Recommended Reads

Book 2 in Sisters of the Mud 

The elite group of girl warriors from the Mud Fam, who excel in the sport of Bowing, face new challenges and threats when a mysterious man claiming to come from the gods arrives and initiates a dangerous tournament.

Once upon a time, among the bloodred trees of Thirstwood, a young forest princess became friends with a lonely demon boy. He gifted her an amber ring, a worthless trinket...or so he thought...because no sooner did he slide it onto her finger than the demon queen and forest king declared war. Years later, Cassia is a crucial force in her father's army, wielding her ring of light that can blind and disorient hundreds of demons at a time. Then battle-hardened Zeru abducts her, planning to steal the ring back to fix his costly childhood mistake. Exhausted, terrified, and more than a little mistrusting, Cassia is forced to travel with Zeru to a place they both believed only existed in storybooks, one where their childhood friendship slowly rekindles into something much more. But it's only a matter of time before the war they've escaped comes for them, and a hidden threat to forest folk and demons alike grows in the shadows.

Following the death of his father, Thomas Walsh had to grow up quickly, taking on odd-jobs to keep food on the table and help pay his gravely ill mother's medical bills. When he's offered a highly paid position as an interpreter for an heiress who exclusively signs, Thomas -- the hearing child of a Deaf adult -- jumps at the opportunity. But the job is not without its challenges. Thomas is expected to accompany Vivienne wherever she goes, but from the start, she seems determined to shake him. To make matters worse, her parents keep her on an extremely short leash. She is not to go anywhere without express permission. She is not to deviate from her routine. She is, most importantly, not to be out after dark.

For fifty years, King Leander Eldana has ruled Ashland without naming an heir to the crown. After sending away his grandchildren to be raised out of the public eye, it's finally time to secure his nation's future by appointing one definitive heir. The best way to appraise his successor is in the halls of Almus Terra Academy. Titus Eldana has always known he'd inherit Ashland's future. Alaric Eldana's secondhand clothes might not be fit for a king, but he knows how to rule: with his fist. Emmeline Eldana only wants to secure the crown to please her neglectful parents. Sadie Aurelia has no idea why she's been given a chance to bring new blood to the throne, but with nothing left to lose back home, she's ready to take it. Filled with competition, secret alliances, enemies-to-lovers romance, and cunning revenge.
 

Thirteen-year-old Growls (aka Shaun) is an aspiring (awful) rapper who hopes to enter this year's Raptology competition with his best friend, Shanks (aka Zachariah). But when a livestream practice goes epically wrong, the two friends do go viral- and not in the way they'd hoped. Being the laughingstock of the school, gets worse, when Shanks goes MIA, leaving him terribly alone. But when Growls meets the new girl on the block (Siobhan), things don't seem so terrible after all. And with some patience, a little luck, and a whole lot of practice, he just might win the Raptology competition and be a hero to both Siobhan and Shanks.

As far back as anyone can remember, the women of the Strand family have been magical. Their gifts manifest when they each turn fifteen, always in different ways. But Nell Strand knows that her family's magic is a curse. . . . Nell sees the way magic rips her family apart again and again. When Nell's own magic arrives in the form of ladybugs alighting on the keys of her beloved piano, the first thing she feels is joy. . . . But soon enough, the rest come. . . . Worst of all are the wasps. It doesn't matter how deep she buries her rage, the wasps always come.

Seventeen-year-old Caprice wants to piece her family back together now that her older brother has returned home, even as she resents that he ever broke them apart. Just as she starts to get a new footing—falling in love for the first time, uncertainly mending her traumatized relationship with her brother, completing the app that will win her a college scholarship and a job in tech—wildfires strike Sierra, her small California town, forcing her to reckon with a future that is impossible to predict.

Eleanor, like so many others, is used to watching her famous father from afar. To the world, Hugo Harrison is the brilliant and charismatic tech genius whose AI inventions seem to create a new, better reality. But to Eleanor, whose mother had an affair with Hugo years ago, he is something even more intriguing, and dangerous--a secret. When Eleanor's spying leads her to a posting for a live-in summer nanny job for Hugo's young son--her half-brother--she knows she has to apply. This is finally her chance to learn about her father, his family, and the life that could have been hers. She only has to do one thing: become someone else. With just a few well-placed lies, Eleanor is catapulted into an unfamiliar, intoxicating whirlwind of money and ego, and into a new romance with a cute boy who works for Hugo. But in a place where image is everything and reality can be rewritten, is anything real--even the Harrisons themselves? Caught between her own secrets and the ones she's uncovering about her father and his latest invention, Eleanor faces a question that technology can't answer: what is your true self, and how do you know when you find her?

