Vote on which book we read next! It's time to select from our Top 3 FicPicks
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Club Calvi's Top 3 FicPicks are stories about love, family, and second chances
Cast your vote for which book will be our next Readers' Choice!
"The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern" by Lynda Cohen Loigman is about a woman newly-retired in Florida who encounters the man who she loved when she was a young girl.
In "How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund," author Anna Montague writes about a woman who takes a road trip after a friend's death and makes discoveries about herself.
"Love Can't Feed You" by Cherry Lou Sy is about a young immigrant in Brooklyn torn between two cultures.
You can read excerpts below and VOTE HERE.
The CBS New York Book Club focuses on books connected to the Tri-State Area in their plots and/or authors. The books may contain adult themes.
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"The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern" by Lynda Cohen Loigman
From the publisher: On the cusp of turning eighty, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs—an active senior community in southern Florida—she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father's old pharmacy—and the man who broke her heart sixty years earlier.
As a teenager growing up in 1920's Brooklyn, Augusta's role model was her father, Solomon Stern, the trusted owner of the local pharmacy and the neighborhood expert on every ailment. But when Augusta's mother dies and Great Aunt Esther moves in, Augusta can't help but be drawn to Esther's curious methods. As a healer herself, Esther offers Solomon's customers her own advice—unconventional remedies ranging from homemade chicken soup to a mysterious array of powders and potions.
As Augusta prepares for pharmacy college, she is torn between loyalty to her father and fascination with her great aunt, all while navigating a budding but complicated relationship with Irving. Desperate for clarity, she impulsively uses Esther's most potent elixir with disastrous consequences. Disillusioned and alone, Augusta vows to reject Esther's enchantments forever.
Sixty years later, confronted with Irving, Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago and how did her plan go so spectacularly wrong? Did Irving ever truly love her or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it's too late?
Lynda Cohen Loigman lives in New York.
"The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern" by Lynda Cohen Loigman (ThriftBooks) $22
"How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?" by Anna Montague
From the publisher: Most days, Magda is fine. She has her routines. She has her anxious therapy patients, who depend on her to cure their bad habits. She has her longtime colleagues, whose playful bickering she mediates. She's mourning the recent loss of her best friend, Sara, but has brokered a tentative truce with Sara's prickly widower as she helps him sort through the last of Sara's possessions. She's fine.
But in going through Sara's old journal, Magda discovers her friend's last directive: plans for a road trip they would take together in celebration of Magda's upcoming seventieth birthday. So, with Sara's urn in tow, Magda decides to hit the road, crossing the country and encountering a cast of memorable characters—including her sister, from whom she's been keeping secrets. Along the way she stumbles upon a jazz funeral in New Orleans and a hilarious women's retreat meant to "unleash one's divine feminine energy" in Texas, and meets a woman who challenges her conceptions of herself—and the hidden truths about her friendship with Sara.
As the trip shakes up her careful routines, Magda finally faces longings she locked away years ago and confronts questions about her sexuality and identity she thought she had long put to rest. And as she soon learns, it's never too late to start your next journey.
Anna Montague lives in Brooklyn.
"How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?" by Anna Montague (ThriftBooks) $21
"Love Can't Feed You" by Cherry Lou Sy
From the publisher: After a harrowing flight, Queenie, her younger brother, and their elderly Chinese father arrive in the United States from the Philippines. They're here to finally reunite with Queenie's Filipina mother, who has been working as a nurse in Brooklyn for the past few years-building a life that everyone hopes will set them up for better prospects. But her mother is not the same woman she was in the Philippines: Something in her face is different, almost hardened, and she seems so American already.
Queenie, on the cusp of adulthood, has big dreams of attending college, of spending her days immersed in the pages of books. But there is not enough money for her and her brother to both be in school, so first she must work. Queenie rotates through jobs and settles, tentatively, into her new life, but her brother begins to withdraw and act out, and her father's anger swells. As the pressures of assimilation compound, and the fissures within her family deepen into fractures, Queenie is left suspended between two countries, two identities, and two parents.
Cherry Lou Sy lives in Brooklyn.
"Love Can't Feed You" by Cherry Lou Sy (ThriftBooks) $21
Excerpt: "The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern" by Lynda Cohen Loigman
Introduction:
Augusta's dream is to be a pharmacist like her father. But when her great aunt Esther comes to stay with her family, Augusta is torn between her father's scientific approach to healing and Esther's mysterious alternative methods. In this scene, Esther allows Augusta to watch her work and begins to teach Augusta some of her secrets.
***
The night following Harriet Dornbush's visit, Augusta slept with one eye open. Long after midnight, when she heard her aunt stir, Augusta followed her into the kitchen. Esther knew that Augusta was trailing her, but she didn't say a word as she moved down the hall, carrying the wooden apothecary case that she had taken from inside her trunk. Her long silver hair hung loose down her back, and the bottom of her silky blue robe skimmed over the wooden floor.
