From the publisher: "A collection of perfectly formed stories written over a period of 20 years, exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family. Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration." More info →

I love novels about New York City and was intrigued by the Broadway angle here: everyone's counting on teen pop star Carter Reid to anchor a much-anticipated musical revival, but he is wholly uninterested in fulfilling his contract. Enter Allison Brinkley, a newly unemployed mom who just arrived from Dallas and still feels like a fish out of water in the city. When a series of minor disasters connects her with the young star, one thing is clear: Carter needs a parental figure in his life. I downloaded the audiobook narrated by Carly Robins, and it was a great listen for a solo road trip. Whispersync narration available. (Note: I was especially glad to have the car to myself; it's seriously sweary.) More info →

From the publisher: "Eric Barker reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success and, most importantly, how anyone can achieve it. By looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn what we can do to be more like them - and find out, in some cases, why it's good that we aren't. Barking up the Wrong Tree draws on startling statistics and surprising anecdotes to help you understand what works and what doesn't, so you can stop guessing at success and start living the life you want." More info →

An atmospheric Midwestern version of Hamlet. Edgar Sawtelle lives with his parents on a farm in northern Wisconsin. Born mute, he communicates via sign language and helps his family raise and train "Sawtelle dogs," a fictional breed. Edgar's peaceful world is disrupted when his uncle Claude returns to the farm. When his father dies unexpectedly, and Claude romances Edgar's mother, Edgar tries to prove his uncle played a role in his father's death, but flees to the wilderness when his plan fails. After coming of age in the north woods, Edgar turns toward home. More info →

Editor Susan Ryeland has worked with Alan Conway for years, putting up with his eccentricities for the sake of his bestselling detective series. Every Atticus Pünd mystery novel feels pretty much the same to Susan by now, each one set in a small English village, following an Agatha Christie-like formula. When Susan reads Conway’s latest, however, she finds there might be more to the fictional mystery at Pye Hall. The more she reads, the more she becomes convinced of a real life mystery between the pages. A tale of greed and gruesome murder prompts Susan to investigate in this clever novel-within-a-novel. More info →

From the publisher: "Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders. Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South." More info →

Monica Wood is on my informal auto-read list; here she returns with another poignant Maine novel centering three lonely people, two of whom are in their 60s, all connected by a terrible tragedy. Violet was just nineteen when, drunk and high, she caused the death of a beloved local teacher and was sentenced to twenty-eight months in prison. Harriet runs the book group at the women’s prison, where the inmates spend one precious hour a month finding comfort in tearing apart the classics. And Frank is the victim’s widower, who fills his time by volunteering his handyman services at the local bookstore. This 2024 Summer Reading Guide selection is a deeply moving tale of redemption, second chances, and the power of books. More info →

Newman’s latest midlife novel is a follow up to Sandwich. (This can be read as a standalone but I recommend reading Sandwich first if you think you might want to read it, which is also on sale.) While Sandwich took place over the course of a week at fifty-something Rocky’s Cape Cod beach house, this story unfolds over a longer time frame and is set two years later at her home in Western Massachusetts. At the beginning of the story, a twenty-something man Rocky's kids know is killed in a train wreck in town, and it sets her family and the wider community reeling—contemplating chance, corporate responsibility, and mortality. Meanwhile, Rocky starts experiencing weird medical symptoms and it turns out there are no easy answers about why she’s experiencing them. In the midst of medical uncertainty and grief, she’s trying to take care of her husband, adult children, and her father the best she can, while she works her job as a food writer from home. And then much of the book encompasses the planning and enjoyment of the family's Thanksgiving feast—the pages are brimming with discussions of how to spatchcock a turkey, brining vs. dry salting, and how many pecan pies to make for the holiday. All the yummy food descriptions made me wish I could join them at the table. More info →

Entertainment Weekly calls this family saga "hard to put down." More info →

The publisher calls this "a sweeping, evocative epic of two women's intertwined fates and their search for identity." More info →