Sixteen-year-old Lynda Fan has the skills and the drive to get into the Rhode Island School of Design—but not the money. Her parents are too busy paying off her stepsister's violin lessons to help Lynda get into art school. So when her rich and arrogant classmate, Angela Wu, offers to hire Lynda as a character designer for an otome game—a love story-based video game—she jumps at the opportunity. Lynda isn’t exactly a romantic, but in pursuit of her dreams, she discovers things she never knew about herself while also finding love with every heart she draws.

Riley quietly left church a year ago when she realized there was no place for a bi girl in her congregation. But it wasn’t until the pastor shunned her older sister for getting an abortion that she really wanted to burn it all down. It’s just her luck, then, that she has to spend spring break at church camp. The only saving grace is that she’ll be there with her best friend, Julia. But Riley won’t let a technicality like “repenting” get in the way of her true mission. Instead of spending the week embracing the seven heavenly virtues, she decides to commit all seven deadly sins. If she can show the other campers that sometimes being a little bad is for the greater good, she could start a righteous revolution! What could possibly go wrong? Aside from falling for the pastor’s daughter.

After realizing her freshman boyfriend is wasting her time and refuses to put a label on their relationship, college freshman Maya decides to reclaim her life but does not have a lot of confidence in romance, so she is not thrilled that her co-planner on the Holi planning committee is the heartthrob Nishanti Rai, especially since their visions (and personalities) do not match.

Diego Benevides works hard. His single mother encourages him to stay focused on school, on getting into college, on getting out of their crumbling neighborhood. That's why she gave him her car. Diego's best friend, Lawson, needs a ride--because Lawson is dealing. As long as Diego's not carrying, not selling, it's cool. It's just weed. But when Lawson starts carrying powder and pills and worse, their friendship is tested and their lives are threatened. As the lines between dealer and driver blur, everything Diego has worked for is jeopardized, and he faces a deadly reckoning with the choices he and his best friend have made. Award-winning memoirist and poet Rex Ogle's searing first novel-in-verse is an unforgettable story of the power and price of loyalty.

Plant-loving Ridhi Kapadia and popular Nilesh Batra were friends once. Now, seventeen and alone, Ridhi blends natural perfumes, wears flower crowns, and wanders her local woods, listening for the leafy whispers of her beloved trees. Pleading for the yakshas to admit her into their enchanted forest kingdom, where she knows she truly belongs. After learning his parents' perfect marriage is a sham and getting suspended from school, a heartsick Nilesh lands at Ridhi's doorstep--the last thing either of them wants. So when a pretty yakshini offers him the distraction of magic, the same magic he mocked Ridhi for believing in, he jumps at it. Furious, Ridhi strikes a bargain with a noblewoman of the yaksha court. In exchange for helping restore her reputation, Lady Sulochana will turn Ridhi into the yakshini she yearns to be--and teach her to divine the trees' murmurs. But when Nilesh ends up trapped in the yakshas' realm, Ridhi realizes the leaves might be telling a disturbing story about the forest her heart is rooted in--one that, even if the two of them band together, threatens to shred the future like so many thorns

After receiving a successful heart transplant, seventeen-year-old Sydney starts to fall for her organ donor's best friend whom she met under false pretenses and feels guilty as her own best friend's health worsens.

When her stepfather is arrested, aspiring artist Ceci moves back to her mother's hometown of Santa Aguas, an eccentric small town steeped in the legend of La Cegua, the specter of a wronged witch who appears on lonely roads at night, luring untrustworthy men to their deaths. Ceci and her mother take up residence in the abandoned manor of the Sevilla family, rumored to have been cursed by La Cegua, where she begins to uncover a past connected to her mother. The more she learns of the Sevillas, the more Ceci finds herself forming a strange affinity with the feared Cegua, who she suspects is the one inspiring her paintings of a mysterious door in the forest. When the very door Ceci has been painting appears in the woods, she ventures through it with her new friend, and maybe crush, Jamie. Together, they discover a well for granting wishes. The well of La Cegua. After learning others are also searching for the well, Ceci must confront the truth of her mother's past and prevent La Cegua's wishes from being used for the wrong reasons. Every wish has its price, and La Cegua never forgets the ones who have wronged her

