The Best We Could Hope For: A Novel
by
Nicola Kraus
Little A, 05/01/2025
When Bunny Linden abandons her three children with her older sister, Jayne, in 1972, she knows Jayne will be the perfect mother. The mother Bunny, a ...
more
Literary Fiction
A Thousand Natural Shocks
by
Omar Hussain
Blackstone Publishing, 05/06/2025
Dash, a reporter in Monterey, California, is desperate to outrun his past. During the day, he investigates the reemergence of a long-dormant serial ...
more
Thrillers
Debut Author
All the Mothers: A Novel
by
Domenica Ruta
Random House, 05/06/2025
Sandy thought she was making her greatest mistake yet when she got unexpectedly pregnant in her mid-thirties by a dating-app flop. Now, her baby Rosie...
more
Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures
by
Lizzie Wade
Harper, 05/06/2025
A drought lasts for decades, a disease rips through a city, a civilization collapses. When we finally uncover the ruins, we ask: what happened? The ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Are You Happy?: Stories
by
Lori Ostlund
Astra House, 05/06/2025
An aspiring veterinarian survives a plane crash and starts life over in California. A woman mourns the loss of her childhood friend's innocence and ...
more
Austen at Sea: A Novel
by
Natalie Jenner
St. Martin's Press, 05/06/2025
In Boston, 1865, Charlotte and Henrietta Stevenson, daughters of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice, have accomplished as much as women are allowed...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Backroom Deals in Our Backyards: How Government Secrecy Harms Our Communities and the Local Heroes Fighting Back
by
Miranda S. Spivack
The New Press, 05/06/2025
Most Americans are likely to encounter the effects of government malfeasance or neglect close to home—from their governors, mayors, town ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Daughters: A Novel
by
Kirsty Capes
The Overlook Press, 05/06/2025
When Mattie and Nora's mother, the brilliant, troubled, and world-renowned Norwegian painter Ingrid Olssen, was on her deathbed, there was one promise...
more
Literary Fiction
Dear Teacher: A Novel
by
Maddalena Vaglio Tanet
HarperVia, 05/06/2025
One morning, a teacher disappears into the woods. As whispers fill her classroom and relatives scour the streets, she melts into a wild landscape, a ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Disco Witches of Fire Island: A Novel
by
Blair Fell
Alcove Press, 05/06/2025
It's 1989, and Joe Agabian and his best friend Ronnie set out to spend their first summer working in the hedonistic gay paradise of Fire Island Pines....
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Ellmann's Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker
by
Zachary Leader
Belknap Press, 05/06/2025
Richard Ellmann's
James Joyce, published in 1959, was hailed by Anthony Burgess as "the greatest literary biography of the twentieth century." Frank ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange
by
Katie Goh
Tin House Books, 05/06/2025
What begins as a curiosity into the origins of the orange soon becomes a far-reaching odyssey of citrus for Katie Goh. Katie follows the complicated ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Forged: A Novel
by
Danielle Teller
Pegasus Books, 05/06/2025
In the Gilded Age, a time of abject poverty and obscene wealth, a desperate and ambitious young woman strikes out for a new life in the rising ...
more
Historical Fiction
Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries
by
Abigail Leonard
Algonquin Books, 05/06/2025
Utterly moving and addictively readable from page one, the book begins with the pregnancies and labor experiences of Anna in Finland, Tsukasa in Japan...
more
Science, Health and the Environment
Girls with Long Shadows: A Novel
by
Tennessee Hill
Harper, 05/06/2025
Identical triplets Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C Binderup were welcomed into the world as their mother was ushered out of it, leaving them nameless and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
His Face Is the Sun: Throne of Khetara #1
by
Michelle Jabès Corpora
Sourcebooks Fire, 05/06/2025
Desire, War, Magic, Monsters...a forgotten oracle will unite them against an ancient enemy. But who will be on the throne when the red dust of Khetara...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Home of the American Circus: A Novel
by
Allison Larkin
Gallery Books, 05/06/2025
After an emergency leaves her short on rent, thirty-year-old Freya Arnalds bails on her lackluster life as bartender in Maine and returns to her ...
more
Literary Fiction
Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk
by
Faiz Siddiqui
St. Martin's Press, 05/06/2025
What happened to Elon Musk? In six years, he turned Tesla into the world's most valuable automaker and cast himself as a savior of humanity, an ...
more
I Can't Even Think Straight
by
Dean Atta
Quill Tree Books, 05/06/2025
Kai knows who he is to others: The good grandson, the reliable best friend, the romantic backup. But he doesn't quite know who he is to himself.
