O'Connor's work is weird, imaginative, and unforgettable. If you've never read her work (or haven't read it since high school?) this is a great place to jump in. Start with the classics Everything That Rises Must Converge, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, and The River. More info →

Set in turn-of-the-century Mexico, Laura Esquivel imbues her novel with magical realism to great effect. As the youngest daughter, Tita De Garza is forbidden to marry as she must care for her mother until she dies. When she and Pedro fall in love, he marries her sister so they can at least be near each other. If that sounds like a recipe for torture, you're right. As the family deals with one tragedy after another, Tita pours her emotions into her cooking as she preserves their recipes, causing everyone who eats the food to react in different ways. It will have you yearning for Tita and Pedro to somehow find a way back to one another. More info →

A sci-fi twist on the domestic thriller, The Echo Wife centers on Evelyn Caldwell, a brilliant award-winning scientist, her obedient clone Martine, and Evelyn’s cheating husband. Gailey’s unique books vary so much in style and this one definitely stands out! The intimate first-person narration amps up the tension—and the enjoyment. Perfect for fans of the movie Ex Machina and “mad scientist” vibes. Content warnings apply. More info →

This historical novel centers two young Black women in the 1950s: Ruby is an ambitious high school sophomore in a single-parent family of limited means in Philadelphia; Eleanor is a promising student at Howard University who, despite her working class upbringing, soon finds herself moving in the upper echelon of DC’s Black society. Both women have big hopes and dreams for their futures: they want love and marriage and family, as well as college degrees and satisfying careers. But shortly after each falls in love, big changes happen—and hard choices have to be made. A good story, well-told, with a satisfying ending. Be sure not to miss the author’s note! More info →

This 1930s Gothic classic is an un-put-down-able mystery. Don't be put off by its age: this thrilling novel feels surprisingly current (and Mrs Danvers is as creepy as ever). Du Maurier's approach is unusual: the woman of the title is dead before the action begins; the young second wife, our narrator, is never given a name. Because she doesn't understand what's going on for a long time, neither does the reader. And by the time you find out what really happened, you may find yourself one of the many readers who feel almost complicit in the crime. Suspenseful but not scary, and it holds its tension on a re-reading: a sure sign of a well-crafted thriller. More info →

From the publisher: "Would a proper adult ignore the spilt milk under the fridge for weeks? Would a proper adult take three years to post a solitary Christmas card? Would a proper adult have decades-old underwear in active service? Mike Gayle is nowhere near being a proper adult - even though his tenth wedding anniversary is looming; his second child is due any moment; and in less than twenty-four hours he is going to be officially closer to forty than he is to thirty. Appalled by this lack of maturity, Mike draws up a To-Do list containing every single item he's been meaning to do but just keeps putting off... He's got a lot of stuff that needs doing. But unlike previous To-Do lists, he promises himself that this one will actually get DONE. And along the way, Mike will learn stuff about life (323), love (999), friends (1004) and family (9) and finally work out what it means to be a grown up (846)." More info →

From the publisher: "Mira Salvi has the perfect life—a job she loves, a fiancé everyone adores, and the secure future she’s always imagined for herself. Really, she hasn’t a thing to complain about, not even when she has to go on her engagement trip to New York alone. While playing tourist in the city, Mira chances upon a lost ring, and her social media post to locate its owner goes viral. With everyone trying to claim the ring, only one person seems to want to find its owner as badly as Mira does: journalist Krish Hale. Brooding and arrogant, he will do anything to get to write this story. As Krish and Mira reluctantly join forces and jump into the adventure of tracing the ring back to where it belongs, Mira begins to wonder if she is in the right place in her own life. She had to have found this ring for a reason…right? Maybe, like the owner of the lost ring, her happy ending hasn’t been written yet either." More info →

From the publisher: "Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships—rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. Now the fortunes of one of Bingtown’s oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia. For Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy. For Althea's young nephew, wrenched from his religious studies and forced to serve aboard the Vivacia, the ship is a life sentence. But the fate of the ship—and the Vestrits—may ultimately lie in the hands of an outsider: the ruthless buccaneer captain Kennit, who plans to seize power over the Pirate Isles by capturing a liveship and bending it to his will." More info →

Bradbury never disappoints, and this strange work is among his best. This collection, which Bradbury called "a book of stories pretending to be a novel," was written in 1950. At the time, Bradbury set it in the distant future—which means right about now. In a series of vignettes, he chronicles the collapse and ultimate destruction of earth, the repeated human attempts to find safety on the red planet, and the conflict between the new arrivals and the native Martians. More info →

From the publisher: "On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter. Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were 'so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.' At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans. Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it's too late." More info →

I loved this magic-infused story about love, loss, and the wildness of nature. It's Alaska, 1920, the night of the first snowfall, which inspires a typically serious couple to indulge in a bit of silliness: they build a child out of snow, just for fun. In the morning, the snow child is gone, but, in a way that eerily mirrors a much-loved fairy tale, the couple spies a young girl they've never seen before running through the trees. From there, a magical and tender story unfolds. More info →

