Recommended Reads

Longing for independence, a young sheltered Kenyan woman flees the expectations of her mother for a life in New York City that challenges all her beliefs about race, love, and family.

“Readers will find a poignant, memorable voice they’ll feel lucky to have met.”—Harper’s Bazaar (Best Summer Beach Reads of 2023)

Soila is a lucky girl by anyone’s estimation. Raised by her stern, conservative mother and a chorus of aunts, she has lived a protected life in Nairobi. Soila is headstrong and outspoken, and she chafes against her mother’s strict rules. After a harrowing assault by a trusted family friend, she flees to New York for college, vowing never to return home.

New York in the 1990s is not what Soila imagined it would be. Instead of finding a golden land of opportunity, Soila is shocked by the entitlement of her wealthy American classmates and the poverty she sees in the streets. She befriends a Black American girl at school and witnesses the insidious racism her friend endures, forcing Soila to begin to acknowledge the legacy of slavery and the blind spots afforded by her Kenyan upbringing. When she falls in love with a free-spirited artist, a man her mother would never approve of, she must decide whether to honor her Kenyan identity and what she owes to her family, or to follow her heart and forge a life of her own design.

Lucky Girl is a fierce and tender debut about the lives and loves we choose—what it meant to be an African immigrant in America at the turn of the millennium, and how a young woman finds a place for herself in the world.

Sometimes true love takes a little heavy lifting

"The most hilarious disaster bisexuals you'll ever meet." --Dahlia Adler, Buzzfeed Books

This irresistible adult debut from beloved YA author Jennifer Dugan is a queer romcom for fans of Delilah Green Doesn't Care and Written in the Stars, in which a gym employee accidentally ruins her bosses' daughter's wedding, then even more accidentally falls for the runaway bride...

The gym is Lizzie's life--it's her passion, her job, and the only place that's ever felt like home. Unfortunately, her bosses consider her a glorified check-in girl at best, and the gym punching bag at worst.

When their son, Lizzie's best friend, James, begs her to be his plus one at his perfect sister Cara's wedding, things go wrong immediately, and culminate in Lizzie giving a drunken pep talk to a hot stranger in the women's bathroom--except that stranger is actually the bride-to-be, and Lizzie has accidentally convinced her to ditch her groom.

Now, newly directionless Cara is on a quest to find herself, and Lizzie--desperate to make sure her bosses never find out her role in this fiasco--gets strong-armed by James into "entertaining" her. Cara doesn't have to know it's a setup; it'll just be a quick fling before she sobers up and goes back to her real life. After all, how could someone like Cara fall for someone like Lizzie, with no career and no future?

But the more Lizzie gets to know Cara, the more she likes her, and the bigger the potential disaster if any of her rapidly multiplying secrets get out. Because now it's not just Lizzie's job and entire future on the line, but also the girl of her dreams.

The #1 New York Times-bestselling author's terrifying new thriller about one man's ice-cold malice, and one woman's fight to reclaim her life.

Former Army brat Morgan Albright has finally planted roots in a friendly neighborhood near Baltimore. Her friend and roommate Nina helps her make the mortgage payments, as does Morgan's job as a bartender. But after she and Nina host their first dinner party--attended by Luke, the flirtatious IT guy who'd been chatting her up at the bar--her carefully built world is shattered. The back door glass is broken, cash and jewelry are missing, her car is gone, and Nina lies dead on the floor.

Soon, a horrific truth emerges: It was Morgan who let the monster in. "Luke" is actually a cold-hearted con artist named Gavin who targets a particular type of woman, steals her assets and identity, and then commits his ultimate goal: murder.

What the FBI tells Morgan is beyond chilling. Nina wasn't his type. Morgan is. Nina was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Morgan's nightmare is just beginning. Soon she has no choice but to flee to her mother's home in Vermont. While she struggles to build something new, she meets another man, Miles Jameson. He isn't flashy or flirtatious, and his family business has deep roots in town. But Gavin is still out there hunting new victims, and he hasn't forgotten the one who got away.

