Summer Reads

A Michelle Obama's Reach Higher Summer Reading List Pick • An NPR Critics Summer Pick • A Good Morning America Pick of the Month • A Good Reads Big Buzz Debut • A Tertulia Staff Pick of the Month • An Electric Literature Best Novel of 2023

“Compelling . . . Studded with sublime wit.” —New York Times Book Review

“A glorious, pondering, heartbreaking, extremely funny, very special book.” —Sarah Jessica Parker

In A Quitter’s Paradise, the darkly humorous debut by bold, new voice Elysha Chang, a young woman does everything she can to ignore her mother’s death, even as unearthed family secrets become increasingly inextricable from her own.

Eleanor knows she’s been acting strangely. She’s dropped out of her PhD program and is ignoring calls from her husband. Lately, she finds herself walking circles in the park, leaving a trail of nuts and raisins in her wake. It’s all, in some sense, a response to her mother’s recent death. This she knows. But Eleanor can’t understand how you are supposed to grieve a mother you never understood. How do you love a person who refused to make herself known?

As Eleanor wends her way forward, we catch glimpses of the past. Eleanor’s parents emigrate from Taiwan to Queens in 1979. The couple thrives in business, importing Taiwanese-made trinkets and managing a growing number of workers at their warehouse. But Rita and Jing Liu remain confounded by the process of raising their two daughters. How do you dole out affection, discipline, protection, and care in a strange place, in a foreign tongue?

Deliciously provocative and exquisitely crafted, A Quitter’s Paradise is an intimate, intergenerational saga of American immigrant ambition, and a profound contemplation of its long afterlife. With a deft hand and a humor distinctly her own, Elysha Chang explores the extent to which we unwittingly guard the hearts of our loved ones, even from ourselves.

A NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

From debut author Shannon Bowring comes a novel of small town America that Pulitzer-winner Richard Russo calls, “measured, wise, and beautiful.”

In most small towns, the private is also public. In the town of Dalton, one local makes an unthinkable decision that leaves the community reeling. In the aftermath, their problems, both small and large, reveal a deeper understanding of the lives of their neighbors, and remind us all that no one is exactly who we think they are.

It’s 1990. In Dalton, Maine, life goes on. Rose goes to work at the diner every day, her bruises hidden from both the customers and her two young boys. At a table she waits, Dr. Richard Haskell looks back on the one choice that’s charted his entire life, before his thoughts wander back to his wife, Trudy, and her best friend.

Trudy and Bev have been friends for longer than they can count, and something more than lovers to each other for some time now—a fact both accepted and ignored by their husbands. Across town, new mother Bridget lives with her high school sweetheart Nate, and is struggling with postpartum after a traumatic birth. And nearer still is teenager Greg, trying to define the complicated feelings he has about himself and his two close friends.

The Road to Dalton offers valuable understandings of what it means to be alive in the world—of pain and joy, conflict and love, and the endurance that comes from living.

From the acclaimed author of Washing the Dead and Bertrand Court comes a satirical and chilling, yet deeply-sensitive, tale that captures the ethos and ruin of children’s competitive swimming, where parents must face the haunting spirits of their own tumultuous upbringings or risk losing their way and—in turn—themselves.

It’s June 2012. The magical and slightly cultish River Run swim club is alive with the spirit of fun competition when a perfect storm brews between team moms and best friends, Gillian Cloud and Kristy Weinstein. The ghost of family addiction has turned up, looming over their carefully planned pasta parties, tie-dye nights, and pep rallies, forcing them to face their unresolved childhood trauma.

Gillian responds by trying to control everyone around her, while Kristy relapses into her dangerous addiction to love. Real sparks fly on the night of the derecho—a freak land hurricane—which sweeps through Northern Virginia, knocking out power for days. The storm ignites a tinder box of secrets, leaving Gillian and Kristy alone in the hot dark—their shame their only company.

At times humorous and devastating, Swimming with Ghosts is a hauntingly dark, yet uniquely tender story of the various entrapments of addiction and lingering trauma, and what it takes to overcome our hidden legacies of disgrace and discover a once unimaginable freedom made possible by confronting life’s greatest storms with the people closest to us.

Eighteen-year-old Sonya Hudson has been gripped by phobia since she was thirteen. What would make navigating the world so difficult for this budding visual artist? When the story opens, she lives with her mother and her sister in a suburb in New York in the late 1970s. The narrative carries us back through her childhood, where she struggles with the family’s frequent moving and with her parents’ increasingly fraught marriage. Lingering at the periphery of her consciousness is the shadow of a damaged boy she knew when she was very young. Reverence for the natural world provides comfort, as does her fierce attachment to her sister and her parents’ poignant guidance. But it is the intimacy with another young woman that ultimately offers a path to healing. In language soaring with poetic incantation, From the Longing Orchard shows us the ways in which a young woman and those she loves all must contend with a longing of some kind and how they seek from each other, and sometimes find, the needed balm.

