A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana HerreraRead about the other entries on the list.
Luz Alana is the heiress of a rum business from the Dominican Republic, looking to expand into France. She arrives in Paris in 1889 during the Exposition Universelle (famously when the Eiffel Tower went up). She meets and quickly begins verbally sparring with James Evanston Sinclair, a Scottish whiskey brand owner. They’re both looking to start over, and are somehow stuck together.
had two songs published, co-owned a dairy manufacturing business, and became the general counsel of two major corporations. Born and raised in Buffalo, NY, Cowan attended Amherst High School, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan Law School. Father of three and grandfather of four, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their eccentric rescue dog Percie.
John Grisham, A Time To KillRead about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.
This novel is next on my list because, as in [Robert Traver's] Anatomy Of A Murder, it includes a temporary insanity defense. To be clear, I am not sayingthat John Grisham was thinking about or even borrowing from Anatomy of a Murder when he wrote A Time To Kill. Even if he was, there is no copyright on a novel including a temporary insanity defense. A Time To Kill might even be in part an homage to the earlier novel. After all, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
A Time To Kill has a “happy ending” in the sense that the black man who killed the two white men who had raped his ten-year-old daughter is eventually exonerated by the white jury. However, after reading the book, one is left horrified by the level of racial hate and violence that is portrayed in the book and that persists to this day.
Andrew Forrester is a writer and former English teacher whose work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and Parents magazine. He holds a PhD in nineteenth-century British literature and lives in Austin, Texas with his family.
Exit West by Mohsin HamidRead about the other entries on the list.
This is a love story, and I won’t hear any argument against it. Nadia and Saeed meet as students in a city experiencing strange unrest—which, it turns out, has to do with unexplained (magical?) doors that are opening up all over the world. Walking through these portals takes someone from one point to another, usually across the globe. Together, Nadia and Saeed escape their city and explore Greece, London, and California, falling in love, yes, but also growing into themselves in beautiful, unexpected ways. Told in lyrical, moving prose… it’s just a perfect book.
The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Publishers Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes full-time in Seattle, Washington where she lives with her family and makes good soup.
Olive, Again by Elizabeth StroutRead about the other titles on Frankel's list at Lit Hub.
In the first Olive book, Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge, we see Olive struggling with retirement, her adult son and his family,her sick husband, the death of old friends. She’s cantankerous certainly, but we sense this has been true of Olive since childhood and has little to do with aging. But the sequel, Olive, Again, takes Olive well into genuinely old age. In this one, by the end of which Olive is in her mid-eighties, we get widowhood, elderly romance, disappointing grandchildren, incontinence, round-the-clock nursing, and an assisted-living facility. The writing is beautiful and elegant, in contrast with Olive herself who is stark, raw, unapologetic, angry, and, usually, absolutely right.
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’FarrellRead about the other entries on the list.
In the summer of 1976, there was a record-breakingly terrible heatwave in London. Gretta, an Irish matriarch, is suffering extra during the horrible weather event because her husband has recently left without a trace. Her three grown-up children, Michael, Monica, and Aoife, return to help her and figure out what happened. When the group returns to Ireland, even more family secrets come to light, and they all have to deal with old wounds.
Dandelion Daughter by Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, translated by Eli Tareq El Bechelany-LynchRead about the other novels on the list at Electric Lit.
Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, an actress, turned to literature with her debut, Dandelion Daughter, a coming-of-age story about the prejudices of rural Québec and a protagonist who realizes they were assigned the wrong gender at birth. It is a story of transgender discovery told with radical honesty and a deep understanding of character—nothing about the self is ever simple. As the protagonist moves to Québec City and then Montreal, the book excavates poetry from deep emotional wounds and demonstrates what it means to own your identity.
features have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Runner’s World, Women's Health, and more. An active member of the International Thriller Writers organization, her novels often focus on the facade and filters people put on to face the world. Her latest novel is Would I Lie to You?. The domestic thriller joins Blade’s previous novels, Have You Met Nora?, The Thunder Beneath Us, and Earth's Waters. A proud Caribbean Canadian, Blades currently lives in New England with her husband and their son.
