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50 Great Books to Read This Spring! |
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Violeta
by Isabel Allende
Living out her days in a remote part of her South American homeland, Violeta finds her life shaped by some of the most important events of history as she tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others.
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Glory
by Noviolet Bulawayo
From the award-winning author of the Booker-prize finalist We Need New Names comes a novel that chronicles the fall of an oppressive regime, and the chaotic, kinetic potential for real liberation that rises in its wake.
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The World Cannot Give
by Tara Isabella Burton
Arriving at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, shy, sensitive Laura Stearns falls under the spell of charismatic, neurotic overachiever Virginia, who gives her purpose until the new school chaplain challenges Virginia, forcing Laura to decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go. 60,000 first printing.
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The family chao : a novel
by Lan Samantha Chang
When Big Leo, the owner of Fine Chao restaurant is found dead—presumed murdered—his three sons are reunited and fall under suspicion of the town and police, and must reckon with the legacy of their father’s outsized appetites and own future survival.
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Devil house
by John Darnielle
A true crime writer with one aging success moves into “The Devil House” where a notorious pair of murders took place in the 1980s and discovers an unexpected puzzle that leads him back into his own work. 100,000 first printing.
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Trust
by Hernán Díaz
"An award-winning writer of absorbing, sophisticated fiction delivers a stylish and propulsive novel rooted in early 20th century New York, about wealth and talent, trust and intimacy, truth and perception. In glamorous 1920s New York City, two characters of sophisticated taste come together. One is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; the other, the brilliant daughter of penniless aristocrats. Steeped in affluence and grandeur, their marriage excites gossip and allows a continued ascent -- all at a moment when the country is undergoing a great transformation. This is the story at the center of Harold Vanner's novel Bonds, which everyone in 1938 New York seems to have read. But it isn't the only version. Provocative, propulsive, and repeatedly surprising, Hernan Diaz's TRUST puts the story of these characters into conversation with the "the truth"-and in tension with the life and perspective of an outsider immersed in the mystery of a competing account. The result is an overarching novel that becomes more exhilarating and profound with each new layer and revelation, engaging the reader in a treasure hunt for the truth that confronts the reality-warping gravitational pull of money, and how power often manipulates facts."
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The candy house : a novel
by Jennifer Egan
"The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea,when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. It's 2010. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, "Own Your Unconscious"-that allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others-has seduced multitudes. But not everyone. In spellbinding interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also extraordinarily moving, a testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption. In the world of Egan's spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are "eluders," those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array ofnarrative styles-from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter and a chapter of tweets. If Goon Squad was organized like a concept album, The Candy House incorporates Electronic Dance Music's more disjunctive approach.The parts are titled: Build, Break, Drop. With an emphasis on gaming, portals, and alternate worlds, its structure also suggests the experience of moving among dimensions in a role-playing game. The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. Egan takes to stunning new heights her "deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology-driven, image-saturated culture" (Vogue). The Candy House delivers an absolutely extraordinary combination of fierce, exhilarating intelligence and heart."
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Booth : a novel
by Karen Joy Fowler
Describes the multiple scandals, family triumphs and disasters that took their toll on the ten children of celebrated Shakespearean actor, Junius Booth as the North and the South reached a boiling point and the Civil War broke out.
