Book reviews & excerpts from exceptional books set mainly in the present day (2000-current).
Contemporary
Recommended books found: 1,768
Page 11 of 91
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Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels
by Ioan Grillo
Hardcover: Feb 2021
Paperback: Apr 2023
The gun control debate is revived with every mass shooting. But far more people die from gun deaths on the street corners of inner city America and across the border as Mexico's powerful cartels battle to control the drug trade.
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It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs
by Mary Louise Kelly
Hardcover: Apr 2023
Paperback: Apr 2025
Operating Instructions meets Glennon Doyle in this new book by famed NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly that is destined to become a classic—about the year before her son goes to college—and the joys, losses and surprises that happen along ...
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Nightcrawling: A novel
by Leila Mottley
Hardcover: Jun 2022
Paperback: Apr 2023
A dazzling novel about a young black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system - the debut of a blazingly original voice that "bursts at the seams of every page and swallows you whole" (Tommy ...
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Let's Not Do That Again: A Novel
by Grant Ginder
Hardcover: Apr 2022
Paperback: Apr 2023
From Grant Ginder, the author of The People We Hate at the Wedding, comes Let's Not Do That Again a poignant, funny, and slyly beguiling novel which proves that, like democracy, family is a messy and fragile thing - perfect for fans of Veep's biting ...
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A Death in Denmark: The First Gabriel Præst Novel
by Amulya Malladi
Paperback: Mar 2023
Meet Gabriel Præst, an ex-Copenhagen cop (who dresses with panache), jazz aficionado, and relentless pursuer of truth as he explores Denmark's Nazi-collaborator past and anti-Muslim present in a page-turning Nordic murder mystery with a ...
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Saints of the Household
by Ari Tison
Hardcover: Mar 2023
Paperback: Nov 2025
Saints of the Household is a haunting contemporary YA about an act of violence in a small-town - beautifully told by a debut Indigenous Costa Rican-American writer - that will take your breath away.
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Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation
by Erika Krouse
Hardcover: Mar 2022
Paperback: Mar 2023
Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private investigator who helped crack it open.
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The Lies I Tell: A Novel
by Julie Clark
Hardcover: Jun 2022
Paperback: Mar 2023
The Lies I Tell is a twisted domestic thriller that dives deep into the psyches and motivations of two women and their unwavering quest to seek justice for the past and rewrite the future.
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The Candy House: A Visit from the Goon Squad #2
by Jennifer Egan
Hardcover: Apr 2022
Paperback: Mar 2023
From one of the most celebrated writers of our time, a literary figure with cult status, a "sibling novel" to her Pulitzer Prize- and NBCC Award-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad - an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for ...
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Unlikely Animals: A Novel
by Annie Hartnett
Hardcover: Apr 2022
Paperback: Feb 2023
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.
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The Island of Missing Trees: A Novel
by Elif Shafak
Hardcover: Nov 2021
Paperback: Feb 2023
A rich, magical new novel on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.
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In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss
by Amy Bloom
Hardcover: Mar 2022
Paperback: Feb 2023
Winner of the 2022 BookBrowse Nonfiction Award
This powerful memoir by New York Times bestselling author Amy Bloom is an illuminating story of two people whose love and shared life experiences led them to find a courageous way to part - and of a woman...
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Life Between the Tides
by Adam Nicolson
Hardcover: Feb 2022
Paperback: Feb 2023
Adam Nicolson explores the marine life inhabiting seashore rockpools with a scientist's curiosity and a poet's wonder in this beautifully illustrated book.
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My Flawless Life
by Yvonne Woon
Hardcover: Feb 2023
Yvonne Woon, author of If You, Then Me, has crafted a slow-burn thriller about fixing—our friends, ourselves, and our complicated pasts. For fans of Allegedly and We Were Liars, My Flawless Life features a compelling narrator who grapples with ...
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Groundskeeping: A novel
by Lee Cole
Hardcover: Mar 2022
Paperback: Feb 2023
An indelible love story about two very different people navigating the entanglements of class and identity and coming of age in an America coming apart at the seams - this is "an extraordinary debut about the ties that bind families together and tear...
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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson
Hardcover: Aug 2020
Paperback: Feb 2023
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
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The Wonders
by Elena Medel
Hardcover: Mar 2022
Paperback: Feb 2023
From award-winning Spanish poet Elena Medel comes a mesmerizing new novel of class, sex, and desire.
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Mercy Street: A Novel
by Jennifer Haigh
Hardcover: Feb 2022
Paperback: Feb 2023
The highly praised, "extraordinary" (New York Times Book Review) novel about the disparate lives that intersect at a women's clinic in Boston, by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh
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Vladimir: A Novel
by Julia May Jonas
Hardcover: Feb 2022
Paperback: Jan 2023
A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students - a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of ...
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Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them
by Dan Saladino
Hardcover: Feb 2022
Paperback: Jan 2023
Dan Saladino's Eating to Extinction is the prominent broadcaster's pathbreaking tour of the world's vanishing foods and his argument for why they matter now more than ever.
The reviewer of each book decides which categories it belongs in - but we're only human, mistakes happen. If you see a book that you think is in the wrong place, tell us!
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