1984 by George Orwell

Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities. Read a sample.

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Fowler

The single mother of a mixed-race college student and a thriving business owner with a troubled daughter clash over a historic oak tree on their property line and the blossoming romance between their children. Read a sample.

A Hundred Suns by Karin Tanabe

In 1933, American Jessie Lesage steps off a boat from Paris and onto the shores of Vietnam. Accompanying her husband Victor, an heir to the Michelin rubber fortune, she's certain that their new life is full of promise. Jessie soon meets Marcelle de Fabry, a spellbinding French woman with a moneyed Indochinese lover, the silk tycoon Khoi Nguyen. Descending on Jessie's world like a hurricane, Marcelle proves to be an exuberant guide to ex-pat life. But hidden beneath her vivacious exterior is a fierce desire to put the colony back in the hands of its people. As a fiery political struggle builds around her, Jessie begins to wonder what's real in a friendship that she suspects may be nothing but a house of cards. Motivated by love, driven by ambition, and seeking self-preservation at all costs, Jessie and Marcelle each toe the line between friend and foe, ethics and excess. Read a sample. 

A Well-Behaved Woman by Therese Anne Fowler

Marrying into the newly rich but socially scorned Vanderbilt clan, a formerly impoverished Alva navigates society snubs and dark undercurrents in the lives of her in-laws and friends while testing the limits of her ambitious rule-breaking. Read a sample.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Taken hostage by a failed bank robber while attending an open house, eight anxiety-prone strangers - including a redemption-seeking bank director, two couples who would fix their marriages and a plucky octogenarian - discover their unexpected common traits. Read a sample.

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope are two NYPD rookies assigned to the same Bronx precinct in 1973. They aren't close friends on the job, but end up living next door to each other outside the city. What goes on behind closed doors in both houses, the loneliness of Francis's wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian's wife, Anne, sets the stage for the stunning events to come. Friendship and love blossoms between Francis's youngest daughter, Kate, and Brian's son, Peter, who are born six months apart. In the spring of Kate and Peter's eighth grade year a violent event divides the neighbors, the Stanhopes are forced to move away, and the children are forbidden to have any further contact. But Kate and Peter find a way back to each other, and their relationship is tested by the echoes from their past. Read a sample.

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He's also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin's emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother's brain. Read a sample.

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor's true history, and fulfill her final request to "share the black cake when the time is right"? Read a sample.

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

One summer morning, Flight 2977 takes off from Newark Airport headed for Los Angeles. There are 216 passengers aboard--among them a Wall Street wunderkind worth $15 million; a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy; an injured vet returning from Afghanistan; and two beleaguered parents moving across the country with their adolescent sons. When the plane suddenly crashes in a field in Colorado, the younger of these boys, 12-year-old Edward Adler, is the sole survivor. Read a sample. 

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

The shattering disappearance of two young girls from Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula compounds the isolation and fears of a tight-woven community, connecting the lives of neighbors, witnesses, family members and a detective throughout an ensuing year of tension. Read a sample.

Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny

Duncan is charming, good-natured, and handsome. He has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan's old girlfriends everywhere, and while she may be able to come to terms with dating the world's most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she didn't have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, still has Duncan mow her lawn. And his coworker Jimmy comes and goes from Duncan's apartment at the most inopportune times. Jane wonders how the relationship is supposed to work with all these people in it. Not to mention most of the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices. After a terrible car crash, Jane's life is permanently intertwined with Duncan, his ex-wife Aggie, and his co-worker Jimmy. And she knows she will never have Duncan to herself. Read a sample.

Educated A Memoir by Tara Westover

Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home. Read a sample.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Tired of living on a failing farm and suffering oppressive poverty, bored housewife Dellarobia Turnbow, on the way to meet a potential lover, is detoured by a miraculous event on the Appalachian mountainside that ignites a media and religious firestorm that changes her life forever. Read a sample.

Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan

Struggling to adjust to small-town life after having a baby, an accomplished New York City journalist immerses herself in social media before bonding with a babysitter from a very different walk of life. Read a sample.

Harry's Trees by Jon Cohen

A 38-year old traumatized widower fortuitously meets an 11-year old girl who sets him on a feverish road to redemption. Read a sample.

