie or show or whatever, you came to the right place.
Many of our March book recommendations are also available on Bookshop.org, which benefits independent bookstores. We also strongly encourage you to support your local bookstore by visiting them in person or ordering online through them directly.
Let us know what you’ve been into recently in the comments!
Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America by Kati Curts
From the publisher: “This religious history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company repositions them within critical studies of religion, examining how Ford transformed American religious practice in the twentieth century. Drawing directly on documents from Ford’s archive, it examines Ford’s mass production methods and bureaucratic reforms as examples of prosperity gospel traditions, illuminating the ways manufacturing and technology intersect with American religious practice. Bridging American religious and industrial history, Assembling Religion offers a new and surprising way to understand Ford’s impact on culture, commerce, and the technology of labor.”
Earlier this month, we had the pleasure of hosting Curts at the AWM for a program presented in conjunction with our special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. Curts discussed the contents and themes of her book, as well as shared insights into her research and writing process. The program was recorded and it will be made available to view and listen to later this month, so stay tuned!
—Nate, Content & Exhibits Manager
Babel by R. F. Kuang
Language and words as the root of magical power in 1830’s Oxford England. A fascinating critique of academia and colonial exploitation by creating an alternate history built on a magical science that uses the power of linguistics engraved in silver as its basis. Absolutely fascinating.
—Carey, President
Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville
From the publisher: “Academics hail it as the beginning of modernism, but to readers around the world—even those daunted by Moby-Dick—Bartleby, the Scrivener is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City’s Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville’s most prescient story: What if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce finally just said, ‘I would prefer not to’?”
—Rachel, Storyteller
Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino
Over dinner, a friend of mine and I were discussing one of our favorite literary sub-genres, which we called “women spiraling.” Best Offer Wins falls perfectly into this category. The propulsive thriller follows Margo, a 37-year-old woman hoping to leave her rent-controlled apartment in Washington, D.C. to start a family in the suburbs. When Margo finds a listing that checks all of her boxes, she becomes obsessed. She goes far enough to involve herself in the sellers’ personal lives—and even further after that as her obsession spirals into complete moral disarray.
Best Offer Wins uses humor and immaculately-paced tension to answer a question many of us have considered with the current state of the housing market—”How far would you go for your dream home?”
Kashino worked as a journalist for 17 years, most recently at The Washington Post. Her transition into the fiction genre does not disappoint. Kashino is a natural storyteller with narrative jobs, and her writing style has a gripping “edge” reminiscent of strong journalism.
—Sydney, Systems Operations Coordinator
Bodies created by Paul Tomalin
Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Si Spencer.
From IMDb: “Four detectives, living in different eras—1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053—find the body of the same murder victim in Whitechapel. They soon come to realize their investigations have them central to a conspiracy spanning over 150 years.”
—Cristina, Development & Membership Associate
Evangeline by Evangeline
From the distributor: “Evangeline is a rising singer-songwriter whose intimate, magnetic songs have quickly won over both critics and fans…Her highly anticipated eponymous debut album, Evangeline blend[s] 11 new tracks with fan favorites like “What Are You Doing Later?”—featured in Winter Spring Summer or Fall— and her breakout singles “I Would Now” and “Will.” On Evangeline, Evangeline reunites with longtime collaborators Max Shrager (The Shacks, 54 Ultra), Grant Milliken (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty), and Dillon Casey (Weyes Blood, Orville Peck), crafting a warm, nostalgic sound that frames her sharp lyricism and timeless melodies—cementing her as one of this year’s artists to watch.”
—Rachel, Storyteller
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano
From the publisher: “Finlay Donovan is killing it…except, she’s really not. She’s a stressed-out single-mom of two and struggling novelist, Finlay’s life is in chaos… When Finlay is overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel with her agent over lunch, she’s mistaken for a contract killer, and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet…Soon, Finlay discovers that crime in real life is a lot more difficult than its fictional counterpart, as she becomes tangled in a real-life murder investigation. Fast-paced, deliciously witty, and wholeheartedly authentic in depicting the frustrations and triumphs of motherhood in all its messiness, hilarity, and heartfelt moments, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It is the first in a brilliant new series from YA Edgar Award nominee Elle Cosimano.”
