This Today Show book club selection is now available on audio.
Laced with fine storytelling, sharp wit, dead-on observations, and moments of sheer joy, Haven Kimmel’s straight-shooting portrait of her childhood gives us a heroine who is wonderfully sweet and sly as she navigates the quirky adult world that surrounds her.
Kimmel takes listeners back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period: people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.

Brilliant, unconventional college senior Trace Pennington has eked out an impoverished, solitary, but highly functional existence in the years since she ran away from her abusive home. But when Trace finds love with a much older man, her life is upended and she is forced to face herself and her past. After recovering a horrific, long-suppressed memory, she discovers that much of her present-day life is a carefully constructed delusion. With equal parts genius and psychosis, Trace copes with the fallout from a brutal, bizarre childhood in a heart-stopping story that explores both the terror and wonder of mental illness.

Picking up where A Girl Named Zippy left off, Haven Kimmel crafts a tender portrait of her mother, a modestly heroic woman who took the odds that life gave her and somehow managed to win.
When we last saw Zippy, she was oblivious to the storm that was brewing in her home. Her mother, Delonda, had literally just gotten up off the couch and ridden her rickety bicycle down the road. Her dad was off somewhere, gambling or “working.” And Zippy was lost in her own fabulous world of exploring the fringes of Moorland, Indiana.
Increasingly frustrated with the limitations of her small-town, married-with-children life, Delonda decides first to learn how to drive a car, even though she won’t have access to one. Next, she applies to the local college, eventually graduating with honors at age forty. We happily follow Zippy from one story to another, but we know this is really her mother’s book: the poignant tale of a strong woman who found a way to save herself and set a proud example for her daughter.

The Used World Emporium is the sprawling antique store where Hazel, Claudia, and Rebekah pass their days surrounded by dusty furniture, cast-off clothes, and ancient housewares. But with the unexpected arrival of two babies and the unfolding of not one but three love stories, each spanning generations, their formerly used world becomes new again. Heartrending, hilarious, and inspiring, this is the book that Kimmel’s loyal fans have been waiting for–and it is certain to win her legions of new ones.