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. But by the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys were diagnosed as schizophrenic. What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institutes of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amidst profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations. Read a sample.

Honor by Thrity Umrigar

Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena - a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man - Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one's own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita's own past. Read a sample.

Inheritance: a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love by Dani Shapiro

Spring, 2016. Through a genealogy website to which she had submitted her DNA for analysis, Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. Her entire history crumbled beneath her. This is the story of her quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years, years she had spent writing on themes of identity and family history. She shows that science and technology may have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover. Read a sample.

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

A stereotyped character actor stumbles into the spotlight before uncovering surprising links between his family and the secret history of Chinatown. Read a sample.

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Presents a true account of the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. Read a sample.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

From her place in the store that sells artificial friends, Klara--an artificial friend with outstanding observational qualities--watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara she is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. Read a sample.

L.A. Weather by María Amparo Escandón

L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He's harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters--Claudia, a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude; Olivia, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt; and Patricia, a social media wizard who has an uncanny knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers--are blindsided and left questioning everything they know. Each will have to take a critical look at her own relationships and make some tough decisions along the way. Read a sample.

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

Sheltering in a New York beach house with a couple that has taken refuge during a massive blackout, a family struggles for information about the power failure while wondering if the cut-off property is actually safe.. Read a sample.

Maid: hard work, low pay, and a mother's will to survive by Stephanie Land

An economic hardship journalist describes the years she worked in low-pay domestic work under wealthy employers, contrasting the privileges of the upper-middle class to the realities of the overworked laborers supporting them. Read a sample.

March, Book One by John Lewis

March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall. Read a Sample.

March, Book Two by John Lewis

Now, March brings the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today's world. After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, John Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through nonviolence - but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before. Faced with beatings, police brutality, imprisonment, arson, and even murder, the young activists of the movement struggle with internal conflicts as well. But their courage will attract the notice of powerful allies, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy... and once Lewis is elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this 23-year-old will be thrust into the national spotlight, becoming one of the "Big Six" leaders of the civil rights movement and a central figure in the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Read a Sample.

Mercy House by Alena Dillon

Inside a century-old row house in Brooklyn, renegade Sister Evelyn and her fellow nuns preside over a safe haven for the abused and abandoned. Gruff and indomitable on the surface, warm and wry underneath, little daunts Evelyn, until she receives word that Mercy House will be investigated by Bishop Hawkins, a man with whom she shares a dark history. Read a sample.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

A woman who has dedicated her life to protecting the environment convinces a fishing captain and his salty crew to follow the world's last flock of Arctic terns on a migration of dark revelations. Read a sample.

Nature's Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy

Douglas W. Tallamy's first book, 'Bringing Nature Home,' awakened thousands of readers to an urgent situation: wildlife populations are in decline because the native plants they depend on are fast disappearing. His solution? Plant more natives. In this new book, Tallamy takes the next step and outlines his vision for a grassroots approach to conservation. 'Nature's Best Hope' shows how homeowners everywhere can turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats. Because this approach relies on the initiatives of private individuals, it is immune from the whims of government policy. Even more important, it's practical, effective, and easy--you will walk away with specific suggestions you can incorporate into your own yard. If you're concerned about doing something good for the environment, 'Nature's Best Hope' is the blueprint you need. By acting now, you can help preserve our precious wildlife--and the planet--for future generations. Read a sample.

Nomadland by Jessica Bruder

An award-winning journalist sets out on the road to explore the new phenomenon of 'workampers' who are migrant workers made up of transient older Americans who took to the road after discovering that their social security came up short and their mortgages were underwater. Read a sample.

November Road by Lou Berney

Set against the assassination of JFK, a poignant and evocative crime novel that centers on a desperate cat-and-mouse chase across 1960s America--a story of unexpected connections, daring possibilities, and the hope of second chances. Read a sample.

Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout

Olive struggles to understand herself while bonding with a teen suffering from loss, a woman who gives birth unexpectedly, a nurse harboring a longtime crush and a lawyer who resists an unwanted inheritance. Read a sample.

Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo

Poet Laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life. In the second memoir from the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, Joy Harjo invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic meditation, 'Poet Warrior' reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice. Weaving together the voices that shaped her, Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, the teachings of a changing earth, and the poets who paved her way. She explores her grief at the loss of her mother and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member. Read a sample.

Ribbons of Scarlet by Kate Quinn et al.

Princesses and peasants, harlots and wives, fanatics and philosophers... the paths of six women cross during one of the most tumultuous and transformative events in history: the French Revolution. In late 18th-century France, women do not have a place in politics-- until the world order that has long oppressed them is upended. With justice corrupted by revenge, all the women must make impossible choices to survive. Read a sample. 

Small World by Jonathan Evison

Chronicles one hundred and seventy years of American nation-building from numerous points-of-view across place and time, and explores the Great American Experiment from its formative days to the present moment and asks whether or not our nation has made good on its promises. Read a sample.

Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris

In Depression-era Pennsylvania, a romance develops between two lonely people fighting for the rights of an impoverished family. When reporter Ellis Reed sees two children up for sale, he is reminded of his own difficult childhood, and he snaps a photo. His editor publishes the photo unexpectedly and assigns Ellis, who has no idea what happened to the children, to write a feature article. Secretary Lily Palmer volunteers to help Ellis with his assignment but won't talk about her own family. Their relationship is shaky at first, but as the children remain unfound, concern for their welfare trumps Ellis and Lily's budding love story. The pair must fight ignorance, prejudice, and criminal activity to unravel the network of lies that hold the children prisoner, all to reunite them with their mother. Read a sample.

Spy x Family (Volumes 1 & 2) by Tatsuya Endo

Master spy Twilight is the best at what he does when it comes to going undercover on dangerous missions in the name of a better world. But when he receives the ultimate impossible assignment--get married and have a kid--he may finally be in over his head! Not one to depend on others, Twilight has his work cut out for him procuring both a wife and a child for his mission to infiltrate an elite private school. What he doesn't know is that the wife he's chosen is an assassin and the child he's adopted is a telepath! Read a sample.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

A story about race and privilege is centered around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both. Read a sample.

The Arctic Fury by Greer Macallister

Secretly hired by an eccentric Lady Franklin to lead a team of women explorers into the Arctic to recover Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition, Virginia Reeve survives a harrowing quest only to find herself on trial for murder. Read a sample.

The Book of Lost Names by Kristen Harmel

Escaping from Paris in 1942 after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew, a graduate student finds refuge in a small mountain town, where she forges identity documents to help hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis.. Read a sample.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

Cussy Mary Carter is the last of her kind, her skin the color of a blue damselfly in these dusty hills. But that doesn't mean she's got nothing to offer. As a member of the Pack Horse Library Project, Cussy delivers books to the hill folk of Troublesome, hoping to spread learning in these desperate times. But not everyone is so keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and the hardscrabble Kentuckians are quick to blame a Blue for any trouble in their small town. Read a sample.

The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor

An unconventional vicar must exorcise the dark past of a remote village haunted by death and disappearances in this explosive and unsettling thriller from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man. Read a sample.

The Cold Millions by Jess Walter

Orphans Gig and Rye Dolan don't have a penny to their names. The brothers work grueling, odd jobs each day just to secure a meal, and spend nights sleeping wherever they can with other day laborers. Twenty-three-year-old Gig is a passionate union man, fighting for fair pay and calling out the corrupt employers who exploit the working class. Eager to emulate his older brother, Rye follows suit, though he can't quite muster Gig's passion for the cause. But when Rye's turn on the soap box catches the eye of well-known activist and suffragette Elizabeth Gurley, he is swept into the world of labor activism-and dirty business. With his brother's life on the line, Rye must evade the barbaric police force, maneuver his way out of the clutches of a wealthy businessman-and figure out for himself what he truly stands for.. Read a sample.

The Collector's Apprentice by B. A. Shapiro

Abandoned in 1922 Paris when she is wrongly accused of theft, 19-year-old Paulien changes her identity and is swept up in the expatriate art world of Gertrude Stein and Henri Matisse while working to recover her father's stolen collection. Read a sample. 

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewel

Discovering the identity of her birth parents and her inheritance of a valuable mansion, 25-year-old Libby makes horrifying discoveries about the massacre and disappearances of her biological family. Read a sample.