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Unlikely Animals
by Annie Hartnett
A lost young woman returns to small-town New Hampshire under the strangest of circumstances in this one-of-a-kind novel of life, death, and whatever comes after from the acclaimed author of Rabbit Cake. The Starlings live in Everton, an ordinary enough New Hampshire town. It's notable only for Corbin Park, an enormous hunting park, and for Maple Street Cemetery-home to many former residents of Everton. There's also the town legend that Emma Starling was born with healing hands. But Emma has never found the right use for her healing abilities, and they've been on the fritz ever since her childhood best friend, Crystal, fell prey to addiction and disappeared. No one went looking for her; the police don't spend much time looking for drug addicts. Now Emma has come back to Everton to see her dying father, the only person who has kept up the search for Crystal. Ever since his recent diagnosis with a rare brain disease, Clive Sterling has been seeing ghosts, including Ernest Harold Baynes, the long-dead naturalist who worked in Corbin Park, and who seems to have some unfinished business in Everton. The residents of Maple Street have their own agenda, too-they'd like to see Emma live up to her potential as a miracle worker and cure her father. Emma's not exactly up for the challenge, though. Recently expelled from medical school, she takes a job as a substitute fifth-grade teacher to get back on her feet and stay close to home. As her father's condition worsens, it's all Emma can do to stay afloat. She isn't trying to be a hero-just a passable guardian to her father and her fifth-graders-but somehow she still sets in motion just the kind of miracle the town needs. Set against the backdrop of a small town in the throes of a very real opioid crisis, Unlikely Animals is a novel about familial expectations, imperfect friendships, and the possibility of resurrecting that which had been thought irrevocably lost.
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Vladimir
by Julia May Jonas
With her husband Vladimir under investigation for inappropriate relationships with his former students, a popular English professor finds their extra-marital pursuits taking a toll on their relationship, while a married young novelist becomes dangerously obsessed with Vladimir, threatening to blow their life wide open. 125,000 first printing.
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Sea of Tranquility
by Emily St. John Mandel
The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.
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Perpetual West : a novel
by Mesha Maren
When her husband, who, unbeknownst to her, has fallen in love with a lucha libra fighter, goes missing, Elana can’t determine whether he left of his own accord or was kidnapped, forcing her to face who she really is. 75,000 first printing.
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Run and hide
by Pankaj Mishra
"Run and Hide is Pankaj Mishra's intimate story of achieving material progress at great moral and emotional cost. It is also the story of a changing country and global order, and the inequities of class and gender that map onto our most intimate relationships."
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True Biz
by Sara Novic
This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection.
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Ocean state
by Stewart O'Nan
This compelling and heartbreaking story of working-class life in Rhode Island and the terrible things love makes us do is told through the alternating perspectives of four women at the heart of the murder of a high school student.
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The swimmers
by Julie Otsuka
When a crack appears in the pool, a fellowship of swimmers who take comfort in their laps are cast out, including Alice, who, slowly losing her memory, is reunited too late with her estranged daughter, in this intimate story of mothers and daughters, and the sorrows of implacable loss.
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The Latinist : a novel
by Mark Prins
When her ex-boyfriend sabotages her career, determined to prove he has her best interests at heart, Oxford-educated Tessa Templeton scrambles to undo the damage, and in the process, makes a discovery about an obscure second-century Latin poet that could launch her career, finally freeing her from his influence.
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The violin conspiracy
by Brendan Slocumb
When, right before the cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition – the Olympics of classical music, his priceless Stradivarius is stolen, with a ransom note for five million dollars in its place, Ray McMillian must piece together the clues to reclaim the violin before it’s too late.
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Mecca
by Susan Straight
When a past action 20 years ago sparks a slow-burning chain of events in the present, California Highway Patrol officer Johnny Frias is united with a colorful and complicated cast of characters he never saw coming. 50,000 first printing.
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Young Mungo : a novel
by Douglas Stuart
"Douglas Stuart's first novel Shuggie Bain is one of the most successful literary debuts of the century so far. It was awarded the 2020 Booker Prize, and is now published or forthcoming in forty territories, having already sold more than a million copiesworldwide. Now Stuart returns with Young Mungo, his extraordinary second novel. Five years in the writing, it is both a page-turner and literary tour de force, a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James. Born under different stars-Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic-they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live. And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. But the threat of discovery is constant and the punishment unspeakable. And when several months later Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland, together with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future. Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much."
