Recommended Reads
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Flashlight
“The first major American novel to be published this year.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“Gorgeous . . . Almost impossibly heartbreaking.” —Sam Worley, New York Magazine
A Must-Read: The New York Times, New York Magazine, Time, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The Chicago Review of Books, Forbes, Literary Hub, and Town & Country
“A major world writer . . . Choi is in thrilling command.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Devastating.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“Ranks among her best work.” —Hamilton Cain, Los Angeles Times
A Dakota Johnson X TeaTime Book Club Pick
A novel tracing a father’s disappearance across time, nations, and memory, from the author of Trust Exercise.
One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked to the skin, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old.
Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, is Korean, but was born and raised in Japan; he lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to North Korea. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her Midwestern family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences.
But now it is just Anne and Louisa, Louisa and Anne, adrift and facing the challenges of ordinary life in the wake of great loss. United, separated, and also repelled by their mutual grief, they attempt to move on. But they cannot escape the echoes of that night. What really happened to Louisa’s father?
Shifting perspectives across time and character and turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Flashlight chases the shock waves of one family’s catastrophe, even as they are swept up in the invisible currents of history.
A monumental new novel from the National Book Award winner Susan Choi, Flashlight spans decades and continents in a spellbinding, heartgripping investigation of family, loss, memory, and the ways in which we are shaped by what we cannot see. -
Badlands
The #1 New York Times bestselling authors Preston & Child return with a thrilling tale of "hair-raising fun" (Kirkus) in which archaeologist Nora Kelly and FBI Agent Corrie Swanson, while investigating bizarre deaths in the desert, awaken an ancient evil more terrifying than anything they've faced before.
In the New Mexico badlands, the skeleton of a woman is found--and the case is assigned to FBI Agent Corrie Swanson. The victim walked into the desert, shedding clothes as she went, and died in agony of heatstroke and thirst. Two rare artifacts are found clutched in her bony hands--lightning stones used by the ancient Chaco people to summon the gods.
Is it suicide or... sacrifice?
Agent Swanson brings in archaeologist Nora Kelly to investigate. When a second body is found--exactly like the other--the two realize the case runs deeper than they imagined. As Corrie and Nora pursue their investigation into remote canyons, haunted ruins, and long-lost rituals, they find themselves confronting a dark power that, disturbed from its long slumber, threatens to exact an unspeakable price.
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What Kind of Paradise
A teenage girl breaks free from her father’s world of isolation to discover that her whole life is a lie in this propulsive new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things and Watch Me Disappear.
“A twisty, sharp coming-of-age story for our strange techno-utopian times.”—Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans
The first thing you have to understand is that my father was my entire world.
Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Waldenesque utopia.
As Jane becomes a teenager she starts pushing against the boundaries of her restricted world. She begs to accompany her father on his occasional trips away from the cabin. But when Jane realizes that her devotion to her father has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past, and her mother’s death: San Francisco. It is a city in the midst of a seismic change, where her quest to understand herself will force her to reckon with both the possibilities and the perils of the fledgling internet, and where she will come to question everything she values.
In this sweeping, suspenseful novel from bestselling author Janelle Brown, we see a young woman on a quest to understand how we come to know ourselves. It is a bold and unforgettable story about parents and children; nature and technology; innocence and knowledge; the losses of our past and our dreams for the future. -
Park Avenue
The HIGHLY ANTICIPATED adult debut novel from #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING author Renée Ahdieh
“Pulse-racing...Fans of The White Lotus and Crazy Rich Asians shouldn’t miss this.” —People
“I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun reading a book!” —Nicola Yoon, #1 NYT BESTSELLING author
Jia Song has always been destined for greatness. As the daughter of Korean bodega owners, she promised herself that she would have every Fifth Avenue luxury when she grew up, and it is all finally within reach. She has just made junior partner at her prestigious Manhattan law firm, she can count on her two best friends to have her back, and she is about to score the ultraluxe gold-on-gold Birkin bag of her dreams. So when her boss asks her to sit in on the hush-hush family implosion of a high-level client, she accepts without hesitation—only to find out that it is one of the most famous Korean families in the world.