...
more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Lessons from My Teachers: From Preschool to the Present
by
Sarah Ruhl
Simon & Schuster, 05/06/2025
Based on her popular class at Yale, this masterful, intimate essay collection from one of our greatest living playwrights and teachers, Sarah Ruhl, is...
more
Michael Without Apology: A Novel
by
Catherine Ryan Hyde
Lake Union Publishing, 05/06/2025
Michael Woodbine was seven years old when a near-fatal fireworks accident scarred him and led to his placement in foster care. Now a college freshman,...
more
Literary Fiction
Misophonia: A Novel
by
Dana Vowinckel
HarperVia, 05/06/2025
It's the hottest of summers in Chicago, and fifteen-year-old Margarita is spending her vacation as usual, under the not-so-watchful eyes of her aging ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
My Friends: A Novel
by
Fredrik Backman
Atria Books, 05/06/2025
Most people don't even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the...
more
Literary Fiction
My Name Is Emilia del Valle: A Novel
by
Isabel Allende
Ballantine Books, 05/06/2025
In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Ocean: Earth's Last Wilderness
by
Sir David Attenborough
Grand Central Publishing, 05/06/2025
Through personal stories, history and cutting-edge science,
Ocean uncovers the mystery, the wonder and the frailty of the most unexplored habitat on ...
more
Science, Health and the Environment
Old School Indian: A Novel
by
Aaron John Curtis
Zando, 05/06/2025
Abe Jacobs is Kanien'kehá:ka from Ahkwesáhsne―or, as white people say, a Mohawk Indian from the Saint Regis Tribe. At eighteen, Abe ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Other Worlds: Stories
by
André Alexis
FSG Originals, 05/06/2025
A Trinidadian obeah man finds himself reborn, a hundred years after his death, in the body of a Canadian child; a writer takes up a seasonal job as a ...
more
Short Stories
Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II
by
Paul Thomas Chamberlin
Basic Books, 05/06/2025
In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age
by
Amanda Hess
Doubleday, 05/06/2025
In the summer of 2020, a routine ultrasound detected a mysterious abnormality in Hess's baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Shopgirls: A Novel
by
Jessica Anya Blau
Mariner Books, 05/06/2025
Nineteen-year-old Zippy can hardly believe it: she's the newest and youngest salesgirl at I. Magnin, "San Francisco's Finest Department Store." Every ...
more
Snowglobe 2: The Snowglobe Duology #2
by
Soyoung Park
Delacorte Press, 05/06/2025
Chobahm's perfect life in Snowglobe came crashing down when she discovered the truth about Haeri; the girl she watched faithfully on television was ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger during World War II
by
Becky Aikman
Bloomsbury Publishing, 05/06/2025
They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses-all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Adventures of Mary Darling
by
Pat Murphy
Tachyon Publications, 05/06/2025
Mary Darling is a pretty wife whose boring husband is befuddled by her independent ways. But one fateful night, Mary becomes the distraught mother ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Director: A Novel
by
Daniel Kehlmann
Summit Books, 05/06/2025
An artist's life, a pact with the devil, and the dangerous illusions of the silver screen.
G.W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest directors of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The End Is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother
by
Jill Bialosky
Washington Square Press, 05/06/2025
When Iris Yvonne Bialosky died in an assisted care facility on March 29, 2020, it unleashed a torrent of emotions in her daughter, Jill Bialosky. ...
more
Biography/Memoir
The Invisible Wild
by
Nikki Van De Car
Running Press Publishers, 05/06/2025
According to legend, when the kanaka 'ōiwi sailed over two thousand miles across untraveled seas to the most remote island chain in the world, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Manor of Dreams
by
Christina Li
Avid Reader Press, 05/06/2025
Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Mother Code: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Myths That Shape Us
by
Ruthie Ackerman
Random House, 05/06/2025
Ruthie Ackerman had long believed that the decision to not have children was a radical act. She'd grown up being told that she came from a long line ...
more
The Names: A Novel
by
Florence Knapp
Pamela Dorman Books, 05/06/2025
In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History
by
Laurence Rees
Public Affairs, 05/06/2025
How could the SS have committed the crimes they did? How were the killers who shot Jews at close quarters able to perpetrate this horror? Why ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Night Birds: A Novel
by
Christopher Golden
St. Martin's Press, 05/06/2025
Charlie Book and Ruby Cahill have history. After their love ended in heartbreak years ago, they never expected to see each other again.
