2025 Reading Challenge Crossover Books

Book Summary

Emily is a librarian on Martha’s Vineyard, but her desire for a more adventurous life leads her to Ireland. Her favorite author, Siobhan Riordan, has offered her a job helping her write the long-awaiting final novel in her series.

Things would be great if it wasn’t for Siobhan’s grumpy son, Kieran, who runs her bookstore. Tensions escalated with Kieran after Siobhan’s health declined. How can Emily help fulfill Siobhan’s desire to see her final book completed with Kieran?

Book Summary

In 1996, Hanna, a rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime working on the conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the earliest Jewish manuscripts ever illuminated with illustrations. The priceless book was rescued during the Bosnian War.
When Hanna discovers a series of tiny artifacts in the book’s ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries.

Inspired by a true story, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks has created a novel of sweeping historical grandeur. In Bosnia during WWII, a Muslim risks his life to protect the book from the German army. In turn-of-the-century Vienna, the book has become a pawn in the struggle against the city’s rising anti-Semitism. In inquisition-era Venice, a Catholic priest saves the book from being burned. In Barcelona in 1492, the scribe who wrote the text sees his family destroyed by the agonies of enforced exile. And in Seville in 1480, the reason for the Haggadah’s extraordinary illuminations is finally disclosed.

WARNING: This book includes a scene of graphic rape.

Book Summary

Kit is the head librarian in the town of Riverton, New Hampshire, but for her, the library is more than just a job. It is a place of peace. When she’s there, no one expects her to talk about the calamitous events that have recently turned her settled, suburban life completely upside down. Instead, she can submerge herself in books and forget about her real-life problems for a while.

Kit’s quiet sanctuary changes suddenly, however, when a 15-year-old named Sunny is assigned community service at the library for the whole summer. Sunny was arrested for shoplifting a dictionary, and the judge threw the book at her, quite literally. Sunny is bright, curious, and eager to connect with someone other than the off-the-grid hippie parents who school her at home. She’s determined to coax Kit out of her self-imposed isolation.

Then there’s Rusty. He’s a Wall Street high-flyer who has recently crashed down to Earth. In this small town library, this unlikely trio is drawn together, along with a cast of other quirky regulars. They will be forced to examine how their lives have unraveled, but they’ll also help knit them together again.

Book Summary

Alice Island bookstore owner A.J. Fikry is having a terrible year. His wife has died, the store isn’t making enough sales, and his beloved book of Poe poems has been stolen. As a result, he’s cranky and pushing those around him away more than ever. Luckily he has a few people that look past his curmudgeonly attitude. 

His depression reaches the point that he no longer enjoys books. But, sometimes, life gives you second chances in unexpected ways. For A.J., it’s a small, but heavy, mysterious package that arrives at his shop. As he begins to see the world around him in a new way, those around him can see him in a new way, too.

Book Summary

In this 273-page non-fiction read, you’ll armchair travel to visit independent bookstores and their proprietors on six different continents.

From a tiny shop on a bike to a bookshop on a boat, you’ll fall in love with the quirky stores and their owners. Throughout the pages, you’ll also find lovely bookish quotes, interviews, and trivia.

Book Summary

Looking for an eerie mystery that’s perfect for book lovers? This highly-rated debut novel follows a bookshop employee named Lydia, who ends up investigating the suicide of one of her bookshop regulars.

As Lydia delves into his past, she also uncovers a buried memory from her own violent childhood. This twisty crime thriller with a very creative puzzle element that will keep readers guessing.

Book Summary

When Valentia was a teenager, her mother, Eloise, abandoned her and her father to start a new life in London. Now in her 30s, Val is a librarian and recently divorced. As she reevaluates her life, she realizes that the lack of closure with her mother is still nagging at her. But in a bittersweet twist of fate, Val learns that her mother has passed away before they’ve had a chance to reconcile.

Val is surprised to discover that Eloise left her a Primrose Hill apartment and the deed to a bookshop that Val never knew her mom owned. Determined to piece together a better understanding of Eloise’s life, Val decides to leave Seattle for a fresh start in London. It doesn’t take long for her to fall in love with the pastel-colored flat in a cozy neighborhood, not to mention the quaint bookstore. Unfortunately, she soon learns that The Book Garden is in financial trouble.

Told from a dual-timeline perspective, this book explores Valentia’s new life in London, as well as her mother’s past and what happened when she left her daughter behind.

Book Summary

With WWII war closing in on their city, Jacques’ wife is forced into hiding. Desperate to hold onto something, Jacques focuses all of his effort on saving his beloved bookshop. But when a woman and her child show up at his door one night begging for refuge, he can’t say no.