The Girl Before by JP Delaney

EMMA--Reeling from a traumatic break-in, Emma wants a new place to live. But none of the apartments she sees are affordable or feel safe. Until One Folgate Street. The house is an architectural masterpiece: a minimalist design of pale stone, plate glass, and soaring ceilings. But there are rules. The enigmatic architect who designed the house retains full control: no books, no throw pillows, no photos or clutter or personal effects of any kind. The space is intended to transform its occupant--and it does. JANE--After a personal tragedy, Jane needs a fresh start. When she finds One Folgate Street she is instantly drawn to the space--and to its aloof but seductive creator. Moving in, Jane soon learns about the untimely death of the home's previous tenant, a woman similar to Jane in age and appearance. As Jane tries to untangle truth from lies, she unwittingly follows the same patterns, makes the same choices, crosses paths with the same people, and experiences the same terror, as the girl before. Read a sample.

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake

The bereaved matriarch of a powerful early-20th-century American family makes a fateful decision that reverberates throughout two subsequent generations further impacted by racism, reversed circumstances and disturbing revelations. Read a sample.

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

An expertly planned celebrity wedding between a rising television star and an ambitious magazine publisher is thrown into turmoil by petty jealousies, a college drinking game, the bride's ruined dress and an untimely murder. Read a sample.

The Guncle by Steven Rowley

Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. He loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, When Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick's brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of "Guncle Rules" Patrick has no idea what to expect. After years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled acting career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old, Patrick's eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility. Even being larger than life means you're unfailingly human. Read a sample.

The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi

A talented henna artist for wealthy confidantes finds her efforts to control her own destiny in 1950s Jaipur threatened by the abusive husband she fled as a teenage girl. Read a sample.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he's searching for lost love. Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited -- her only connection to her family's troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world. Read a sample.

The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson

Needing to reconnect with the baby she gave up for adoption years earlier, an Ivy League-educated Black engineer uncovers devastating family secrets before her bond with a young white misfit scandalizes her racially torn community. Read a sample.

The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim

The story of two sisters, one raised in the United States, the other in South Korea, and the family that bound them together even as the Korean War kept them apart. Read a sample.

The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan

An indebted young widow, a freedom-seeking kitchen maid, the wife of a wealthy but unkind man and a trained chef navigating sexism compete for a once-in-a-lifetime spot hosting a BBC cooking program during World War II.  Read a sample.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Susan Orlean reopens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution--our libraries. Read a sample.

The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis

It's 1913, and Laura Lyons' life seems perfect-her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building. But Laura wants more, and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, where her world is cracked wide open. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother. When valuable books are stolen back at the library, she's forced to confront her shifting priorities head on. Eighty years later, in 1993, Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother Laura Lyons, especially after she's wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. But the job quickly becomes a nightmare when items for the exhibit Sadie's running begin disappearing from the library. Determined to save both the exhibit and her career, Sadie teams up with a private security expert to uncover the culprit. Things unexpectedly become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage-truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library's history. Read a sample.

The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh

Emma loves her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby: she'd do anything for them. But almost everything she's told them about herself is a lie. And she might just have got away with it, if it weren't for her husband's job. Leo is an obituary writer; Emma a well-known marine biologist. When she suffers a serious illness, Leo copes by doing what he knows best - researching and writing about his wife's life. But as he starts to unravel the truth, he discovers the woman he loves doesn't really exist. Even her name isn't real. When the very darkest moments of Emma's past finally emerge, she must somehow prove to Leo that she really is the woman he always thought she was. Read a sample.

The Maid by Nita Prose

When she discovers the dead body of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black in his suite, hotel maid Molly Gray finds her orderly life upended as she becomes the prime suspect in the case and is caught in a web of deception that she has no idea how to unravel. Read a sample.

The Marsh King's Daughter by Karen Dionne

A woman whose birth occurred as a result of her teen mother's abduction and imprisonment in an isolated marshland cabin risks the adult family that does not know her past when she uses survival skills honed in childhood to track down her murderous father. Read a sample.