—Cristina, Development & Member Associate
The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri
From the publisher: “In an England fueled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes. Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen’s court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other? As they seek a way to break the cycle, a mysterious assassin begins targeting tales like theirs. To survive, the two will need to write a story stronger than the one that fate has given to them. But what tale is stronger than The Knight and the Witch?”
—Allison, Director of Programs
Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey
From the publisher: “‘Come home.’ Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories—she’s come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there, beneath the house he’d built for his family. Coming home is hard enough for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting…but who else could it possibly be? There are secrets yet undiscovered in the foundations of the notorious Crowder House. Vera must face them and find out for herself just how deep the rot goes.”
—Hunter, Storyteller
Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. by Harry Styles
From Pitchfork: “Bid adieu to Harry’s House, and say hello to Harry’s very classy club-slash-listening-room-slash-meditation-center. Led by the LCD Soundsystem and Coldplay-inflected “Aperture,” the British star’s first album in four years Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. trades out the honeyed stylings of his prior record for refined slivers of dance pop, funk, and post-punk. (Don’t worry, he finds time for a couple ballads too, namely “Paint by Numbers” and the string-laden “Coming Up Roses”). It was executive produced by Kid Harpoon, and has credits from a bevy of artists including Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, the Smile’s Tom Skinner, and a full gospel choir.
—Maya, Marketing & Creative Associate
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
From the publisher: “In this Hugo Award–winning alternative history classic—the basis for the Amazon Original series—the United States lost World War II and was subsequently divided between the Germans in the East and the Japanese in the West.
It’s America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In this dystopian world, we meet…seemingly disparate characters [who] gradually realize their connections to each other just as they start questioning the very nature of their reality. And it seems as though the answers might lie with Hawthorne Abendsen, a mysterious and reclusive author, whose best-selling novel describes a world in which the US won the War. The Man in the High Castle is Dick at his best, a masterpiece of philosophical science fiction giving readers a harrowing vision of the world that almost was.”
—Christopher, Director of Operations
Memoir of a Snail screenplay by Adam Elliot
From Rotten Tomatoes: “In 1970s Australia, Grace’s life is troubled by misfortune and loss. After their mother dies during pregnancy, she and her twin brother, Gilbert, are raised by their paraplegic-alcoholic former juggler father, Percy. Despite a life filled with love, tragedy strikes anew when Percy passes away in his sleep. The siblings are forcibly separated and thrust into separate homes. Gilbert finds himself in the care of a cruel evangelical family, while Grace, grappling with intense loneliness, gradually withdraws into her shell, much like the snails she adopts. As the years pass, and despite new disappointments and sorrows, a glimmer of hope emerges when she strikes up an enduring friendship with an elderly eccentric woman called Pinky.”
—Maya, Marketing & Creative Associate
Mother Daughter Traitor Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal
From the publisher: “From the New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope series comes a tantalizing standalone novel inspired by a real-life mother-daughter duo who stumble upon an underground Nazi cell in Los Angeles during the early days of World War II—and find the courage to go undercover…But as the news of Pearl Harbor ripples through the United States, and President Roosevelt declares war, the Grace women realize that the plots they’re investigating are far more sinister than they feared—and even a single misstep could cost them everything…Mother Daughter Traitor Spy is a powerful portrait of family, duty, and deception that raises timeless questions about America—and what it means to have courage in the face of terror.”
—Cristina, Development & Membership Associate
The Mountain by Gorillaz
It’s against the law for me to not recommend every new Damon Albarn release. While the band is ostensibly British, the album includes a wide array of American artists including Sparks, Black Thought of the Roots, and former National Youth Poet Laureate (and Chicago’s own) Kara Jackson. Albarn and collaborator Jamie Hewlett drew inspiration for the album on two trips to India (and features many Indian musicians), but something morbid happened along the way: both of their fathers passed away during the writing of the album. The result is an introspective, contemplative, and genre-bending reflection on mortality. The album even features posthumous recordings of Dennis Hopper, Bobby Womack, and David Jolicoeur of De La Soul, further blurring the barrier between life and death.