One of the Best Books of 2022
NPR • Them • Lit Hub • CrimeReads • Book Riot • Chicago Review of Books

“A one-of-a-kind queer horror comedy for people who watch The Bachelor and The X-Files back-to-back.” —Kirkus Reviews

On this season of The Catch, contestants must compete for love. And their lives.

When the final four women in competition for an aloof, somewhat sleazy bachelor’s heart arrive on a mysterious island in the Pacific Northwest, they prepare themselves for another week of extreme sleep deprivation, invasive interviews, and, of course, the salacious drama eager viewers nationwide tune in to devour. Each woman came on The Catch for her own reasons—brand sponsorships, followers, and, yes, even love—and they’ve all got their eyes steadfastly trained on their respective prizes.

Enter Patricia, a temperamental and woefully misunderstood local living alone in the dark, verdant woods, and desperate for connection. Through twists as unexpected as they are wildly entertaining, the self-absorbed cast and jaded crew each make her acquaintance atop the island’s tallest and most desolate peak, finding themselves at the center of an action-packed thriller that is far from scripted—and only a few will make the final cut.

A whirlwind romp careening toward a last-girl-standing conclusion, and a scathing indictment of contemporary American media culture, Patricia Wants to Cuddle is also a love story: between star-crossed lesbians who rise above their intolerant town, a deeply ambivalent woman and her budding self-actualization, and a group of misfit islanders forging community against all odds.

“A breathtaking success . . . dazzling.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“[A] rollicking, wide-ranging, unpredictable novel—part crime story, part coming-of-age, part satire, part deadly serious.” —Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer finalist for The Great Believers

Who pays for the secrets we keep? For the lies we tell ourselves?

Lorena Saenz has just been paired with Jenny Stallworth for a school project by a teacher hoping to unite two girls from starkly different backgrounds. Jenny is pretty and popular, and Lorena is quickly drawn into the family’s picture-perfect suburban lifestyle. Jenny’s mother, Rosemary, is glamorous, but needy—she treats Lorena like a friend, if only to break up the monotony of lonely afternoons. Jenny’s father, Marcus, spends his days teaching and his nights wandering the desert, absorbed in his research on the scorpions of Death Valley. Outwardly, they are the perfect family, poised for success in 1981 Sacramento at the dawn of a glorious American decade. Lorena finds her access intoxicating and alluring, a far cry from her life in the small apartment she shares with her single mother.

But the veneer is shattered when Marcus disappears. The prime suspect: Lorena’s troubled older brother, Tony.

To uncover the truth, Lorena must embark on an unforgiving odyssey into the desert, into the secrets and lies of the Stallworth family, and the dark heart of America’s criminal justice system. A shape-shifting social novel, All the Secrets of the World is a propulsive tour de force from a writer at the height of his powers.

A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Winner for Best Romance

A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for Best General Fiction

From the acclaimed author of Before Anyone Else comes a captivating new novel about the lengths we will go to protect the ones we love.

Bailey thought she’d gotten her happy ending. She is married to the man she loves, she has started a family, and her design business is flourishing. But when Bailey’s ex-husband, a famous TV chef, is found murdered with her DNA all over his apartment and body, she is suddenly facing murder charges in a high-profile case. Already burdened by the demands and challenges of marriage, motherhood, and her career, Bailey now must do everything she can to prove her innocence. But it’s the ones she thought would surely be on her side—her enigmatic lawyer and her husband—who might be doubting her innocence the most.

Alternating between the past and present, After Everyone Else chronicles the grip of the past, the challenges of forgiveness, and the resilient love we save for the person we love after everyone else.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From the co-host of chart-topping true crime podcast Morbid, a thrilling debut novel told from the dueling perspectives of a notorious serial killer and the medical examiner following where his trail of victims leads

Something dark is lurking in the Louisiana bayou: a methodical killer with a penchant for medical experimentation is hard at work completing his most harrowing crime yet, taunting the authorities who desperately try to catch up.

But forensic pathologist Dr. Wren Muller is the best there is. Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of historical crimes, and years of experience working in the Medical Examiner's office, she's never encountered a case she couldn't solve. Until now. Case after case is piling up on Wren's examination table, and soon she is sucked into an all-consuming cat-and-mouse chase with a brutal murderer getting more brazen by the day.

