Featured Literary Fiction
YELLOWFACE
by R.F. Kuang
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences⌠Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didnât write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian Americanâin this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel.Â
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athenaâs a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.
So when June witnesses Athenaâs death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athenaâs just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.
So what if June edits Athenaâs novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Songâcomplete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesnât this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? Thatâs what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.
But June canât get away from Athenaâs shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring Juneâs (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuangâs novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
THE GUEST
by Emma Cline
A young woman pretends to be someone she isnât in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.
âA grifter tale for the post Anna Delvey era.ââVogue
âAlex drained her wineglass, then her water glass. The ocean looked calm, a black darker than the sky. A ripple of anxiety made her palms go damp. It seemed suddenly very tenuous to believe that anything would stay hidden, that she could successfully pass from one world to another.â
Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.
A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man sheâs been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.
With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarefied world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.
Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Clineâs The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.
THE THREE OF US
by Ore Agbaje-Williams
Long-standing tensions between a husband, his wife, and her best friend finally come to a breaking point in this sharp domestic comedy of manners, told brilliantly over the course of one day.
What if your two favorite people hated each other with a passion?
The wife has it all. A big house in a nice neighborhood, a ride-or-die snarky best friend, Temi, with whom to laugh about facile men, and a devoted husband who loves her above all elseâeven his distaste for Temi.
On a seemingly normal day, Temi comes over to spend a lazy afternoon with the wife: drinking wine, eating snacks, and laughing caustically about the husband’s shortcomings. But when the husband comes home and a series of confessions are made, the wife’s two confidantes are suddenly forced to jockey for their positions, throwing everyone’s integrity into questionâand their long-drawn-out territorial dance, carefully constructed over years, into utter chaos.Â
Told in three taut, mesmerizing partsâthe wife, the husband, the best friendâover the course of one day, The Three of Us is a subversively comical, wildly astute, and painfully compulsive triptych of domestic life that explores cultural truths, what it means to defy them, and the fine line between compromise and betrayal when it comes to ourselves and the people we’re meant to love.
HAROLD
by Steven Wright
A uniquely humorous and deeply profound novel from a legendary stand-up comedian that follows the thoughts of a 1960s third grader during a single day at school.
Steven Wright is one of the most significant and influential stand-up comedians in history. Rolling Stone ranked him fifteenth on their â50 Best Stand-ups of All Timeâ list, while the New York Times has written of his enduring legacy: âIf you made a family tree of modern stand-up, he would top one of the few major and expanding branches. The children of Mr. Wright pack the comedy scene today.â Now comes his first novel, which is sure to be unlike anything youâve ever read.
From the outside, Harold is an average seven-year-old third grader growing up in the 1960s. Bored by school. Crushing on a girl. Likes movies and baseballâespecially the hometown Boston Red Sox. Enjoys spending time with his grandfather. But inside Haroldâs mind, things are a lot more complex and unusual. His thoughts come to him as birds flying through a small rectangle in the middle of his brain. He visits an outdoor cafe on the moon and is invited aboard a spaceship by famed astronomer Carl Sagan. He envisions his own funeral procession and wonders if the driver of the hearse has even been born yet.
Harold documents the meandering, surreal, often hilarious, and always thought-provoking stream-of-consciousness ruminations of the title character during a single day in class. Saturated with the witticisms and profundities for which Wrightâs groundbreaking stand-up has long been venerated, this novel will change the way you perceive your daily existence. To quote one of its many memorable lines: âEverything doesnât have to make sense. Just look at the world and your life.â
THE GOD OF GOOD LOOKS
by Breanne McIvor
Most Anticipated by Oprah Daily, Good Housekeeping, and Zibby Mag!
Combining the honesty, warmth, and humor of Queenie and a modern-day Bridget Jonesâs Diary, this entertaining, transportive, and luminous debut novel from award-winning writer Breanne Mc Ivor follows a young Trinidadian woman finding her voice and a new kind of happy ending.
“Phenomenal! A book worthy of a standing ovation. I will never forget how this novel made me feel. It’s effortlessly beautiful.”âLizzie Damilola Blackburn, author of Yinka, Where is your Huzband?
