Best Books of 2022

Read the books Time Magazine has dubbed the 100 must-read books of 2022.

Below you’ll find Time Magazine’s Best Books of 2022. Whether you’re looking for award-winning nonfiction or gripping fantasy novels, Plano Public Library has it all.

Biography

Anna: The Biography by Amy Odell. This definitive biography of legendary fashion journalist and media mogul Anna Wintour follows her journey from the trendy fashion scene of swinging 1960s London to becoming the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine. Print / eBook.

Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality by Tomiko Brown-Nagin. Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, and defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham. Civil Rights Queen captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country. Print.

I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg. From New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a dazzling memoir about unlocking and embracing her creativity-and how it saved her life. Print.

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff. A revelatory biography from a Pulitzer Prize-winner about the most essential Founding Father— the one who stood behind the change in thinking that produced the American Revolution. Print.

Ted Kennedy: A Life by John A. Farrell. A biography of one of modern America’s most fascinating and consequential political figures, drawing on important new sources, by the biographer who covered Kennedy closely for many years. Print.

Nonfiction

A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney. A visceral and deeply personal memoir by the star of the Amazon Prime series Catastrophe, about the loss of his young son. Print.

An Immense World by Ed Yong. The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Ancestor Trouble by Maud Newton. Maud Newton’s ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. In Ancestor Trouble, Newton uses genealogy—a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry—to expose the secrets and contradictions of her own ancestors, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us. Print / eBook.

Animal Joy by Nuar Alsadir. Taking laughter’s revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir’s experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy is an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive. Print.

Breathless: the Scientific race to Defeat a Deadly Virus by David Quammen. The story of the worldwide scientific quest to decipher the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, trace its source, and make possible the vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Print.

Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke. Butts are a body part unique to humans, critical to our evolution and survival, and yet it has come to signify so much more: sex, desire, comedy, shame. A woman’s butt, in particular, is forever being assessed, criticized, and objectified, from anxious self-examinations trying on jeans in department store dressing rooms to enduring crass remarks while walking down a street or high school hallways. But why? Reporter, essayist, and RadioLab contributing editor Heather Radke is determined to find out. Print.

Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson. The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson shatters herself into pieces and recombines them into a new and vital apparatus on the page, fusing the criticism that she is known for, fragments of the family members she grieves for, and signal moments from her life, as well as the words of those who have peopled her past and accompanied her in her solitude, dramatized here like never before. Print.

The Crane Wife: a Memoir in Essays by CJ Hauser. A memoir in essays that expands on the viral sensation “The Crane Wife” with a frank and funny look at love, intimacy, and self in the twenty-first century. Print.

Dirtbag, Massachusetts: a Confessional by Isaac Fitzgerald. Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He’s been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents’ lives–or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self. Print / eAudiobook.

Easy Beauty: a Memoir by Chloé Cooper Jones. Moving through the world in a body that looks different than most, Jones learned on to factor “pain calculations” into every plan, every situation. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), she feels something in her shift, and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she’d been denied and had denied herself. Print / Large print.

Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino. Over the past several decades, globalization has homogenized what we eat, and done so ruthlessly. The numbers are stark: Of the roughly six thousand different plants once consumed by human beings, only nine remain major staples today. In Eating to Extinction, the distinguished BBC food journalist Dan Saladino travels the world to experience and document our most at-risk foods before it’s too late. Print.

The Emergency: a year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER by Thomas Fisher. The riveting, pulse-pounding story of a year in the life of an emergency room doctor trying to steer his patients and colleagues through a crushing pandemic and a violent summer, amidst a healthcare system that seems determined to leave them behind. Print.

The Escape Artist: the man who Broke out of Auschwitz to warn the World by Jonathan Freedland. In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became the first Jew to break out of Auschwitz–one of only four who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world–and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them at the end of the railway line. Print.

Everything I need I get from you: how Fangirls Created the Internet as we know It by Kaitlyn Tiffany. A thrilling and riotous dive into the world of superfandom, One Direction, and the fangirls who shaped the social internet. Print.

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man by Paul Newman. The raw, candid, unvarnished memoir of an American icon. The greatest movie star of the past 75 years covers everything: his traumatic childhood, his career, his drinking, his thoughts on Marlon Brando, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, John Huston, his greatest roles, acting, his intimate life with Joanne Woodward, his innermost fears and passions and joys. With thoughts/comments throughout from Joanne Woodward, George Roy Hill, Tom Cruise, Elia Kazan and many others. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

The Family Outing by Jessi Hempel. By the time Jessi Hempel reached adulthood, everyone in her family had come out, starting a chain reaction of revelations that made them all question their place in the world in new and liberating ways. Print.