Now, as ...
more
The Ones We Loved: A Novel
by
Tarisai Ngangura
Park Row, 05/06/2025
On a bus moving across rural landscapes from town to town, two young people are escaping with nothing to hold except hope. She has committed a ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Original Daughter: A Novel
by
Jemimah Wei
Doubleday, 05/06/2025
Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Retirement Plan
by
Sue Hincenbergs
William Morrow, 05/06/2025
After thirty years of friendship, Pam dreams of her perfect retirement with Nancy, Shalisa, Marlene, and their husbands—until their husbands ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The River Is Waiting: A Novel
by
Wally Lamb
Simon & Schuster, 05/06/2025
Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into ...
more
The Sun Blessed Prince: A Tale of Two Crowns #1
by
Lindsey Byrd
Random House Canada, 05/06/2025
Separated by war, united by fate...
Prince Elician is a Giver. He can heal any wound and bring the dead back to life. He also can't be killed, so ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Wanderer's Curse: A Memoir
by
Jennifer Hope Choi
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/06/2025
When Jennifer Hope Choi first stumbled upon the "curse" known as yeokmasal―an allegedly inheritable affliction causing one to roam farther and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
The Words of Dr. L: & Other Stories
by
Karen E. Bender
Counterpoint Press, 05/06/2025
Grounded in both the contemporary United States and a variety of dystopias, the new stories in Karen E. Bender's third collection examine the evolving...
more
Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir
by
Craig Mod
Random House, 05/06/2025
Photographer and essayist Craig Mod is a veteran of long solo walks. But in 2021, during the pandemic shutdown of Japan's borders, one particular walk...
more
This Is Your Mother: A Memoir
by
Erika J. Simpson
Scribner, 05/06/2025
Growing up, Erika Simpson's mother loomed large, almost biblical in her life. A daughter of sharecroppers, middle child of ten, her origin story ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
This Thing of Ours
by
Frederick Joseph
Candlewick Press, 05/06/2025
In an instant, Ossie Brown's entire future is in jeopardy when a torn ACL ends his promising basketball career. Now that basketball is no longer a ...
more
Twelve Post-War Tales
by
Graham Swift
Knopf, 05/06/2025
Here are the soldiers and doctors and veterans, wives and lovers and children, who have been affected in ways both subtle and profound by the ...
more
Up in Smoke
by
Nick Brooks
Henry Holt and Company, 05/06/2025
Unmask a murderer or take the fall.
After Cooper King is pressured by big brother figure Jason to go on a looting spree during a local march, the ...
more
Wake the Wild Creatures
by
Nova Ren Suma
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 05/06/2025
Three years ago, Talia lived happily in the ruins of the Neves, a once-grand hotel in the wilds of the Catskill Mountains, with her mother Pola and ...
more
Warhol's Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine
by
Laurence Leamer
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/06/2025
"Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil," Andy Warhol confessed, "of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could ...
more
What My Father and I Don't Talk About: Sixteen Writers Break the Silence
by
Michele Filgate
Simon & Schuster, 05/06/2025
What My Mother and I Don't Talk About has become a rare gem in the literary world. Both a viral sensation online and chosen by
Oprah Daily as one of ...
more
32 Days in May
by
Betty Corrello
Avon Books, 05/13/2025
Nadia Fabiola wants to lose herself in Evergreen—the Jersey Shore town where she grew up vacationing with her family—and never look back ...
more
Romance
Anima Rising: A Novel
by
Christopher Moore
William Morrow, 05/13/2025
Vienna, 1911. Gustav Klimt, the most famous painter in the Austrian Empire, the darling of Viennese society, spots a woman's nude body in the Danube ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Awake in the Floating City: A Novel
by
Susanna Kwan
Pantheon Books, 05/13/2025
Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Bear Witness: A Crusade for Justice in a Violent Land
by
Ross Halperin
Liveright/W.W. Norton, 05/13/2025
As young men, Kurt Ver Beek, an American sociologist, and Carlos Hernández, a Honduran schoolteacher, devoted their lives to helping the poor. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI
by
John Cassidy
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/13/2025
At a time when artificial intelligence, climate change, and inequality are raising fundamental questions about the economic system,
Capitalism and Its...more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal
by
Samuel Marquis
Diversion Books, 05/13/2025
Captain William Kidd stands as one of the most notorious "pirate" outlaws ever, but his notorious legend is tainted by a bed of lies. Captain Kidd has...