"A full-throated chant for Hawai'i. Part coming-of-age story, part historical family epic, all love. . . . It's impossible to come away unchanged." --KAWAI STRONG WASHBURN, author of the PEN/Hemingway award-winning Sharks in the Times of Saviors

Set in Hilo, Hawai'i, a sweeping saga of tradition, culture, family, history, and connection that unfolds through the lives of three generations of women--a tale of mothers and daughters, dance and destiny.

"There's no running away on an island. Soon enough, you end up where you started."

Hi'i is proud to be a Naupaka, a family renowned for its contributions to hula and her hometown of Hilo, Hawaii, but there's a lot she doesn't understand. She's never met her legendary grandmother and her mother has never revealed the identity of her father. Worse, unspoken divides within her tight-knit community have started to grow, creating fractures whose origins are somehow entangled with her own family history.

In hula, Hi'i sees a chance to live up to her name and solidify her place within her family legacy. But in order to win the next Miss Aloha Hula competition, she will have to turn her back on everything she had ever been taught, and maybe even lose the very thing she was fighting for.

Told in part in the collective voice of a community fighting for its survival Hula is a spellbinding debut that offers a rare glimpse into a forgotten kingdom that still exists in the heart of its people.

A groundbreaking voice in contemporary Latin American literature, María Fernanda Ampuero's writing is "raw and savage" as she confronts machismo, inequity, and violence in this acclaimed short story collection (Vistazo).

An undocumented woman answers a job posting only to find herself held hostage, a group of outcasts obsess over boys drowned while surfing, and an unhappy couple finds themselves trapped in a terrifying maze. With scalpel-like precision, Ampuero considers the price paid by those on the margins so that the elite might lounge comfortably, considering themselves safe in their homes.

Simultaneously terrifying and exquisite, Human Sacrifices is "tropical gothic" at its finest--decay and oppression underlie our humid and hostile world, where working-class women and children are consistently the weakest links in a capitalist economy. Against this backdrop of corrosion and rot, these twelve stories contemplate the nature of exploitation and abuse, illuminating the realities of those society consumes for its own pitiless ends.

This epic, sweeping historical novel full of "wondrous complexity" spans continents and a century, and reveals how one act of survival can reverberate through generations (Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin). ​



"Remarkable....a haunting, symphonic tale"-- New York Times Book Review



In 1898, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India to labor for the British on the East African Railway. Far from home, Pirbhai commits a brutal act in the name of survival that will haunt him and his family for years to come.



So begins Janika Oza's masterful, richly told epic, where the embers of this desperate act are fanned into flame over four generations, four continents, throughout the twentieth century. Pirbhai's children are born in Uganda during the waning days of British colonial rule, and as the country moves toward independence, his granddaughters, three sisters, come of age in a divided nation. Latika is an aspiring journalist, who will put everything on the line for what she believes in; Mayuri's ambitions will take her farther away from home than she ever imagined; and fearless Kiya will have to carry the weight of her family's silence and secrets.



In 1972, the entire family is forced to flee under Idi Amin's military dictatorship. Pirbhai's grandchildren are now scattered across the world, struggling to find their way back to each other. One day a letter arrives with news that makes each generation question how far they are willing to go, and who they are willing to defy, to secure their own place in the world.



A History of Burning is an unforgettable tour de force, an intimate family saga of complicity and resistance, about the stories we share, the ones that remain unspoken, and the eternal search for home.

Emma Rosenblum's Bad Summer People is a whip-smart, propulsive debut about infidelity, backstabbing, and murderous intrigue, set against an exclusive summer haven on Fire Island.

"This roiling beach community satire serves up wicked, clever fun that is White Lotus sharp." —Kevin Kwan, New York Times bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians and Sex and Vanity

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF SUMMER 2023: Bustle, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, PopSugar, Bloomberg, Vogue, and more!

None of them would claim to be a particularly good person. But who among them is actually capable of murder?

Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker rule the town of Salcombe, Fire Island every summer. They hold sway on the beach and the tennis court, and are adept at manipulating people to get what they want. Their husbands, Sam and Jason, have summered together on the island since childhood, despite lifelong grudges and numerous secrets. Their one single friend, Rachel Woolf, is looking to meet her match, whether he’s the tennis pro—or someone else’s husband. But even with plenty to gossip about, this season starts out as quietly as any other.

Until a body is discovered, face down, off the side of the boardwalk.

Stylish, subversive, and darkly comedic, this is a story of what's lurking under the surface of picture-perfect lives in a place where everyone has something to hide.

A “superb fantasy saga” (Helene Wecker) of martial arts and magic, about what happens when a prophesied hero is not the chosen one after all—but has to work with a band of unlikely allies to save the kingdom anyway, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lives of Tao
 
“An ambitious and touching exploration of disillusionment in faith, tradition, and family—a glorious reinvention of fantasy and wuxia tropes.”—Naomi Novik, New York Times bestselling author of A Deadly Education

So many stories begin the same way: With a prophecy. A chosen one. And the inevitable quest to slay a villain, save the kingdom, and fulfill a grand destiny.
 
But this is not that kind of story. 
 
It does begin with a prophecy: A child will rise to defeat the Eternal Khan, a cruel immortal god-king, and save the kingdom. 
 
And that prophecy did anoint a hero, Jian, raised since birth in luxury and splendor, and celebrated before he has won a single battle. 
 
But that’s when the story hits its first twist: The prophecy is wrong. 
 
What follows is a story more wondrous than any prophecy could foresee, and with many unexpected heroes: Taishi, an older woman who is the greatest grandmaster of magical martial arts in the kingdom but who thought her adventuring days were all behind her; Sali, a straitlaced warrior who learns the rules may no longer apply when the leader to whom she pledged her life is gone; and Qisami, a chaotic assassin who takes a little too much pleasure in the kill.
 
And Jian himself, who has to find a way to become what he no longer believes he can be—a hero after all.

By the author of Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian): the fictional memoir of a trans indie rock musician that reveals how the act of creation can heal trauma and even change the past.

Any Other City is a two-sided fictional memoir by Tracy St. Cyr, who helms the beloved indie rock band Static Saints. Side A is a snapshot of her life from 1993, when Tracy arrives in a labyrinthine city as a fledgling artist and unexpectedly falls in with a clutch of trans women, including the iconoclastic visual artist Sadie Tang.

Side B finds Tracy, now a semi-famous musician, in the same strange city in 2019, healing from a traumatic event through songwriting, queer kinship, and sexual pleasure. While writing her memoir, Tracy perceives how the past reverberates into the present, how a body is a time machine, how there's power in refusing to dust the past with powdered sugar, and how seedlings begin to slowly grow in empty spaces after things have been broken open.

Motifs recur like musical phrases, and traces of what used to be there peek through, like a palimpsest. Any Other City is a novel about friendship and other forms of love, travelling in a body across decades, and transmuting trauma through art making and queer sex--a love letter to trans femmes and to art itself.

An addictively gripping coming-of-age story about an all-consuming, insidious love affair between a college freshman and a mysterious older woman, from an unforgettable new voice in fiction



Eighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived at her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for the big, impersonal city. Everyone she encounters seems to know exactly who they are. She reads advice listicles and watches videos online and thinks about how to fit in, how to really become someone, whoever that might be.



And then she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her, and is drawn unstoppably into Nora's orbit. She begins spending more and more of her time at Nora's perfect, tidy home in her beautiful, quiet world. Natalie lies to her floormates about her absence, inventing a fake off-campus boyfriend, and carefully protects this sacred, adult relationship. This only deepens her obsession, even as she comes to suspect Nora is hiding something. As the secrets multiply and the intensity of the romance threatens to overwhelm her, Natalie realizes that the new, adult identity she had imagined for herself is far from the one she's actually coming to know.



With atmospheric, electric prose that captures the anxiety and emotional intensity of young adulthood like never before, The Adult is about sex, yearning, poetry, and learning to free oneself from the expectations of others. Bronwyn Fischer is an immensely talented new writer to watch.