Nine years ago, the war between the Kingdom of Night and the Kingdom of Rivers tore An'ying's family apart, leaving her mother barely alive and a baby sister to fend for. Now the mortal realm is falling into eternal night, and mo--beautiful, ravenous demons--roam the land, feasting on the flesh of humans and drinking their souls. An'ying is no longer a helpless child, though. Armed with her crescent blades and trained in the ancient art of practitioning, she has decided to enter the Immortality Trials, which are open to any mortal who can survive the journey to the immortal realm. Those who complete the Trials are granted a pill of eternal life--the one thing An'ying knows can heal her dying mother. But to attain the prize, she must survive the competition. Death is common in the Trials. Yet oddly, An'ying finds that someone is helping her stay alive. A rival contestant. Powerful and handsome, Yu'chen is as secretive about his past as he is about his motives for protecting An'ying. The longer she survives the Trials, the clearer it becomes that all is not right in the immortal realm. To save her mother and herself, An'ying will need to figure out whether she can truly trust the stranger she's falling for or if he's the most dangerous player of all . . . for herself and for all the realms.

While running for junior class president at his university, Jared falls for his opponent who has a similar platform based on equity and inclusion, and processes his feelings by writing letters to his deceased friend Manny.

By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society. Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt, enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus's livestreamed assassination spectacle : the Lamb's Gauntlet. Melinoe is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks. When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs, the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she's had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother she might stand a chance of staying alive. For Melinoe, this is a game she can't afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption. As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there's more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she's capable of more than killing. And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.

Eighteen-year-old Cass Issac doesn't believe in sticking around. She's had to move a lot due to her dads' house-flipping business--always a different school, always a new friend group. She's learned there's no need for drawn-out-goodbyes with people you'll lose touch with anyway. Which makes Grad Nite at Disneyland the perfect way to finish up high school, and have a magical last night with her best friend, Bryony--before she leaves once again. But amid the roller coaster rides and Cars Land dance party, the night turns into one big disaster. When she meets cute British bassist Freddie Sharma, she accidentally ruins his big break. Worse still? Cass gets in a major fight with Bryony. And instead of being able to make a quick exit, she's thrown for a literal time loop. Which means the queen of ghosting has nowhere to go as she's forced to relive the most dramatic night of her life, over and over. Now, Cass will have to find a way to make things right... or be stuck at Grad Nite forever

To his friends back home, Viet Ho is calm and collected and a lovable oddball who nurses an obsession with forensic science. He’s relieved to head off to UC Davis and escape from being in the middle of his bickering immigrant parents. Evie Mai is a junior biology major and the eldest daughter who has never trod far off the beaten path. When a clumsy accident brings Viet and Evie together, they bond over their shared hometown and similar history—and their orbits grow smaller as their friends collide. The more time they spend with each other and support each other, mentally and emotionally, the more their friendship shifts into something else.

Severed from the Legendborn Order and her ancestral ties, African American Bree binds herself to the Shadow King to hone her abilities and protect her friends while the fractured Round Table battles against the demons. Book 3 in The Legendborn Cycle.

A multi-genre, young adult anthology that spotlights the transformative power of books while equipping teens to fight for the freedom to read, featuring the voices of 15 diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators

Stranger Than Fiction Book Club Pick April 2025

Stranger Than Fiction Book Club Pick March 2025

Stranger Than Fiction Book Club Pick February 2025

Stranger Than Fiction Book Club Pick January 2025
 

Romance Me Book Club Pick April 2025

Romance Me Book Club Pick March 2025

Romance Me Book Club Pick February 2025

Romance Me Book Club Pick January 2025

Are you bursting with great ideas for a new business but aren't quite sure where to start? Do you know that you'd be great at selling something but first need to figure out what that "something" actually is? Are you gearing up to be an entrepreneur but think that kids can't really build anything big? If any of these sound like you—you've come to the right book!