The Park family’s net worth is estimated at a billion dollars, and their megasuccessful Korean beauty brand has shaped the culture for the past two decades. But the patriarch is filing for divorce while his wife is dying, and their three children can’t stop snapping at one another. With both the family fortune and legacy under threat from the worst kind of scandal, it’s up to Jia to set things right—and she only has a month to do it.
As Jia sorts through the lies and subterfuge, chasing the truth across the globe on private jets, she finds herself falling for this broken, badly-behaving family in ways she can’t quite explain. But it is also becoming clear that the Parks are hiding dark secrets. Can she find the truth in time to protect the Parks’ fortune and secure her success at the firm? And can she hold on to what’s most important, even if it means admitting that what she's always wanted isn’t what she actually needs? -
The Ghostwriter
DELUXE FIRST EDITION WITH PRINTED EDGES!
"Deftly and engagingly delves into this complicated not-so-cold case." --The New York Times
"Expertly plotted and exquisitely twisted." --Ashley Elston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of First Lie Wins
From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight and The Lies I Tell comes a dazzling new thriller.
June, 1975.
The Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets.
Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she's offered a job to ghostwrite her father's last book. What she doesn't know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies. Because it's not another horror novel he wants her to write.
After fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk about what really happened that night in 1975.
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Atmosphere: A GMA Book Club Pick
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • From the author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.
The stunning hardcover of Atmosphere features beautiful endpapers and a premium dust jacket!
“Thrilling . . . heartbreaking . . . uplifting . . . the fast-paced, emotionally charged story of one ambitious young woman, finding both her voice and her passion.”—Kristin Hannah, author of The Women
“NASA? Space missions? The ’80s? This is a collection of all the things I love.”—Andy Weir, author of Project Hail Mary and The Martian
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars. -
King of Ashes
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Pick up the novel everyone will be talking about.” —The Atlantic
“Dark, riveting, and accomplished.” —Washington Post
“Propulsive and powerful. . . A gripping roller coaster ride of escalating danger.” —New York Times Book Review
Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.
Amazon Best Books of the Year So Far 2025 • Indie Next pick for June 2025 • Library Reads pick for June 2025 • Book of the Month Club pick • Starred Library Journal • Starred Kirkus • Los Angeles Times 30 Must-Read Books for Summer • NPR’s 10 books we're looking forward to this spring • New York Post’s Must-Read New Thriller Books • New York Times’s 12 Summer Books We’re Looking Forward To • USA TODAY’s Most Anticipated Books of summer 2025 • The Atlantic’s 24 Books to Read This Summer • TIME’s 16 Most Anticipated Books to Read This Summer • People’s The 15 Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2025 • Vulture’s 28 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Summer • New York Times’s Books to Read This Summer • New York Times’s 4 Summer Books We’re Looking Forward To • Washington Post’s 30 Books to Read This Summer • New York Post’s 30 Best Beach Reads
When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.
Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself, and his own particular set of skills.
Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.
Because everything burns.
“A fast-paced thriller that will have readers asking whether the ends justify the means if there is no end in sight. . . Reminiscent of the great tragedies, this is Cosby at his best.”
—Library Journal, starred review -
Kill Your Darlings
"A dazzlingly clever murder mystery, told backwards, asking the question: why would this loving wife murder her husband?"--Gillian McAllister, New York Times bestselling author of Famous Last Words and Wrong Place Wrong Time
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Kind Worth Killing and Eight Perfect Murders comes an inventive, utterly propulsive murder-mystery in reverse, tracing a marriage back in time to uncover the dark secret at its heart.
Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over twenty-five years. They live in a beautiful Victorian on the north shore of Massachusetts. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well...except that Wendy wants to murder her husband.
What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom's marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple's lives--their fiftieth birthday party, buying their home, Jason's birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague--all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago.
Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early twenties, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.
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Murder Takes a Vacation
"Murder Takes a Vacation has all Laura Lippman's trademark razor-sharp insight and effortlessly absorbing writing, plus huge amounts of warmth and fun. Mrs. Blossom is a pure joy, and I'm already hoping for more." -Tana French
Highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman returns with an irresistible mystery featuring Muriel Blossom, a former private investigator and middle-aged widow whose vacation on a Parisian river cruise turns into a deadly international mystery...that only she can solve.
