Ariel Horn's Holiday Gift Suggestion

Ariel Horn is probably the youngest author taking place in Beatrice's gift recommendations. The 24-year-old New York schoolteacher is the author of Help Wanted, Desperately, which fellow chick-lit writer Laurie Notaro describes as a "perfect cocktail of charm, wit and pain." For more background on her gift recommendation, check out this NYT profile written by Caren Lissner (whose novels Beatrice also recommends, especially Carrie Pilby).

Though it seems like a shameless plug (and yes, I admit that it is!), my older sister Dara Horn's novel, In the Image, is an absolutely phenomenal read. (And I'm not just saying that as her sister; as her sister, I have the right to be ruthless about the book, so it really says something that I loved it!) In the Image follows a young woman named Leora through the death of her best friend in high school and on to college, career, and falling in love. Simultaneously, it traces the story of Bill Landsmann, her lost friend’s grandfather, back through several generations of experience in Amsterdam, Austria, and New York’s Lower East Side. Beautifully written from start to finish, In the Image explores two delicately interwoven stories that question both the big and the little issues of life: what it means to be in love, the importance of familial connections, and the very nature of good and evil. Not to be missed!