This time—for Augusta's benefit—she whispered the names of her ingredients: pomegranate seeds, black cohosh, stinging nettle, raspberry leaves, viburnum. The spicy aroma of licorice root hit the back of Augusta's nostrils.
The moon showed itself as if Esther had summoned it, peering in through the window like a dutiful friend, illuminating the mortar until the brass seemed to glow. As she ground the ingredients, she hummed her strange song. An entreaty. A wish. An incantation. A prayer. The pestle blazed bright from between her long fingers, until the room smelled of potency, abundance, and hope.
When she was finished grinding the herbs, she deposited the powder in another square of clean white muslin and tied it with string. This time, she handed the mortar to Augusta and asked her to wipe it clean. It was heavier than Augusta expected, and felt rougher to the touch. "How long have you had this?" Augusta asked.
"It belonged to my mother, her mother before her, and her mother before that. One day, perhaps, it will belong to you."
Augusta felt her pulse quicken in her veins. "Do you really think so?"
Esther nodded. "I told you that you had the heart of a healer, and I believe it to be true. Of course, the path will not be easy. There is a great deal to learn and you will have to work very hard."
"I'll work harder than anyone," Augusta insisted. "But if I want to learn from you, does that mean I shouldn't go to pharmacy college?"
"Of course you should go to college!" Aunt Esther snapped. "When I was young, I had no such opportunity. My brothers were sent to study in Lviv, but my sisters and I were not allowed to go. I was as bright as you are now—equally curious, equally ambitious. But because I wasn't born a man, I was forced to stay at home. I learned everything I know of plants and potions from my mother and my grandmother. But if I'd had the chance to go to university, who knows how much more knowledge I might have collected? You must go to college, Goldie. You must do what I could not."
"Did your mother and grandmother teach your sisters, too?"
Aunt Esther shook her head. "Neither of my sisters wanted to learn. One married a farmer and one a stonemason. When I grew older, they were ashamed of me—ashamed of their strange spinster sister. What was more, they did not like that I advertised my knowledge. My mother and grandmother had kept their skills private, but I chose to share mine with others. Many in my village were grateful to me, especially when my powders cured them of illness. But others accused me of being a witch, a Baba Yaga of the forest. They said I flew above the trees at night, sitting inside a wooden mortar, like a witch on a broom. They said I steered with an enchanted pestle, inflicting disease on whoever wronged me. They blamed me whenever they had a cough, or if they sneezed or had a toothache."
"That's ridiculous," Augusta said. But she didn't feel entirely convinced.
Esther raised her silver eyebrows. "I wanted to study medicine and healing. If I had been born a man, they would have called me an apothecary. Perhaps even a doctor, if I'd had the training. But because I was born a woman, they called me a witch instead. To ignorant men, every gifted woman is a witch."
"But you know things my father doesn't know," said Augusta. "You're able to help people in ways that he can't. How?"
"If a person is denied a formal education," said Esther, "she must be inventive in her quest for knowledge. She must study the folktales and the old stories. She must learn however she can. She must use every tool at her disposal."
"Like your mortar?"
"Like my mortar."
"Will you tell me about the words inside it? The words you are always repeating? Please, will you explain what they mean?"
"The words themselves could not be simpler. They state the mortar's purpose, that is all." She held up the mortar and pointed inside it as she recited the words in English.
To ease the pain of those who suffer
To repair the bodies of those who are ill
To restore the minds of those in need
"But if the words are so simple," Augusta pressed, "why are they so important?"
"Must words be complicated or unusual for us to believe in them?"
"Maybe not, but you still haven't explained why the words are necessary at all. Words can't simply make someone better. Words don't have that kind of power."
Esther put all of her tins and bottles back in the proper places in her case. She stared at Augusta for a good long while. "Words can do anything," she said. "A kind word can fix a person's spirit. A cruel one can break a person's heart. Wicked words have caused wars, and honest words have made peace. Why shouldn't they be able to heal?"
From The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman. Copyright © 2024 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group.
Excerpt: "How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?" by Anna Montague
The physicist Erwin Schrödinger became famous for his hypothetical experiment in which a cat, a flask of poison, and a minuscule amount of radioactive substance were placed in a sealed box. In the scenario, the atoms in the radioactive material were not known to have decayed; the box, after all, was closed. But if even one atom were to decay, the flask would shatter, the poison released upon the cat.
The idea was that two potential resolutions could not hold indefinitely. At some point, reality must eventually resolve into one state or another. Only with the box closed could both possibilities exist, could the cat ostensibly be both alive and dead. Upon opening the box, any lingering ambiguity would be obliterated: it had to be one or the other.