The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin

Three strangers navigating grief and devastating setbacks cross paths in a rural Oregon town, where they find unexpected friendship, healing and new chances on local honeybee farm. Read a sample.

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

A vivacious dance-hall girl in 1930s colonial Malaysia is drawn into unexpected danger by the discovery of a severed finger that is being sought by a young houseboy who would protect his late master's soul. Read a sample.

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict

Hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library, Belle de Costa Greene becomes one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she keeps. Read a sample.

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he's teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what's left of his self-respect; he hasn't written-let alone published-anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn't need Jake's help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then...he hears the plot. Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker's first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that--a story that absolutely needs to be told. Read a sample.

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

Working at the local library, Aleisha reads every book on a secret list she found, which transports her from the painful realities she's facing at home, and decides to pass the list on to a lonely widower desperate to connect with his bookworm granddaughter. Read a sample.

The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts

In 1954, Annie Wilkins, a sixty-three-year-old farmer from Maine, embarked on an impossible journey. She had no relatives left, she'd lost her family farm to back taxes, and her doctor had just given her two years to live--but only if she "lived restfully." He offered her a spot in the county's charity home. Instead, she decided she wanted to see the Pacific Ocean just once before she died. She bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men's dungarees, loaded up her horse, and headed out from Maine in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. She had no map, no GPS, no phone. But she had her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness. Between 1954 and 1956, Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, journeyed more than 4,000 miles, through America's big cities and small towns, meeting ordinary people and celebrities--from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan) to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers--a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher who loved animals as much as she did. As Annie trudged through blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by her at terrifying speeds, she captured the imagination of an apprehensive Cold War America. At a time when small towns were being bypassed by Eisenhower's brand-new interstate highway system, and the reach and impact of television was just beginning to be understood, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world. Read a sample.

The River by Peter Heller

Two college students on a wilderness canoe trip find their survival skills and longtime best friendship tested by a wildfire, white-water hazards and two mysterious strangers. Read a sample.

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

At the height of the Cold War, two secretaries are pulled out of the typing pool at the CIA and given the assignment of a lifetime. Their mission: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one dare publish it, and help Pasternak's magnum opus make its way into print around the world. This novel combines a legendary literary love story--the decades-long affair between Pasternak and his mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya, who was sent to the Gulag and inspired Zhivago's heroine, Lara--with a narrative about two women empowered to lead lives of extraordinary intrigue and risk. It captures a watershed moment in the history of literature--told with soaring emotional intensity and captivating historical detail. And at the center of this unforgettable debut is the powerful belief that a piece of art can change the world. Read a sample.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning. Read a sample.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber becomes dangerously obsessed with uncovering the truth about what prompted his client, an artist who refuses to speak, to violently murder her husband in a way that triggers mass public speculation. Read a sample.

The Stars are Fire by Anita Shreve

Grace, a young woman with two small children, lives by the coast of Maine in 1947. Her marriage isn't very happy, but she's dutiful and devoted to her children. After escaping a devastating fire that wiped out her town and nearby forests, Grace has to become braver, stronger, and more resourceful than she's ever had to be before. She manages, until something unexpected makes her life contract once more. Read a sample.

The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali

A novel set in 1953 Tehran, against the backdrop of the Iranian Coup, about a young couple in love who are separated on the eve of their marriage, and who are reunited sixty years later, after having moved on to live independent lives in America, to discover the truth about what happened on that fateful day in the town square. Read a sample. 

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?. Read a sample.

The Women of Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell

In July 1913, twenty-five-year-old Annie Clements had seen enough of the world to know that it was unfair. She's spent her whole life in the coal-mining town of Calumet, Michigan where men risk their lives for meager salaries--and had barely enough to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. The women labor in the houses of the elite, and send their husbands and sons deep underground each day, dreading the fateful call of the company man telling them their loved ones aren't coming home. When Annie decides to stand up for herself, and the entire town of Calumet, nearly everyone believes she may have taken on more than she is prepared to handle. Read a sample.

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett

The author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. Read a sample.

This Tender Land by William Kent Kruger

Fleeing the Depression-era school for Native American children who have been taken from their parents, four orphans share a summer marked by struggling farmers, faith healers and lost souls. Read a sample.