Books Your June 2025 Reads Stories You May Like Alum’s Bakery with a Hollywood Following Hits a Sweet Spot Andrea Savage ’94 Makes ’em Laugh What’s the Most Iconic Cornell Tradition? Vote in the Final! This month's featured titles include the latest from a bestselling thriller author and an NFL coach's co-authored memoir Did you know that Cornell has an online book club? Check it out! For more titles by Big Red authors, peruse our previous round-ups. Have you published a book you'd like to submit? Scroll down for details! The Doorman Chris Pavone ’89 “Pavone is the author of five previous books, literary thrillers characterized by elegant writing and intricate plotting,” says a New York Times review. “This is something bigger in tone and ambition.” His latest novel is set in and around a luxury apartment building in Manhattan. It centers on its doorman, a former Marine named Chicky Diaz, who struggles with massive debt while surrounded by enormous wealth. Meanwhile, political protests are inflaming the city, and the building’s privileged residents endure their own dramas and crises—often of their own making. Says the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Pavone has written an outstanding book full of sociological detail and pulsing with the passions and prejudices of the times in which we live.” The book garnered blurbs from such big names as Stephen King and Lee Child—and comparisons to Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. Raves John Grisham: “The Doorman is a near-perfect blend of clever plotting, wicked social commentary, irresistible setting, truly memorable characters, and old-fashioned, page-turning fun. What a romp!” Runs in the Family Sarah Spain ’02 Spain, an award-winning sports journalist and podcaster, co-authors the life story of the NFL’s Deland McCullough—a former college football star who played for the Cincinnati Bengals before transitioning to coaching in the pros. “Spain and McCullough captivatingly recount his journey,” says a review in the Washington Post, “exploring the impact that love and self-knowledge can have on identity.” Told in the third person, the book recounts McCullough’s search for his own history through the unsealing of his adoption records. As he learned, his birth mother was a 16-year-old who gave him up in the hope he’d have a better life—but his childhood was volatile and even abusive, and he sought refuge in sports. “Even non-sports fans will love this incredible story,” says Booklist, calling it “a book about trauma, family, and hope, threaded with moments of profound sadness and unbelievable joy.” Fugitive Tilts Ishion Hutchinson Hutchinson is Arts & Sciences’ W.E.B. Du Bois Professor in the Humanities, and a poet whose three collections include a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Fugitive Tilts, his first book of essays, collects work from the past few decades—contemplating such topics as his childhood in Jamaica and the country’s colonial history. Many of the essays originally appeared in major periodicals such as Harper’s, the New Yorker, and the Paris Review. The pieces include “Treasure Island and Me,” in which Hutchinson parses his youthful obsession with Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure novel. “I wondered—I was about 12 at this time, a full year of reading Treasure Island—how the bays, the coves, and the ridges behind our house got their names,” he writes, adding: “Strange to think, later when I left home, that it was Treasure Island that brought on this kind of wondering about inheritance.” Stories You May Like Alum’s Bakery with a Hollywood Following Hits a Sweet Spot Andrea Savage ’94 Makes ’em Laugh As Hutchinson tells the Cornell Chronicle in an interview about Fugitive Tilts: “To a great extent it’s about the education of an aesthetic sensibility which is very much caught between all kinds of sociopolitical and historical structures that bear heavily on that reader hoping to become an artist or a writer or a poet, discovering what it means to become more confident.” Call Me Gebyanesh Arlene Rosenfeld Schenker ’71 Based on the experiences of Schenker’s co-author, this children’s book (aimed at kids aged four to eight) follows a young girl who emigrates from Ethiopia to Israel. She finds it difficult to adjust to many aspects of life in her new country—and the transition is made harder when her teacher decides that her name is too difficult to pronounce, and she should go by “Rakhel” instead. “I’m so different from the Israeli kids,” the protagonist observes. “I know we’re all Jewish, but I look different, my lunches are different, and everything in Israel is different! I do love my name, and I don’t like pretending that I’m Rakhel when I’m Gebyanesh on the inside!” Call Me Gebyanesh is the first published book for Schenker, a Human Ecology alum whose résumé includes practicing law and teaching first grade. Says School Library Journal: “What an unusual, subtle addition to a familiar conflict; this will be a good fit for collections that support social-emotional learning in early elementary students.” Mesa Verde’s Secret Garden Christopher Barns ’72 In this nonfiction book from University of New Mexico Press, Barns—a longtime staffer and volunteer in the field of federal land management—chronicles the history of Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park. As Barns explains, the park’s backcountry and wilderness are not open to the public, in part to protect its hundreds of ancient Native American cliff dwellings. “Through this history, Mesa Verde emerges as a prime example of the conflicts often seen as inherent between the stewardship of what appear to be opposing resources,” Barns writes. “It is customary for disputes to be expected when trying to balance preservation and resource extraction. But here, as in other parks and wilderness areas with exceptionally important cultural components, there arises a friction between wilderness preservation and cultural preservation.” The Shah of Texas Charlie Green In this satirical novel by Green—a senior lecturer in English who previously published the poetry collection Feral Ornamentals—Texas secedes from the U.S. Then it installs a shah as its leader, and goes to war against its former country. The tale is set in 1989, a decade after the secession. Its characters include those loosely based on such governmental bigwigs as President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. The novel’s protagonist is a journalist seeking to uncover a Texas camp where political prisoners are tortured; meanwhile, the rebel state’s government is feeding its residents disinformation to convince them it’s winning the war. As the author has described it: “Think Dr. Strangelove meets Mel Brooks meets 1984.” To submit your book for consideration, email cornellians@cornell.edu. Please note that to be included, books must be recently published by a conventional publisher—not self published, pay-to-publish, publish on demand, partner-published, or similar—and be of interest to a general audience. Books not featured will be forwarded to Class Notes. Published June 16, 2025 Leave a Comment Cancel replyOnce your comment is approved, your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment * Name * Class Year Email * Save my name, email, and class year in this browser for the next time I comment. Δ Other stories You may like Students Cornell Fashion Collective Spotlights Big Red Design Flair Campus & Beyond New Book by Alumni Explores Walter LaFeber’s Life and Work Students Fur Above: Big Red Bears Bring Touchdown to Life