Bianca Bridge has always dreamt of becoming a writer. But Trinidadian society can be unforgiving, and having an affair with a married government official is a sure-fire way to ruin your prospects. So when Obadiah Cortland, a notoriously tyrannical entrepreneur in the islandâs beauty scene, offers her a job, Bianca accepts, realizing that working on his magazine is the closest to her dreams sheâll get.
 As Bianca begins to embrace her power and creative voice, she starts to suspect Obadiah is not the elite tyrant he seems. Sheâs right. Born in one of the poorest parts of Trinidad, Obadiah has clawed partway up societyâs ladder and built his company around his meticulously crafted persona. Now, heâs not about to let anyone, especially Bianca, see past his façade.
 When Biancaâs ex-lover threatens everything sheâs rebuilt, jeopardizing all sheâs come to love about her new life, sheâs surprised to find support from the most unlikely ally and, finally, draws the strength to fight back like her mother taught her.
 Sharp-witted and fiercely fun, The God of Good Looks alternates between Biancaâs diary entries and Obadiahâs first-person narrative to portray modern Trinidadâs rigid class barriers and the fraught impact of beauty commodification in a patriarchal society. Boisterous, moving, and full of meaty, universally relatable questions, Mc Ivorâs sparkling debut is an open-hearted, awakening tale about prejudice and pride, the masks we wear, and what we can become if we dare to take them off.
THE ENCHANTED HACIENDA
by J.C. Cervantes
From the New York Times bestselling author, J.C. Cervantes, THE ENCHANTED HACIENDA introduces us to the magical Estrada family
âThe warmth and humor of The Enchanted Hacienda immediately cast a spell over me.â
âKaty Hays, New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters
When Harlow Estrada is abruptly fired from her dream job and her boyfriend proves to be a jerk, her world turns upside down. She flees New York City to the one place she can always call homeâthe enchanted Hacienda Estrada.
The Estrada family farm in Mexico houses an abundance of charmed flowers cultivated by Harlowâs mother, sisters, aunt, and cousins. By harnessing the magic in these flowers, they can heal hearts, erase memories, interpret dreamsâbut not Harlow. So when her mother and aunt give her a special task involving the familyâs magic, she panics. How can she rise to the occasion when she is magicless? But maybe itâs not magic sheâs missing, but belief in herself. When she finally embraces her unique gifts and opens her heart to a handsome stranger, she discovers sheâs far more powerful than she imagined.
With unforeseen twists, romance, and a heavy sprinkle of magic, The Enchanted Hacienda is a captivating coming-of-age debut exploring identity, unconditional family love, and uncovering the magic within us all.
THE TRUE LOVE EXPERIMENT
by Christina Lauren
Sparks fly when a romance novelist and a documentary filmmaker join forces to craft the perfect Hollywood love story and take both of their careers to the next levelâbut only if they can keep the chemistry between them from taking the whole thing off scriptâfrom the New York Times bestselling authors of The Soulmate Equation and The Unhoneymooners.
Felicity âFizzyâ Chen is lost. Sure, sheâs got an incredible career as a beloved romance novelist with a slew of bestsellers under her belt, but when sheâs asked to give a commencement address, it hits her: she hasnât been practicing what sheâs preached.
Fizzy hasnât ever really been in love. Lust? Definitely. But that swoon-worthy, canât-stop-thinking-about-him, all-encompassing feeling? Nope. Nothing. What happens when the optimism sheâs spent her career encouraging in readers starts to feel like a lie?
Connor Prince, documentary filmmaker and single father, loves his work in large part because it allows him to live near his daughter. But when his profit-minded boss orders him to create a reality TV show, putting his job on the line, Connor is out of his element. Desperate to find his romantic lead, a chance run-in with an exasperated Fizzy offers Connor the perfect solution. What if he could show the queen of romance herself falling head-over-heels for all the world to see? Fizzy gives him a hard passâunless he agrees to her list of demands. When he says yes, and production on The True Love Experiment begins, Connor wonders if that perfect match will ever be in the cue cards for him, too.
