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| 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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| 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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Pool House
by Mary H. K. Choi
Stevie cannot escape her mother. Abandoning 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.
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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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The Lowe Job
by Grace Alexander
When Lili Lowe gets caught having an affair with her married boss, an admired local politician, she finds herself at the epicenter of a scandal that could dismantle her life as she knows it. She turns, as many women would, to her mother. But Lydia Lowe is not the kind of mother to offer gentle words of consolation. Instead she devises a strategy that doesn't just manage the fallout, it actively exploits it, and Lili goes from making coffee and booking meetings to making headlines and booking talk shows..
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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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| The Take by Kelly YangFrustrated young writer Maggie Wang finds a path forward when veteran Hollywood producer Ingrid Parker offers a surprising deal: $3 million and a mentorship to participate in ten experimental blood transfusions, which will reverse Ingrid's aging but accelerate Maggie's. This satirical first adult book from award-winning children's author Kelly Yang serves Hollywood drama while shining a spotlight on sexism, racism, and ageism. For fans of: the 2024 film The Substance; Matthew Pearl's The Award. |
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An Unlikely Visitor
by Joanna Cannon
Margaret thinks her time is up... Things have been hard since her husband Derek died, and they never got over the disappearance of their daughter, Jeanie, all those years ago. With his support, it seemed like everything would be okay--okay enough, that is. But now Derek's gone. Margaret moves through the days slowly, quietly, alone. Then one day, Margaret returns home to an unlikely visitor, and together they set out to discover what really happened to Jeanie.
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| Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent YuResidents of Beckitt, Massachusetts, a small town populated by mostly Asian Americans, all receive a cell phone alert that they should seek immediate shelter as a missile is inbound. This leads to a multitude of reactions: some people run, some try to protect others, and others share feelings they normally hide. Twenty minutes later, it's revealed to be a big mistake. Using linked stories and focusing on characters of all ages, this intriguing debut offers thought-provoking fodder for book clubs. |
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What Gentlemen Do
by Todd Babiak
Waylon Gans did not mean to start a riot on the university campus. He was only there because he wanted to be in the audience while one of his heroes, Josh Modley, recorded a live podcast. The problem, as Waylon sees it, is that he is trash: he lives in Walleye, a town everyone wants to leave; his parents are losing their home due to a bad cryptocurrency investment; his job at the used bookstore is a dead-end; Derby, the love of his life, cannot even look at him; and he's worried he's falling back under podcaster Josh Modley's influence and the comfort of blaming everything on the feminists, globalists, and communists.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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