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The books of Jacob : or, A fantastic journey across seven borders, five languages, and three major religions, not counting the minor sects. Told by the dead, supplemented by the author, drawing from a range of books, and aided by imagination, the which being the greateest natural gift of any person. That the wise might have it for a record, that my compatriots reflect, laypersons gain some understanding, and melancholy souls obtain some slight enjoyment
by Olga Tokarczuk
Set in the mid-18th century, this sweeping novel follows a mysterious, Messianic religious leader as he, traversing the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, reinvents himself again and again and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike. Illustrations.
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French Braid
by Anne Tyler
Follows the Garrett family from 1959 onward as they discover that their actions advance across decades and ripple through generations in the new novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Breathing Lessons.
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The hummingbird : a novel
by Sandro Veronesi
This saga of a Florentine family from the 1960s to the present follows Marco Carrera, a man with an almost supernatural ability to remain still amid the chaos of an ever-changing world, as he deals with life’s trials and tribulations. 75,000 first printing.
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Black cake : a novel
by Charmaine Wilkerson
Two estranged siblings try to reclaim the closeness they once shared while trying to piece together their late mother’s life story and fulfill her last request of sharing a traditional Caribbean black cake “when the time is right.”
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The Doloriad
by Missouri Williams
"In the wake of a mysterious environmental cataclysm that has wiped out the rest of humankind, the Matriarch and her brother, and the family descended from their incest, cling to existence on the edges of a ruined city"
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Chasing history : a kid in the newsroom
by Carl Bernstein
The Pulitzer Prize winning coauthor of All The President’s Men recounts the world of the 1960s as he experienced it as a young reporter learning his craft at the Washington Star. 100,000 first printing.
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Bittersweet : how sorrow and longing make us whole
by Susan Cain
"With her mega-bestseller Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an untapped power hidden in plain sight. Now, she employs the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and the surprising lessons these states of mind teach us about creativity, compassion, leadership, spirituality, mortality and love. Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy when beholding beauty. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death-bitter and sweet-are forever paired. A song in a minor key, an elegiac poem, or even a touching television commercial all can bring us to this sublime, even holy, state of mind-and, ultimately, to greater kinship with our fellow humans. But bittersweetness is not, as we tend to think, just a momentary feeling or event. It's also a way of being, a storied heritage. Our artistic and spiritual traditions - amplified by recent scientific and management research - teach us its power. Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. If we don't acknowledge our own sorrows and longings, she says, we can end up inflicting them on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know - or will know - loss and suffering, we can turn toward each other. And we can learn totransform our own pain into creativity, transcendence, and connection. At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways."
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Manifesto : on never giving up
by Bernardine Evaristo
"Bernardine Evaristo's 2019 Booker Prize win was an historic and revolutionary occasion, with Evaristo being the first Black woman and first Black British person ever to win the prize in its fifty-year history. Girl, Woman, Other was named a favorite book of the year by President Obama and Roxane Gay, was translated into thirty-five languages, and has now reached more than a million readers. Evaristo's astonishing nonfiction debut, Manifesto, is a vibrant and inspirational account of Evaristo's life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought over several decades to bring her creative work into the world. With her characteristic humor, Evaristo describes her childhood as one of eight siblings, with a Nigerian father and white Catholic mother, tells the story of how she helped set up Britain's first Black women's theatre company, remembers the queer relationships of her twenties, and recounts her determination to write books that were absent in the literary world around her. She provides a hugely powerful perspective to contemporary conversations around race, class, feminism, sexuality, and aging. She reminds us of how far we have come, and how far we still have to go. In Manifesto, Evaristo charts her theory of unstoppability, showing creative people how they too can visualize and find success in their work, ignoring the naysayers. Both unconventional memoir and inspirational text, Manifesto is a unique reminder to us all to persist in doing work we believe in, even when we might feel overlooked or discounted. Evaristo shows us how we too can follow in her footsteps, from first vision, to insistent perseverance, to eventual triumph."
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Watergate : A New History
by Garrett M. Graff
Explores the full scope of the Watergate scandal through the politicians, investigators, journalists and informants who made it the most influential political event of our modern era. Illustrations.
