| The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-DaltonWhat it is: a believable near-future eco-thriller with hints of magic set in a small Florida town subject to increasingly violent natural disasters.
What happens: Amidst loss, isolation, and societal decay, a young girl with unique abilities comes of age. Her surprising gifts become a source of hope, redemption, and renewal.
Book buzz: Good Morning America Book Club pick, Marie Claire #ReadWithMC book club selection, and is featured on NPR “Books We Love 2022.” |
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| The Ingenue by Rachel Kapelke-DaleThe setup: Former piano prodigy Saskia Kreis endured a rigid, emotionally isolated childhood. Now an adult, she must return home to Milwaukee to settle her mother's affairs.
What goes wrong: Saskia learns her mother has willed the family fortune to an ex-colleague, a man whom Saskia loathes with good reason.
Is it for you? The Ingenue deals frankly with predatory grooming, sexual abuse, and the trauma that survivors like Saskia carry into adulthood. |
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| The Book of Everlasting Things by Aanchal MalhotraStarring: Samir, a Hindu perfumer, and Firdaus, a Muslim calligrapher, whose forbidden love story sweeps readers from the early 20th century to the present day.
Read it for: a lush, atmospheric story of cultural, political and personal turmoil surrounding the 1947 Partition of India.
For fans of: Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees, Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, or All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. |
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| Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra RehmanWhat happens: After changing schools, Razia -- a young Pakistani American woman -- questions her conservative Muslim upbringing and falls in love with a fellow student, Angela.
Read it for: Razia's 1980s transformation into queer teen rebel, with a side of nostalgic pop culture references.
Try this next: Dominicana by Angie Cruz or Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. |
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| The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay AdamsWhat it's about: Professional baseball player Gavin Scott will do anything to win his wife Thea back, even...join a romance book club?
Why you might like it: Gavin unlearns some bad habits while Thea learns to balance personal goals and family commitments. Members of the book club offer hilarious advice throughout.
Check out: the next in this bookish, funny, heartwarming (occasionally steamy!) rom-com series with #2: Undercover Bromance. |
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| The Starless Sea by Erin MorgensternWhat happens: A mysterious book leads graduate student Zachary Ezra Rawlins on a magical quest to another world, hidden in plain sight.
What it is: another atmospheric, puzzle box of a story told in dreamlike prose by the author of The Night Circus.
Take a bite: "Zachary Ezra Rawlins stares at...the same symbols he once contemplated in an alleyway behind his mother's store and wonders how, exactly, he is supposed to continue a story he didn't know he was in." |
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| Hell of a Book by Jason MottWhat it is: a complex, metafictional work about Black experiences in white America, told by a child named Soot and an unnamed author, aka "the Writer."
Read it for: the humor of the Writer who -- even as he is chased by an angry husband -- asserts "this is a love story"; the sadness of a bullied kid who'd rather be "unseen and safe" than anything else.
Winner: National Book Awards 2021 for Fiction. |
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| The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna RobinsonStarring: Maggie, who starts a top-secret book club to keep a small-town bookshop from ruin; Ralph, guardian of archaic policies that sabotage the shop's success; and Malcolm, who finds Maggie's rule-flouting ways more than a little attractive.
Freedom to read...triumphs in this "charming, funny, and uplifting" (Booklist) story of community redemption and romance.
For fans of: Katarina Bivald, Jenny Colgan, or Abbi Waxman. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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