Sunday Paper Recommends—Week of September 13, 2026
This week at The Sunday Paper, we’re sharing new books, an audiobook, and a show that we believe will add inspiration to your days. We hope these suggestions open your heart and mind and encourage you to come together for meaningful conversations.
What We’re Watching
This week, as we launch Finding Home with The Sunday Paper, we’re revisiting one of television’s most tender stories on the subject: Anne with an E. Amybeth McNulty stars as Anne Shirley, an orphan sent to Green Gables by mistake, who has spent her whole life without a place that was truly hers. What follows isn’t a quick fix. Anne has to earn her place with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, and they have to learn how to let her in, one stubborn, imaginative, heartfelt moment at a time. It’s a gentle reminder that home isn’t always where you start out. All three seasons are streaming now on Netflix.
What We’re Reading
Before Sally and Gillian Owens cast their spell on the big screen again, meet them on the page. Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic series spans four books, starting with the 1995 original and winding through prequels The Rules of Magic and Magic Lessons before landing in The Book of Magic, the very novel that inspired Practical Magic 2. Each book digs deeper into the Owens family’s history, tracing the curse that has shaped generations of witches long before Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman ever mixed a midnight margarita. With the sequel now in theaters, there’s no better time to fall back in love with the family that started it all. You can start anywhere in the series, or begin at the beginning—either way, you’ll be spellbound.
What We’re Listening To
Transformational coach Jim Curtis has spent more than two decades helping people rewire the patterns that keep them stuck, and in The Book of Possibility, he turns that work into a guide readers can work through themselves. Drawing on his own experience with chronic illness, Curtis blends neuroscience, hypnotherapy, and mindfulness into a three-step process he calls Release, Align, Become. Each chapter combines reading, guided listening, and reflective writing, so the book asks something of you as you go rather than just handing over advice. Curtis narrates the audiobook himself, which makes the guided-listening portions land the way they’re meant to, like the process is happening in real time, not just being described.
Sunday Paper Recipe
Frenchy Onion Soup
Let’s get one thing straight: This isn’t “a quick bowl of soup.” This is a performance in a bowl. But between you and me, it’s a perfect go-to when I’m aiming to impress but secretly just want to stick something in the oven and mostly ignore it for about 90 minutes. The onions take a slow, caramelly journey in the oven (low drama, high reward), then you hit them with wine, sherry, beef broth, and a little fish sauce (just trust me). Add toasts rubbed with garlic and a literal mountain of Gruyère, broil until it’s bubbling and browned, and serve straight from the pot. Appetizer or entrée, this soup is worth the onion tears. It’s deeply savory, smells like a French bistro, and comes with a bubbling, golden cheese lid that makes me lose my damn mind in the best way.
Serves: 4 to 6 as an entrée, 6 to 8 as an appetizer
PRO TIP - Slicing your onions from the root end to the top, instead of crosswise into half-moons, will give you slices that are all very similar in size. Not only will the onions cook more evenly, they’ll hold their shape better, too.
Ingredients:
- 3 pounds yellow onions, thinly sliced (about 10 cups; see Pro Tip)
- ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
- 4 tablespoons (½ stick) salted butter, sliced
- 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, plus more for serving
- 4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
- Kosher salt and coarsely ground black pepper
- ¾ cup dry white wine
- 6 tablespoons dry sherry
- 8 cups beef broth (not low-sodium)
- 2 teaspoons fish sauce
- 2 bay leaves
- 8 (½-inch thick) slices sourdough bread, cut in half
- 12 ounces freshly grated Gruyère cheese (about 3½ cups)
Directions:
- Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 400°F.
- In a large Dutch oven, combine the onions, olive oil, butter, thyme, and 3 of the garlic cloves. Season with 1 teaspoon salt and some pepper. Cover and bake for 45 minutes. Uncover, stir, cover, and bake for 45 minutes more. Uncover, stir, and return to the oven (this time uncovered) for 10 to 15 minutes more, until the onions are deeply browned.
- Carefully place the Dutch oven on the stovetop over medium-high heat (leave the oven on). Smush the roasted garlic cloves with a wooden spoon. Stir in the white wine and sherry. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has mostly evaporated, 7 to 10 minutes. Add the broth, fish sauce, and bay leaves and reduce the heat to medium-low. Partially cover the Dutch oven and simmer until the broth is very flavorful, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove and discard the bay leaves.
- Rub each toast with the remaining garlic clove. Arrange the sourdough toasts in a slightly overlapping pattern on top of the soup’s surface and sprinkle the Gruyère over the top. Return the soup to the oven and broil, watching it closely, for 4 to 5 minutes, until the cheese has melted and the soup is bubbling. (Alternatively, bake the soup at 475°F for 8 to 10 minutes, until the cheese has melted.)
- Garnish the soup with more thyme leaves and some pepper. Serve immediately.
Recipe reprinted with permission from Oversharing by Cortney LaCorte © 2026. Published by Union Square & Co., an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group. Photography by Emily Dorio.
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