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Sweat : A History of Exercise
by Bill Hayes
Exercise is our modern obsession, and we have the fancy workout gear and fads from HIIT to spin classes to hot yoga to prove it. Exercise-a form of physical activity distinct from sports, play, or athletics-was an ancient obsession, too, but as a chapter in human history, it's been largely overlooked. In Sweat, Bill Hayes runs, jogs, swims, spins, walks, bikes, boxes, lifts, sweats, and downward-dogs his way through the origins of different forms of exercise, chronicling how they have evolved over time, dissecting the dynamics of human movement.
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Born of lakes and plains : mixed-descent peoples and the making of the American West
by Anne Farrar Hyde
"A revealing history of the West that pivots on Native peoples and the mixed families they made with European settlers. There is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using marriage to link communities and protect people within circles of kin. These family circles took in European newcomers who followed the fur trade into Indian Country from the Great Lakes to the Columbia River. Vividly combining the panoramic and the particular,Anne F. Hyde's pathbreaking history follows five mixed-descent families whose lives were inscribed by history: corporate battles over control of the fur trade, the extension of American power into the West, the ravages of imported disease, the violence triggered by Indian removal, the incessant battles for land with encroaching American settlement, and the mix of opportunity and disaster in post-Civil War reservations and allotment. Occupying a dangerous intermediate ground in a continent of conflict, mixed-descent families were pivotal in the events that made the West"
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The Devil Never Sleeps : Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters
by Juliette Kayyem
Filled with personal anecdotes and real-life examples from natural disasters like the California wildfires to man-made ones like the Boeing 737 MAX crisis, The Devil Never Sleeps is a guide for governments, businesses, and individuals alike on how to alter our thinking so that we can develop effective strategies in the face of perpetual catastrophe.
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The Nineties
by Chuck Klosterman
Discussing everything nineties, including film, music, sports, TV, politics, changes regarding race and class and sexuality, a New York Times bestselling author shows how this decade brought about a revolution in the human condition that we are still groping to understand,
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Indelible city : dispossession and defiance in Hong Kong
by Louisa Lim
"An award-winning journalist and longtime Hong Konger indelibly captures the place, its people, and the untold history they are claiming, just as it is being erased. Lim's deeply researched-and deeply personal-account casts often startling new light on key moments: the British takeover in 1842, the negotiations leading to its "return" to China in 1997, the current protests, and the future Beijing seeks to impose. Throughout, it is populated by contemporary figures who, like her, aim to put Hong Kongers at the center of their own story: guerrilla calligraphers, amateur historians and archaeologists, and wending through it all, the King of Kowloon, a mentally ill trash collector, descended from royalty, whose iconic street art both embodied and inspired the unique identity Lim unforgettably conveys-Hong Kong as a place of disappearance and reappearance, power and powerlessness, loss and reclamation, silence and voice."
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Emotional : how feelings shape our thinking
by Leonard Mlodinow
Examines how current research shows how our emotions are as key to our sense of well-being as our thoughts, and how we can use them to overcome frustration, fear and anxiety and lead happier, more well-balanced lives.
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Ancestor trouble : a reckoning and a reconciliation
by Maud Newton
"Maud Newton's ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother's father, who came of age during the Great Depression in Texas, was supposedly married thirteen times, and survived being shot in the stomach by one of his wives. Hisfather purportedly killed a man in the street with a hay hook, and later died in a mental institution. On her father's side, a Massachusetts ancestor was accused of being a witch, who cast sickness on her neighbor's ox and was later tried in court for causing the death of a child. Maud's father had a master's in aerospace engineering on scholarship from an Ivy League university and was valedictorian of his law school class; he also viewed slavery as a benevolent institution that should never have been disbanded, and would paint over the faces of brown children in her storybooks. He was obsessed with maintaining the purity of his family bloodline, which he could trace back to the days of the Revolutionary War. Her mother was a whirlwind of charisma and passions that could become obsessions; she kept over thirty cats and birds in a tiny two-bedroom apartment, and later started a church in her living room, where she would perform exorcisms. Maud's parents' marriage was acrimonious, their divorce a relief. But the meeting of their lines in her was something she could not shake. She signed up for an online account and began researching her genealogy. She found records of marriages and trials, wills in which her ancestors gave slaves to their spouses and children. The search took over her life. But as she dabbled in DNA testing and found herself sunk in census archives at 1 o'clock in the morning, it was unclear to her what she was looking for. She wanted a truth that would set her free, in a way she hadn't identified yet. This book seeks to understand why the practice of genealogy has become a multi-billion-dollar industry in contemporary America, while also mining the secrets and contradictions of one singularly memorable family history."