A New York Times "Best Beach Reads of Summer"
One of Washington Post's "Best Mysteries to Read This Summer"
One of Boston Globe's "Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List"
One of Minneapolis Star Tribune's "24 terrific books for the beach, cabin or lawn chair you'll want to read this summer"
One of Chicago Tribune's Summer Books 2025
Mrs. Blossom has a knack for blending into the background, which was an asset during her days assisting private investigator Tess Monaghan. But when she finds a winning lottery ticket in a parking lot, everything changes. She is determined to see the world that she sometimes feels is passing her by.
When Mrs. Blossom booked her cruise through France on the MS Solitaire, she did not expect to meet Allan on her transatlantic flight. He is the first man who's sparked something inside her since her beloved husband passed.
She also didn't expect Allan to be found, dead, twenty-four hours later in Paris, a city he wasn't supposed to be in.
Now Mrs. Blossom doesn't know who to trust on board the ship, especially when a mystifying man, Danny, keeps popping up around every corner, always present when things go awry. He is convinced that Allan was transporting a stolen piece of art, and Mrs. Blossom knows more than she lets on, regarding both the artifact and Allan's death.
Mrs. Blossom's questions only increase as the cruise sails down the Seine. Why does it feel like she is being followed? Who was Allan, and why was he killed? Most alarmingly, why do these mysterious men keep flirting with her?
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Crown
"A book built of deep suspense, a survival story of the first order . . . Evanthia Bromiley writes at the intersection of poverty and motherhood better than almost anyone I know. Crown is an astonishing, revelatory first novel." --Emily Fridlund
A suspenseful, lyrical debut novel tracking three days leading up to the eviction of a pregnant single mother and her nine-year-old twins from a trailer park in the American Southwest.
Jude Woods is on the brink of eviction. Pregnant, jobless, and mother to Evan and Virginia, she has three days to box up her family's life and find a safe place to live. In the Woods' quiet trailer park, neighbors keep to themselves, but it's no secret Jude and her twins are in jeopardy--the eviction notice slapped on their front door like a white shout.
When Jude's contractions flare just as their power is shut off, she rushes to the hospital instructing Evan and Virginia to hide in their car in the surrounding fields. If the children are discovered outside alone, they will be taken from her. Jude labors through the night in a crowded emergency room while the twins, desperate in the heat of the cramped car and spurred by their wild imaginations, strike out along the dangerous riverbank in search of a new home for their growing family. As night hurtles toward the morning lockout, both mother and children reckon with what it means to live and dream in a modern America insistent on slamming doors.
Poetic and distinct, the voices of the three Woods open to a chorus of waitresses and oil men, veterans and graffiti artists as Crown trawls the laundromats, public bus systems, and waiting rooms of a forgotten blue-collar city. In this mesmerizing, singular debut, the tenacious spirit of a young family and their community comes to profound and moving life.
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Total Dreamboat
“FRESH AND FUN AS HELL — Katelyn Doyle is absolutely an author to watch.” —People Magazine
From the author of Just Some Stupid Love Story, an IRRESISTIBLE ROM-COM about what happens when a cruise ship romance goes...overboard
Hope Lanover needs a vacation. Her relationship has imploded, her creative ambitions have flatlined, and she can’t seem to locate the badass girl she used to be. So when her best friend invites her on a luxury cruise, she goes along with it, despite decidedly not being a cruise person.
Felix Segrave, a sober, determinedly single, workaholic chef, hates leaving his restaurant and routine. But when his parents surprise him and his sisters with cruise tickets, he can’t say no—he’s disappointed them too many times in his troubled past.
Hope and Felix are prepared to grin and bear it . . . until they lock eyes at check-in. Suddenly ten days in the Caribbean doesn’t seem so bad, if it means a fling with a sexy stranger. But when their romantic demons catch up to them and a huge fight leaves them stranded in paradise, they must work together—not to mention share a bed—to make their way home. Can they navigate the stormy seas of love or will they face romantic shipwreck? -
Sunny Side Up
"A clever and stylish ride.”
—New York Times, The Summer’s Best Beach Reads
“Escape into a world of designer clothes and trendy NYC restaurants, where career dreams come true at the drop of a hat, preferably by the pool in a flattering swimsuit.”
—Oprah Daily, 26 Best Summer Reads of 2025
From body-acceptance advocate and MEGABABE founder Katie Sturino comes a heartwarming and hilarious debut.
