End of the Month Must Reads! |
|
| All the Water in the World by Eiren CaffallIn a flooded and abandoned Manhattan, 13-year-old Nonie, her family, and a few others live at the top of the closed American Museum of Natural History, working to preserve artifacts. After a superstorm hits, the four survivors take a canoe from a display and set out on the Hudson River in a novel that depicts their journey and narrator Nonie's remembrances. For another lyrical apocalyptic tale, try Sequoia Nagamatsu's How High We Go in the Dark. |
|
|
|
How High We Go in the Dark: A novel
by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Spanning hundreds of years, a cast of intricately linked characters struggle with the Arctic Plague, an ancient illness accidentally unleashed by researchers investigating the melting permafrost in 2030, which forces humanity to continually reinvent itself to survive. 100,000 first printing.
|
|
| Homeseeking by Karissa ChenThis sweeping novel follows the entwined lives of Haiwen and Suchi, who meet as young children in 1938 Shanghai and fall in love as teens, but end up mostly apart from each other due to war, family, marriage, and more, until happening upon each other in a Los Angeles grocery store in 2008. Read-alikes: Wendy Chen's Their Divine Fires; Eve J. Chung's Daughters of Shandong. |
|
|
|
Daughters of Shandong
by Eve J. Chung
As China's civil war ravages and engulfs their once-privileged lives, four resourceful daughters defy tradition and flee their home as the Communist army closes in, charting a path across a war-torn nation to independence in Taiwan.
|
|
| Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love by Marianne CroninEddie Winston, a 90-year-old charity shop volunteer in Birmingham, England, unexpectedly becomes friends with Bella, a pink-haired young woman mourning her boyfriend. When Bella realizes that Eddie has never been kissed, she sweetly sets out to help him find love. Read-alikes: Clare Pooley's How to Age Disgracefully; Anna Johnston's The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife. |
|
|
|
How to Age Disgracefully
by Clare Pooley
To save their local London community center, a group of eclectic seniors and their empty-nester social leader team up with a 17-year-old single dad from the nursery school group in this funny, feel-good novel. Read-alikes: Nosy Neighbors by Freya Sampson; The Thursday Murder Club mysteries by Richard Osman.
|
|
| The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate FaganIn this engaging fictionalized memoir, famous reclusive author Cate Kay shares her real name and describes life as an ambitious small-town teen, running away after an accident, changing her name (twice), her career, her relationships (including with a Hollywood actress), and more. Complete with chapters from the viewpoint of those who've known her, this Reese's Book Club Pick is great for fans of complex characters. |
|
|
|
First Lie Wins: A Novel
by Ashley Elston
A woman with many faces and identities, Evie Porter, covertly moves from job to job for her unknown employer until her latest mark, Ryan Summer gets under her skin and makes her envision a different sort of life.
|
|
| The Favorites by Layne FargoSet in the cut-throat world of competitive ice dancing and inspired by Wuthering Heights, this high-drama novel finds Katarina Shaw telling her own story in response to a new documentary focused on the ups and downs of her years-long pairing with Heath Rocha. Fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid will want to read this novel that's "engrossing, thrilling, and just downright fun" (Booklist). |
|
|
|
Icebreaker: A Novel
by Hannah Grace
"Anastasia Allen has worked her entire life for a shot at Team USA. It looks like everything is going according to plan when she gets a full scholarship to the University of California, Maple Hills and lands a place on their competitive figure skating team. Nothing will stand in her way, not even the captain of the hockey team, Nate Hawkins. Nate's focus as team captain is on keeping his team on the ice. Which is tricky when a facilities mishap means they are forced to share a rink with the figure skating team--including Anastasia, who clearly can't stand him. But when Anastasia's skating partner faces an uncertain future, she may have to look to Nate to take her shot"
|
|
| Mothers and Sons by Adam HaslettCovering several time periods, readers follow Peter Fisher, presently a lonely, gay 40-year-old New York City immigration lawyer who's estranged from his mother, Ann, a former Episcopal priest running a Vermont women's retreat with her girlfriend. This "thoughtful, psychologically acute, beautifully written examination of intersecting lives" (Booklist) will please fans of Andrew Sean Greer. |
|
|
|
Imagine Me Gone: A Novel
by Adam Haslett
Electing to marry the fiancé who is hospitalized for depression, a woman commits to decades of love and faith involving their brilliant musical eldest son, their responsible daughter and a tightly controlled younger son who helps her care for her increasingly troubled husband. By the Pulitzer Prize-finalist author of You Are Not a Stranger Here. 75,000 first printing.
|
|
| We Do Not Part by Han KangBlurring reality with the mysterious, this poetic latest from 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang follows Kyungha, a Korean author who isn't sleeping or eating much. After a friend is hospitalized and her pet bird needs care, Kyungha travels through wintery weather to Jeju Island, the setting of a 1940s military massacre, and encounters the spirit of her friend's mother. Try this next: The Liberators by E.J. Koh. |
|
|
|
Greek Lessons: A Novel
by Kang Han
A young Korean woman losing her ability to speak befriends a Greek language teacher who is losing his sight, and soon they discover they have even more in common, in the new novel from the International Booker Prize-winning author of The Vegetarian.
|
|
| Death of the Author by Nnedi OkoraforNewly fired and with her latest literary work rejected, paraplegic Nigerian American Zelu ends up writing a smash-hit science fiction novel. With excerpts of that book, Rusted Robots, interspersed throughout, readers follow Zelu as she navigates fame, family drama, fans clamoring for a sequel, and her own feelings and dreams for the future. Read-alike: Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn. |
|
|
|
Remote Control
by Nnedi Okorafor
When an alien artifact turns her into Death's adopted daughter, Sankofa, with her name being the only tie to her family and her past, searches for answers as cities fall in her wake. 150,000 first printing.
|
|
| Definitely Better Now by Ava RobinsonManhattan marketing assistant Emma is a self-described alcoholic who's officially been sober for a year. To aid her recovery, she stopped dating, but feels a connection with the office IT director, Ben, especially when they start planning the company holiday party. But will self-sabotage and family issues derail Emma's progress? Covering serious topics sensitively, this touching debut has hope and humor. Try this next: Early Sobrieties by Michael Deagler. |
|
|
|
Loathe to Love You
by Ali Hazelwood
Three“STEMinist” novellas from the New York Times best-selling author of The Love Hypothesis include tales of an environmental engineer forced to cohabitate with a big-oil lawyer, and a civil engineer who gets stuck in an elevator.
|
|
| Water Moon by Samantha SottoAt a magical Tokyo pawnshop, people hand over their regrets and leave unburdened. But one day Hana Ishikawa awakens to find the shop a mess, her shop-owner father gone, and an item missing, so she travels on a magical journey to set things right, assisted by a handsome young physicist. This whimsical tale will please fans of cozy Japanese fantasies, such as Sosuke Natsukawa's The Cat Who Saved Books. |
|
|
|
Convenience Store Woman
by Sayaka Murata
A Japanese woman who has been working at a convenience store for 18 years, much to the disappointment of her family, finds friendship with an alienated, cynical and bitter young man who becomes her coworker.
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|