Finding Me by Viola Davis. This is Viola Davis’ story, in her own words, and spans her incredible, inspiring life, from her coming-of-age in Rhode Island to her present day. Hers is a story of overcoming, a true hero’s journey. Print / Large print / Playaway / eBook / eAudiobook.

Half American: the epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at home and Abroad by Matthew F. Delmont. The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont. Print.

His Name Is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd’s life and legacy–from his family’s roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing–telling the singular story of how one man’s tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.  Print / Large print.

How Far the Light Reaches: a life in ten sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler. A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature. Print.

The Hurting Kind: poems by Ada Limón. An astonishing collection about interconnectedness-between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves-from National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist Ada Limón. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor–including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother–and how she retook control of her life. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

In Love: a Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom. Amy and Brian’s world was changed forever with his diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s. Forced to confront the daily frustrations and realities of the disease and its impact on their lives and marriage, Brian resolved not to let it dictate his life and instead asked himself: What makes life meaningful, and how do I want to live the rest of mine? Print / Large print / eAudiobook.

Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan. Most of us give little thought to the back of the book-it’s just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart-and we have been for eight hundred years. Print / eAudiobook.

The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke. A landmark exploration of one of the most consequential and mysterious issues of our time: the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases. Print / eBook.

Life Between the Tides by Adam Nicolson. Adam Nicolson, the award-winning author of The Making of Poetry and The Seabird’s Cry, explores the marine life inhabiting seashore rockpools with a scientist’s curiosity and a poet’s wonder in this beautifully illustrated book. Print.

The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama offers readers a series of fresh stories and insightful reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress. Print / Large print / Spanish / eBook / eAudiobook.

Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz. Eighteen months before her beloved father died, Kathryn Schulz met Casey, the woman who would become her wife. Lost & Found weaves together their love story with the story of losing Kathryn’s father in a brilliant exploration of the way families are lost and found and the way life dispenses wretchedness and suffering, beauty and grandeur all at once. Print / eAudiobook.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras. Interweaving family stories more enchanting than any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. Print.

Manifesto by Bernardine Evaristo. A vibrant and inspirational account of Booker Prize winner Bernadine Evaristo’s life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought over several decades to bring her creative work into the world. Print / eAudiobook.

The Method: how the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler. From the co-author of The World Only Spins Forward comes the first cultural history of Method acting-an ebullient account of creative discovery and the birth of classic Hollywood. Print / eBook.

The Naked Don’t Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins. In 2016, a young Afghan driver and translator named Omar makes the heart-wrenching choice to flee his war-torn country. Matthieu Aikins, a journalist living in Kabul, decides to follow his friend. As setbacks and dangers mount for the two friends, Matthieu is also drawn into the escape plans of Omar’s entire family, including Maryam, the matriarch who has fought ferociously for her children’s survival. Print.

Scoundrel: how a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women who Loved him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to set him Free by Sarah Weinman. Sarah Weinman’s Scoundrel leads us through the twists of fate and fortune that brought Smith to freedom, book deals, fame, and eventually to attempting murder again. In Smith, Weinman has uncovered a psychopath who slipped his way into public acclaim and acceptance before crashing down to earth once again. Print.

South to America by Imani Perry. An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South–and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America. Print.

Stay True by Hua Hsu. From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art. Print / Large print / eAudiobook.

Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv. The highly anticipated debut from the acclaimed award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv compels us to examine how the stories we tell about mental illness shape our sense of who we are. Print.

Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong. Ocean Vuong’s second collection of poetry looks inward, on the aftershocks of his mother’s death, and the struggle – and rewards – of staying present in the world. Print / eAudiobook.

The Trayvon Generation by Elizabeth Alexander. In the midst of civil unrest in the summer of 2020 following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, one of the great literary voices of our time, Elizabeth Alexander, wrote a moving reflection on the psyche of young Black America, turning a mother’s eye to her sons’ generation. Print.

Under the Skin by Linda Villarosa. The first book to tell the full story of race and health in America today, showing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation, by a groundbreaking journalist at the New York Times Magazine. Print / eAudiobook.

Woman Without Shame by Sandra Cisneros. A bold new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros, the best-selling author of The House on Mango Street. Print.

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi. With poems that spin backwards and forwards in time, this collection reminds us that the apocalypse has already come in a myriad of ways for marginalized peoples, and calls forth the importance of imagining what will persist in the aftermaths. Print.