more
Eliza, from Scratch
by
Sophia Lee
Quill & Quire, 05/13/2025
Eliza Park's senior year will be perfect: She's going to be salutatorian, give a tear-jerking graduation speech in front of her parents, and enjoy her...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Family & Other Calamities: A Novel
by
Leslie Gray Streeter
Lake Union Publishing, 05/13/2025
Entertainment journalist Dawn Roberts has a lot to work through: a widow's grief, betrayals of family and friends, and scandals that almost tanked her...
more
Literary Fiction
Fitting Indian
by
Jyoti Chand
HarperAlley, 05/13/2025
All Nitasha's parents want is for her to be the perfect Indian daughter—something she is decidedly not. Everything she does seems to disappoint ...
more
Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America's Civil Rights Revolution
by
Peniel E. Joseph
Basic Books, 05/13/2025
In
Freedom Season, acclaimed historian Peniel E. Joseph offers a stirring narrative history of 1963, marking it as the defining year of the Black ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea
by
Marcus Rediker
Viking, 05/13/2025
As many as 100,000 enslaved people fled successfully from the horrors of bondage in the antebellum South, finding safe harbor along a network of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Happiness Forever: A Novel
by
Adelaide Faith
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/13/2025
"It's maybe six hundred times a day," Sylvie says, and then she stops and the therapist tilts her head. "That I think about you," Sylvie goes on, the ...more
Home Has No Borders
by
Samira Ahmed
HarperCollins Publishers, 05/13/2025
From first crushes to first heartbreaks, complicated family dynamics to community relationships, this powerful collection of stories explores race, ...
more
Hunger Like a Thirst: From Food Stamps to Fine Dining, a Restaurant Critic Finds Her Place at the Table
by
Besha Rodell
Celadon, 05/13/2025
When Besha Rodell moved from Australia to the United States with her mother at fourteen, she was a foreigner in a new land, missing her friends, her ...
more
Insectopolis: A Natural History
by
Peter Kuper
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/13/2025
This visually immersive work of graphic nonfiction dives into a world where ants, cicadas, bees, and butterflies visit a library exhibition that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Intraterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth
by
Karen G. Lloyd
Princeton University Press, 05/13/2025
Life thrives in the deepest, darkest recesses of Earth's crust—from methane seeps in the ocean floor to the highest reaches of Arctic permafrost...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil: A Novel
by
Oliver Darkshire
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/13/2025
This debut novel by beloved rare bookseller and memoirist Oliver Darkshire reimagines the
Decameron heroine Isabella (with her creepy pot of basil) in...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Make Me Famous: A Novel
by
Maud Ventura
HarperVia, 05/13/2025
Ever since she was a child, Cléo, the French-American daughter of two academics, has had only one obsession: becoming a famous singer. Over the ...
more
Marble Hall Murders: A Novel
by
Anthony Horowitz
Harper, 05/13/2025
Editor Susan Ryeland has left her Greek island, her hotel, and her Greek boyfriend Andreas in search of a new life back in England.
Freelancing ...
more
Mark Twain
by
Ron Chernow
Penguin Press, 05/13/2025
Ron Chernow, the highly lauded biographer of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and Ulysses S. Grant, brings his considerable powers to bear on ...
more
Metallic Realms: A Novel
by
Lincoln Michel
Atria Books, 05/13/2025
Perennially single, socially awkward, and drowning in debt, Michael Lincoln's life has turned out nothing like the intergalactic pulp heroes of his ...
more
My Father's House: An Ode to America's Longest-Serving Black Congressman
by
John Conyers III
Amistad, 05/13/2025
A respectful, thoughtful, yet clear-eyed reframing of a national hero's personal and political odyssey,
My Father's House is John Conyers III's love ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Of Earthly Delights
by
Goldy Moldavsky
Henry Holt and Company, 05/13/2025
Aspiring artist Rose Pauly is not happy moving from her home in New York City right before her senior year of high school. But on her first miserable ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Romantic Thrillers
One of the Boys
by
Victoria Zeller
Levine Querido, 05/13/2025
As senior year begins, Grace is struggling to find her place in early transition, new social circles, and a life without football. But when her skills...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Parallel Lines: A Novel
by
Edward St. Aubyn
Knopf, 05/13/2025
It's the summer, and Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him grappling with his fragile grip on reality and his persistent ...
