Books like The Traveling Show — picked by fans

The vintage fashion descriptions are killer diller with little mini-stories about each dress featured that evoke nostalgia and often melancholy. The mini-stories were sweet, delightful vignettes that reminded me of the way I think of my vintage clothing. They were beautifully written and I loved them all but most noticeably, I loved the story about the wartime mother splashing in puddles with her children. Dora’s character was likable and believable and I rooted for her. The supporting characters were perfectly quirky and delightfully despicable. Plus there is a nice romantic element with a fun love-triangle with wonderful supporting characters.

The characters really stand out. Trey is easy to love and you root for him right away with plenty of dance scenes that put swing dance center stage. Backen makes use of era music, citing big bands with a good amount of vintage fashion description, shoes, too! Although I guessed at most of the plot points, I love having my suspicions confirmed. Still, there were some nice twists along the way. I loved the soda shop setting and the barn, both exuding their own romance. Last but not least, I loved that the MC wasn’t the stereotypical hunk (short guys are the best to dance with–trust me).

Set in post-WWII with wartime flashbacks to an earlier time, Blundell uses music, dance, and fashion to capture the mood and atmosphere of the era. Her descriptions of the fashions had me drooling and wanting to run to the nearest vintage shop to buy a new dress. Blundell’s use of language, imagery, and metaphor worked well and often flirted with brilliance. She captured the dichotomy of having one foot in childhood and the other in adulthood with compelling plot twists, intertwining the complex mother and the daughter relationship from the perspective of a young woman. The romance aspect was realistic and dangerous with the character of Peter exactly what every parent fears for their budding daughter and what so many naive girls think they want.

I was fascinated with the depiction of the 1930s Malaysian dance halls steeped in music, fashion, and dance. As a writer who dabbles in the paranormal, the cultural spirits and supernatural elements were intriguing. The split narrative appealed to me since my Jitterbug Dress series is a dual narrative set in the 1940s and 1990s. The author also set the narrative apart by telling the story in different tenses and POVs (Ren and William’s story is in third person past, while Ji Lin’s story is first person, present). Choo did a great job of juxtaposing the beast or wild animal inside each person, where the line of who we are inside and what we present to society is drawn all while creating tension and suspense, keeping me guessing on how all these narratives intertwine. 

I love this series.

Lily Ivory, who owns a vintage clothing shop in San Francisco, wants to fit in somewhere and conceal her “witchiness”.

She is spiritual and stylish and has a charming sense of humor. Just when life seems normal, she stumbles onto a spooky murder.

This book ticks off all the boxes for a fun and mentally stimulating read. Lily’s familiar is an adorable, witty pig. There’s a sexy myth buster who is enticing. And there’s a powerful warlock who is her nemesis.

Such a fun read!

This frothy, well-paced cozy witch mystery features a psychic who can pick up visions of the past wearers of old clothes. How convenient that she runs a vintage clothing store… Add a Cary-Grant handsome ghost and some very lively romantic entanglements to the great clothes and a charming small town, and you’ve got a winning paranormal mystery. The author also does an excellent job describing the experience of clairtangency—psychic touch.

This book isn’t as light-hearted as most cozies, but I found the premise intriguing. Charley will do anything to make her vintage clothing store a success, even if it means joining The Agathas Book Club, whose members she can hardly stand. But they are her most prominent customers, so what else can she do but grin and bear it?  

It turns out she’s not the only one who dislikes the members, for one by one, they start turning up dead. Charley notices something odd that the police have overlooked; the murders are made to look like the ones in the books the club members are reading. I love how Charley puts her personal feelings aside to work with the difficult Agathas members. It’s the only way she can hope to find the killer before they all turn up dead.

My favorite part is the way her perspective shifts, and she… show more.

I love Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward's way of weaving a beautiful story that makes you say, 'just one more chapter'.

They always pull you into the story and make you feel like you are there. I often read their books in a day because I can’t put them down.

I love the grumpy-sunshine trope in this book. It was fun and sexy and emotional. There is a hidden and very well-portrayed medical issue for one of the characters, which I felt added so much depth to the book and touched on very real, relatable issues.

As a U.S. labor historian, I’ve read loads of books on the unionization of mass production during the Great Depression.

Labor’s New Millions stands above the rest for its power to make you feel like you’re right there at the picket lines, union halls, and other venues that the journalist Mary Heaton Vorse visited as she gathered material for this book about worker uprisings that put the Congress of Industrial Organizations on the map. As she shows in vivid detail, whole communities rallied to build the CIO, and campaigns for justice on the job spilled over into other realms.

Housewives going toe to toe against police, kids hand painting their own picket signs, strikers chanting “Freedom! Freedom”: Labor’s New Millions brings to life all of this and much more. 

Every Father’s Day, someone or the other on my social media feed will post Robert Hayden’s wonderful poem “Those Winter Sundays.” The poem takes me back not only to the many acts of kindness and unheralded small sacrifices that my father made but also to the ambition and the anxiety of Seepersad Naipaul on behalf of his son away at Oxford and starting in life as a writer, a writer who later in life will win the Nobel Prize.

The poignant part of this drama is the father’s own ambition and anxiety about making it as a writer. It doesn’t happen. Instead, the son receives a telegram with some terrible news. He sends his family a telegram in return: “= HE WAS THE BEST MAN I KNEW STOP EVERYTHING I OWE TO HIM BE BRAVE MY LOVES TRUST ME = VIDO”