Sunny Greene is thirty-five, recently divorced, facing the looming prospect of going solo to her little brother’s wedding, and currently trying to find anything plus-sized in the Bergdorf Goodman swimsuit department that doesn’t make her want to cry. It’s not going well. But isn’t rock bottom the perfect place to start a climb?
She decides it’s now or never. Sunny has her PR empire, her gorgeous Chelsea apartment, her two dogs, and her loyal best friends. Maybe it's time to just love her body and accept herself for who she is. With a new commitment to confidence, her journey begins. Who says a plus-sized divorcee can’t put herself first, feel beautiful, and date up a storm?
Of course things are never straightforward in the dating world. Is fate knocking at her door with Dennis, the charming and down-to-earth mailman, or should she be with Ted, the business tycoon who seems ready to make her size-inclusive swimsuit brand a reality? And what should she do about her ex, who shows up unexpectedly, eager to reconnect?
With the same candor and confidence her followers love, Sturino brings us Sunny Greene, a Carrie Bradshaw for the next generation, and her journey through the trials and triumphs of dating, friendship, and finding yourself. -
The Four Engagement Rings of Sybil Rain
Forgetting Sarah Marshall meets Anyone But You in this novel from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author and The Bachelorette star Hannah Brown.
Starling Ranch Inn promises to be a tropical paradise, and Sybil can't wait to escape there, all expenses paid. Well technically the expenses were paid--last year, when she was supposed to go to Hawaii for her honeymoon with her then-fiancé Jamie. But the wedding didn't go as planned (or at all), and now she's decided to use those hotel vouchers alone, before they expire.
Sybil's expecting mai tais, med spas and me-time, so she nearly plunges backwards into the infinity pool when she sees that Jamie has had the same idea! His family business is thinking of buying the resort, so he's here with a gorgeous, tangerine bikini-clad "colleague" to give the property a once-over.
Desperate to save face in front of the ex who broke her heart at the altar, Sybil accidentally-on-purpose blurts out that she's here with her boyfriend. But what starts as a harmless lie to spare her dignity soon spirals into an ex-fiancé fiasco when Sebastian--the second of Sybil's three failed engagements--pops by fresh off a photography gig. Seb's always up for a good time, and happy to play along ...sparking unexpected jealousy in Jamie.
From snorkeling snafus to stunning vistas to staff parties at the beach, Sybil does her best to juggle two ex-fiancés, but it's becoming clear that her past of broken promises must be reckoned with once and for all--including that first fiancé, Liam, the one she never talks about...
Is the notorious free-spirit, life-of-the-party, runaway bride Sybil Rain ready to heal from her three past engagements and make room in her heart for a fourth and final chance at love? -
If You Love It, Let It Kill You
"A refreshingly irreverent novel about art, desire, domesticity, freedom, and the intricacies of the 21st century female experience, by the acclaimed novelist Hannah Pittard Divorced and childless by choice, Hana P.-the metafictional version-has built a cozy life in Lexington, Kentucky, teaching at the flagship university, living with a fellow academic, and helping raise his pre-teen daughter. Her sister's sprawling family lives just across the street, and their long-divorced, deeply complicated parents have also newly moved to town. One day, Hana learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently-and soon-in her ex-husband's debut novel. For a week, her life continues largely unaffected by the news-she cooks, runs, teaches, entertains-but the morning after baking mac 'n' cheese from scratch for her nephew's sixth birthday, she wakes up changed. The contentment she's long been enjoying is gone. In its place: nothing. A remarkably ridiculous mid-life crisis ensues, featuring a talking cat, a visit to the dean's office, a shadowy figure from the past, a Greek-like chorus of indignant students whose primary complaints concern Hana's auto-fictional narrative, and a game called Dead Body. Playing with the subtleties and strangeness of contemporary life, If You Love It, Let It Kill You is a deeply nuanced and disturbingly funny examination of memory, ownership, and artistic expression for readers of Miranda July's All Fours and Sigrid Nunez's The Friend"--
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The Bewitching
Three women in three different eras encounter danger and witchcraft in this eerie multigenerational horror saga from the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.
“In Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s sure hands, every uncovered secret is fraught with intrigue and creeping horror.”—Tananarive Due, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Reformatory
“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.
In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay’s manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.
Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.