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Paradise falls : the true story of an environmental catastrophe
by Keith O'Brien
"From the New York Times best-selling journalist, the staggering, hidden story of an unlikely band of mothers who discovered the deadly secret of Love Canal, and exposed one of America's most devastating environmental disasters. Lois Gibbs, Luella Kenny and Barbara Quimby thought they had found a slice of the American dream when they and their families moved onto the quiet streets of Love Canal, a picturesque middle-class hamlet by Niagara Falls in the winter of 1977, the town had record snowfalls, and in the spring, rains filled the earth with water like a sponge and the basements of the neighborhood's homes with a pungent odor. It was the sweet, synthetic smell of chemicals. Then, one by one, the children of the more than 800 families that made Love Canal their home started getting very sick. In this propulsive work of narrative reportage, Keith O'Brien uncovers how Lois, Luella, Barbara and other local mothers uncovered the poisonous secret of Love Canal: that they were living on the site where industrial employer Hooker Chemical had been dumping toxic waste for years, and covering it up. O'Brien braids together the previously unknown stories of Hooker Chemical's deception, the local newspapermen and scientists who tried to help, the city officials who didn't, and the heroic women who stood up to corporate and governmental indifference, and-ultimately-triumphed. O'Brien paints a vividly how their dauntless efforts would capture the American imagination at the time and form the foundation of the modernenvironmental movement."
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The invisible kingdom : reimagining chronic illness
by Meghan O'Rourke
"A landmark exploration of one of the most consequential and mysterious issues of our time: the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: these are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O'Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of "invisible" illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVIDynthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier. Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O'Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness, and reveals how inherited ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions, ones that resist easy description or simple cures. And as America faces this health crisis of extraordinary proportions, the populations most likely to be neglected by our institutions include women, the working class, and people of color. Blending lyricism and erudition, candor and empathy, O'Rourke brings together her deep and disparate talents and roles as critic, journalist, poet, teacher, and patient, synthesizing the personal and universal into one monumental project arguing for a seismic shift in our approach to disease. The Invisible Kingdom offers hope for the sick, solace and insight for their loved ones, and a radical new understanding of our bodies and our health."
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South to America : a journey below the Mason-Dixon to understand the soul of a nation
by Imani Perry
This intricately woven tapestry of stories of immigrant communities, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes and lived experiences shows the meaning of American is inextricably linked to the South—and understanding its history and culture is the key to understanding our nation as a whole. 150,000 first printing. Illustrations.
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The power of regret : how looking backward moves us forward
by Daniel H. Pink
Drawing on research in social psychology, neuroscience and biology, as well as true stories and practical takeaways, this book lays out a dynamic new way of thinking about regret to help us live richer, more engaged lives. Original. Illustrations.
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Lost & found : a memoir
by Kathryn Schulz
A staff writer at The New Yorker and winner of the Pulitzer Prize brilliantly explores of the role that loss and discovering play in all of our lives, in this part memoir, part guidebook to living in a world that always demands both our gratitude and our grief.
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Funny farm : my unexpected life with 600 rescue animals
by Laurie Zaleski
The founder of an animal rescue shares her experiences caring for over 600 animals, including horses, goats, dogs, cats, chickens and pigs and how she was able to honor her mother’s legacy by carrying on her work. 40,000 first printing. Illustrations.
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