Paperback Fiction from our 2017 Summer Newsletter

When a boy is accidentally killed on a North Dakota reservation, the family of the shooter undertakes a drastic attempt at redemption. The fraught but permanent tie between the families sparks questions of trust, loyalty, justice, and memory. As in life, there are no concrete answers, and Erdrich does not attempt to prettify that which life makes messy. Her prose, as ever, is unrelentingly affecting; the agonies, hopes, and longings of these characters become the reader’s own. LaRose traces its characters’ paths as they cross back and forth between old tradition and modernity, the spirit world and tangible experience, reconciliation and grief. - Julia

Praised by Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See), this book immediately caught my eye. It is not an easy story to read, but it transcends despair with imaginative grace and voice. The book opens with 12-year-old twin sisters Stacha and Pearl as they enter Auschwitz, selected to be participants in Josef Mengele’s “Zoo.” Alternating between each sister’s point of view, Mischling is a lyrical tale of survival, loyalty, and love, where children create meaning and magic despite their surroundings; a beautiful read that had a profound impact. - S.M.C.

It took me until my thirties to really appreciate characters who don’t have everything together, and Tess is certainly one of those characters. Her experience working in an elite New York City restaurant is adrenaline filled—a rock star lifestyle. This is an intense read that will forever change the way you see restaurants. - Karena

A book about adults growing up, Modern Lovers follows a close-knit group of longtime friends who struggle to salvage the romance of their youth while raising teens of their own. The revelation that their kids are sleeping together forces the friends to confront secrets from their past and see the flaws in their picture-perfect lives. Sweaty and sincere, Modern Lovers is a summer beach read with just the right amount of substance. - Jade

After Josie extracts herself from a long relationship with a deadbeat, loses her dental practice in a lawsuit, and assumes guilt in a young patient’s death, she escapes to Alaska. Trekking across desolate highways and sweeping landscapes in a rundown RV with her confused children, Josie (often hilariously) tries her best to keep it all together—her kids’ tempers, the facade of their weird “vacation,” her sanity, and her falling-apart heart. - Julia

This book broke my heart, put it back together, then repeated the process, in the best way possible. Homegoing follows two sisters and their descendants for 200 years, from Ghana to the United States, with some of the most powerful writing in the last few years. - Karena

We all have something in our past that haunts us and steers our course in life: a missed opportunity, a tragic event, a lost love. Nathan Hill borrows an otherworldly creature  from Norwegian folklore—the nix—to embody this concept. Written with sharp wit and a mastery of language usually unseen in a debut novel, The Nix explores what happens  when the ghosts of our past suddenly come back to life. - Aric

“The four of us together weren’t something they understood. They understood girls alone, folding their arms across their breasts, praying for invisibility,” says Jacqueline Woodson’s character, August, as she embarks upon her transformation from girlhood to womanhood with a cohort of friends in 1970’s Brooklyn. It is the poetic voice of these girls, bound and yet alone, that grounds the reader in the neighborhood, and in the class, race, and religious dynamics of that time and place but that ultimately speaks to all women whose memory of their youth continuously folds and unfolds into their identity. A powerful, beautiful novel. - Casey

I’m a huge fan of anything under 200 pages, and this story of Dr. Morayo Da Silva, a Nigerian woman living in San Francisco, fits the bill perfectly. Our 75-year-old protagonist is at an age that our culture inaccurately assumes is filled only with death and physical decline. While there are elements of both here, there is also a luminous and lively center upon which her story pivots; the narrative floats effortlessly between the bustling present and Da Silva’s nostalgia-worthy past. It’s a natural next read for fans of Fredrik Backman. - Louise

Nine-year-old Alex and his superhero mom Valerie make their way across the country, comic-con by comic-con, toward a future of inevitable loss. They visit the fallen heroes, wise women, and wizards of pen and ink who have all shaped the story of their lives. Pushed and pulled by so many other people’s stories, can they learn to write their own? - Cat