I love Jen Smith (a Summer Reading Guide author). From the publisher: "Quirks of timing feature in this romantic novel about family connections, second chances, and first loves. Set over a twenty-four-hour-period, Hadley and Oliver find that true love can be unexpected. Today should be one of the worst days of seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan's life. Having just missed her flight, she's stuck at JFK airport and late to her father's second wedding, which is taking place in London and involves a soon-to-be stepmother Hadley's never even met. Then she meets the perfect boy in the airport's cramped waiting area. His name is Oliver, he's British, and he's sitting in her row. A long night on the plane passes in the blink of an eye, and Hadley and Oliver lose track of each other in the airport chaos upon arrival. Can fate intervene to bring them together once more?" More info →

Taylor Jenkins Reid's work has been a fun (if sometimes emotionally fraught) palate cleanser when I'm reading mostly serious stuff. I don't want to explain too much about the plot line, but I'll just say Reid's m.o. is to layer chick lit-style prose atop serious, thoughtful subjects. More info →

The Independent calls author Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that Elizabeth Taylor) "the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike." Listen to this charming description from the publisher: "On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper. Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unlikely friendship with an impoverished young writer, Ludo, who sees her as inspiration for his novel." More info →

Over her long career, Berg has consistently written strong female characters at many ages and stages. (Fun fact: Liane Moriarty cites Berg as her favorite author and early inspiration.) From the publisher: "A self-anointed spinster at fifty-one, Myra Lipinsky has endured the isolation of her middle life by doting on her dog, Frank, and immersing herself in her career as a visiting nurse. Myra considers herself reasonably content, telling herself, It's enough, work and Frank. And it has been enough -- until Chip Reardon, the too-good-to-be-true golden boy she adored from afar, is assigned to be her new patient. Choosing to forgo invasive treatment for an incurable illness, Chip has returned from Manhattan to the New England home of his childhood to spend what time he has left. Now, Myra and Chip find themselves engaged in a poingnant redefinition of roles, and a complicated dance of memory, ambivalence, and longing. With effortless warmth, and loving respect for characters that defies easy sentiment, Never Change melds the emotional depth and gentle intensity of poetry with the rich satisfactions of finely wrought fiction." More info →

Three close friends live at Bennet House, an all-women's dorm at Longbourn University: EJ, a Black engineering major, Jamie, a trans French and theater double major, and Tessa, a Filipina astronomy major. Regardless of what’s happening in their personal lives, the dorm is their oasis and a source of self-discovery. As the semester gets underway, each woman finds the promise of romance in this fresh modern take. More info →

This was a deeply relatable, laugh-out-loud, busy and buoyant delight. Debut novelist Shook has a lot of plates spinning: the vast character count and rapidly shifting narrative perspective made me a little dizzy in the early chapters, but once I figured out who was who, I was hooked. The story opens with a shocking revelation at the patriarch’s funeral and unfolds over the course of one chaotic week in fictional Eulalia, Georgia. Every member of this large family has been keeping big secrets from each other, and by week’s end they all come spilling out. I don’t like to say “should,” but I’m strongly tempted to call this a must-read for fans of contemporary family dramas. For fans of Jonathan Tropper's This Is Where I Leave You and Emma Straub's All Adults Here. More info →

This new Cheryl Strayed mini-memoir just came out on January 1. It's a 31-page snapshot of her complex relationship with her mother-in-law, a woman she very much wanted to be close to—but their relationship was never quite what she had hoped for or dreamed of. At a key moment in their history together, Strayed reflects back on the ill-fated moment they first met in a bar, before they were officially connected by marriage. Twenty years later, in the present day, her mother-in-law is entering hospice care and working out her "unfinished business." I've never read Wild, would you believe it? But I loved Tiny Beautiful Things and, given the opportunity, was happy to re-enter Strayed's world on the page for this short story-length reflection. More info →

From the publisher: " Kerry Hayes is single mum, living on a tough south London estate. She provides for her son by cleaning houses she could never afford. Taken into care as a child, Kerry cannot forget her past. Noah Martineau is a successful barrister with a beautiful wife, daughter and home in fashionable Primrose Hill. Adopted as a young child, Noah never looks back. When Kerry contacts Noah, the sibling she lost on the day they were torn apart as children, she sets in motion a chain of events that will change both of their lives forever." More info →

Brigid says: The first in a fantasy series set in an alternate Egypt in 1912, this a short novella that can be read as a standalone and listened to in an afternoon. When Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi is sent to investigate a suspicious death from suicide by Cairo’s Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, she is quickly pulled into a much larger sinister plot. Whispersync narration available in the atmospheric audiobook narrated by Suehyla El-Attar. More info →