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The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
An intricate and dazzling novel about the perfect butler and his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. The butler, Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, embarks on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the great gentleman, Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's greatness, and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
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Silenced Voices
by Pablo Leon
Langley Park, Maryland, 2013. Brothers José and Charlie know very little about their mother's life in Guatemala until José grows curious about the ongoing genocide trial of Efrain Rios Montt. At first his mother, Clara, shuts his questions down. But as the trial progresses, she begins to open up to her sons. Petén, Guatemala, 1982. Sisters Clara and Elena hear about the armed conflict every day. The day the fight comes to their doorstep, the sisters are separated and are forced to flee through the mountains, leaving them to wonder if their paths have diverged forever.
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Sorcery and Small Magics
by Maiga Doocy
Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics. Minor charms don't earn him much respect, but anything more elaborate always blows up in his face, so Leo vows never to use powerful magic again. That is, until a mishap with a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his longtime rival, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo's complete opposite. He's respected, talented, and insufferable. To break the curse, they will have to uncover the depths of Leo's magic, set aside their rivalry, and work together, even as an odd spark of attraction flares between them.
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Remember You Will Die
by Eden Robins
Poppy Fletcher dies too young, and the entire world is eager to accept it and move on, except for her mother, who is no ordinary mother. She is Peregrine, an AI woman walking the earth, a fugitive loathed and misunderstood by the very people who aided in and benefitted from her creation. As more details emerge about Poppy's death, the facts add up less and less. The story of Poppy and Peregrine spans several centuries of obituaries and reveals a planet slowly dying, a world increasingly disconnected, and the consequences of ego and greed.
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Canto Contigo
by Jonny Garza Villa
Rafael Alvarez led his High School's Mariachi to their eleventh first-place win in the Mariachi Extravaganza de Nacional and made out with one of the cutest guys he's ever met. Eight months later, his family is moving to San Antonio, forcing him to leave behind his group while dealing with the loss of his beloved abuelo. Another hitch in his plan, his new academy's Mariachi Todos Colores already has a lead vocalist, Rey Chavez--the boy Rafie made out with--who now stands between him winning and being the great Mariachi Rafie's abuelo always believed him to be.
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The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
by Stuart Turton
The Hardcastle family has decided to throw a party at Blackheath House as a memorial to their son who was killed there years before. At 11 p.m., during the party, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered. Aiden Bishop is trapped inside a time loop with this murder mystery at its center. Each morning he awakens in another guest’s body and relives that same day until Evelyn’s death. If he does not find the killer by 11 p.m., Evelyn will die, and the cycle will begin again. However, there is a catch: he has eight days, eight do-overs, to solve the mystery. If he fails, he will be killed himself.
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Daughter of Fortune
by Isabel Allende
Set during the 1849 California gold rush, the tale begins in Chile, with young Eliza Sommers, who was left as a baby on the doorstep of wealthy British importers. Now 16 and newly pregnant, Eliza decides to follow her lover when he leaves for California to make his fortune in the gold rush. Enlisting the unlikely aid of Tao Chi'en, a Chinese shipboard cook, she stows away on a ship bound for San Francisco. When they disembark, Eliza is disguised as a boy, and she spends the next four years in male attire so she may travel freely and safely.
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The Only One Left
by Riley Sager
The Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast in 1929. Most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, but it was never proven. It's now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives to care for Lenora. Lenora can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer: I want to tell you everything. "It wasn't me." As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there's more to the tale than people know.
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The Postcard
by Anne Berest
Fifteen years after the arrival of an anonymous postcard with the names of her maternal great-grandparents and their children, all killed at Auschwitz, Anne Berest is moved to discover who sent it and why and embarks on a journey to learn the fate of the Rabinovitch family. This is a moving saga of a family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling that shatters long-held certainties about Anne's family, her country, and herself.
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Martyr!
by Kaveh Akbar
When Cyrus was an infant, his mother, Roya, was killed by a mistakenly fired U.S. missile. His father has also recently died. Cyrus disappeared for a time into alcoholism and drugs. Now on the cusp of 30, newly sober, but still feeling stuck, Cyrus becomes obsessed with making his life matter. By chance, he discovers a terminally ill Iranian American artist who has decided to live out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum, having candid tête-à-têtes with the visitors who line up to see her, and Cyrus embarks on a quest to visit and consult with and learn from her.
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All Consuming
by Ruby Tandoh
Most of us live in a world of abundance, and there’s a problem in the paradox of plenty: “The more we have, the less we seem able to enjoy it.” That gives rise to diet fads and “weird culinary nationalism,” a certain unbending devotion to certain foods at the expense of others. Recipes are available everywhere and food trends spread worldwide thanks to the internet, but most home cooks will “cycle through the same couple of dozen recipes for the rest of our lives.” Part of Tandoh’s purpose is to shake those cooks out of complacency and try something new.
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The Art of Dying Well
by Katy Butler
An inspiring, informative, and practical guide to navigating end of life issues. Butler argues that we have lost touch with the "art of dying" as practiced by our ancestors, yet we still hunger for rites of passage. It's not about living as long as possible, it's about living as well as possible. Our current system poorly serves our medical needs and crowds out any sense of the sacred. Through exploring the stages of later life, sharing "good death" stories, as well as offering practical takeaways, The Art of Dying Well illuminates a path to a better end of life.
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Lucas Wars
by Laurent Hopman, art by Renaud Roche
A deep dive into the creative process behind Star Wars: A New Hope, from the hell of casting to the nightmare of filming. Lucas is forced to juggle actor quarrels, a secret love affair, costume and set mishaps, and constant pushback from film execs. But despite it all, a landmark movie emerges, one that changes the medium of film forever. Lucas Wars is an exhilarating underdog story and a unique glimpse into the world of cinema.
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Vanishing Treasures
by Katherine Rundell
Literature, folklore, history, and science inform the profiles of 22 endangered species: America has refused to designate the giraffe as an endangered species, even though its numbers have dropped 40% in 30 years. It’s possible that some rarely seen, slow, half-blind Greenland sharks are more than 500 years old. Pangolins are “currently the most trafficked animals in the world,” and the blind, iridescent golden mole can hear ants and beetles crawling aboveground. All will savor Rundell’s enthusiasm for these remarkable and infinitely varied creatures.
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The Art Spy
by Michelle Young
The Art Spy chronicles the brave actions of a key resistance spy in the Nazi's art looting headquarters in the French capital. Rose Valland has, until now, been written out of the annals, despite bearing witness to history's largest art theft. While Hitler was amassing stolen art, Valland, his undercover adversary, secretly worked to stop him. At every stage of World War II, she was front and center. She passed crucial information to the resistance network, put herself in harm's way to protect the museum staff, and faced death during the last hours of Liberation Day.
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