"The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead
Set in the Jim Crow South and based on a true story that will make your blood boil, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead's "The Nickel Boys" finds two boys navigating a nightmarish reform school.
"The Most Fun We Ever Had" by Claire Lombardo
Marilyn and David Sorenson might get along famously but their four daughters, decidedly, do not. Claire Lombardo expertly explores the highs and lows of romantic and familial love in her astute and acerbic debut, "The Most Fun We Ever Had."
"Three Women" by Lisa Taddeo
This provocative feat of journalism unflinchingly mines the sexual lives of three women. You will want to shake them, you will want to hug them, and you want to look in the mirror and examine your own complicated relationship with desire.
"The Need" by Helen Philips
A paleo botanist, and exhausted mother of two, confronts a home intruder who may or may not be real in Helen Phillips's "The Need"—a surreal psychological thriller with a deeply emotional core.
"Stay and Fight" by Madeline Fftch
The lives of a unique family living off the grid in Appalachian Ohio are upended when their precocious son is injured in an accident. "Stay and Fight" is an earnest and heart-wrenching debut that celebrates, and critiques, what it means to be free.
"Deep River" by Karl Marlantes
"Matterhorn" author Karl Marlantes returns with a harrowing and adventure-filled historical novel about three siblings who are forced to flee Finland and resettle in a Pacific Northwest logging community.
"In The Valleys of The Noble Beyond" by John Zada
Is Bigfoot real or imagined? John Zada's lushly written travelogue/nature narrative does not solve this mystery, but it does illuminate what our fascination with this supposed species of hairy, bipedal man-apes says about ourselves.
"They Called Us Enemy" by George Takei and Harmony Becker
In this moving graphic memoir, a cautionary tale for today's political climate, Star Trek alum and activist George Takei recounts his family's incarceration in two internment camps during World War II.
"The Chain" by Adrian McKinty
A mother gets a call informing her that her daughter has been abducted. To ensure her safe return, she must kidnap a child, and that child's parent has to do the same. You'll happily abide McKinty's outlandish plot for one of the best white-knuckle reads of the summer.
"Drive-Thru Dreams" by Adam Chandler
An entertaining treatise on how fast food has changed American culture, and been changed by it, Adam Chandler traces its history from the beginnings of White Castle to today.