Liv Constantine, The Last Mrs. ParrishRead about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.
In this psychological thriller, Amber Patterson insinuates herself into the gilded marriage of Daphne and Jackson Parrish. Coveting the wife’s life, Amber plots to take her place. But shocking twists and turns unveil deeper deceptions, buried secrets and danger at every corner.
Chhaunk by Abhijit BanerjeeRead about the other books on the list at Electric Lit.
How are roadside chowmein and foreign policy related? What does a disappointing New Year’s Eve have in common with Universal Basic Income? Few authors can extrapolate the dreary slog of everyday life to economic theories without being overly didactic, but Banerjee suffers from no such predicament. Every chapter begins with a juicy anecdote about food—in one, a sanyasi suckles lasciviously at a ripe mango on a crowded train, putting on a show for his scandalised audience; in another, a group of friends skip lunch to make their evening meal of sutli kebabs feel more rewarding, only to find that hunger has fettered every ounce of their mental energy.
Then, almost as if by chance, Banerjee begins to drift away—drawing unexpected parallels to Xi Jinping’s domestic policy, India’s malnutrition problem, the erosion of democracy, undertrial prisoners. Nothing is too frivolous, everything is related, and it almost always circles back to food. But while Chhaunk is a sobering reminder that the personal has always been political, Banerjee’s writing is laced with levity, making it an easily digestible read in spite of its heft.
Milk Glass Moon by Adriana TrigianiRead about the other entries on the list.
Bestselling author Adriana Trigiani is well-known for her sweeping sagas set in Italy, like The Shoemaker’s Wife and The View From Lake Como, but she also has a slew of excellent novels set in Appalachia. (Trigiani was born in Big Stone Gap, Virginia!)
The novel Milk Glass Moon—the third installment in her 1970s-set Big Stone Gap series—centers on Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney, who recently visited a fortune teller and was told to “redream” her future. Meanwhile, Ave Maria is struggling to raise her headstrong daughter, Etta. Set against the close-knit backdrop of southwest Virginia, this deeply heartfelt novel explores motherhood, marriage and the ever-changing bonds of family.
The Washington Post, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Bookpage, and more.
The Paris Apartment by Lucy FoleyRead about the other entries on the list.
Admittedly, the title of this one was reason enough for me to pick it as an audiobook when it came out in 2023 — even though I’m usually not a mystery reader! But a missing resident of a Paris apartment, and a building full of cryptic, stonewalling residents? I was hooked. The heroine, Jess, arrives in Paris only to find that her brother Ben — who extended the invitation to his apartment — is missing. If you like a locked-room (locked-building?) mystery, The Paris Apartment scratches that itch, with really deft character work by Foley, who knows how to luxuriate in details while still keeping pace with the twists and turns of the plot.
Read about the other entries on the list.Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones
It’s only forever, not long at all…
Up next is a YA retelling of a mix of Labyrinth (but without the purple leggings) and Beauty and the Beast. It’s about a young woman looking to save her sister from the Goblin King. When Liesl’s younger sister Käthe eats magical fruit at the Goblin Market, she falls under the spell of the feared and mysterious Goblin King. To save her, Liesl must travel to the Underground to get her back.
decades, he has expanded access, supported youth programming, and helped shape libraries as spaces for connection, learning, and opportunity. He believes deeply that reading, in all its forms, belongs to everyone, and that libraries are essential community spaces that show up as real pillars in their communities, meeting people’s needs in whatever way is needed.
Wayne A. Wiegand, Part of Our LivesRead about the other entries on the list.
A history of public libraries that shifts the focus from institutions to the people who use them. Wiegand centers everyday readers and how they moved through libraries, what they chose, and why it mattered. It’s a reminder that libraries are not defined solely by what they offer, but by how communities shape, use, and make meaning from them.
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