Quick Lit September 2026

From the publisher: "Shannon Sanders’s sparkling debut brings us into the company of the Collins family and their acquaintances as they meet, bicker, compete, celebrate, worry, keep and reveal secrets, build lives and careers, and endure. Moving from Atlantic City to New York to DC, from the 1960s to the 2000s, from law students to drag performers to violinists to matriarchs, Company tells a multifaceted, multigenerational saga in thirteen stories. Each piece includes a moment when a guest arrives at someone’s home. In 'The Good, Good Men,' two brothers reunite to oust a “deadbeat” boyfriend from their mother’s house. In 'The Everest Society,' the brothers’ sister anxiously prepares for a home visit from a social worker before adopting a child. In 'Birds of Paradise,' their aunt, newly promoted to university provost, navigates a minefield of microaggressions at her own welcome party. And in the haunting title story, the provost’s sister finds her solitary life disrupted when her late sister’s daughter comes calling. These are stories about intimacy, societal and familial obligations, and the ways inheritances shape our fates. Buoyant, somber, sharp, and affectionate, this collection announces a remarkable new voice in fiction."
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This is a summer reading pick for my 13-year-old, and he asked me to read it too. This American classic is about a group of kids from the wrong side of the tracks in Oklahoma, and I've heard it compared to West Side Story. Unbelievably, Hinton wrote this when she was just 16, and it was published when she was 18. You could also read this title for a reading challenge category "a book that's been banned at some point."
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Didion’s first work of nonfiction, this essay collection published in 1968, remains a classic. She writes about figures like John Wayne and Howard Hughes, her experience growing up in California, and the birth of the 1960s counterculture movement in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. Didion drew her title from the W.B. Yeats poem “The Second Coming” (“things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”) and wrestles throughout with the disruption and unease she sees at work in the culture around her.
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This 2004 novel's backstory is fascinating and heartbreaking: novelist Irène Némirovsky, a French-Ukrainian, was arrested in 1942; her crime was being Jewish. The manuscript survived, unread and hidden in an old suitcase, even after she was captured and killed at Auschwitz. Her daughters had the manuscript for years, not knowing what they possessed, but in 1998 finally opened the manuscript, not finding the journals they expected, but the novellas that became Suite Français. This is possibly the earliest work of fiction about World War II. Translated by Sandra Smith.
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From the publisher: "From the author of the international bestseller Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, a heartfelt invitation to reflect on your relationship with reading and celebrate the joys of books. Why do we read? What is it that we hope to take away from the intimate, personal experience of reading for pleasure? How often do we ask these profound, expansive questions of ourselves and of our relationship to the joy of reading? In each of the essays in Every Day I Read, Hwang Bo-reum contemplates what living a life immersed in reading means. She goes beyond the usual questions of what to read and how often, exploring the relationship between reading and writing, when to turn to a bestseller vs. browse the corners of a bookstore, the value of reading outside of your favorite genre, falling in love with book characters, and more. Every Day I Read provides many quiet moments for introspection and reflection, encouraging book-lovers to explore what reading means to each of us."
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From the publisher: "Twenty-year-old Thomas Flett lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, Northern England, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the drizzly shore to scrape for shrimp, and spends the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and sea-scum, pining for his neighbor, Joan Wyeth, and playing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but this remains a private dream. Then a mysterious American arrives in town, and enlists Thomas’s help in finding a perfect location for his next movie. Though skeptical at first, soon Thomas starts to trust the stranger, Edgar, and, shaken from the drudgery of his days by the promise of Hollywood glamour, begins to see a different future for himself. But how much of what Edgar claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?"
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a gateway

to reliable joy this summer

Our 15th Summer Reading Guide is coming May 14th.  Pre-order now and plan to join us on May 14th for Unboxing—the best book party of the year!

Buckle Up!

It’s almost time for the Summer Reading Guide. Order now and plan to join us on May 15th for Unboxing—the best book party of the year!

summer reading starts May 16th

Grab your Summer Reading Guide and join us for the best book party of the year!