In medical school, Magda had found that line of thinking ridiculous. The cat ought to be presumed dead, she felt. The inherent risk, the sheer probability of death!
Up until receiving Fred's voicemail the previous year—really, up until the moment he'd choked out "She's gone," Magda had found the whole debate pointless, and bordering on superstition. So what if the box hadn't been opened yet? Surely, the cat would never survive.
The night Sara died, they were meant to meet for a movie. Sara had chosen a pulpy thriller, the 8:00 p.m. showing at Lincoln Center. It was a nice gesture, Magda usually the one to make a few suggestions, before deferring to Sara's only—and totally random—choice. But it felt, lately, that the choices themselves had been dwindling: Sara increasingly prone to lateness, returning calls after nearly a week without apologizing or even offering up solid excuses. Work was hectic; she was tired; but she seemed to forget that so, too, was Magda. Tiredness hadn't stopped Sara from vacationing with Fred, had it, or from attending a gallery opening downtown when they were supposed to have dinner, leaving Magda opposite an empty wineglass and the house salad Sara had said she wanted to share.
At the time, Magda didn't really mind. She didn't want to see Sara: that was the truth.
After a tense few months, they'd impulsively taken a trip to Boston, which had failed to bring them closer. Since then, the easy rapport of their friendship had given way to something more polite, distanced, with Sara often distracted and forgetful. When they were together, Magda could ignore the nauseating panic of this dissonance; there was Sara, right there with her, and the warmth of Sara's presence canceled out Magda's annoyance. Then they parted ways, Magda increasingly optimistic, only for Sara to disappear again, to cancel yet another plan; the cycle began anew. What Magda suspected: Fred, poisoning the well, and Sara, allowing him to.
That night, she had left Sara a message, suggesting that they might meet another time, perhaps the following week; she wasn't feeling up to it. She offered a flat apology and hung up, and hours later, as she was filling the kettle, the phone began to trill. You can call Sara back, Magda reminded herself. You don't always have to do whatever she wants.
Not until the next morning, when she listened to Fred's message, did the floor shatter.
For weeks, she would find herself immobile, lodged under the covers of her bed and unable to do anything but breathe that stale air, note the beads of sweat pooling on her chest. An unsustainable grief, melted by the remembering of simple things: doctors' appointments and upcoming sessions, lives other than her own. The sadness needed only subside for a moment before she remembered that there was purpose to her day; she needed to get up, and to iron her blouse, because otherwise the patients would be left waiting, or, if she arrived unkempt and unprepared, they would be left wondering.
Even so.
Each day, Magda would peel back the bedsheets, tug her hair into an unruly bun, and have her first cigarette. Exhaling by the window, she would flip through the paper. That new Mediterranean place on Fifty-Eighth, that's what Sara would have chosen. Or no, perhaps they would have ambled downtown to a promising sculptor's exhibition, somewhere deep in the Village. Every morning, Magda read about the day she would have had, if Sara were still there to share it with her. Bundling the paper, she would then stub her cigarette on the windowsill and make her way to the hall closet, rummaging around for a minute before she left.
Any minute, she thought, Sara would appear on the front steps. In the park. At her office, lofting a paper sack of bagels overhead, during that brief midmorning window when Magda took her lunch and Sara didn't yet have to be at the gallery.
Sara would have her gloves on, already coffee-stained, and Magda would take her cup from Sara's hand, using the other to readjust a wayward curl that tugged over her friend's forehead. She would say, There's an exhibition we might want to— and Sara would interrupt by clapping her hands together. Oh, I was so hoping you'd say that.
Any minute, Magda would think. Any minute and my life is going to come rushing back to me.
What if she had picked up and said, yes, they could go to the movie, but only if they talked—actually talked—first? Or what if she had been a better friend, said nothing, and they had gone to the movie, Magda briefly leaving Sara in order to get their popcorn, the soda with its two straws? But what if Magda had been the one to come back and find her motionless, prone in the seat? Or what if the unknown variable, the killer, had been triggered by something in Sara's own apartment? Magda's voicemail, even—if hers was the last voice Sara heard. But what if Magda was the one who could have saved her? Had she gone to the movie, would Sara have lived? Could the cat ever be both alive and dead?
From How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? by Anna Montague. Copyright © 2024 by Anna Louise Montague Field. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Excerpt: "Love Can't Feed You" by Cherry Lou Sy
I am going to die. My body contracts the second the plane descends from thirty thousand feet. I feel bile in my throat and grab another vomit bag. I think of the stories others will tell about me—gone too soon, what a shame that she didn't get to live out her potential. This is not how anyone imagines arriving to America.
Papa tells me to pray. My mouth forms Hail Marys, but the monster in my stomach shoves its way to my throat again. The queasiness possesses me with violence and pins me to my seat as I lurch like the women from back home—the ones who thrash on the ground filled with the Holy Spirit.
