Bookshop Santa Cruz staff recommendation:

Ta-Nehisi Coates has already established himself as an important cultural voice on race relations. Now with his first novel, he adds to the conversation in ways best left to provocative fiction, exploring the cascading damage done when enslaved families are sold away from each other. Hiram Walker is an orphan of this crime and this is his remarkable story of deciding to leave his situation and become involved as a singular conductor in a slightly mystical, still historical Underground Railroad. The result is a captivating, resonating read. - Melinda

Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah has written an astonishing novel that looks smartly sideways at the history of British colonialism through the death of 19th-century explorer Dr. David Livingstone and the richly rendered funeral group who endeavors to deliver his body across Africa, sending it home. Two within his entourage, his loyal cook Halima and the Christian freed slave Jacob, narrate this journey through their own complicated perspectives, painting a broader, more nuanced understanding of slavery and colonialism, all while telling an engaging, atmospheric story. - Melinda

The Giver of Stars is one of the most satisfying stories I’ve yet read. What more could you ask for: remarkable women during the Great Depression, overcoming personal and social obstacles to deliver library books on pack horses for miles throughout the Kentucky mountains! I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough in my effort to save these beloved characters from their many perils and challenges. To know that this is based on a true story and to think how the impact of their efforts are still felt today is inspirational. - Jenny

Jeanette Winterson draws you into a world split between a life mostly true and one that could be: 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley writing Frankenstein, and young trans Dr. Ry Shelley, in love with Victor Stein, who dreams of breaking death’s hold on humanity. Also, sex dolls, poetry, workers’ rights, AI ethics, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and God—all part of a modern fable on humanity’s fears, Desire, and Love; a wild dream to marvel at. - Jocelyn