Fiction

Our Missing Hearts
By Celeste Ng

Celeste Ng creates a fictitious yet terrifyingly real future where economic and health crises lead to political violence and racial backlash. We meet a Chinese American family caught in the middle of all of this, one whose desire to stay under the radar is threatened when the mother’s poetry starts to speak for the resistance. Ng’s novel explores our deepest fears and our deepest humanity, and the role that art and books can play in centering our democracies. Booklist says in its starred review “As lyrical as it is chilling, as astonishing as it is empathic, Our Missing Hearts arguably achieves literary perfection.” Don’t miss this.  —Casey

Liberation Day: Stories
By George Saunders

Award-winning author George Saunders is back with yet another dazzling collection of short stories. The nine deeply personal works that make up this collection are mainly speculative stories that involve harsh confrontations with reality alongside smaller and equally poignant narratives on motherly love, generational guilt, and our desire to cling to the past. Those who love Saunders for his wry cynicism, witty prose, and earnest sentimentality will not be disappointed.
—Magnolia

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
By Angie Cruz

This novel made me feel as if I was having a heart-to-heart talk with my own mother, a woman whom I’ve never fully understood. Cruz delivers a fully flawed and loveable character in your lap and lets you melt into her. The nuances of being a single mother, a senior citizen, and an immigrant in the wake of the Great Recession are entirely entangled in Cara Romero’s life, and you will want nothing more than to keep listening to her talk.
—Nikole

The Marriage Portrait
By Maggie O'Farrell

Maggie O’Farrell, author of Hamnet and one of the best historical fiction writers of our time, is back with an immersive portrait of life at court in 1500’s Florence. When Lucrezia is married off to another court at an early age, she finds herself at the intersection of girlhood and womanhood, at the mercy of the men, power, and politics of the time. Thus begins a coming-of-age story unlike any other, one that not only illuminates the past but reckons with the emotional lives of women throughout time. —Casey

Demon Copperhead
By Barbara Kingsolver

I am always excited by a new Barbara Kingsolver novel but even more so when she lays bare the heartbreak and heart-filled essence of our humanity. Demon Copperhead, the witty, smart and resourceful boy growing up in poverty and foster homes in Appalachia, brilliantly casts a light on an entire generation of forgotten kids damaged by opioid addiction. Kingsolver brings into the open communities who have been unraveled and bowed in so many ways but are also filled with family, ingenuity, and grit. This is the book that everyone will be talking about for years to come.  —Casey

Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm 
By Laura Warrell

Like the jazz that hums through this swingy debut novel, Laura Warrell weaves together the loud, lyrical, effervescent story of trumpet-playing ladies’ man Circus Porter and, more importantly, the women who have threaded through his life over the years. A daughter, her mother, lovers, the loved, and the left, each woman seeks to determine her story and relationship on her own grounds. A beautiful, breakable, lovely mess is found—and this fine novel is its song. —Melinda

Less Is Lost
By Andrew Sean Greer

Five years ago, the world was introduced to our favorite gay curmudgeon, Arthur Less, when Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Less: A Novel. Now, we feel the joy once again as we join Arthur on a cross-country road trip that results in laugh-out-loud experiences while he reckons with his career, love life, upbringing, and the distinct existence that is America. It is a dramatic understatement to say that Arthur’s hapless adventures are exactly what we all need right now. —Casey

The Fortunes of Jaded Women
By Carolyn Huynh

Five years ago, the world was introduced to our favorite gay curmudgeon, Arthur Less, when Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Less: A Novel. Now, we feel the joy once again as we join Arthur on a cross-country road trip that results in laugh-out-loud experiences while he reckons with his career, love life, upbringing, and the distinct existence that is America. It is a dramatic understatement to say that Arthur’s hapless adventures are exactly what we all need right now. —Melinda

Ithaca
By Claire North

Travel alongside Hera, queen of queens, as she recounts the untold tale of Penelope, queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus. North eloquently critiques what it means to be the wife of a king and the son of a hero. I felt enthralled and honored to watch the story unfold through the eyes of Hera, an underrepresented figure of Olympus. An absolute must for fans of Madeline Miller's Circe. —Kailey Jo

Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions
By Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

For me, this book was like looking into a mirror. I appreciated that one unifying element in these stories is food—from jollof rice to egusi soup—and culture from very distinct ethnic groups in Nigeria. Conversely, it highlights the surreal experience of being considered black in America, being affected by racism, but also feeling disconnected to the visceral anger that many black-americans feel toward the United States’ history. This was a uniquely satisfying book.  —Morgan

Shrines of Gaiety
By Kate Atkinson

The prolific Kate Atkinson returns with the story of Nellie Coker, notorious queen of London’s nightlife in 1926. Loosely based on a real person named Kate Meyrick, Coker is as comfortable among the British aristocracy as she is among street hustlers, but her empire of “businesses” is under threat from all sides. As always, Atkinson’s writing is clever and slyly funny. Her ability to move comfortably across a variety of class and social boundaries calls to mind the best of Charles Dickens. The novel is a great gift for readers of historical fiction and a must for Atkinson fans. 
—Rico