—Andrew, Institutional Giving Manager
Mule Boy by Andrew Krivák
From the publisher: “An elegiac novel of men lost in a coal mining disaster and the boy who survives to tell the story…Told in incantatory prose set to the rhythm of human breath, this sublime novel turns the memento mori into a meditation not only on death but on what it takes to tunnel through darkness and live.”
Krivák, a National Book Award finalist, will lead a generative writing workshop at the AWM on March 12. Part of our American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture programming, this workshop is intended for students who are interested in writing longer form narratives from the first-person point of view. The “I” at the center of any writing poses a perspective that is all at once imaginatively powerful and narratively problematic, uniquely insightful and necessarily unreliable. Thus, we’ll consider the question of not simply why do writers write in the first-person but why do you want to write in the first-person? Sign up for the writing workshop here!
—Nate, Content & Exhibits Manager
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
From the publisher: “As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.”
—Annie, Administrative Associate
The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich
This is one of those books you finish and go “what the hell did I just read?” But what else to expect when the blurbs compare Creeps to the works of David Lynch, Kathy Acker, William Burroughs, and GG Allin. It’s about a woman searching for her long-lost sister and also not really about that at all. It’s unhinged. It’s foul. Convenience store bathroom hook-ups, DIY punk shows, ESP-induced deliriums, Pacific Northwest ennui, foster-home trauma. And vampires. Maybe. An unnerving trip through a never-ending dread-filled highway.
—Andrew, Institutional Giving Manager
Parade by Rachel Cusk
From the publisher: “Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas. At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries. When a mother dies, her children confront her legacy: the stories she told, the roles she assigned to them, the ways she withheld her love. Her death is a kind of freedom.
Parade is a novel that demolishes the conventions of storytelling. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot to tell the story of G, an artist whose life contains many lives. Rachel Cusk is a writer and visionary like no other, who turns language upside down to show us our world as it really is.
—Deanna, Storyteller
Paradise created by Dan Fogelman
I found this show through a 45-second TikTok clip and ended up devouring it over a single weekend. It’s a fantastic show and, as someone who is always a fan of “epic” versions of classic songs, Paradise has been filling my cup (so to say).
—Matt, Community Engagement Manager
Pauli Murray: The Life of a Pioneering Feminist & Civil Rights Activist by Rosita Stevens-Holsey and Terry Catasús Jennings, illustrated by Ashanti Fortson
From the publisher: “Pauli Murray was a trailblazer who spent her life fighting for civil rights and women’s rights. Writer, lawyer, activist, priest, Pauli was a champion for justice. Her extraordinary life is immortalized in this riveting biography told in verse.”
I recently had the great pleasure to interview Rosita Stevens-Holsey, who is Pauli Murray’s niece, about the life and legacy of her incredible aunt for an episode of our podcast series Nation of Writers. We were joined by Lucille W. Walker, who also knew Murray personally and loaned Murray’s personal crosses to display in our special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture.
—Nate, Content & Exhibits Manager
The Pitt created by R. Scott Gemmill
The new season is hitting.
More from IMDB: “The daily lives of healthcare professionals in a Pittsburgh hospital as they juggle personal crises, workplace politics, and the emotional toll of treating critically ill patients, revealing the resilience required in their noble calling.”
—Hunter, Storyteller
Play Nice by Rachel Harrison
From the publisher: “After Clio’s parents’ messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That’s not what Clio’s sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped her of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house. After Alex’s sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother’s claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother’s book, a sinister presence in the house manifests, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio’s beautiful life to its very foundation.”
—Hunter, Storyteller
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
With the movie coming out later this month, there is no better time to pick up this book! Without wanting to spoil anything, here is a little something about the book from Goodreads: “An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could imagine it, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.”
—Andrea, Education Program Coordinator
Singin’ to an Empty Chair by Ratboys
The recently released record from the Chicago-based band is very much worth the listen, check it out!