more
Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece
by
James Romm
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/13/2025
Plato is one of history's most influential thinkers, the "sublime philosopher" whose writings remain foundational to Western culture. He is known for ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse into Mercenary Chaos
by
Candace Rondeaux
Public Affairs, 05/13/2025
In June 2023, the Wagner Group assembled an armed convoy that included tanks and rocket launchers and set out on what seemed like a journey to take ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Queen of All Mayhem: The Blood-Soaked Life and Mysterious Death of Belle Starr, the Most Dangerous Woman in the West
by
Dane Huckelbridge
William Morrow, 05/13/2025
On February 3, 1889, just two days shy of her forty-first birthday, Myra Maybelle Shirley—better known at that point by her outlaw sobriquet "...
more
Run for the Hills: A Novel
by
Kevin Wilson
Ecco, 05/13/2025
Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it's just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While she sometimes ...
more
Shampoo Unicorn
by
Sawyer Lovett
Hyperion, 05/13/2025
In the small town of Canon, West Virginia, most people care about three things: God, country, and football.
Brian is more into
Drag Race, Dolly ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Sleep: A Novel
by
Honor Jones
Riverhead Books, 05/13/2025
Every parent exists inside of two families simultaneously – the one she was born into, and the one she has made.
Ten-year-old Margaret hides ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color
by
Caro De Robertis
Algonquin Books, 05/13/2025
So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
State Champ
by
Hilary Plum
Bloomsbury Publishing, 05/13/2025
A high-school state champion runner turned college dropout, Angela is working as a receptionist at an abortion clinic when a "heartbeat law" ...
more
Take to the Trees: A Story of Hope, Science, and Self-Discovery in America's Imperiled Forests
by
Marguerite Holloway
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/13/2025
Journalist Marguerite Holloway arrives at the Women's Tree Climbing Workshop as a climbing novice, but with a passion for trees and a deep concern ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Afterlife of Malcolm X: An Outcast Turned Icon's Enduring Impact on America
by
Mark Whitaker
Simon & Schuster, 05/13/2025
Malcolm X has become as much of an American icon as Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, or Martin Luther King. But when he was murdered in 1965, he was ...
more
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want
by
Emily M. Bender
Harper, 05/13/2025
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland
by
Michelle Young
HarperOne, 05/13/2025
On August 25, 1944, Rose Valland, a woman of quiet daring, found herself in a desperate position. From the windows of her beloved Jeu de Paume museum,...
more
The Boy from the Sea: A Novel
by
Garrett Carr
Knopf, 05/13/2025
In Donegal, Ireland, 1973, a baby boy is found on the beach of a close-knit fishing village. After the baby has been carried through the crowd of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Dark Maestro: A Novel
by
Brendan Slocumb
Doubleday, 05/13/2025
Curtis Wilson is a cello prodigy, growing up in the Southeast D.C. projects with a drug dealer for a father. But through determination and talent, and...
more
The Devil Three Times: A Novel
by
Rickey Fayne
Little Brown & Company, 05/13/2025
Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Duke Steals Hearts & Other Body Parts
by
Elias Cold
Page Street YA, 05/13/2025
Wielding a magic that allows him to pop off limbs, con artist Phyllis steals body parts and his partner Lucent ransoms them. Everyone who knows about ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Education of Kia Greer
by
Alanna Bennett
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 05/13/2025
Growing up in the public eye, Kia would gladly give up her privileged life as the daughter of a reality star for the freedom to find her own way—...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin
by
Daniel Brook
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/13/2025
More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld first argued that gender and sexuality were fluid. Dubbed "the Einstein of Sex," Hirschfeld grew famous...
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The Emperor of Gladness: A Novel
by
Ocean Vuong
Penguin Press, 05/13/2025
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting ...
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The Incandescent
by
Emily Tesh
Tor Books, 05/13/2025
"
Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."
Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians...
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Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story
by
Brandy Schillace
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/13/2025
Set in interwar Germany,
The Intermediaries tells the forgotten story of the Institute for Sexual Science, the world's first center for homosexual and...
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History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties
by
Dennis McNally
Da Capo, 05/13/2025
Few cities represent the countercultural movement of the 1960s more than San Francisco. By that decade, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood was home to ...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Last Secret Agent: My Life as a Spy Behind Nazi Lines
by
Pippa Latour
St. Martin's Press, 05/13/2025
From a unique and singular voice comes the incredible true story of the last surviving undercover British female operative in WW2. Pippa Latour ...
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The Red House: A Novel
by
Mary Morris
Doubleday, 05/13/2025
Thirty years ago, Laura's mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Viola was ...
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The Remembered Soldier
by
Anjet Daanje
New Vessel Press, 05/13/2025
After serving as a soldier in the Great War, Noon Merckem has lost his memory and lives in a psychiatric asylum. Countless women, responding to a ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Romance Rivalry
by
Susan Lee
HarperCollins Publishers, 05/13/2025
Irene Park loves romance novels—so much so she's made a career of them as an online book reviewer with a massive following. But Irene's real ...