You’re never too young to start a business. Whether you want to launch a babysitting service, run a lemonade stand, sell crafts online—or don’t even know what business to start—You're the Boss is here to help. In this book, you'll learn how to figure out which business is right for you, find your ideal customers, manage the competition, calculate costs and profits, pitch your ideas, and so much more.

Myths and legends tell our stories. They connect us and show us not only who we are, but also reflect the people during the time the stories were first told. And LGBTQIA+ people have been a part of every community since the dawn of storytelling. From Tu’er Shen, the Chinese rabbit god who protected those yearning to come out in an unaccepting world, to Ghede Nibo, the Haitian spirit who performed drag in the realm of the dead, the twenty myths told in this collection capture one irrefutable fact—even as labels, language, and definitions have changed, LGBTQIA+ people have always existed.

Nat the Cat has a hat. Pat the Rat has a nicer hat. Nat the Cat wants a hat like that. Will the two friends have a spat?

Watch for seal-skinned selkies coming to shore every ninth day to dance—but keep a safe distance, lest you become mesmerized. If you spy a fair mermaid combing her hair whilst sitting upon a rock, look away, as that could be bad luck indeed. And legend has it that just one encounter with the silver-tongued fairy known as the Charmer may leave a person lovesick and heartbroken. This gorgeous book offers illuminating introductions to fifteen remarkable fairies, the lesser-known heroes and villains of Irish folklore, from tiny leprechauns to enormous giants, trickster spirits to slippery shape-shifters. 

Verity “Very” Nelson can do it all.

She’s student body president, debate club whiz, and first chair clarinetist. You could say she’s pretty much the best at everything…Well, almost everything. Everything except math.

And it’s not like she doesn’t try. Math just doesn’t make sense in her brain. But it better start soon, or else she can kiss her presidency—and her campaign promises—goodbye. Soon Verity finds herself enrolled in a remedial math class where, despite her best efforts, failure persists. All seems lost until a teacher helps her discover the truth: Verity has dyscalculia, a learning disability that causes her to mix up numbers.

Armed with a new diagnosis and improved grades, Verity is confident her math struggles will remain secret. But when a gossipy podcaster dismantles her perfect image, Verity must choose: remain part of a broken system or fight to fix it.

All big sister Abby wants is to spend more time with her friends, far away from the sticky fingers and snooping eyes of her annoying brothers and sisters. But when a case of the chickenpox leaves the Lai kids covered in scratchy red spots and stuck at home together for two weeks of nonstop mayhem, Abby thinks this might be the end . . . of her sanity. Yet she feels responsible for the situation since her best friend was Patient Zero and brought chickenpox into their home.

There are ME bunnies.

There are YOU bunnies.

There are US bunnies . . . and WE bunnies . . . and THEM bunnies.

There are a lot of bunnies in Me and Other Bunnies.

No time, Pop! Can't stop!"

Toad and his tow truck are always on the move to lend a hand to anyone who needs help. Whether it's a flat tire or engine trouble, it's Toad to the rescue!

Pop does his best to try to get Toad to slow down and take care of himself, but there always seems to be someone else who needs to be towed by Toad. How can he say no?

Toad is so used to being the problem solver that when his tow truck breaks down, he does everything he can to fix it himself — and can't! What happens when the helper needs help? 

An American Library Association Geisel Honor book • An American Library Association Notable Children's Book

Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder, Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father―an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist―who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame.

Lonely Charles Latterly arrives at his small hotel hoping that the island’s blue skies and gentle breezes will brighten his spirits. Unfortunately, there’s no holiday cheer to be found among his fellow guests, who include a pompous novelist, a stuffy colonel, a dangerously ill-matched married couple, and an ailing old man. The one charming exception is orphaned teenager Candace Finbar, who takes Charles under her wing and introduces him to the island’s beauty. But the tranquility of the holiday is swiftly disrupted by a violent quarrel, an unpleasant gentleman’s shocking claims of being stalked, and the ominous stirrings of the local volcano. Then events take an even darker turn: A body is found, and Charles quickly realizes that the killer must be among the group of guests.

Moscow has resurrected the mammoth. But someone must teach them how to be mammoths, or they are doomed to die out again. Dr. Damira Khismatullina, an expert in elephant behavior, was brutally murdered trying to defend the world's last elephants from the brutal ivory trade. Now, her digitized consciousness has been downloaded into the mind of a mammoth. As the herd's new matriarch, can Damira help fend off poachers long enough for the species to take hold? Or will her own ghosts, and Moscow's real reason for bringing the mammoth back, doom them to a new extinction?

