Multicultural Authors
Apr-May 2026
New & Notable
To Ride a Rising Storm: The Second Book of Nampeshiweisit by Moniquill Blackgoose
To Ride a Rising Storm
by Moniquill Blackgoose

A young indigenous woman and her dragon fight for the independence of their homeland in this epic sequel to the bestselling and multi-award-winning To Shape a Dragon's Breath, a remarkable novel that is bound to be a staple of fantasy shelves for years to come.
One Sun Only: Stories by Camille Bordas
One Sun Only: Stories
by Camille Bordas

A young woman takes stock after the burglary of her apartment. A teenager becomes obsessed with the obituaries in a weekly magazine. Grandchildren mourn the grandparents who loved them and the grandparents who didn't. Painters and almost-painters try to distinguish Good Art from Bad Art. People grapple with life-altering illness, unrequited love, and promises they have every intention of keeping. Some win the lottery. Others don't. In these sinewy, thoughtful stories, celebrated New Yorker contributor Camille Bordas delves into the mysteries of life, death, and all that happens in between.
Belgrave Road: A Love Story by Manish Chauhan
Belgrave Road
by Manish Chauhan

An unforgettable debut novel about two young people searching for better lives, and the blossoming forbidden romance between them that threatens their families and futures.
Beetlecreek by William Demby
Beetlecreek
by William Demby

First published in 1950, Beetlecreek stands as a moving condemnation of provincialism and fundamentalism, and a classic of Black American literature. Both a critique of racial hypocrisy and a new direction for the African American novel, it occupied fresh territory for its time: neither the gritty realism of Richard Wright nor the ironic modernism of Ralph Ellison.
The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes
The White Hot
by Quiara Alegría Hudes

April is a young mother raising her daughter in an intergenerational house of unspoken secrets and loud arguments. Her only refuge is to hide away in a locked bathroom, her ears plugged into an ambient soundscape, and a mantra on her lips: dead inside. That is, until one day, as she finds herself spiraling toward the volcanic rage she calls the white hot, a voice inside her tells her to just--walk away. She wanders to a bus station and asks for a ticket to the furthest destination; she tells the clerk to make it one-way. That ticket takes her from her Philly home to the threshold of a wilderness and the beginning of a nameless quest--an accidental journey that shakes her awake, almost kills her, and brings her to the brink of an impossible choice.
Intemperance by Sonora Jha
Intemperance
by Sonora Jha

In this follow-up to the critically-acclaimed The Laughter-winner of the Washington State Book Award-a middle-aged woman starts a firestorm when she holds a contest, based on an ancient Indian ritual, in which men must compete to win her affections.
Kin: Oprah's Book Club by Tayari Jones
Kin
by Tayari Jones

Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother's death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life. A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.
The Ex-Boyfriend's Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee by Saki Kawashiro
The Ex-Boyfriend's Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee
by Saki Kawashiro

Twenty-nine-year-old Momoko has been tragically dumped. She thought her boyfriend was her soulmate. She believed he was going to propose. Instead, he broke things off at a love hotel. So Momoko does what many broken-hearted people do--she gets incredibly drunk. So drunk that she passes out in a nearly empty café. When she awakens, she's eager to tell her story to anyone who will listen and pours her heart out to a curious manager and the sole other customer in the café, a Buddhist monk in training. As Momoko describes how she doted on her ex and how he loved her cooking, the manager decides to indulge her by allowing her to slip into the kitchen and cook up her former beau's favorite dish: a warm, delightful butter chicken curry. As Momoko finishes telling her story, she realizes that this combination of cooking and sharing has stopped the flow of her constant tears. And the manager has a brilliant idea. What if they started doing this regularly, inviting patrons to share stories about heartbreak while cooking dishes that held significance in their relationships? Thus, an unconventional therapy group is born.
American Han by Lisa Lee
American Han
by Lisa Lee

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, Jane Kim and her brother, Kevin, dutifully embodied the model minority myth as their parents demanded: both stellar tennis players and academically gifted, they worked hard to make their parents proud. Jane went on to law school. Kevin came close to becoming a professional tennis player. But where they started is nowhere near where they have ended up: Jane has stopped going to her law school classes, and Kevin, now a policeman, has become increasingly distant. Their parents, each on their own path toward the elusive American Dream (their mother hell-bent on having the perfect house and the perfect family, their father obsessed with working his way up from one successful business to the next), don't want to see the family unraveling. When Kevin goes missing, no one recognizes his absence as the warning sign it is until it erupts, forcing them all to come to terms with their past and present selves in a country that isn't all it promised it would be.
The Hitch by Sara Levine
The Hitch
by Sara Levine

As an antiracist, Jewish secular feminist eco-warrior, Rose Cutler knows the right way to do everything, including parent her six-year-old nephew Nathan. But while she's looking after him in his parents' absence, things veer disastrously off course-Rose's Newfoundland attacks and kills a corgi at the park, and Nathan starts acting strangely: barking, overeating, talking to himself. Rose mistakes this for repressed grief over the corgi's death, but Nathan insists he isn't grieving, and the corgi isn't dead. Her soul leaped into his body, and she's living inside him. Now, Rose must banish the corgi from her nephew before his parents return.
Bad Seeds by Mary Monroe
Bad Seeds
by Mary Monroe

A warm-hearted, generous businesswoman discovers her dark side when she's betrayed by both the younger man she thought was the love of her life and the best friend she's always trusted--with shattering consequences.
200 Monas by Jan Saenz
200 Monas
by Jan Saenz

For fans of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Miranda July comes a whip-smart, irresistible novel about a college senior who has 48 hours to sell her recently deceased mother's surprise stash of rare pills, or suffer the consequences. .
All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun
All the World Can Hold
by Jung Yun

Let the Great World Spin meets My Name Is Lucy Barton in this novel set aboard an aging cruise ship bound for Bermuda, where growing tensions lead three strangers to confront their past regrets and imagine different futures.
Superfan by Jenny Tinghui Zhang
Superfan
by Jenny Tinghui Zhang

Freshman Minnie is adrift at college in Austin, Texas, when she discovers a boy band called HOURglass and the online forums that worship them. She especially loves Halo, whose sharp edges feel somehow familiar. After a brief romance goes painfully awry, Minnie pours everything into her new fandom, clinging to each livestream and bonding with other fans online. But when a scandal threatens to expose Halo to harm, Minnie decides that she is the only one who can save him. Except Halo's secret is darker than anything the tabloids could imagine. Before he was a superstar heartthrob, he was Eason: a high school dropout haunted by a tragic accident. When he is recruited for HOURglass, it feels like a chance to become someone else. And when he is on stage in front of his fans, he can almost forget the horrors of his past - until one of those very fans threatens to destroy everything.
Contact Your Librarian for More Great Reads
Washington-Centerville Public Library Centerville Library
111 W. Spring Valley Rd
Centerville, OH 45458
(937) 433-8091
Woodbourne Library
6060 Far Hills Ave
Centerville, OH 45459
(937) 435-3700
Creativity Commons
895 Miamisburg Centerville Rd
Centerville, OH 45459
(937) 610-4425