ADULT FICTION
“Abigail” by Magda Szabo — “Sequestered at a boarding school during World War II, a rebellious teenager confronts secrets, lies, and danger. . . . Urgent moral questions underlie a captivating mystery.” —Kirkus
“Augusta” by Celia Ryker — “In this novel inspired by the challenging life of the author’s grandmother, a woman is left to raise her four children alone during the 1920s… Smooth-flowing prose carries the tale forward at a steady pace… farm and city vignettes create vivid images of time, place, and economic class, and Augusta emerges as a formidable woman in the face of daunting odds. A historically evocative period drama that’s poignant and disquieting.”– Kirkus Reviews
“Chenneville: A Novel of Murder, Loss and Vengenace” by Paulette Jiles — “In her richly lyrical prose, acclaimed author Jiles (Simon the Fiddler, 2020) turns to the waning weeks and months of the Civil War, a period when the scales of justice felt heavily tipped toward the war’s administrators and beneficiaries. Jiles uses John’s lawless quest to interrogate the inequalities in the justice system—inequalities that still echo loudly today.” — Booklist (starred review)
“Eastbound” by Maylis de Kerangal — “I read Maylis de Kerangal’s short novella Eastbound earlier this year, which is about a young Russian conscript who, once aboard the Trans-Siberian rail, decides to desert and meets a French woman who helps him. I haven’t stopped thinking about it . . . De Kerangal reminded me how transportive it is when an author successfully creates that itching desire to know what happens next—without forgoing an ounce of style.” —Maya Chung, The Atlantic““Eastbound” by Maylis de Kerangal — “I read Maylis de Kerangal’s short novella Eastbound earlier this year, which is about a young Russian conscript who, once aboard the Trans-Siberian rail, decides to desert and meets a French woman who helps him. I haven’t stopped thinking about it . . . De Kerangal reminded me how transportive it is when an author successfully creates that itching desire to know what happens next—without forgoing an ounce of style.” —Maya Chung, The Atlantic
“Heart Bones” by Colleen Hoover — “Sexy, brooding Samson, especially, is just the kind of hero Hoover readers thirst for. This is sure to scratch an itch for fans.” ― Publishers Weekly
“In Memoriam” by Alice Winn — “…When was the last time characters in a novel seemed so real to me, so cherishable, so alive? Alice Winn has made familiar history fresh; no account of the First World War has made me feel so vividly its horror, or how irrevocably it mutilated the world. That In Memoriam is also an extraordinary love story is a sign of Winn’s wild ambition and her prodigious gifts: this is a novel that claims both beauty and brutality, the whole range of human life.” —Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness
“It Happened One Summer” by Tessa Bailey — “Bailey delivers on her usual trifecta of sharp banter, instant chemistry, and high-heat sex scenes, but they are coupled with intense soul-searching for both Piper and Brendan… Another winning romance from an author at the top of her game.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck — “Erpenbeck’s handling of characters caught within the mesh (and mess) of history is superb. Threats loom over their love and over their country. Hans is jealous, weak-willed, vindictive, Katharina self-abasing. At heart the book is about cruelty more than passion, about secrets, betrayal, and loss.” ― Kirkus Reviews
“Maggie Brown & Others” by Peter Orner — “This collection’s forty-four powerful tales express Orner’s talent for crafting captivating character sketches that read like memoirs…Readers will sympathize with Orner’s characters and identify with their all-too-human frailties.”―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Sold on a Monday” by Kristina McMorris — “The sale of two young children leads to devastating consequences in this historical tearjerker from McMorris… Set against the hardscrabble backdrop of the Great Depression, McMorris’s altruistic and sometimes damaged characters have moral compasses that realistically waver. A tender love story enriches a complex plot, giving readers a story with grit, substance, and rich historical detail.” ― Publishers Weekly
“The Book Club Hotel” by Sarah Morgan — “The Book Club Hotel is the kind of gift that arrives just when you most need it. Sarah Morgan has given us the perfect escape-and-find-yourself novel, featuring four very different women united by their shared love of books. Together, they illuminate the power of stories to validate and heal the heart, and the timeless bonds of friendship to keep us laughing, crying, and reading.” —Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling author