On the evening of March 9th, 1566, David Rizzio, the private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, was brutally murdered. Dragged from the chamber of the heavily pregnant Mary, Rizzio was stabbed fifty six times by a party of assassins. This breathtakingly tense novella dramatises the events that led up to that night, telling the infamous story as it has never been told before.

In this witty and necessary new book, artist Grayson Perry trains his keen eye on the world of men to ask, what sort of man would make the world a better place? What would happen if we rethought the macho, outdated version of manhood, and embraced a different ideal? In the current atmosphere of bullying, intolerance and misogyny, demonstrated in the recent Trump versus Clinton presidential campaign, The Descent of Man is a timely and essential addition to current conversations around gender. 

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Sun Tzu wrote this classic book of military strategy based on Chinese warfare and military thought. Since that time, all levels of military have used the teaching on Sun Tzu to warfare and cilivzation have adapted these teachings for use in politics, business and everyday life. The Art of War is a book which should be used to gain advantage of opponents in the boardroom and battlefield alike.

Valeria Luiselli's extended essay on her volunteer work translating for child immigrants confronts with compassion and honesty the problem of the North American refugee crisis. Appealing to the language of the United States' fraught immigration policy, Luiselli exposes the cracks in this foundation. Herself an immigrant, she highlights the human cost of its brokenness, as well as the hope that it (rather than walls) might be rebuilt.

In this short novella, Dave Eggers gives us an unforgettable duo, Helen and Peter Mahoney, a homebody niece and her adventurous, almost-British uncle. Helen designs invitations to parties and galas to which she is not welcome, and is quite comfortable with that. One day, though, Peter wonders, "Why not print an extra invite and I'll be your plus one?" What starts out as an innocuous lark becomes much more -- a very funny and lyrical referendum on why humans congregate and celebrate, and the pros and cons of leaving the house at all.

Ashley Smith, an American art student in London for her junior year, was planning on spending Christmas alone, but a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall, country residence of the Chapman family. She is mesmerized by the cozy, firelit house, the large family, and the charming village of Clevemoor, but also by Adam Chapman, Emma's aloof and handsome brother. But Adam is being investigated by the local police over the recent brutal slaying of a girl from the village, and there is a mysterious stranger who haunts the woodland path between Starvewood Hall and the local pub. Ashley begins to wonder what kind of story she is actually inhabiting. 

Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the Kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull's egg, as "perfect as the moon." With the pearl comes hope, the promise of comfort and of security.

When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself.

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mom abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands.

Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew. But Rian White, the government agent in charge, starts to suspect that there’s more to Ada than meets the eye. He’s not wrong—but he’s so pretty that Ada is perfectly happy to keep him paying attention to her—at least until she can complete the job she was sent to pull off. But as quick as Ada is, Rian might be quicker—and she may not be entirely sure who’s manipulating whom until it’s too late.

At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two "letters," written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. 
 

In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

Astrid Strick realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. Astrid's youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? It might be that only Astrid's thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most. 

Ingrassia lost his mother, two sisters, brother, and nephew to cancer—different cancers developing at different points throughout their lives. And while highly unusual, his family is not the only one to wonder whether their heartbreak is the result of unbelievable bad luck, or if there might be another explanation. Through meticulous research and riveting storytelling, Ingrassia takes us from the 1960s—when Dr. Frederick Pei Li and Dr. Joseph Fraumeni Jr. first met, not yet knowing that they would help make a groundbreaking discovery that would affect cancer patients for decades to come—to present day, as Ingrassia and countless others continue to unpack and build upon Li and Fraumeni’s initial discoveries, and to understand what this means for their families.

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, this parental relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.

The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy's great college love—and biggest heartbreak—makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos.

Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s. By 2016, they have four radically different daughters, each in a state of unrest. Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator turned stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. 
With the unexpected arrival of young Jonah Bendt—a child placed for adoption by one of the daughters fifteen years before—the Sorensons will be forced to reckon with the rich and varied tapestry of their past. 

