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The Double Life of Benson Yu
by Kevin Chong
What it's about: A Chinese American comic book author faces the truth of his painful childhood in Chong’s inventive metafictional outing (after The Plague, a retelling of Camus’s novel). Benny, is raised by his grandmother in 1980s New York City. She dies when he is 12, and he attempts to fend for himself in their Chinatown apartment.
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My Nemesis
by Charmaine Craig
From the acclaimed author of Miss Burma, longlisted for the National Book Award and the Women's Prize for Fiction, comes an immersive and searing story of two women, their marriages, and the rivalry between them.
What happens: This tense and thought-provoking exploration of an intellectual affair and its impact on two couples follows successful writer Tessa, who forms a connection with Charlie a philosopher and scholar, as she deals with the consequences of her actions against Charlie's traditional and subservient wife.
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| Your Driver is Waiting by Priya GunsWhat it's about: Damani, gig driver for an unnamed ride-share company, spends her free time at a hangout for artists and activists. A meet-cute moment sparks a romance with a wealthy white woman (not Damani's usual type) who seems to share the same social justice values...at first.
Read it for: "rich commentary on gig work, race, and white privilege" (Publishers Weekly); a kick-ass protagonist with a "ferocious heart" who is "a lover and a fighter, start to finish" (Booklist). |
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Dust Child
by Phan Quâãe Mai Nguyäãen
From the bestselling author of The Mountains Sing, a richly poetic and suspenseful saga about two Vietnamese sisters, an American veteran, and an Amerasian man whose lives intersect in surprising ways, set during and after the war in Việt Nam.
What it's about: The abandoned son of a Black American soldier and a Vietnamese woman during the war dreams of finding his family and a better life. i
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I Went To See My Father
by Kyæong-suk Sin
An instant bestseller in Korea and the follow up to the international bestseller, Please Look After Mom; centering on a woman's efforts to reconnect with her aging father, uncovering long-held family secrets.
What it's about: In the wake of a personal tragedy, a novelist goes back home in the Korean countryside to take care of her gentle father and learns, through the testimonies of his loving family and friends, how his lifelong kindness belies a past wrought in both private and national trauma.
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Celebrate Jewish Heritage Month in May
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The Promise of a Normal Life
by Rebecca Kaiser Gibson
For readers of Marilynne Robinson, Elizabeth Strout, and Katie Kitamura, the indelible journey of a quiet young woman--the "silent person" in the Seder--finding her way.
What happens: The unnamed narrator is a fiercely observant, introverted Jewish-American girl who seems to exist in a private and separate realm. She's the child of a first-generation doctor and lawyer--whose own stories have the loud grandeur of family legend--in an America where Jews are excluded from the country club across the street. Her expectations for adulthood are often contradictory. In the changing landscape of the 1960s, she attempts to find her way through the rituals of life, her geography expanding across the country, across the ocean, and into multiple nations.
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Kantika
by Elizabeth Graver
What is it: A dazzling Sephardic multigenerational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, exploring displacement, endurance, and family as home.
What it does: Exploring identity, place and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body-in work, art and love-serves as a site of both suffering and joy. A haunting, inspiring meditation on the tenacity of women that celebrates the insistence on seizing beauty and grabbing hold of one's one and only life"
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Take What You Need
by Idra Novey
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Oprah Daily, Vulture, Today.com, Elle, and Lit Hub.
What it's about: The narrative unfolds through the alternating voices of two women—Leah, who fled her hometown, and Jean, her estranged stepmother. Upon Jean’s death, Leah returns and learns that her stepmother had become a sculptor, welding towers of metal from found materials. In vibrant yet spare prose, Novey tells a story of finding beauty in what had been cast aside.
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Kunstlers in Paradise
by Cathleen Schine
What it's about: In this powerful novel of stories hand down and handed on, and those held close to the heart, Julian Künstler, during the 2020 pandemic, is trapped in Venice, California, with his glamorous, eccentric 93-year-old grandmother who shares her experiences upon arriving in the US after escaping Nazi Germany.
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The Woman Beyond The Sea
by Sarit Yishai-Levi
What is it: A mesmerizing novel about three generations of women who have lost each other--and the quest to weave them back into a family.
What happens: After Eliya Zoref’s estranged and narcissistic husband, Ari, rejects her yet again during a meeting in a Paris café, Eliya, 25, returns to Tel Aviv and attempts suicide. She survives, and as part of her healing regimen, her psychiatrist recommends she make an effort to repair her relationship with her mother, Lily. She has never had a good relationship with her mother, whom she calls “the evil beast,” but Eliya nevertheless begins to help Lily in her search for the identity of her mother, who left Lily as a newborn at the door of a Jerusalem convent in 1927
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| A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami AdébáyoMeet: Eniolá, a teen embittered by poverty and his parents' favoritism toward his sisters; and Wúràolá, a doctor from a wealthy family who becomes engaged to the son of a local power broker.
What happens: Wealth, power, political corruption, and gender inequality in modern-day Nigeria set the protagonists on a collision course for violence and tragedy.
Try this next: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. |
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| The Last Carolina Girl by Meagan ChurchWhat happens: Impoverished and fatherless in 1930s rural North Carolina,14-year-old Leah is whisked away to Charlotte by a well-off family. The state's recently established eugenics board deems her "feeble minded" when she is less than docile.
Is it for you? The eugenics movement -- driven by negative biases about race, gender, and class -- forced medical procedures upon thousands of vulnerable individuals until the 1970s. Due to its subject matter, this novel packs emotional wallop akin to Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. |
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| At Sea by Emma FedorWhat happens: A young woman's romance with a former soldier, who claims he was trained to breathe underwater, leads to marriage, a child -- and devastation when he disappears with their son.
Read it for: a genre-defying debut with mesmerizing characters, whose experiences of love, loss, and personal evolution are narrated across past and present.
For fans of: Diane Chamberlain and Sally Hepworth. |
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| American Mermaid by Julia LangbeinWhat happens: Penny goes to Hollywood after her best-selling feminist novel -- in which a woman falls into the ocean and discovers she's a mermaid -- is slated for a splashy film adaptation.
Reeled in: Studio execs turn Penny's asexual mermaid protagonist into a super-sexy action goddess. Penny becomes increasingly unsure of where she stands (or swims) when events in the script start happening in real life.
Read it for: a witty, metafictional satire of publishing and filmmaking. |
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| The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzieBuckle up: Penny Rush has had a rough few years. Her parents disappeared in the Australian Outback. Her marriage failed. Her gun-toting granny nearly landed in protective custody. Next thing you know, Penny's on the road with an accountant and his Pomeranian, Kweecoats.
Reviewers say: "This whirlwind tale has heart to spare" (Publishers Weekly).
For fans of: un-put-downable stories about imminently likeable, offbeat characters on madcap adventures. |
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| Stars in an Italian Sky by Jill SantopoloGenoa, 1948: Star-crossed lovers -- a tailor's daughter and a duke's son -- are caught up in political events that alter Italy's history.
New York, 2017: Lovebirds Luca and Cassandra discover long-buried secrets connecting their families and the consequences could derail their perfect wedding plans forever.
Read it for: "A romantic, sweeping story that's satisfying and heartbreaking at the same time" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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