“The Cook” by Maylis de Kerangal — “Narrated with almost documentary-like precision . . . this portrait of self-taught chef Mauro is not just a beautifully delineated character study or inside look at a hard way to make a living but a perceptive meditation on the meaning of work itself . . . All this in just over 100 pages and done brilliantly. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“The Invisible Hour” by Alice Hoffman — “Alice Hoffman’s The Invisible Hour is a rich, immersive, magical reading experience. This beautiful novel is about the stories women tell each other and the ones that save us, about the price and peril of motherhood, and the difficulties women have faced throughout history in controlling their own fates. Alice Hoffman, the reigning queen of magical realism, takes her readers on a fantastic, mystical journey that celebrates the joy and power of reading and dares to believe in the impossible.” —Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Four Winds
“The Path to Sunshine Cove” by RaeAnne Thayne — “Thayne is a master at creating richly dimensional and kind characters from different generations who find themselves facing difficult challenges.”—Booklist on The Path to Sunshine Cove
“The Summer Job” by Lizzy Dent — “Beach Read meets Sweetbitter in this laugh-out-loud and ultimately heartwarming debut of a good friend’s very bad decision and the summer job that stands to ruin or make her life.” — Publisher Annotation
“The Vaster Wilds” by Lauren Groff — “Transcendent. Mesmerizing. Dazzling. Incandescent. Audacious….All of those descriptors are accurate and none of them are sufficient to describe just how spectacular [Groff’s] new book is.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“The Year of Second Chances” by Lara Very — “It speaks to Avery’s skill that the novel soars from this implausible beginning. While there is romance and there is humor, this is not (as it might first seem) a meet-cute rom-com. It’s a story about grief, and about finding a way to move ahead after a traumatic loss — even if ‘moving ahead’ might not mean what you think it does.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Us Against You” by Fredrik Backman — “Backman (A Man Called Ove) returns to the hockey-obsessed village of his previous novel Beartown to chronicle the passion, violence, resilience, and humanity of the people who live there in this engrossing tale of small-town Swedish life… Backman’s excellent novel has an atmosphere of both Scandinavian folktale and Greek tragedy. Darkness and grit exist alongside tenderness and levity, creating a blunt realism that brings the setting’s small-town atmosphere to vivid life.” ― Publishers Weekly
“Whalefall” by Daniel Kraus — “A crazy, and crazily enjoyable, beat-the-clock adventure story about fathers, sons, guilt and the mysteries of the sea . . . [Kraus] brings the rigor of a scientist and the sensibility of a poet to his descriptions of the undersea world.” —New York Times
ADULT MYSTERY
“The Hunting Party” by Lucy Foley — “Like a deliciously drawn out game of Clue, this novel brings together a group of Oxford friends at a remote Scottish highlands estate for the Christmas holidays….Foley paints such a vivid hunting-lodge-and-lochs setting that you’ll immediately be booking your own highland fling, clandestine killers or no.” — National Geographic
“The River We Remember” by William Kent Krueger — “Absorbing. . . combines nostalgic settings with depictions of the lingering hardships and traumas of war and the home front . . . in the decade after WWII.” —Booklist (starred review)
ADULT BIOGRAPHY
“Diary of an Invasion” by Andrey Kurkov — “Sergey is at once a war-weary adventurer and a fairy-tale innocent . . . His naive gaze allows Kurkov to get to the heart of a country bewildered by crisis and war, but where kindness can still be found . . . Translated by Boris Dralyuk with sensitivity and ingenuity.” —Uilleam Blacker, Times Literary Supplement
PICTURE BOOK
“The Little Blue Planet” by Anais La Rocca & Eve Grissinger
JUVENILE GRAPHIC NOVELS
“Class Act” by Jerry Craft — “A well-Crafted, visually rich, truth-telling tale for our troubled times that affirms the eternal importance of friends.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
YOUNG ADULT FICTION
“The Rage” by Lassiter Williams — “The Rage is fast-paced, gripping, and beautifully written, with a cast of appealing, unusual characters who struggle in a strange and threatening world.” — Reeve Lindbergh–Two Lives