Eight books with Philly roots you should be reading this spring

It’s an exciting time to be a Philly writer.

Peacock debuted its limited edition thriller Long Bright River based on South Philadelphia writer Liz Moore’s novel of the same name Thursday. Frankford’s Joseph Earl Thomas’ God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer won the Center for Fiction’s prestigious First Novel Prize last December. And our own Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland was named one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2024.

“We are seeing a really lovely variety of books set in Philly by Philly authors,” said Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of Housemates, a novel about two queer friends road-tripping through Pennsylvania. Eisenberg is the cofounder of Blue Stoop, a local nonprofit championing Philly scribes. “The last five years have been a bumper crop of great work,” Eisenberg said. “I’m really proud of us.”

Whether you listen to books on long car rides or you’re a late-night reader, here are some books with deep Philly connections for you.

Girls High graduate, editor, and poet Jessie Redmon Fauset discovered Harlem Renaissance writers Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Nella Larsen when she was the literary editor of the NAACP magazine the Crisis. In Harlem Rhapsody, author Victoria Christopher Murray weaves the story of Fauset’s literary success — and a few visits to the Big Apple by Philly’s own Black elite like Delta Sigma Theta’s first national president Sadie Tanner Mossell — into a soapy roaring twenties novel. At the heart of the 400-page page-turner is Fauset’s alleged steamy affair with renowned civil rights activist and Philadelphia historian W.E.B. Du Bois.

Whether it’s Rose and Maggie Feller in the 2001 bestseller In Her Shoes or Diana Starling in the 2021 novel That Summer, former journalist-turned-blockbuster novelist Jennifer Weiner is deft at making readers fall in love with her emotional characters. In her latest, The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits, the Philly novelist flashes back to the bling-fueled early 2000s with siblings Cathy and Zoe Grossberg, a chart-topping pop-duo. Today the sisters are middle-aged suburban women holding on to decades-old secrets. Watch them unravel.

Joni Mitchell’s soulful folk songs helped memoirist and Rutgers University Camden professor Paul Lisicky find his creativity. Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell is the Cherry Hill native’s ode to Mitchell’s work. Lisicky takes readers on his artistic journey to self-discovery, starting in the fourth grade when he fell in love with Mitchell’s song “Both Sides Now.” We sit with him as he writes his first song and watch as this leads to meaningful prose. Song so Wild and Blue speaks to Mitchell fans and budding artists.

Hungry? Tired? Hungry and tired? Well, West Philadelphian — by way of Birmingham, Ala. — and Inquirer deputy food editor Margaret Eby has written the book you need. You Gotta Eat is filled with hacks, recipes, and tips for busy hungry people. It includes easy breakfast, snacks, and dinners including my favorite, the one sheet pan meal. The best advice in the book is the most obvious: use the leftover roasted veggies to make sandwiches on bread that, well, you don’t have to bake. Such good advice in today’s foodie-aesthetic driven world.

The message is simple. If you love a romance, buy this Mount Airy writer’s novel: Zoe Brennan, First Crush. In Laura Piper Lee’s book, Zoe Brennan runs her family’s vineyard in Blue Ridge. After a hot night with a mysterious woman — who she later learns is the daughter of a rival winemaker — the ladies team up to host a wine festival. Will they discover true love in the planning? Sounds like a Hallmark movie to me.

Philly-based novelist Ken Kalfus’ A Hole in the Story gives bingeable series energy. The 208-page novel is a dark story of how political commentator Adam Zweig becomes the third wheel in a titillating sexual harassment scandal between a colleague and an ex-boss. This has him confronting his biases and how they shape his coverage and that of his network’s.

Independent labor reporter Kim Kelly’s award-winning Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of The American Labor Movement illuminated the stories of freed Black women who organized for protection in Reconstruction-era South and Jewish immigrant garment workers in the early 1900s, among others. In Fight to Win: Heroes of American Labor, the Philly-based writer reiterates these stories for a young adult audience, at a time when such history lessons are becoming harder and harder to come by.

Former Philadelphia Inquirer journalist Charles Fancher tells the fictional story of an enslaved family and its enslavers at the dawn of Reconstruction. Fancher, who lives in the Poconos, weaves an epic saga of friendship, betrayal, violence, and redemption that takes readers from Alabama and Paris to New Orleans. Released in February, Red Clay is among the most anticipated historical fiction works of 2025.