The True Love Experiment is the book fans have been waiting for ever since Fizzyâs debut in the New York Times bestselling The Soulmate Equation. But when the lights come on and all eyes are on her, it turns out the happily ever after Fizzy had all but given up on might lie just behind the camera.
DYKETTE
by Jenny Fran Davis
Named one of the Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2023 by Vogue
Named a Best Book of 2023 (So Far) by Cosmopolitan
Named a Best Book of Spring 2023 by Esquire
Named a Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Book of 2023 by Buzzfeed, Electric Lit, and Them
Named a Most Anticipated Book of Spring & Summer by Bustle
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Our Culture, Yahoo!, The Millions, LitHub and SPY.com
Named a Most Anticipated Debut of 2023 by Debutiful and Goodreads
An addictive, absurd, and darkly hilarious debut novel about a young woman who embarks on a ten-day getaway with her partner and two other queer couples
Sasha and Jesse are professionally creative, erotically adventurous, and passionately dysfunctional twentysomethings making a life together in Brooklyn. When a pair of older, richer lesbiansâprominent news host Jules Todd and her psychotherapist partner, Mirandaâinvites Sasha and Jesse to their country home for the holidays, theyâre quick to accept. Even if the trip includes a third coupleâJesseâs best friend, Lou, and their cool-girl flame, Darcyâwhose It-queer clout Sasha ridicules yet desperately wants.
As the late December afternoons blur together in a haze of debaucherous homecooked feasts and sweaty sauna confessions, so too do the guestsâ secret and shifting motivations. When Jesse and Darcy collaborate an ill-fated livestream performance, a complex web of infatuation and jealousy emerges, sending Sasha down a spiral of destructive rage that threatens each coupleâs future.
Unfolding over ten heady days, Dykette is an unforgettable love story at the crossroads of queer nonconformity and seductive normativity. With propulsive plotting and sexy, wickedly entertaining prose, Jenny Fran Davis captures the vagaries of desire and the many devastating places in which we seek recognition.
THE TIME HAS COME
by Will Leitch
The author of the Edgar nominated and ALEX Award-winning How Lucky (âan absorbing thriller with heartââPeople), blends suspense, humor, and compassion in a new novel about seven strangers and one very intense evening at a small-town Georgia pharmacy.
Lindberghâs Pharmacy is an Athens, Georgia, institutionâthe type of beloved mom and pop shop that once dotted every American town but has mostly disappeared. But Lindberghâs has recently become the object of attention of a local fourth grade teacher Tina Lamm (âMs. Lamm to my studentsâ). Tina is certain something very, very bad is happening behind its famous black door and she intends to do something about it.
Her suspicionsâand the drastic actions she plansâare the unlikely glue that will connect her to a group of six employees and customers inside the pharmacy one hot Georgia evening. They include Theo, the Lindberghâs scion with a secret of his own; Daphne, a nurse and Army veteran struggling with her faith; Jason, a local contractor uncertain how to deal with his gifted teenage son; Karson, a young lawyer and activist wrestling with a job offer that makes him uncomfortable; David, an Athens music scene lifer whose sobriety has been sorely tested by isolation; and Dorothy, a widow just beginning to regain her bearings.
The fates of these individualsâand their fateful encounter with Tina Lammâbecome intertwined in a story that is by turns funny, touching, and tense. As he did in How Lucky, Will Leitch illuminates how we live today through a story of human beings struggling to do their best.
GLASSWORKS
by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
A gorgeously written and irresistibly intimate queer novel that follows one family across four generations to explore legacy and identity in all its forms.
A Goodreads Buzziest Debut Novel of 2023
In 1910, Agnes Carter makes the wrong choice in marriage. After years as an independent woman of fortune, influential with the board of a prominent university because of her financial donations, she is now subject to the whims of an abusive, spendthrift husband. But when Bohemian naturalist and glassblower Ignace Novak reignites Agnes’s passion for science, Agnes begins to imagine a different life, and she sets her mind to getting it.
Agnes’s desperate actions breed secrecy, and the resulting silence echoes into the future. Her son, Edward, wants to be a man of faith but struggles with the complexities of the mortal world while apprenticing at a
stained-glass studio.