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Trans History: A Graphic Novel: From Ancient Times to the Present Day
by
Alex L. Combs
Candlewick Press, 05/13/2025
What does "trans" mean, and what does it mean to be trans? Diversity in human sex and gender is not a modern phenomenon, as readers will discover ...
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You and Me on Repeat
by
Mary Shyne
Henry Holt and Company, 05/13/2025
Chris O'Brien has a genius plan: If he can share the perfect first kiss with his crush, Andy, then of course he'll break free from the time loop that ...
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You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea
by
Thomas Fallace
University Of Chicago Press, 05/14/2025
The widely embraced notion that we all process information in one of three distinct modes—visual, auditory, or kinesthetic—has informed ...
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History, Current Affairs and Religion
By the Second Spring: Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine
by
Danielle Leavitt
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/20/2025
Even as scores of Americans rally to the Ukrainian cause and adopt Volodymyr Zelensky as a hero, the lives of Ukrainians remain opaque and mostly ...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Don't Let Me Go
by
Kevin Christopher Snipes
HarperCollins Publishers, 05/20/2025
Out and proud, Riley Iverson knows there's nothing more cringe than crushing on a straight boy. But from the moment that the handsome, sporty, and ...
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Romance
Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us
by
Anna Malaika Tubbs
Flatiron Books, 05/20/2025
Patriarchy has oppressed women and denied their contributions worldwide, but the United States of America has its own unique gendered hierarchy. Dr. ...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Everyone Sux But You
by
K. Wroten
Henry Holt and Company, 05/20/2025
High school senior Carson Flynn doesn't give a damn―about you, about school, or about her future. The only thing she cares about is jumping into...
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First Rain in Paradise
by
Gwyneth Lewis
Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 05/20/2025
These accounts of living in and emerging from the dark wrestle with the angel of language. Suffering does not preclude humour and may, in fact, ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Gingko Season: A Novel
by
Naomi Xu Elegant
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/20/2025
After suffering her first big heartbreak two years earlier, Penelope Lin has built a quiet life with no romantic entanglements. She spends her days ...
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Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Hardly Creatures: Poems
by
Rob Macaisa Colgate
Tin House Books, 05/20/2025
Brilliant and innovative, Rob Macaisa Colgate's debut poetry collection,
Hardly Creatures, takes the form―visually and metaphorically―of ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Debut Author
In Case You Read This
by
Edward Underhill
Quill & Quire, 05/20/2025
Arden isn't excited about moving. Los Angeles was an easy place to fit in and find a supportive queer community. But Winifred, Michigan? That sounds ...
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Is a River Alive?
by
Robert Macfarlane
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/20/2025
Hailed as "a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler" (Holly Morris,
New York Times), Robert Macfarlane ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Our Last Wild Days: A Novel
by
Anna Bailey
Atria Books, 05/20/2025
The Labasques aren't like other families.
Living in a shack out in the swamps, they made do by hunting down alligators and other animals. To the ...
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Thrillers
Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA
by
John Lisle
St. Martin's Press, 05/20/2025
Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA's most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous―even deadly&#...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Run Like a Girl
by
Amaka Egbe
HarperCollins Publishers, 05/20/2025
To make matters worse, Dera learns that her new school doesn't have a girls' track team, shattering her dreams of getting a track scholarship and, one...
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Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Salvación
by
Sandra Proudman
Wednesday Books, 05/20/2025
Lola de La Peña yearns to be free from the societal expectations of a young Mexican lady of her station. She spends her days pretending to be ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Shamanism: The Timeless Religion
by
Manvir Singh
Knopf, 05/20/2025
What are the origins of shamanism, and what is its future? Do shamans believe in their powers? What exactly is trance? What can we learn from ...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Sike: A Novel
by
Fred Lunzer
Celadon, 05/20/2025
Adrian earns his living writing lyrics for rappers he never meets, and finds success with a hit song about his own fruitless search for love. After ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Sing to Me: A Novel
by
Jesse Browner
Little Brown & Company, 05/20/2025
His family farm and the surrounding community now emptied by war, young Hani embarks on an epic quest – assisted by a brooding yet brilliant ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Sins of Survivors: A Carter Brothers Novel
by
Blair Underwood, Joe McClean
Amistad, 05/20/2025
In 1908 Alabama, precocious young Benjamin Carter brings deadly consequences down upon his father's head when he dares to use a white drinking ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Songs of Summer
by
Jane L. Rosen
Berkley Books, 05/20/2025
Maggie Mae Wheeler is content with her life. At 30, she has grand plans for her vintage record shop in the charming Midwestern town where she grew up,...