An addictive read with straight-from-the-morgue details only an autopsy technician could provide, The Butcher and the Wren promises to ensnare all who enter.

Now with an exclusive sneak peek at the highly anticipated sequel!

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Editors' Choice • An Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

“The most fascinating debut I've read in years—enigmatic, biting, absurd, and right when you think you've got it figured out, utterly horrifying.” —Daniel Kraus, New York Times bestselling author of Whalefall and The Shape of Water (with Guillermo del Toro)

“A gripping, surreal mystery about language, identity, and greed.” —Peng Shepherd, bestselling author of The Cartographers

“The Centre draws you in with a gentle hand until it throws the mallet down.” —Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger

“The Centre is as haunting as it is tempting; this book devoured me back.” —Sarah Gailey, author of Just Like Home and Eat the Rich

In this “dazzling” speculative debut, a London-based Pakistani translator furthers her stalled career by attending a mysterious language school that boasts near-instant fluency—but at a secret, sinister cost (Gillian Flynn)

Anisa Ellahi dreams of being a translator of “great works of literature,” but mostly spends her days subtitling Bollywood movies and living off her parents’ generous allowance. Adding to her growing sense of inadequacy, her mediocre white boyfriend, Adam, has successfully leveraged his savant-level aptitude for languages into an enviable career. But when Adam learns to speak Urdu practically overnight, Anisa forces him to reveal his secret.

Adam begrudgingly tells her about The Centre, an elite, invite-only program that guarantees complete fluency in any language, in just ten days. This sounds, to Anisa, like a step toward the life she’s always wanted. Stripped of her belongings and all contact with the outside world, she enrolls and undergoes The Centre’s strange and rigorous processes. But as Anisa enmeshes herself further within the organization, seduced by all that it’s made possible, she soon realizes the hidden cost of its services.

By turns darkly comic and surreal, and with twists as page-turning as they are shocking, The Centre journeys through Karachi, London, and New Delhi, interrogating the sticky politics of language, translation, and appropriation along the way. Through Anisa’s addictive tale of striving and self-actualization, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi ultimately asks the reader: What is the real price we pay in our scramble to the center?

A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for Best General Fiction

Dave is a Dad with Asperger's.

He sees the world differently than most, and he feels like he has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to raising his 15-year-old daughter, Cleo. She also feels like he has no idea what he’s doing, especially now that her mom is gone.

They were both better off when Jana was around—Dave's wife, Cleo's mother. But now she's not, and they are left to figure out life on their own. Dave dedicates his attention to his newfound hobby of doomsday prepping, researching the various ways the world could end. Cleo feels like her world already has.

Everything changes when neighbors move in, threatening their isolation in the hills of San Juan Capistrano. Cleo is intrigued by the new girl, Edie, and soon finds out the intrigue is mutual. Dave, not at all intrigued, is forced to come to terms with everything he cannot control.

As they struggle to live in the present, both Dave and Cleo must dare to revisit the tragic past they share. What happened to Jana? Who was she, really? Who are they without her?

Ways the World Could End is a story of grief, friendship, and love—the love between parents and children, between spouses, between teenagers, and between strangers. It is a story that requires us to consider the bounds of forgiveness, what we’re willing and not willing to forgive, and reminds us that often the hardest thing to forgive is ourselves.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

* 2024 High Plains Book Award Winner * 2023 Reading the West Book Award Winner * Finalist for Goodreads Choice Award * Colorado Public Radio 2023 Books We Love *

Set amid Colorado’s wild beauty, the heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter. A tragic and uplifting novel of love and loss, family and survival—and hope—for readers of Great Circle, The Four Winds, and Where the Crawdads Sing.

“Beautiful . . . A striking first novel of love and strength and growth, set against the forests and rivers of Colorado’s high country. Read is a gifted writer, and the book is a literary triumph.”—Denver Post

“With gorgeous descriptions of the great outdoors, an illicit love story, and an unforgettable protagonist, Go as a River offers something for everyone.”—Real Simple

Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado—the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses.

Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known, fleeing into the surrounding mountains, where she struggles to survive in the wilderness with no clear notion of what her future will bring. As the seasons change, she also charts the changes in herself, finding in the beautiful but harsh landscape the meaning and strength to move forward and rebuild all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River threatens to submerge her homeland—its ranches, farms, and the beloved peach orchard that has been in her family for generations.

Inspired by true events surrounding the destruction of the town of Iola in the 1960s, Go as a River is a story of deeply held love in the face of hardship and loss, but also of finding courage, resilience, friendship, and, finally, home—where least expected. This stunning debut explores what it means to lead your life as if it were a river—gathering and flowing, finding a way forward even when a river is dammed.