MacMillan

In a future where security is run by sophisticated AIs, one robot just wants to be left alone to watch soap operas. Murderbot (a name they gave their self) has to work very hard to keep humans unaware of their own agency to avoid being wiped back to factory settings. Also, someone is trying to kill the people in their charge. I loved this fresh take on the future of AI. - Ivy

People who've been traumatized by a crime are victims, too. Finding ways to comfort them is also part of my job. I adored this gentle, intricately plotted novel! Told in vignettes, this unusual whodunnit follows Detective Kaga as he solves small domestic mysteries with kindness and grace, while gaining more insight into the life of the murder victim and those around her. - Ksenia

It's hard to talk about this book without drawing comparisons to Daniel Wallace's Big Fish, and that's a great thing! The story travels back and forth through time in telling the multigenerational story of a family and their land in Alabama. This history is being passed from one generation to the next in this hodgepodge storytelling that captivates as much as it obfuscates. - Clara

In his newest novel, the author of two of my favorite books of the past decade (Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04) tells the story of a “lefty household” in Topeka, Kansas, in the 1990s. The parents are psychologists transplanted from the big city, their son a gifted high school debater. It is about the end of the 20th century and the breakdown of our political discourse, but it’s also about language. Lerner is a poet—literally; he’s published three books of poetry—and every page here brims with fresh turns of phrase, startling images, and precisely rendered emotional moments. - Rico

Ghosh is old-school, a throwback to the 19th century, when novelists wrote sweeping sagas that captured the essence of entire nations and cultures. Here he tells the story Deen Datta, a rare-book dealer who, after hearing a tale of a lost shrine that pays homage to both a Hindi snake goddess named Manasa Devi and a Muslim saint named Ilyas, sets out on a journey that will change his life. The book is about a world on the brink, about loss and displacement, and also about hope. It’s a deeply satisfying read. -  Rico

Do you remember the way you used to draw as a child? Most of us lose that as we grow older. Making Comics is a master class in the comic form. Barry, a powerhouse creator of strange and beautiful comic books, guides us through an intensive process to get the creative juices flowing and remind us of the courage we had as younglings. I was pleasantly surprised at my own daring as I worked my way through the book. - Ivy

The Long Call was everything I wanted to curl up with and lose myself in. A vibrant British seaside town is rocked with the mysterious murder of a formerly homeless man, himself more mysterious yet. The character-driven mystery kept me turning pages for the secrets and complexities of a community of artists, do-gooders, bird watchers, spiritual seekers, and of course police—including haunted detective Matthew Venn, whose husband may be at the center of everything. I am so satisfied, and so ready for the next of this wonderful new series. - Jocelyn

From Cixin Liu, legendary author of The Three-Body Problem, comes Supernova Era, an earlier work being published in English for the first time. Liu’s vision of the future reads like Lord of the Flies on a global scale. Eight light years away, a star has died, creating a supernova event that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Within a year, everyone over the age of 13 will die. And so the countdown begins. “A political thriller founded on a thought experiment reminiscent of classic SF.” —Publishers Weekly

Leigh Bardugo thrusts you behind the ivy-covered walls of Yale, where Alex (Galaxy) Stern knows the occult power wielded by the secret societies’ elite and finds herself at the center of a plot that snakes between mysteries and murders, rituals and secrets, and vivid, recognizable characters. Ninth House’s magic illuminates real truths within our world: privilege, addiction, mental illness, #MeToo, and everything in between. It goes to some of the darkest places but never loses the shine of hope, or the will to fight for what’s right. - Jocelyn

I first learned about Lydia Davis at one of my favorite bookstores, Dog-Eared Books in San Francisco, when I overheard the booksellers there waxing poetic about her. Reading Break It Down was a revelation, and I’ve been a fan ever since. In Essays One, the first in a two-volume set, Davis has gathered essays dating back to the 1970s, revealing her influences as a reader and an early writer/student and discussing process at length, most deliciously in her “Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits.” There’s a reason Davis is considered a “writer’s writer”—this book is an education you didn’t know you needed. - Chorel