book club picks

This love letter to Black life in the United States highlights the unspeakable trauma of slavery, the faith and fire of the civil rights movement, and the grit, passion and perseverance of some of the world's greatest heroes.

Marshall, a journalist, is sent to a small town to look into an improbable rumor that a horse has given birth to a human baby. As she investigates, she discovers evidence of a murder and becomes drawn into an even deeper and stranger mystery than she expected.

As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward. Content warning for suicidality.

In a mysterious convent, a lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened. When a stranger passes the convent walls, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future and her present life.

Lucy Smith, a foster teen on the run, is drawn into a complex mystery involving her stolen Ojibwe heritage. Lucy must uncover the truth about her past, while also trying to clear her name and protect her loved ones.

Eniiyi must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin, Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including Monife's tragic end.

Born to a Korean Buddhist mother and Jewish father, the author shares her remarkable journey from outsider to one of America’s most influential rabbis.

The Kennedy name has long been synonymous with wealth, power, glamor and integrity. But this carefully constructed veneer hides a dark truth: the pattern of Kennedy men physically and psychologically abusing women and girls, leaving a trail of ruin and death in each generation's wake.

Faced with a difficult decision, Betty, a young, queer Palestinian American woman, finds answers in partially translated notebooks that reveal her late Aunt Nuha's complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which she hid from the family, along with much more than that.

Four very different strangers, and one little dog, make their way west to Poppy Fields, an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain... and keep on sleeping.

A collection of horror stories centering on Black girls who battle monsters-- both human and supernatural-- face down death and survive.

When her beloved grandmother passes away, 14-year-old Lulu is drawn to the glamorous stranger who crashed the funeral. Their unexpected kinship picks at the secrets of Lulu's family and a curse that reverberates across generations.

A search-and-rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

Chicago, 1924: Emily and her husband, Henry, leave Chicago for the Kansas prairie, though she hates leaving her sister. In 1932, when tragedy strikes, their orphaned niece Dorothy lands on their doorstep.

A gripping story about a brother and sister, emancipated from slavery but still searching for true freedom, and their odyssey across the deserts of Mexico to finally reunite, all while escaping a former master still intent on their bondage.

Etheldreda, a twice-widowed mother, fights to secure a future for her daughters through the royal ball while navigating a dark, suspenseful secret involving the royal family.

In a small Irish town in 1985, coal merchant and family man Bill Furlong, while delivering an order to the local convent, makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

In a coming-of-middle-age tale, obituary writer Bud Stanley gets a second chance to write his life's story.

With her life in disarray after her Appa's extramarital affair and subsequent departure, Ji-won, plagued by horrifying yet enticing dreams of bloody rooms full of eyes, is overcome by hunger and rage that can only be sated by deceit, manipulation and murder as victims accumulate around her college c

Decades after a tangled college love triangle shaped her life, a woman is forced to confront her old choices and hidden truths.

An accomplished actress and an attractive, troubling young man meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. In this novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day-- partner, parent, creator, muse-- and the truths every performance masks.

Graduate students Alice and Peter must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor's soul: perhaps at the cost of their own.

In a near future where the Risk Assessment Administration uses data to prevent future crimes, Sara Hussein is arrested after a dream-analysis algorithm indicates she'll harm her husband. Held at a retention center, she's losing hope she'll ever get out when a newcomer upends everything.

Amid a global pandemic, a writer explores how a mysterious illness warps reality, identity, memory and language, forcing her to question if she's losing her mind or gaining a new self as she deals with past family trauma and the surreal experience of a changed world.

The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in 1910 Chicago, and the two daughters, Olivia and Helen, are finding their way and finding love-- even where they are not supposed to.

For years, Debbie Mullen was an advice columnist to whom women went for sympathy and advice. After Debbie loses her job, she begins to spiral. Her husband is keeping secrets, and her daughters are acting strange. Now, it's time to take her own advice. It's time for payback.

Embarking on a deeply personal journey across the country from Mississippi to Maine, the author tallies up what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm: the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others.

Cynical August doesn't believe in the impossible until she meets Jane, a mysterious punk rocker who is literally displaced in time from the 1970s and is trying to find her way back, all while stuck on the New York subway.

This literary mystery alternates between Dr. Agnes Linstrom, a forensic anthropologist investigating a 2,000-year-old bog body in 2018 England, and the first-person story of that body-- an ambitious Iron Age druid.

From adolescence, Florence Nightingale was determined to fulfill her life's calling to serve the sick and suffering.

When Steph Harper was five, her mother fled an abusive husband-- with Steph and her younger sister in tow-- to Cherokee Nation.

Lily, a disillusioned young woman, competes in a high-stakes reality show on a desert compound where personal bonds, hidden desperation and escalating challenges blur the lines between game strategy and survival.

In 1980, professor Joan Goodwin is selected to join NASA's space shuttle program in Houston with Top Gun pilot Hank, scientist John, mission specialist Lydia, warm-hearted Donna and aeronautical engineer Vanessa, who become unlikely friends-- until December 1984, when everything changes.

In the wake of being sexually assaulted by her pastor, 16-year-old Amina struggles to regain her footing until she finds the strength within herself to confront her abuser in court.

In small-town South Dakota, newly divorced Erica, a closeted trans teacher, forms an unlikely bond with Abigail, a bold trans student navigating senior year, as their friendship withstands community scrutiny, as it shapes their journeys toward self-acceptance and authenticity.

A provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity and the internet.

In the struggling town of East Gladness, Connecticut, 19-year-old Hai is saved from despair by Grazina, an elderly widow with dementia, forging an unexpected bond that reshapes their lives and reveals dynamics of love, memory and resilience on the margins of society.

An unlikely trio find connection and second chances after their paths cross at a book store.