| Leave Your Mess at Home by Tolani AkinolaEstranged eldest daughter Sola is back in Chicago after her influencer life implodes thanks to her now ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, Sola's golden child brother worries about impending fatherhood, her physician sister isn't sure about her career or her love life, and her college student baby sister ponders who she is. This moving, funny debut takes place over two months and culminates at Thanksgiving with the siblings' Nigerian immigrant parents. Try this next: Terah Shelton Harris' Long After We Are Gone. |
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| Men Like Ours by Bindu BansinathThe Sharma family's friend Matthew Pillai charms everyone in their Indian American neighborhood in New Jersey, so his odd death sets tongues wagging. At the center of the story is newly widowed Anita Sharma, who immigrated as part of an unhappy arranged marriage, and her teen daughter Leila, whom Matthew spent a lot of time with. This evocative, darkly humorous novel is the debut of Bindu Bansinath, who writes for The Cut. Try this next: Shobha Rao's Indian Country. |
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| Good Joy, Bad Joy by Mikki BrammerAt 89, widowed Joy Bridport lives alone, though she has daily check-ins with her longtime best friend Hazel to make sure they are both still kicking. When cancer leaves adventurous Hazel with just months to live, it makes Joy question her own sedate life, leading to risk-taking, rule-breaking, and petty crime in this moving and heart-warming story about friendship, grief, and second chances. Read-alikes: Hillary Yablon's Sylvia's Second Act; Marianne Cronin's Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love. |
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The Hill by Harriet ClarkSuzanna Klein was a baby when her mother got up early one morning to rob a bank with a group of fellow radicals. Now, every Saturday, Suzanna lines up at the prison gates among the other children, each dressed as if for celebration. Inside there is a nursery and a cemetery; there are watchful guards and distractable nuns; there are women counting down to release and women like Suzanna's mother, who will never be released. At home, Suzanna is raised by her grandmother, who is entirely unforgiving of her daughter's crime and refuses to visit the prison. “A tour de force.” (Publishers Weekly).
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| Bumblebee Season by Eileen GarvinJake, who's paralyzed below his waist, can't gather all the honey from his dozens of hives alone. With locals uninterested, he takes on Flaco, an undocumented teen fleeing violence. In Oregon studying bumblebees, neurodivergent doctoral student Abigail and her research team members also agree to help with the harvest. Then, after a local politician causes trouble, they all band together in this sweet tale. Though Bumblebee Season continues Jake's story from The Music of Bees, it works well as a standalone. |
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| Livonia Chow Mein by Abigail Savitch-LewCovering Brooklyn's Brownsville area, 23-year-old reporter Sadie Chin connects with community organizer Lina Rodriguez Armstrong. Back in 1978, Lina ran a small school in her apartment, but an arsonist burned down her tenement and another. Locals blame Mr. Wong, owner of a restaurant in one of the buildings, leading Sadie to investigate the 40-year-old fire. Covering four generations of Wongs, this compelling debut novel looks at race and gentrification. For fans of: Richard Price's Lazarus Man. |
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The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth StroutArtie Dam is a man with a secret. He goes about his days teaching American history to high schoolers, correcting their casual ignorance, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He spends his free time sailing the beautiful Massachusetts Bay, or with his adult son and his wife of more than three decades - and as Artie does these things, he plans the event that will forever change the world he inhabits. But when a startling accident awakens a new perspective in Artie, and he realizes that life has its own secret it's been keeping from him - along with a lot more to say on the weighty matters of fate and freedom in his home and his country - he charts another course full of grief, hilarity, and heart, to a place where the end marks the beginning.
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John of Johnby Douglas StuartOut of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides to find that little has changed except for him. He returns to the windswept croft and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother. John of John is a singular novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of the truth.
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| Mercy Hill by Hannah ThurmanThe four Cross sisters, aged ten to 13, grow up in a cottage on the sprawling grounds of a North Carolina state mental hospital run by their formidable psychiatrist mother. Their mom expects them to eventually take over, so she pushes them academically and to volunteer at the understaffed hospital. But events threaten her grand plan in this debut narrated by the youngest sister and set between 1999 and 2004. For fans of: reflective, character-driven coming-of-age novels. |
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| The Left and the Lucky by Willy VlautinKind-hearted Oregon house painter Eddie Wilkens tries to help others, like his three employees, one of whom struggles with addiction and isn't close to reliable. But his biggest impact may be on Russell, the neglected eight-year-old neighbor boy who's bullied by his violent teenage brother. Eddie and Russell develop a father-son dynamic, which helps them both in this authentic, heartfelt novel about grief, found family, and dealing with tough times. Try this next: Mary Lawson's A Town Called Solace. |
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