| Under Story by Chloe BenjaminAfter a terrible loss and then a divorce, grieving Wisconsin scientist Laurel Salter takes a job washing dishes at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station. When a surreal light suddenly appears near the research base, it becomes known as the Arc and draws in more scientists, including Laurel’s ex, Eli. Believing the light is evidence of Eli’s theory of a second universe where time moves backward, Laurel tries to talk him into entering the Arc. For fans of: GMA Book Club books; Scott Alexander Howard’s The Other Valley. |
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The Radiance
by Ayad Akhtar
When a hit-and-run shatters more than his body, a writer is plunged into a spiritual awakening he can't tell from madness. In its grip, he's drawn to a brilliant campus colleague by an uncanny pull, and into a scandal that threatens to destroy them both. What begins as a provocative portrait of academic and cultural warfare deepens into erotic entanglement, the exposure of a family secret, and the mystery surrounding the narrator's accident--both the violence and its aftermath. Moving between rural America and Europe, Islam and Christianity, the intimate and the metaphysical, The Radiance is of our American moment and beyond it--asking not only what has broken, but what radiance remains.
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American Hagwon
by Min Jin Lee
In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children--Bo, DH, and Mido--find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John's oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California--where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children's futures. The Kohs, their friends, relatives, and even their foes move in and out of each other's lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security. In American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice--for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers--is a kind of prayer.
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The Many Private Lives of Missy Cooke
by Jane Green
Missy Cooke's parents divorced when she was young. While her mother did her best to make ends meet, she hardly knew her father, Silicon Valley tech titan Marty Cooke. He devoted his life to work--and his new family. Now an adult with tech world aspirations of her own, Missy finds herself thrust into a world of high-stakes board meetings and cutthroat corporate policies when Marty must step down from his tech empire, iprry, and chooses Missy to take his place.As interim CEO, Missy must navigate the immense pressure of her father's legacy while navigating a strained relationship with her boyfriend, the reappearance of a childhood crush, and the constant scrutiny of a world that sees her as nothing more than a privileged heiress, an image totally at odds with her modest upbringing. To make matters worse, she uncovers a dark secret that threatens to destroy everything her father built. Can she forge her own path in the face of this dark discovery and prove her worth, or will she crumble under the weight of her father's shadow?Propulsive, timely, and emotionally resonant, The Many Private Lives of Missy Cooke is an unforgettable family novel by a beloved author at the height of her literary power.
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Welcome to the Kokoro Cat Clinic
by Syou Ishida
Cats once again prove to be the best medicine in the wonderful third book following the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel We'll Prescribe You a Cat. When you are lost, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul will find for you. Dr. Nikk and his clinic are always ready to offer their unconventional approach to healing. Although one never quite understands how they ended up there, each person who has walked through the door has left with a cat and a deeper understanding of themselves. Every time, the clinic reaffirms that the unbreakable bond between cats and people has the potential to heal and transform lives. With Dr. Nikk as the constant that weaves each of these stories together, we meet a woman anxious about an upcoming competition, an overwhelmed young father, an illustrator questioning her career, and a young woman burdened with guilt. Digging ever deeper into the complicated minds of humans--and the love of their feline companions--this poignant, episodic novel provides something richer and more challenging than mere comfort: compassion.
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Assorted Crisis Events Volume 1
by Deniz Camp
Time is having a crisis. Mingling in the red-light district, you can find actual cavemen, medieval knights, and cyborg soldiers on leave from World War IV. Victorian debutantes amble their way into cell phone stores, confused and bewildered (what is a data plan?). On their way to work, bleary-eyed commuters get trapped in time-loops, assaulted by alternate-reality versions of themselves, and try to avoid post-apocalyptic wastelands. And look: the 3:15 bus just took a wrong turn...into the neolithic era. Assorted Crisis events is an ongoing, zig-zagging anthology series about the compromised clicks of our clocks--full of one-shot stories both beautiful and ugly, tragic and redemptive, surreal and somehow all too familiar. Stories of people (and reality) in crisis--trying to keep it together while the world is falling apart, second by twisted second... Collects the first arc, issues #1-5.
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| When Lemons Give You Life by Anna JohnstonPretending to have dementia while living in a care home, retired chef Griff Barlow grieves for his beloved late partner. Preparing to end it all, he breaks into the nursing home kitchen to bake one last lemon tart, but sharing it ends up changing his life. Meanwhile, his much younger sister navigates life changes and deals with her sadness that she and Griff are estranged. For fans of: the author's previous novel, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife; Marianne Cronin's Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love. |
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| Sunrise by Téa ObrehtIn 2024, after the small plane her boyfriend was piloting crashes, Nina ends up alone in the Wyoming mountains, where she stumbles upon Sunrise, an abandoned town. In 2003, Coll is putting the finishing touches on Sunrise’s annual historical reenactment when a newcomer upsets things. In 1902, gunslinger Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise after years away. This buzzy novel is the lyrical latest from the author of The Tiger's Wife. Try this next: Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky. |
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| You'll Love It Here by Natalie SueAfter her estranged dad dies, Mona talks back to a client and is put on leave from her marketing job. Then her elderly landlady lands in the hospital, leading Mona to make a sketchy deal with the woman's niece: Mona will become the temporary super of the building and secretly prep the place for sale. But getting to know her quirky neighbors and the handsome guy at the neighborhood deli has her questioning her priorities. For fans of: engaging stories with heart that explore community and found family. |
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Hollywood, Ending
by John Green
For rising talents Kai Laramie and Juniper Castillo, being cast in the buzzy biopic Andy Warhol Never Gets Old is the opportunity they've both been waiting for. They're on the verge of breaking out, and maybe even falling in love. Soon, the movie is blowing up, and so are their lives--in exciting, but also terrifying, ways. John Green artfully blends a behind-the-scenes Hollywood love story with an unflinching examination of the insatiable attention economy. Told through dual points of view, the novel brilliantly juxtaposes the on-screen study of Warhol's life at the dawn of celebrity culture with the intimate struggles of two young people figuring out who they are, both together and alone. Tender, heartbreaking, and shrewdly funny, this is a story as only Green can tell it. Hollywood, Ending is a deeply observed novel about the tension between a public and a private life, and the audacity to pursue the kind of love we all deserve.
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