In present-day Paris, Juliette and her husband are supposed to be on a romantic getaway, but instead, she quickly discovers how far they’ve grown apart. When she comes across an abandoned bookshop with a for-sale sign in the window, she thinks it might just be the new adventure she’s craving. But the bookstore hides a lot more than meets the eye.

Book Summary

Joy’s French husband has passed away, and she has no idea why he has left a valuable painting to a woman named Robyn on the western coast of Ireland. So, she decides to deliver the painting in person.

When she arrives in Ballycove, she finds that Robyn runs a chaotic and unprofitable bookshop and desperately needs assistance. Joy soon becomes entangled not only in the bookshop but also in the town. All the while, she’s still trying to discover the secrets behind her late husband’s painting.

Book Summary

Mercy and her twin-sister Lizzie are the new proprietors of an antique bookshop in the tiny Irish village of Shamrock Cove. However, their new venture takes a dark turn when Mercy finds their neighbor dying on his doorstep. Worse, he accuses her of murder before he dies, and several people hear him!

She has to quickly investigate to try and clear her name. As she looks through the victim’s old books, she finds that the local pub landlord, the kindly cook, and a neighborly knitter all had a reason to want the man dead. But, when Mercy’s top suspect also dies and leaves behind a threatening note typed on paper from Mercy’s new bookstore, things get even more complicated.

Book Summary

Set in post-war London, Bloomsbury Girls focuses on an old-fashioned bookstore that has been run by men for a hundred years. However, by 1950, the world is changing in many ways. 

Three of the shop girls, Vivien, Grace, and Evie, have their own big dreams that are intersected by fascinating interactions with famous literary figures. As they work in the shop, they plot out a future bigger than 1950 society generally allows.

Book Summary

Childhood friends Rachel & Henry grew apart when Rachel moved, and Henry didn’t respond to a confession of her love that she left behind for him in a book.

Now, Rachel has moved back and is struggling with the death of her sister. She gets a job at the bookshop owned by Henry’s family, and is closed off to him as she still feels rejected. What she didn’t know is that Henry’s life is also going through a rough patch – his girlfriend broke up with him, and the bookshop is slipping away as his family breaks apart.

But as Rachel & Henry work together, they begin exchanging letters through the pages of books in the store. Can they find new hope in each other?

Book Summary

Jude is twenty-nine and just graduated, so she can finally be public about her relationship with philosophy professor, Mack. She’s looking forward to their upcoming dream holiday to run a tiny bookshop in the harbor village of Clove Lore.

Two weeks before the non-refundable trip, Jude sees Mack kissing someone else. Luckily, there’s no better place to heal a broken heart than a bookshop. Jude takes the trip and expects to have some peace alone at the store, but finds another vacationing shopkeeper, Elliot, who seems to be hiding something.

Book Summary

By day, Kitty is a single woman who owns a bookstore in Denver with her best friend, Frieda. In 1962, it was unconventional for a woman of her age to be an unmarried business owner, but she enjoyed having complete control over her day-to-day life without a husband to answer to. However, there was a man in her life once that she might have considered marrying—a doctor named Kevin.

But at night, Kitty leads an alternate life in her dreams. In this dream reality, Kitty goes by Katharyn, and the year is 1963. She’s married to the love of her life, a man named Lars. Together they live in an elegant Denver home and have triplets.

This life is everything that she once thought she wanted, and at first, Kitty enjoys her nightly visits to this alternate reality. But soon, Kitty begins to find Katharyn’s life irresistible. As the lines between her real life and her dream life begin to blur, she wonders if she can choose the life she wants – and if so, at what cost?

Book Summary

University student Rachel works at a bookstore, where she meets James, who quickly becomes her new BFF and roommate. The duo runs the streets of Cork, striving for a Bohemian lifestyle but also sharply aware of a looming financial collapse.

When Rachel falls for her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, she plots to seduce him after a reading at her bookstore. However, Fred has other desires that launch a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected wife.

Book Summary

When her estranged mother passed away, Stella received a one-way ticket and a note reading, “Go to Paris.” While she is much more comfortable living within her strict routines, her boss encourages her to go on the trip.

In Paris, Stella continues to live as cautiously and frugally as she does at home until she stumbles upon a Dior dress in a vintage store. When the shopkeeper insists that it was meant for Stella, she impulsively purchases the dress and it launches a new outlook on life.

When Stella meets Jules, an octogenarian art collector, he takes her under his wing and shows her the best of the literary, art, and culinary worlds of 1980s Paris.