Bliss Montage: Stories
By Ling Ma

Ling Ma, author of the bestselling dystopian novel Severance, has compiled a collection of her short stories. Eerie and imbued with a sense of melancholy, Bliss Montage is anything but. The eight stories here focus on themes of nostalgia, abuse, agency, and relationships. Ma’s writing conjures worlds that are like ours, but not, parallel universes where yetis live amongst us and recreational drugs can make you temporarily invisible. Ma’s stories left me feeling strange, and a little bit squeamish. Great for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh. —Jade

People Person
By Candice Carty-Williams

The Penningtons, five step-siblings from one brazen yet absent father and four different mothers, are not a typical family. So when they come back into each other’s lives in adulthood around a dramatic event, their work at building relationships is filled with challenges of communication, emotional baggage, and a whole lot of enticing drama. Carty-Williams’s authentic, witty, and tender voice is a breath of fresh air, as she lets us see what it means to be a family in all possible ways.  —Casey

Lessons
By Ian McEwan

In boarding school very far from his family, a young boy falls under the simultaneously abusive and alluring spell of his piano teacher. Twenty-five years later, that same boy, now a man, is suddenly abandoned by his wife weeks after their first child is born. In gorgeous, emotionally precise prose, Ian McEwan fleshes out these and other key moments in one man’s very unusual life, extending forward to the COVID pandemic and the Western world’s current political turmoil. McEwan is best known for his novel Atonement, which I loved, but this might be even better. It is, without question, the best novel I’ve read this year. —Rico

Hester
By Laurie Lico Albanese

In this fresh and enthralling take on The Scarlet Letter, Hester is reimagined as Isobel Gamble, a Scottish seamstress with strange talents. The story opens with her 1829 arrival in Salem, Massachusetts. When her husband abandons her soon after, Isobel must navigate a new land on her own. Thrust into these uncertain circumstances, she meets a young Nathaniel Hawthorne, who is beset by his own set of unfortunate circumstances. Laurie Lico Albanese’s twist on a classic tale is vivid and enchanting, immediately and easily immersive.  —Maddy

We All Want Impossible Things
By Catherine Newman

This is a sad book. This is a funny book. This is a life book. Catherine Newman strikes a brilliant balance between the misery and humor that exists if we dare to live in the messiest—and sometimes the richest—parts of life. Readers who have walked through the illness and subsequent loss of someone dear will appreciate Newman’s adroit ability to somehow sidestep writing a “depressing” story and instead give us an honest story with misplaced laughter, inexcusable outbursts, unexplained behaviors, and the foods that help us eat our feelings when feeling them is too much.
—Jenny

Now Is Not the Time to Panic
By Kevin Wilson

“The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.” These two lines haunt me. They are musical, magical, and they won’t let go. Thankfully, this wonderful, quirky, truth-telling book won’t either. I won’t say too much as it just needs to be experienced, but it is about life and art, being young and growing older, having control and none at all. It is about two lonely teenagers finding each other, making something incredible, and causing the Coalfield Panic of 1996. —Melinda

The Hero of This Book
By Elizabeth McCracken

It’s hard to say exactly what this astonishing book is, other than a must-read by one of my favorite authors. McCracken as short story writer, as novelist, always provides the unexpected revelation, but here, as she plumbs the autofictional depths of the writer’s mother and the grief following her death, she has reached new levels of subtle, expertly off-kilter literary acrobatics and keen insight. A travelogue, a writer’s treatise, an understanding, this novel flows on memory and love. I am as moved as I am in awe. —Melinda

The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks
By Shauna Robinson

Trust me: You won’t be able to help yourself from loving Maggie Banks. Shauna Robinson’s irrepressible, vivacious heroine, who sees everyone as a potential new friend, has an infectious drive to make the world around her better and more fun. This literary comedy explores the power of books (for good and ill), friendship, and finding one’s own way, with an intriguing, opposites-attract romance. Escape for a while in Cobblestone Books, its contraband paperbacks, classic/genre mashup parties, and cheddar scones.  —Jocelyn

Several People Are Typing
By Calvin Kasulke

Absurdist humor meets The Office in Calvin Kasulke’s Several People Are Talking. Gerald is trapped inside Slack—his office’s communication platform—and he must convince his colleagues that the system’s AI has taken over his body. This is a delightful, quick, and lighthearted read for those who have spent the last few years trapped behind a screen and who love a good bit of office drama.   —Kailey Jo

The Consequences: Stories
By Manuel Muñoz

You might not have heard of Manuel Muñoz, but he definitely deserves a place on your bookshelf. A native of tiny and dusty Dinuba, California, Muñoz grew up poor but went on to Harvard University. He tells stories of the Central Valley, of the people who till the fields and try to hold families together in the face of crushing poverty. With characters that are all too real and prose that’s somehow both poetic and straight to the point, this collection loudly announces him as one of America’s best short story writers. —Rico

Assembly
By Natasha Brown

This debut novel, filled with razor-sharp words that left an indelible impression on me, is a brilliant achievement that brings a vital perspective to understanding the social fabric we live in. The narrator is a Black British woman of Jamaican descent who appears to be living a success story, having reached the pinnacle of London’s financial world. But of course, appearances can be deceiving. This is a short, powerful read that I recommend with enthusiasm.  —Trey