Charles Wang, a brash, lovable businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, has just lost everything in the financial crisis. So he rounds up two of his children from schools that he can no longer afford and packs them into the only car that wasn't repossessed. Together with their wealth-addicted stepmother, Barbra, they head on a cross-country journey from their foreclosed Bel-Air home to the Upstate New York retreat of the eldest Wang daughter, Saina. 
 

In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma. And soon the shocking truth comes out: The Duchons are under a curse. And they think Jemma has the power to break it. 

Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. But in terms of caretaking and relating to two children, Patrick is, honestly, overwhelmed. So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick's brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of "Guncle Rules" ready to go, Patrick quickly realizes that parenting--even if temporary--isn't solved with treats and jokes. His eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you're unfailingly human.

Gabby DiMarco believes in absolute, verifiable Truths. But the genealogy test she took as research for an article has yielded a baffling result: Gabby has a sister—one who’s been desperately trying to find her. Isabella Ruiz can still picture the face of her baby sister, who disappeared from the streets of San Juan twenty-five years ago. At last, she’s found a match, and Gabby has agreed to come to Puerto Rico. With nothing—or perhaps so much—in common, Gabby and Isabella set out to find the truth, though it means risking everything they’ve known for an uncertain future—and a past that harbors yet more surprises.

Séamas O'Reilly's mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten (!) brothers and sisters, and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the Troubles were a background rumble, but Séamas was more preoccupied with dinosaurs, Star Wars, and the actual location of heaven than the political climate. ­This family of loud, argumentative, musical, sarcastic, grief-stricken siblings was then shepherded into adulthood by a man whose foibles and reticence were matched only by his love for his children and his determination that they would flourish.

The Lowland is an engrossing family saga steeped in history: the story of two very different brothers bound by tragedy, a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past, a country torn apart by revolution, and a love that endures long past death. Moving from the 1960s to the present, and from India to America and across generations, this dazzling novel is Jhumpa Lahiri at the height of her considerable powers.

Annie and Buster Fang have spent most of their adult lives trying to distance themselves from their famous artist parents, Caleb and Camille. But when a bad economy and a few bad personal decisions converge, the two siblings have nowhere to turn but their family home. Reunited under one roof for the first time in more than a decade and surrounded by the souvenirs of their unusual upbringing, Buster and Annie are forced to confront not only their creatively ambitious parents, but the chaos and confusion of their childhood.

​India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward sixteen-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero. Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. An adoptive mom herself, the one thing India knows for sure is what makes a family isn’t blood. And it isn’t love. No matter how they’re formed, the truth about family is this: it's complicated.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

In Elephant Complex, John Gimlette ventures into Sri Lanka, a country only now emerging from twenty-six years of civil war. Beginning in the exuberant capital, Colombo, Gimlette ventures out in all directions: to the dry zones where the island’s 5,800 wild elephants congregate around ancient reservoirs; through cinnamon country with its Portuguese forts; to the “Bible Belt” of Buddhism; then up into Kandy, the country’s eccentric, aristocratic Shangri-la. In the course of his journey, Gimlette meets farmers, war heroes, cricketers, terrorists, a former president, survivors of great massacres—and perhaps some of their perpetrators. That’s to say nothing of the island’s beguiling fauna: elephants, crocodiles, snakes, storks, and the greatest concentration of leopards on Earth. Here is a land of beauty and devastation, a place at once heavenly and hellish—all brought to vibrant, fascinating life here on the page.

Jess needs a fresh start. She's broke and alone, and she's just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn't sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn't say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up - to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? - he's not there. The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother's situation, and the more questions she has. Ben's neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it's starting to look like it's Ben's future that's in question.

In 2007, a seven-ton minke whale was found stranded on the banks of the Tapajós River, hundreds of miles into the Amazon rainforest. For days, environmentalists, journalists, and locals followed the lost whale, hoping to guide her back to the ocean, but ultimately proved unable to save her. Ten years later, journalist Fábio Zuker travels to the state of Pará, to the town known as "the place where the whale appeared," which developers are now eyeing for mining, timber, and soybean cultivation. In these essays, Zuker shares intimate stories of life in the rainforest and its surrounding cities during an age of raging wildfires, mass migration, populist politics, and increasing deforestation.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games and share their ambitions of becoming “lion women.” But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives. .