More from Pitchfork: “Bringing their country-tinted indie rock to boundless new landscapes, the Chicago band returns with their most emotionally affecting and compositionally advanced songs to date.”
—Christopher, Director of Operations
Trinity by Leon Uris
Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, although I don’t think I will finish this huge book by then. When you’re ready for a sweeping epic of historical fiction, Trinity awaits you!
More from the publisher: “Leon Uris captures the ‘terrible beauty’ of Ireland during its long and bloody struggle for freedom. It is the electrifying story of an idealistic young Catholic rebel and the valiant and beautiful Protestant girl who defied her heritage to join his cause. It is a tale of love and danger, of triumph at an unthinkable cost—a magnificent portrait of a people divided by class, faith, and prejudice. It is an unforgettable saga of the fires that devastated a majestic land—and the unquenchable flames that burn in the human heart.”
—Linda, Director of Development
The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken
From the publisher: “In 17th-century Denmark, Christenze Kruckow, an unmarried noblewoman, is accused of witchcraft. She and several other women are rumored to be possessed by the Devil, who has come to them in the form of a tall headless man who gives them dark powers…The Wax Child, narrated by a wax doll created by Christenze Kruckow, is an unsettling horror story about brutality and power, nature and witchcraft, set in the fragile communities of premodern Europe. Deeply researched and steeped in visceral, atmospheric detail, The Wax Child is based on a series of real witchcraft trials that took place in Northern Jutland in the 17th century. Full of lush storytelling and alarmingly rich imagination, Olga Ravn also weaves in quotes from original sources such as letters, magical spells and manuals, court documents, and Scandinavian grimoires.”
—Deanna, Storyteller
Will Trent created by Liz Heldens and Daniel T. Thomsen
From Rotten Tomatoes: “Based on Karin Slaughter’s bestselling books, the series follows Special Agent Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations. As a child, Trent was abandoned and was forced to endure a harsh coming-of-age in Atlanta’s overwhelmed foster care system. Now that he is in a position to make a difference, Trent is determined to use his unique point of view to make sure no one is abandoned like he was. His personal motivation and background contribute to Will Trent having the highest clearance rate in the GBI.”
—Cristina, Development & Membership Associate
The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott
From the publisher: “When an arrogant prince (and his equally arrogant entourage) gets stuck in Orledder Halt as part of brutal political intrigue, competent and sunny deputy courier Elen—once a child slave meant to shield noblemen from the poisonous Pall—is assigned to guide him through the hills to reach his destination. When she warns him not to enter the haunted Spires, the prince doesn’t heed her advice, and the man who emerges from the towers isn’t the same man who entered. The journey that follows is fraught with danger. Can a group taught to ignore and despise the lower classes survive with a mere deputy courier as their guide.”
—Allison, Director of Programs
Women Laughing Alone With Salad by Sheila Callaghan
From the publisher: “What’s on the menu for Meredith, Tori, and Sandy, the three women in Guy’s life? Healthy lifestyles, upward mobility, meaningful sex? Or self-loathing and distorted priorities? Inspired by the strangely ubiquitous advertising trend of picturing attractive women blissfully eating salad, award-winning playwright Sheila Callaghan breaks all the rules of our image-obsessed culture in Women Laughing Alone With Salad. This raw comedy is served with a side of feminism and tossed with audacious imagery biting social critique and devastating humor.”
—Matt, Community Engagement Manager
Years and Years created by Russell T Davies
From Rotten Tomatoes: “An ordinary British family contends with the hopes, anxieties and joys of an uncertain future in this six-part limited series that begins in 2019 and propels the characters 15 years forward into an unstable world. The story begins as members of the Lyons clan converge for the birth of the newest family member, baby Lincoln, and an outspoken celebrity begins her transformation into a political figure whose controversial opinions will divide the nation. As the Britain of this imaginary drama is rocked by political, economic and technological advances, the family experiences everything hoped for in the future, and everything that is feared.”
—Matt, Community Engagement Manager
Visit our Reading Recommendations page for more book lists.