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Literary Fiction
Spent: A Comic Novel
by
Alison Bechdel
Mariner Books, 05/20/2025
In Alison Bechdel's hilariously skewering and gloriously cast new comic novel confection, a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, running a pygmy goat ...
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The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse
by
S. L. Price
Atlantic Monthly Press, 05/20/2025
Nearly a millennium ago, Native Americans created lacrosse as a means of training warriors and settling disputes. Co-opted by whites in the late 1800s...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Book of Records: A Novel
by
Madeleine Thien
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/20/2025
Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-...
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Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Doorman: A Novel
by
Chris Pavone
MCD, 05/20/2025
Chicky Diaz is everyone's favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York...
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The Fate of Others: Stories
by
Richard Bausch
Knopf, 05/20/2025
In ten piercing new stories, Richard Bausch fleshes out the rich inner worlds of his characters and plumbs the nuances of infidelity, loss, and ...
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Historical Fiction
The Gone Book
by
Helena Close
Little Island Books, 05/20/2025
Matt's mom left home when he was 10. He writes letters to her but doesn't send them. He keeps them in his Gone Book, which he hides in his room. Five ...
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The True Happiness Company: A Memoir
by
Veena Dinavahi
Random House, 05/20/2025
It is hard for Veena Dinavahi to live while her classmates keep dying. The high-achieving daughter of loving Indian immigrants, Veena lives in a ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Things in Nature Merely Grow
by
Yiyun Li
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/20/2025
"There is no good way to say this," Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book.
"There is no good way to state these facts, which must be ...
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This Could Be Forever
by
Ebony LaDelle
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 05/20/2025
Deja's got a plan. The first in her large family to go to college, she wants to study chemistry and sell natural skin care products, like the ones she...
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We Live Here Now: A Novel
by
Sarah Pinborough
Flatiron Books, 05/20/2025
After an accident that nearly kills her, Emily and her husband, Freddie, move from London to a beautiful Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge. ...
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What Will People Think?: A Novel
by
Sara Hamdan
Henry Holt and Company, 05/20/2025
Mia Almas has a secret. By day, she works at a respectable job as a media fact checker―a position her conservative, Arab grandparents approve of...
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Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Audrey: Timeless Edition Featuring Authentic Illustrations
by
Mary Johnston
Independently published, 05/23/2025
Raised far from society, she loved nature and lived simply, with a strong belief in goodness and truth.
One day, Audrey's peaceful life changed ...
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Historical Fiction
Autocorrect: Stories
by
Etgar Keret
Riverhead Books, 05/27/2025
Etgar Keret is the world's most famous living Israeli writer, known for writing short stories that are lean and accessible in style, and whimsical, ...
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Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950
by
Eli Erlick
Beacon Press, 05/27/2025
Highlighting influential individuals from 1850-1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares 30 remarkable stories from romance to rebellion ...
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Come As You Are: A Novel
by
Dahlia Adler
Wednesday Books, 05/27/2025
Hot on the heels of a broken heart, Everett "Evie" Riley arrives at Camden Academy ready for a new beginning - one far away from her cheating ex-...
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Consider Yourself Kissed: A Novel
by
Jessica Stanley
Riverhead Books, 05/27/2025
When she first meets Adam, Coralie is new to London and feeling adrift. But Adam is clever, witty, and (he insists) a quarter inch taller than the ...
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Costumes for Time Travelers
by
A. R. Capetta
Candlewick Press, 05/27/2025
Anyone who has hiked through time knows the town of Pocket. It's the place travelers first reach after they stumble away from their hometime, passing ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Deep Breath
by
Rita Halász
Catapult, 05/27/2025
When we meet Vera, her body and mind are on a precipice. She's just left her marital home to live with her father after her husband's violent ...
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Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Disappoint Me: A Novel
by
Nicola Dinan
Dial Books, 05/27/2025
I don't know why I feel like I've been caught doing something dirty. Cheating on queerness. Fell down the stairs and woke up a trad wife.
Thirty ...