"I should have given you the Dramamine," Papa says for the tenth time since we left Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila.
Papa didn't let me eat anything he could save for later: the crumbly granola bars, foil‑wrapped biscuits, and even the hard dinner rolls. He pocketed the silverware too.
He complains to the flight attendant and asks for more vomit bags since I have used mine, his, and even Junior's vomit bags. Junior sleeps soundly on the other side of Papa, his legs akimbo. A white woman next to me turns to her young companion and shakes her head. Her disgust pierces through my nausea.
"Never have children," she says.
My ears pop and the rest of her words blur. The plane rocks from the turbulence of November winds. My eyes roll to the back of my head.
"Can't you do something about your grandchild?" the woman asks Papa.
Papa apologizes to her, ashamed to say that I am not his grand‑ child but his teenage daughter. How could he explain his silver hair to her? How could he explain that he fathered his first child—who has done nothing but stir trouble—at the age of fifty? He says that I've been throwing up nonstop because he didn't give me Drama‑ mine. How this is our first plane ride. How he should have known that this was like taking a long bus ride, only worse. He even tells this stranger that he would give me Dramamine as a two‑year‑old to con‑ trol the motion sickness, a sickness that made me a terrible travel companion when what he needed was a good girl who never made a fuss.
The white woman softens a little and tells him how she learned from a Chinese herbalist that ginger is good for motion sickness, and that he should be giving me ginger instead. She mentions that the herbalist helped her with her many health issues, explaining the con‑ cept of hot and cold air in the body, the yin and yang.
"Aren't you Chinese?" she asks him. Papa's tongue loosens and says yes, but not exactly Chinese. The woman's mouth makes an O.
He tells her that his parents moved from China to the Philippines and that he was born and left in the hospital for two years because his parents couldn't afford to have another mouth to feed.
"What a shame," the woman says, then asks him if we are going to the US for a visit. Papa pauses. It feels like the same question the man from the embassy asked us a few months before. Papa tells her the story we all rehearsed before the interview to get our visas. That we're tourists visiting Ma, who's been in New York working as a nurse for the last five years. That we're going to see snow for the first time. That five years is long enough for a mother to go without seeing her family.
"What do you do?" the woman asks. "Business," Papa says.
The little lies and the big lies all meld. He doesn't tell her about all the money he lost—how he bought wholesale rice the year when three Category 3 typhoons flooded the rice fields, along with the stockrooms that housed the harvested rice, or that his partner ran away with the money that was supposed to be used to pay off their creditors. He doesn't tell her about getting into the export business with an Australian man who fled after the big earthquake and left him with a storage house filled with giant rotting wood carvings. He doesn't tell her that he wants to start fresh in America. He doesn't tell her about his plans for his son and daughter to go to American schools and have American lives, or that we bought round‑trip tickets for a one‑way journey. This is inside talk that she doesn't need to hear.
"How long are you going to stay?" she asks.
We are on alert. Junior, whose eyes were closed a moment earlier, turns and looks at Papa. Even in my state, where every movement causes me discomfort, I sense danger and turn my head a little with my eyes closed. Papa slows down, careful not to give away too much, though he has given away so much already.
"Until the end of winter," he says, repeating the rehearsed words we said to the man in the gray suit at the embassy as he looked us over, one by one, trying to gauge what was true and what was not. Junior asked Papa then, before the interview, if it's all right to lie, and Papa said yes—when you have to.
The woman hails one of the flight attendants and clears her throat. "Do you have Dramamine by any chance?" she asks, pointing to me.
The flight attendant, a thin young woman with long hair, looks at me and says in a low voice, "We're not supposed to have it. Regula‑ tions, you know."
Someone from across the aisle overhears her and fishes something out of her bag, a tube of Dramamine. She offers it to our neighbor. "I forgot I had this."
At this moment, I vomit again and some of the bile gets on my T‑shirt, jeans, and jacket—clothes from the last balikbayan box Ma sent in preparation for the trip. The strong, distinct scent of puke emanates from my mouth, all traces of food I've eaten on the plane from Manila to Japan combined into a fermented, sour mess.
"She may not be able to hold this down if she keeps throwing up like that," the woman who talked about yin and yang says, wrinkling her nose.
None of these humiliations are enough, of course. My sanitary pad needed changing over two hours ago, but I don't dare get up to go to the bathroom. I can't anyway. My body defies me and here I am, an animal sitting in her own bloody filth. Another jolt in the air. Another wave of nausea. I reach for the vomit bag. I moan.
Excerpted from LOVE CAN'T FEED YOU by Cherry Lou Sy. Copyright © 2024 by Cherry Lou Sy.. Reprinted by permission of Dutton, an imprint Penguin Random House.
