In 2016, Morrison delivered the Norton lectures at Harvard University about race, human nature, and other-ness. This is the book form of those addresses; because they were first delivered as lectures they are exceptionally easy to read, although the themes themselves are hard. I especially enjoyed Morrison's discussions of her own popular works, like Beloved and Paradise, and her references to authors like Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner. With a foreword by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Publication date: September 18.

This isn't an easy book to read (and if you struggle through the first half, you're not alone), but persevering readers will be rewarded with one of the most important and beautifully written multicultural historical novels in the American canon. Sethe escaped slavery and fled to Ohio, but her memories stay with her, as does the ghost of her baby. Though she attempts to bury her past, Sethe is thwarted at every turn—most of all when a young woman shows up at her door, bearing the same name as the ghost baby's headstone: Beloved. I can't improve on the publisher's description, which says Beloved is "filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope." If you're interested in adding an iconic southern gothic novel to your TBR, look no further.

From the publisher: "Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment. Published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing."

Toni Morrison might be known for her fiction but her nonfiction is just as worth reading. This collection includes meditations, her takes on much debated issues, and commentary on other works. It offers a new perspective on an esteemed writer but also invites readers to see the world in a different light, leaving them better for it.

From the publisher: "In this 1983 short story—the only short story Morrison ever wrote—we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them. Another work of genius by this masterly writer, Recitatif keeps Twyla's and Roberta's races ambiguous throughout the story. Morrison herself described Recitatif, a story which will keep readers thinking and discussing for years to come, as "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial." We know that one is white and one is Black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage? A remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and how perceptions are made tangible by reality, Recitatif is a gift to readers in these changing times."

From the publisher: "Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life."

From the publisher: "In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in 'flesh,' he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives."

This coming-of-age family saga has an unforgettable opening scene. The day before Milkman Dead was born, a neighbor leaps off the hospital roof in the mistaken belief that he will fly across Lake Superior. Milkman’s father is a wealthy Black man, the only Black person to own a car in their town and a practitioner of respectability politics. The women in the family, by contrast, are kind and nourishing. Despite their care, Milkman winds up entitled and rootless, culpable to swindlers and the like, as he leaves the rustbelt city in search of his family’s origins. Morrison’s masterpiece is set in an unnamed city in Michigan that is widely believed to be Detroit. Content warnings apply.