In 1986, Edward’s child, Novak-just Novak-is an acrobatic window washer cleaning Manhattan high-rises, who gets caught up in the plight of Cecily, a small town girl remade as a gender-bending Broadway ingĂŠnue.
And in 2015, Cecily’s daughter Flip-a burned-out stoner trapped in a bureaucratic job firing cremains into keepsake glass ornaments-resolves to break the cycle of inherited secrets, reaching back through the generations in search of a family legacy that feels true.
For readers of Mary Beth Keane, Min Jin Lee, and Rebecca Makkai, Glassworks is “an era-spanning, family and chosen-family following, marvel of a debut.” (CJ Hauser, author of FAMILY OF ORIGIN)
THE OLD LION
by Jeff Shaara
In one of his most accomplished, compelling novels yet, acclaimed New York Times bestseller Jeff Shaara accomplishes what only the finest historical fiction can do – he brings to life one of the most consequential figures in U.S. history – Theodore Roosevelt – peeling back the many-layered history of the man, and the country he personified.
From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, from the waning days of the rugged frontier of a young country to the emergence of a modern, industrial nation exerting its power on the world stage, Theodore Roosevelt embodied both the myth and reality of the country he loved and led.
From his upbringing in the rarefied air of New York society of the late 19th century to his time in rough-and-tumble world of the Badlands in the Dakotas, from his rise from political obscurity to Assistant Secretary of the Navy, from national hero as the leader of the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War to his accidental rise to the Presidency itself, Roosevelt embodied the complex, often contradictory, image of America itself.
In gripping prose, Shaara tells the story of the man who both defined and created the modern United States.
Still Hot in Literary Fiction
HAPPY PLACE
by Emily Henry
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
âThe beach-read master hooks us again.”âPeople
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by BuzzFeed â Paste Magazine â Elle â Southern Living â SheReads â Culturess â Medium â Her Campus â Readers Digest â Zibby Mag and more!
A couple who broke up months ago pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.
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Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in collegeâthey go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, nowâfor reasons theyâre still not discussingâthey donât.
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They broke up five months ago. And still havenât told their best friends.
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Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend groupâs yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blissful week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
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Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week theyâll all have together in this place. They canât stand to break their friendsâ hearts, and so theyâll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. Itâs a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one weekâŚin front of those who know you best?
IN THE LIVES OF PUPPETS
by T.J. Klune
AÂ NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY TIMESÂ AND INDIE BESTSELLER!
Most Anticipated from BookPage ⢠Goodreads ⢠The Nerd Daily ⢠Paste Magazine ⢠LitReactor ⢠OverDrive ⢠LGBTQ Reads ⢠Tor.com â˘Â LibraryReads ⢠more
New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune invites you deep into the heart of a peculiar forest and on the extraordinary journey of a family assembled from spare parts.
âAn enchanting tale of Pinocchio in the end times.â âP. DjèlĂ Clark
In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robotsâfatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. Theyâre a family, hidden and safe.
The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled âHAP,â he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gioâa past spent hunting humans.
When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gioâs former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vicâs assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.
Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?
Inspired by Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, and like Swiss Family Robinson meets Wall-E, In the Lives of Puppets is a masterful stand-alone fantasy adventure from the beloved author who brought you The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door.
HANG THE MOON
by Jeanette Walls
The instant New York Times bestseller! Named a LibraryReads Pick for March 2023 and a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Oprah Daily, Elle, and LitHub!
From Jeannette Walls, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle, comes a riveting new novel about an indomitable young woman in Virginia during Prohibition.
Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody whoâd amount to nothing. Sallie had other plans.
Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid. Born at the turn of the 20th century into a life of comfort and privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke has remarried and had a son, Eddie. While Sallie is her fatherâs daughter, sharp-witted and resourceful, Eddie is his motherâs son, timid and cerebral. When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out.
Nine years later, she returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. Thatâs a lot more complicated than Sallie expected, and she enters a world of conflict and lawlessness. Sallie confronts the secrets and scandals that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger.
You will fall in love with Sallie Kincaid, a feisty and fearless, terrified and damaged young woman who refuses to be corralled.
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