From the publisher: "Some people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks' isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, his family have lived and worked in the Lake District of Northern England for generations, further back than recorded history. It's a part of the world known mainly for its romantic descriptions by Wordsworth and the much loved illustrated children's books of Beatrix Potter. But James' world is quite different. His way of life is ordered by the seasons and the work they demand. It hasn't changed for hundreds of years: sending the sheep to the fells in the summer and making the hay; the autumn fairs where the flocks are replenished; the grueling toil of winter when the sheep must be kept alive, and the light-headedness that comes with spring, as the lambs are born and the sheep get ready to return to the hills and valleys. In evocative and lucid prose, James Rebanks takes us through a shepherd's year, offering a unique account of rural life and a fundamental connection with the land that most of us have lost. It is a story of working lives, the people around him, his childhood, his parents and grandparents, a people who exist and endure even as the culture - of the Lake District, and of farming - changes around them. Many memoirs are of people working desperately hard to leave a place. This is the story of someone trying desperately hard to stay." More info →

"We cannot help but be interested in the stories of people that history pushes aside so thoughtlessly," writes Min Jin Lee in her unputdownable novel tracing four generations of a 20th-century Korean family back to the time when Japan annexed the country in 1910, affecting the fates of all. I loved this book. Lee portrays the family's struggles against the backdrop of cultural and political unrest, as they endure fierce discrimination at the hands of the Japanese. Operatic and sprawling, every decision has a reverberating consequence in this intricate portrait of a little-explored period of history. I recommended this on episode 65 of What Should I Read Next. More info →

From the 2018 Summer Reading Guide. Roy and Celestial are young, middle-class, in love, and "on the come-up," as Roy likes to put it. But only 18 months into their marriage, Roy is sentenced to twelve years in prison—for a crime he didn't commit. Roy needs Celestial behind him if he is to survive. She needs to cut him loose if she is to do the same. In his letters, Roy writes, "I'm innocent." But Celestial tells him, "I'm innocent, too." If everyone is innocent, where does the fault lie? This is very much a book about mass incarceration—and it's no coincidence that Roy is arrested, tried, and imprisoned in Louisiana, the state with the highest per-capita rate of incarceration, with a 4:1 ratio of black prisoners to white—but there's little talk of "issues" in this book. Instead, this is a love story, though one gone horribly and irreversibly wrong. More info →

This is laugh out loud funny, tender, and written in a fresh voice, which you might not expect given the premise. Lilian's husband died in a car accident in front of their house four years ago and she hasn’t been quite ready to move on. Lili is no longer stuck in her grief, but she is in a rut, and generally okay with it: life with her daughters is enough. But when she's given a special project at work to illustrate a book about vegetables, she's signed up for their six-week garden class, introducing Lili (and the readers!) to a delightful cast of fellow gardeners. An unlikely community forms, and no one is quite the same by the time the class ends. More info →

Li-yan and her family, Akha ethnic minorities, farm tea in their remote mountain village in China. When a stranger arrives at the village gate, Li-yan's life takes a turn and she begins rejecting the rituals and routines that shaped her life thus far. When she becomes pregnant, she leaves the baby in an orphanage but never stops thinking about her. That baby is ultimately adopted by a white American family in California. Haley wonders about her birth parents and where she came from. A moving story about family, tea farming, and what gives life meaning. More info →

This epic fantasy is rooted in 20th Century Chinese history and mythology. It features Rin, an orphaned peasant girl, who, against all odds, earns a place in an elite military academy. At school, Rin discovers that she possesses incredible powers and studies the mythical art of shamanism. As the Nikara Empire teeters on the brink of war, Rin answers the call to save her people. Kuang has spoken about her choice to write fictional accounts of historical events like the Nanjing Massacre with unflinching detail, not to glorify war, but to show the realities of trauma. (Content warnings for sexual violence, atrocious warcrimes, self-harm). More info →

Lisa Jewell has a gift for coming up with intriguing premises, and her 2019 novel is no exception. Shortly after Libby turns 25, she gets a letter from the trust attorneys. She’s been expecting the letter her whole life; her biological parents died when she was young, and she knew about the trust. But the contents of the letter shock her: Libby didn’t expect to inherit much, but she’s suddenly the owner of a mansion on the finest street in Chelsea. She soon discovers the house has a tragic past, and she is intimately tied to the tragedy. And what’s more, she learns she has a family out there somewhere—one she hasn’t seen in 25 years. A spine-tingling mystery. More info →

Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club rejoice to see this, our October flight pick, on sale! Attica Locke knows how to write atmosphere and creates a compelling character in this modern noir. As a Black Texas Ranger, Darren Matthews has an intricate understanding of racial tensions in East Texas. He’s proud of his roots and his family, but when his loyalty lands him in trouble, he agrees to get out of town and investigate a crime for a friend. He drives up Highway 59 to the town of Lark, where a recent murder has stirred up hatred and history. Atmospheric and intense, and terrific on audio. J.D. Jackson narrates this and I adore his work. Whispersync narration available. More info →