Fiction

Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah. From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa. Print / eBook.

All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd. Fuyuko Irie is a freelance proofreader in her thirties. When she sees her reflection, she’s confronted with a tired and spiritless woman who has failed to take control of her own life. As Fuyuko starts to see the world in a different light, painful memories from her past begin to resurface. Fuyuko needs to be loved, to be heard, and to be seen. But living in a small world of her own making, will she find the strength to bring down the walls that surround her? Print.

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews. From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself—a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America. Print / eBook.

Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi. From Man Booker International Prize–winning author Jokha Alharthi, Bitter Orange Tree is a profound exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. It presents a mosaic portrait of one young woman’s attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in which her own power and happiness might find the freedom necessary to bear fruit and flourish. Print / eBook.

The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li. Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised—the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now Agnès is free to tell her story. As children in a war-ravaged backwater town, they’d built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves—until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss. Print / eBook.

Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah. A young Native American boy in a splintering family grasps for stability and love, making all the wrong choices until he finds a space of his own. Print.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. It’s 2010. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious” — that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others — has seduced multitudes. But not everyone. In spellbinding interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Print / Large print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid. In this powerful novel about the cost of ambition and success, a legendary athlete attempts a comeback at an age when the world considers her past her prime. Print / Large print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Chef’s Kiss by TJ Alexander. A high-strung pastry chef’s professional goals are interrupted by an unexpected career transition and the introduction of her wildly attractive nonbinary kitchen manager in this deliciously fresh and witty queer rom-com. Print / eBook.

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti. After a rough year at NYU, aspiring writer Lora Ricci is thrilled to land a summer internship at ELLE magazine where she meets Cat Wolff, contributing editor and enigmatic daughter of a clean-energy mogul. But as Lora is drawn into Cat’s glamorous lifestyle, Cat’s perfect exterior cracks, exposing an illicit, shady world. Print / eBook.

Either/Or by Elif Batuman. From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin’s quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood. Print / eBook.

Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark. Celebrated children’s book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy—to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic coast in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders is her best friend, Polly. Print / eBook.

Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho. A witty, warm, and irreverent book that traces the lives of two young Taiwanese American women as they navigate friendship, sexuality, identity, and heartbreak over two decades. Print / eBook.

The Furrows by Namwali Serpell. Namwali Serpell’s remarkable new novel captures the uncanny experience of grief, the way the past breaks over the present like waves in the sea. The Furrows is a bold exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a story of mistaken identity, double consciousness, and the wishful—and sometimes willful—longing for reunion with those we’ve lost. Print / eBook.

Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo. Glory centers around the unexpected fall of Old Horse, a long-serving leader of a fictional African country, and the drama that follows for an unruly nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Print / eBook.

The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken. Over the course of one weekend in London, a woman, “trying to decide what I thought about my life,” winds up wrestling with the memory of her mother. Her mother—who had also loved to visit London—died ten months earlier, but her presence is in no way diminished by her death. Print / eBook.

Honey & Spice by Bolu Babalola. Sharp-tongued (and secretly soft-hearted) Kiki Banjo is an expert in relationship-evasion and the host of the popular student radio show Brown Sugar. But when the Queen of the Unbothered kisses Malakai Korede, the guy she just publicly denounced as “The Wastemen of Whitewell,” she finds her show on the brink. Can a fake relationship salvage their reputations and save their futures? Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, an Egyptian American woman and a man from the village of Shobrakheit meet at a café in Cairo. But soon their desire–for one another, for the selves they want to become through the other–takes a violent turn that neither of them expected. Print / eBook.

If I Survive You: Stories by Jonathan Escoffery. A collection of humorous and harrowing linked stories following a Jamaican-American family as they seek stability upon moving to Miami. Print / eBook.

Learning to Talk by Hilary Mantel. In the wake of Hilary Mantel’s brilliant conclusion to her award-winning Wolf Hall trilogy, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood. Print / eBook.

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu. In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Print.

Liberation Day by George Saunders. Booker Prize winner George Saunders returns with his first collection of short stories since the New York Times bestseller Tenth of December. Print.

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout. As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. Print / Large print / Playaway / eBook / eAudiobook.

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer. This lyrical debut novel is at once a passionate coming-of-age story, a meditation on illness and death, and a kaleidoscopic journey through one woman’s life—told in part by the malevolent voice of her disease. eBook.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell. Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson. A successful art dealer confesses the story of his rise to a former classmate in an airport bar–a story that begins with his rescue and resuscitation of a drowning man with whom he becomes inextricably and disturbingly linked. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty. Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy. Print / eBook.

