The Friday Five // January 30, 2026
Reading Notes from the CLS Team
Rounding out the first month of 2026 with these carefully curated Friday Five selections, available in the CLS catalog or through our friends at Buxton Books. Before the winter weather hits our fair city, be sure to stop in and snag these in person or check out our digital catalogue. Stay warm!
★ CRITICS CORNER
The Rest of Our Lives: A Novel by Ben Markovits
Shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, Ben Markovits’ latest novel takes readers out of the house and on a literary roadtrip, confronting marital breakdown, a health scare, and above all, the past.
“Mr. Markovits is a prolific author…whose writing is restrained and plainspoken….The lack of adornments helps us see Tom laid bare. Stripped of his certainties, he achieves a raw kind of clarity.”
— Wall Street Journal
★ VOICES AND VIEWPOINTS
Across the Universe: the Past, Present, and Future of Crossword Puzzles by Natan Last
If you joined us for a program we held a few years ago with crossword aficianado Derrick Niederman, then bimonthly crossword constructor for The New Yorker, Natan Last, is one to be familiar with. In a time of word game mania, tackle the most celebrated and seemingly apolitical puzzle like you’ve never experienced it before in Last’s latest.
“A love letter to the crossword puzzle that is sprawling in its scope, deeply nerdy in sensibility, and passionate at its core. . . . A great read, chock full of fun facts about that most prestigious of puzzles. . . . It should be at the top of every gift guide for word nerds and puzzle enthusiasts everywhere.”
— Chicago Review of Books
★ A LITTLE BIT LIGHTER NOW
The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
Now a hit Netflix special featuring Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan, The Thursday Murder Club returns with the latest in the series, full of just as much malady and mystery.
“So what is it about the Thursday Murder Club books that make them so broadly appealing? The simple answer is that they are really good. The writing is pithy and fresh, so much so that I kept writing down lines from The Last Devil To Die. . . But there’s more than just quotable sentences at work here. Osman’s plots play fair with the reader, carefully placing ‘red herrings’ to fool the reader into picking the wrong possible murder suspect–a gambit that has improved with each successive book.” [Text Wrapping Break]— Esquire
★ THRILLS AND CHILLS
The Spy in the Archive by Gordon Corera
Co-host of The Rest is Classified podcast and writer on intelligence and security issues Gordon Corera brings us the remarkable story of how the in-house archivist for the KGB and the secrets inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy — ended up changing the world.
“Corera routinely impresses. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, The Spy in the Archivemanages to be, by turn, illuminating and riveting.”
— Christian Science Monitor
★ DIRECTOR OF COLLECTIONS PICK
This is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenddin
The New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and named a most anticipated book of 2026 by Town & Country, Bustle, AARP, and Kirkus, Daniyal Mueeddin’s latest multi-generational epic transports readers to contemporary Pakistan, exploring class, power, and social mobility through the intertwined lives of a wealthy family and their servants on a feudal estate.
“This is Where the Serpent Lives is a sweeping parable of power and fortune, set in Pakistan but with universal application. . . . Mueenuddin is a sort of literary magician. . . . Expect to see this epic novel all over prize lists in 2026.”
— The Times (London)