Stephanie Landsem's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Shadow Over Moscow was an immediate buy for this 1980s girl – the Cold War, 1980s spy intrigue, and a story of a mother and daughter set against the monolithic USSR.

As a teenager in the 80s, I visited East Berlin and East Germany twice before the downfall of the Iron Curtain. As a history major, I signed up for every Russian class my school offered. This compelling novel brought me back to the time when the USSR and the US dominated the world stage, and we teetered on the precipice of nuclear war. And the story itself resonated so strongly in my mother’s heart.

The relationship between this mother and daughter, fraught with deep love, lies, and looming fear, was extraordinarily well-done –filled with emotion and truth. It is a book for everyone who remembers the politics and fear of the 1980s and for every mother who wants to be the heroine her daughter needs.

I grew up loving the culture and language of Germany and my own German heritage. Still, I've always been haunted by the question of how so many Germans went along with -- or at the very least allowed -- Adolph Hitler to carry out his horrific plan for world domination and genocide.

The German Wife is a deeply moving story that answers the question of how one family was inexorably ensnared by the Nazi party and forced into compliance with evil.

The parallel story in this dual-timeline novel was an equally compelling view of the complicity of the United States in the 1950s arms race. Both storylines were thought-provoking, and the ending was equally heartbreaking and hopeful.

This book was a delight from start to finish. Although the majority of my reading is historical fiction, the setting of this contemporary novel in the Pacific Northwest – where I grew up – and the character of Marcellus, a Giant Pacific Octopus, intrigued me so much I couldn’t resist.

Oh, how I loved Marcellus! The friendship between Marcellus and Tova, an elderly widow mopping floors at the aquarium, is wholly original and heartwarming.

Then there was Cameron, a loveable oaf of a twenty-something desperately in need of a grandma, who grabbed my heart and didn’t let go. This is a luminous story of friendship and love the crosses even the boundaries of species!