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley. A dazzling novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson. Twenty years after secretly causing panic in her hometown through the written word and artwork, along with a fellow loner named Zeke, famous author, mom, and wife Frances Eleanor Budge gets a call that brings her past rushing back, threatening to upend everything. Print / Large print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Nuclear Family by Joseph Han. Mr. and Mrs. Cho run a successful chain of Hawai’ian plate lunch restaurants, and their adult children are finding their way in the world: 21-year-old Grace is graduating in a few months, and 25-year-old Jacob is teaching English in Seoul. They’re set to take over the restaurants when Umma and Appa retire. But when Jacob is captured by the South Korean government for attempting to run across the DMZ, the Chos’ peaceful lives are shattered. Print / eBook.

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez. A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots, all in the wake of Hurricane María. Print / eBook.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng. In a society consumed by fear, twelve-year-old Bird Gardner, after receiving a mysterious letter, sets out on a quest to find his mother, a Chinese-American poet who left when he was nine years old, leading him to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change. Print / Large print / Playaway / eBook / eAudiobook.

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty. A debut novel about an odd assortment of residents living in a crumbling apartment building in the post-industrial Midwest. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani. Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as “the land of sushi.” Hiruko, a former citizen and a climate refugee, searches for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue. Print.

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. Set in near-future America, The School for Good Mothers introduces readers to a government-run reform program where bad mothers are retrained using robot doll children with artificial intelligence. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson. The #1 national bestselling, award-winning author of Life after Life transports us to the dazzling London of the Roaring Twenties in a whirlwind tale of corruption, seduction, and debts that have come due. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro. Late on a summer night in 1985, three teenagers are in a tragic car crash on the quiet, suburban Division Avenue. A girl is killed, and Theo and Sarah Wilf are left with a devastating secret that will haunt their family forever. When Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant but lonely child, befriends Ben Wilf, who is struggling with his wife’s decline from Alzheimer’s, he sets in motion the spellbinding, unforgettable climax. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub. When Alice wakes up on her fortieth birthday somehow back in 1996 as her sixteen-year-old self, she finds the biggest surprise is the forty-nine-year-old version of her father with whom she is reunited, and, armed with a new perspective on life, wonders what she would change given the chance. Print / Large print / Playaway / eBook / eAudiobook.

Tides by Sara Freeman. After a sudden, devastating loss, Mara flees her family and ends up adrift in a wealthy beach town with a dead cellphone and barely any money. Mired in her grief, Mara detaches from the outside world and spends her days of self-imposed exile scrounging for food and swimming in the night ocean until meeting Simon, and the facts of her flight begin to emerge. Print.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. A modern love story about two childhood friends, Sam, raised by an actress mother in LA’s Koreatown, and Sadie, from the wealthy Jewish enclave of Beverly Hills, who reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Print / Large print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Trust by Hernan Diaz. In glamorous 1920s New York City, two characters of sophisticated taste come together. One is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; the other, the brilliant daughter of penniless aristocrats. Steeped in affluence and grandeur, their marriage excites gossip and allows a continued ascent–all at a moment when the country is undergoing a great transformation. Print / eBook.

Upgrade by Blake Crouch. An ordinary man undergoes a startling transformation – and fears that all of humanity may be next – in the mind-blowing new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas. A popular English professor’s charismatic husband is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. When our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding. Print / eBook.

When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar. In this heartrending, lyrical debut work of fiction, the acclaimed author of If They Come for Us traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after their parents die, are left to raise one another. eBook.

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. The story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James. Born under different stars–Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic–they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Babel by R.F. Kuang. From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. From the bestselling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night comes a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico. Print / eBook / eAudiobook.

The Employees by Olga Ravn, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken. chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids. Print.

Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi. A primal biblical epic flung into the future, Goliath weaves together disparate narratives–a space-dweller looking at New Haven, Connecticut as a chance to reconnect with his spiraling lover; a group of laborers attempting to renew the promises of Earth’s crumbling cities; a journalist attempting to capture the violence of the streets; a marshal trying to solve a kidnapping–into a richly urgent mosaic about race, class, gentrification, and who is allowed to be the hero of any history. Print / eBook.

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo. Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill-but she doesn’t care. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes–even if that means becoming the monster herself. Print / eBook.

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Graphic Novels

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton. Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. After university, Beaton heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates. Print.