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Literary Fiction
Dreaming of Home: A Young Latina's Journey to Pride, Power, and Belonging
by
Cristina Jiménez
St. Martin's Press, 05/27/2025
Dreaming of Home is a coming-of-age story both for a young woman finding her true self and for a social movement of immigrant youth trailblazers who ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power
by
Augustine Sedgewick
Scribner, 05/27/2025
Fatherhood is one of the most meaningful aspects of human culture, but we know little about when or where fatherhood first emerged, or even how or why...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Harmattan Season: A Novel
by
Tochi Onyebuchi
Tor Books, 05/27/2025
Veteran and private eye Boubacar doesn't need much―least of all trouble―but trouble always seems to find him. Work has dried up, and he'd ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Lay Your Armor Down: A Novel
by
Michael Farris Smith
Little Brown & Company, 05/27/2025
An old woman, riddled with dementia, walks off into the woods in the middle of the night. A light in the wood draws her to a campfire with two ...
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Literary Fiction
Let Us Play: Winning the Battle for Gender Diverse Athletes
by
Harrison Browne
Beacon Press, 05/27/2025
The recent anti-trans commentary around the 2024 Summer Olympics and the wave of anti-trans sports law around the world often includes disturbing ...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Maybe This Will Save Me: A Memoir of Art, Addiction and Transformation
by
Tommy Dorfman
Hanover Square Press, 05/27/2025
On a hot summer day, twenty-eight-year-old Tommy Dorfman was enjoying a beautiful outing on a boat. But inside she felt unmoored. After a lifetime of ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Never Flinch: A Novel
by
Stephen King
Scribner, 05/27/2025
When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to "kill thirteen innocents and one guilty" in "an act ...
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Not They Who Soar: Katharine Wright Mysteries #2
by
Amanda Flower
Kensington Publishing, 05/27/2025
Summer 1904. Katharine and her best friend from Oberlin College, Margaret Goodwin Meacham, are thrilled to attend the St. Louis Exposition in St. ...
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Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie
by
Dave Hage, Josephine Marcotty
Random House, 05/27/2025
The North American prairie is an ecological marvel, a lush carpet of grass that stretches to the horizon, and home to some of the nation's most iconic...
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Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Solo
by
Gráinne O'Brien
Little Island Books, 05/27/2025
Daisy can feel like a solo act at home. On the outside of her twin brothers' intense relationship, she leans towards her parents, particularly her ...
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Poetry & Novels in Verse
Storybook Ending: A Novel
by
Moira Macdonald
Dutton, 05/27/2025
April, a smart and lonely tech worker, worries work from home has gotten out of hand: She's left an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at...
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Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Busybody Book Club
by
Freya Sampson
Berkley Books, 05/27/2025
Having recently moved from London to a small Cornish seaside village, Nova Davies started a book club at the local community center, but so far it's a...
more
The Gravedigger's Almanac: A Leopold von Herzfeldt Case #1
by
Oliver Pötzsch
HarperVia, 05/27/2025
Vienna, 1893. A gravedigger at the city's famous Central Cemetery, Augustin Rothmayer is an unorthodox yet highly educated oddball who finds solace ...
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Thrillers
The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s
by
Paul Elie
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/27/2025
The 1980s are usually seen as a slick, shrill decade. The Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers urged "Death to America"; Ronald Reagan was in the ...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club: A Novel
by
Martha Hall Kelly
Ballantine Books, 05/27/2025
2016: Thirty-four-year-old Mari Starwood is still grieving as she travels to the storied island of Martha's Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. ...
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Historical Fiction
The South: A Novel
by
Tash Aw
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/27/2025
When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they've inherited, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair...
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The Stalker
by
Paula Bomer
Soho Press, 05/27/2025
Robert Doughten Savile, aka "Doughty," is the son of a once-wealthy, now hard-up family from Darien, Connecticut. Doughty lives in a perpetual cloud ...
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These Vengeful Gods
by
Gabe Cole Novoa
Random House Books for Younger Readers, 05/27/2025
Years ago, the descendants of the god of Death were murdered. The few that remain are in hiding, including Crow, a teen who survived the genocide and ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
This Moth Saw Brightness
by
A. A. Vacharat
Dutton for Young Readers, 05/27/2025
"The invisible D in my name is my mother's second most lasting contribution to my life."
'Wayne Le—known as "Invisible-D 'Wayne" at school&...
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Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Titan of the Stars
by
E.K. Johnston
Tundra Books, 05/27/2025
Celeste knows every inch of this ship. She's proud of her work as apprentice engineer. And as the maiden voyage of the
Titan launches, she's ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
by
Jordan Thomas
Riverhead Books, 05/27/2025
Eighteen of California's largest wildfires on record have burned in the past two decades. Scientists recently invented the term "megafire" to describe...
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