| Waiting on a Friend by Natalie AdlerRenata has always seen ghosts, though the recent ones have died from a new disease, AIDS. But the one spirit she desperately wants to appear -- her best friend Mark -- doesn't. Then a local East Village business claims it can get rid of paranormal problems, leading Renata and friends to investigate. Touching on love, loss, and community, this surprisingly funny debut is a powerful portrait of friendship and 1984 New York. Try this next: Rasheed Newson's My Government Means to Kill Me. |
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Summer's Never Over by Darby BozemanFive years ago, Greer left her family's summer camp in the mountains of Georgia and vowed she'd never return. An idyllic season had turned into a nightmare after a mysterious Phantom began stalking the camp--and ended with Greer's friend and fellow counselor dead. Losing Steph shattered everything, and Greer's been fleeing from the grief ever since. But then Greer's mother dies, and Greer finds herself back at Dread's Cove, surrounded by the people she was closest to that intense summer, including Margo, Steph's best friend. Greer and Margo didn't leave things on the best of terms. But now, Margo needs her. Margo never believed that Steph's death in that horrific fire was an accident--and she's on the trail of an explosive secret Steph took to her grave. Greer has to make a choice: keep the Cove's secrets and her own, or finally face the truth about that summer. Read-alike: Spells for Forgetting by Adrienne Young.
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Pool House by Mary H. K. ChoiAbandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, her days are a purgatorial bore. Many dream of moving to L.A. and into the spotlight, but Stevie can't wait to move away from it, and her mother's orbit, to start over. Moon is many things: an out-of-work actress, a recovering addict, whatever a mistress becomes when she's widowed, and a mother. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband's death, Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too. Now, neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other. And their cost of living forces them into a glass-walled pool house in the backyard, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon's former TV son and Stevie's forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the 'Big House' and play-acting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel. Try this next: A Likely Story by Leigh McMullan Abramson.
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When We Were Brilliant by Lynn CullenIn 1952, Norma Jeane Baker follows documentary photographer Eve Arnold into a powder room on the night they first meet. She has a proposition for her. Norma Jeane created Marilyn Monroe to be photographed, and she wants Eve to do it. Eve is better than anyone she's seen at revealing a person's inner truth. Together they can help each other. Together, she says, they can make something brilliant. Skeptical of this cipher of a young woman, Eve demurs. She's looking for more serious subjects than this ambitious starlet. But she keeps getting drawn back into Marilyn's orbit, and the women come to recognize something in each other--something fundamental. Nothing will get in the way of what they want, and when Marilyn's star takes off to teetering heights, neither will ever be the same. For fans of And They Called It Camelot : a Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis by Stephanie Marie Thornton.
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| Elegy in Blue by Mark HelprinAn unnamed 82-year-old narrator revisits his life, from his childhood and his Wall Street career, to his happy marriage and life as a father. Over the years, violence takes loved ones, leaving him alone in an apartment in his beloved Brooklyn, where he contemplates helping others and his own death. Lyrical and complex, this introspective literary tale digs into intriguing questions of mortality and morality. Read-alike: Henry, Himself by Stewart O'Nan. |
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| Sublimation by Isabel J. KimIn this debut novel, emigration creates two copies of a person. The iterations can be reintegrated, or both can exist, one in the home country, one in the new. They can keep in touch, or not. Rose Kang left Korea for the United States at ten, cutting off her other self, Soyoung. Now Rose is back in Korea, and Soyoung wants to meet. Meanwhile, a tech company tries to monetize reintegration. For fans of: Apple TV's Severance; Bliss Montage by Ling Ma. |
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Everyday Movement by Gigi L. LeungOn a weekend morning, college roommates Ah Lei and Panda wake up with very different reactions to the night before. They have been chased and tear-gassed in the streets of their city after joining tens of thousands of others to protest a national security law that would effectively spell the end of democracy in Hong Kong. Ah Lei can't get out of bed, her heart heavy with the lingering images of the police and the violence on the streets, and her worries about the future of her hometown. Panda, whose resistance is no less ardent, puts on a sundress, lines her eyes, and urges Ah Lei to join her for brunch. While the demonstrations rage, the routine of life also persists for Ah Lei, Panda, and people in their orbits. In the span of a few months, life as they know it seems to become a mirage: tear gas and the sounds of rubber bullets amid neon signs strangely evoke happier memories of summer night fireworks. Try this next: The Last Exiles by Ann Shin.
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| Ghalen by Walter MosleyIn 1999, when Jamilah, an advanced medical genetics student, meets Robert, a neurodivergent chef at a vegan restaurant, they fall for each other, marry, and have son Ghalen. But Jamilah gets cancer, leaving the two on their own. Ghalen grows up, becoming a high school valedictorian at 15, but faces hurdles, including racism. For fans of: moving, thought-provoking coming-of-age novels, like Jacqueline Woodson's Red at the Bone and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead. |
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| Palaces of the Crow by Ray NaylerNeriya, a Lithuanian Jewish girl, befriends local crows, and one leads her to safety in the forest when Germans arrive in 1941. She meets Czeslaw, an underage Polish soldier and Red Army deserter; Kezia, an orphaned Romani girl; and a mute boy. Hiding from soldiers as well as others who might harm them, the four young teens survive a brutal winter thanks to the crows and each other. For fans of: thought-provoking historical novels with a bit of magical realism; acclaimed tales of found family and war. Try this next: The Yellow Bird Sings by Jennifer Rosner. |
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| The Radiant Dark by Alexandra OlivaIn 1980, young new mom Carol Girard struggles in her Adirondacks hometown. But when a flickering light in the sky is believed to be intelligent life communicating from star Ross 128, humanity adapts, and the Girards change too. Carol, fascinated with the discovery, finds like-minded people, while her husband raises their kids alone. This slow-burn novel covers decades, later following Carol's daughter Ro, who becomes an interstellar communication expert. Read-alikes: Meg Charlton's Voyagers; Eliana Ramage's To the Moon and Back. |
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In Salerno, Italy, Dilara spends her days caring for her aging father and her hypochondriac husband. Since leaving her native Istanbul, she’s been unable to find a job—adrift, she becomes increasingly fixated on domestic improvement, specifically on the renovation of a second bathroom. When the work is completed, she enters and finds herself not in a bathroom but in a prison cell, and a Turkish one at that. She confronts the prison’s other inhabitants—the buffoonish guards who refuse to believe her conundrum; the other women who begin filling the cells beyond hers . . . Has she gone mad? Is she the victim of a terrible prank? Is it a portal, a dream, a simulation? As she burrows deeper into her cell, her life beyond it begins to fall apart—her husband disappears, her father’s grip on reality loosens, political dictatorship threatens to destroy everything worth keeping. For fans of The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard |
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| Returns and Exchanges by Kayla Rae WhitakerWith four young kids and a successful retail store in 1979 Lexington, Kentucky, Fred and Fran have worked hard to achieve the American Dream. But as the years go by, the love that united them diminishes as insecure Fred looks to high-society groups for approval and business-minded Fran develops feelings for store manager Wendy. Meanwhile, their kids have their own dreams and problems. Read-alikes: Lake Effect by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney; The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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