Sophie Kohl is living a nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband, a mid-level American diplomat in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot and killed. Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent, has fielded his share of midnight calls. But his heart skips a beat when, this time, he hears the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved ask why her husband has been assassinated. Omar Halawi has worked in Egyptian intelligence for years, and he knows how to play the game. But the murder of a diplomat in Hungary has ripples all the way to Cairo, and Omar must follow the fallout wherever it leads.

In the evening, a man who appears to be very drunk staggers onto the Nihonbashi bridge in Tokyo and collapses right under the statue of a Japanese mythic beast - a kirin. The patrolman who sees this scene unfold goes to rouse the man, only to discover that the man has not passed out, he is dead; that he was not drunk, he was stabbed in the chest. That same night, a young man named Yashima is injured in a car accident while attempting to flee from the police. Found on him is the wallet of the murdered man. Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga is assigned to the team investigating the murder - and must bring his skills to bear to uncover what actually happened that night on the Nihonbashi bridge. 

Barcelona, 1964. Exiled from Cuba after the revolution, Isabel Perez has learned to guard her heart and protect her family at all costs. After Isabel’s sister Beatriz disappears in Barcelona, Isabel goes to Spain in search of her. Barcelona, 1936. Alicia Perez arrives in Barcelona after a difficult voyage from Cuba, her marriage in jeopardy and her young daughter Isabel in tow. Violence brews in Spain, the country on the brink of civil war, the rise of fascism threatening the world. When Cubans journey to Spain to join the International Brigades, Alicia’s past comes back to haunt her as she is unexpectedly reunited with the man who once held her heart. 

1914, Fiji: Akal Singh, 25, would rather be anywhere but this tropical paradise—or, as he calls it, “this godforsaken island.” After a promising start to his police career in Hong Kong, Akal has been sent to Fiji as punishment for a humiliating professional mistake. Lonely and grumpy, Akal plods through his work and dreams of getting back to Hong Kong or his native India. When an indentured Indian woman goes missing from a sugarcane plantation and Fiji’s newspapers scream “kidnapping,” the inspector-general reluctantly assigns Akal the case. Akal, eager to achieve redemption, agrees—but soon finds himself far more invested than he could have expected.
 

Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flaneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them. In so doing he reveals, in all its multitudinous glory, the vicissitudes and triumphs of the city ’s cultural, political, and social history: from indigenous antiquity to the Aztec period, from the Spanish conquest to Mexico City today—one of the world’s leading cultural and financial centers.

Ten-year-old Jun-su is a bright and obedient boy whose only desire is to be a credit to his family, his nation, and most importantly, his Dear Leader. However, when he discovers a copy of The Dungeon Master’s Guide, left behind in a hotel room by a rare foreign visitor, a new and colorful world opens up to him. With the help of an English-speaking teacher, Jun-su deciphers the rules of the famous role-playing game and his imaginary adventures sweep him away from the harsh reality of a famine-stricken North Korea. Over time, the game leads Jun-su on a spellbinding and unexpected journey through the hidden layers of his country, toward precocious success, glory, love, betrayal, prison, a spell at the pinnacle of the North Korean elite, and an extraordinary kind of redemption.

It is 1801 and President Thomas Jefferson has assembled a deep-water navy to fight the growing threat of piracy, as American civilians are regularly kidnapped by Islamist brigands and held for ransom, enslaved, or killed, all at their captors' whim. The Berber States of North Africa, especially Tripoli, claimed their faith gave them the right to pillage anyone who did not submit to their religion. Young Bliven Putnam, great-nephew of Revolutionary War hero Israel Putnam, is bound for the Mediterranean and a desperate battle with the pirate ship Tripoli. He later returns under legendary Commodore Edward Preble on the Constitution, and marches across the Libyan desert with General Eaton to assault Derna--discovering the lessons he learns about war, and life, are not what he expected.

Witnessed by a throng of gaping spectators, a charismatic Marine sergeant is murdered under a Bangkok bridge inside a bolted-shut Mercedes Benz. Among the witnesses are the only two cops in the city not on the take, but within moments one is murdered and his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep—a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I.—is hell-bent on wreaking revenge. On a vigilante mission to capture his partner’s murderer, Sonchai is begrudgingly paired with a beautiful FBI agent named Jones and captures her heart in the process. In a city fueled by illicit drugs and infinite corruption, prostitution and priceless art, Sonchai’s quest for vengeance takes him into a world much more sinister than he could have ever imagined.