In the realms of power, money, and love, the characters in Daniyal Mueenuddin‘s work grapple with the choice between moral integrity and practical decisions that enable them to navigate the entrenched systems of caste, capital, and social influence in their culture. Profoundly moving and both intimate and epic, This Is Where the Serpent Lives is a remarkable work poised to become a classic of contemporary literature. The New York Times has listed it as one of “The Novels Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026.”

Moving from Pakistan’s vibrant, chaotic cities to its lawless, feudal countryside, This Is Where the Serpent Lives vividly portrays contemporary life there. The story follows the intertwined fates of a dozen unforgettable characters, connected through violence, tragedy, triumph, and love.

Orphaned as a young boy and surviving on the streets of the city, Yazid rises to a position of responsibility and respect in the Lahore household of Colonel Atar, a powerful industrialist and politician. However, he soon finds his position threatened by conflicting loyalties and misplaced trust.

Born on Colonel Atar’s country estate to a poor gardener, Saqib is entrusted with managing a pioneering business. Yet, he overreaches and becomes an outlaw, facing the violent corruption of the Punjab Police. Meanwhile, the colonel’s son competes with his beloved brother for the affections of a woman, only to discover that her choice brings unexpected darkness and light into his life.

Daniyal Mueenuddin, raised in Lahore, Pakistan, and Elroy, Wisconsin, graduated from Dartmouth College and Yale Law School. His stories have appeared in prestigious publications such as The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, and The Best American Short Stories 2008, which Salman Rushdie selected. His collection, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. For several years, he practiced law in New York. He currently splits his time between Oslo, Norway, and his farm in South Punjab, Pakistan.

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Today, I started reading Hisham Matar’s “My Friends: A Novel.” It is a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction and the winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. This novel explores themes of friendship, family, and the harsh realities of exile. Hisham Matar is also the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Return.” The pages on my Kindle App on my iPad fly like autumn’s falling leaves.

One evening, a young boy named Khaled, growing up in Benghazi, hears a captivating short story read aloud on the radio. The story, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, leaves an indelible mark on Khaled, igniting a lifelong fascination with the power of words and the enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa. This transformative experience sets Khaled on a journey that will lead him far from home to the University of Edinburgh to pursue a life of the mind.

In a new and unfamiliar environment, Khaled finds himself far from his familiar life in Libya. His resilience is tested when he attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London. The event turns into a tragedy, leaving Khaled injured and unable to leave Britain. Despite the danger posed by monitored phone lines, his determination to communicate his situation to his parents is a testament to his strength.

When Khaled has a chance encounter with Hosam Zowa, the author of a life-changing short story, at a hotel, Khaled begins the most profound friendship of his life. This friendship sustains him and eventually compels him, as the Arab Spring unfolds, to confront complex tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his sense of self concerning those closest to him.

A profound exploration of friendship and family and how time can test and fray these bonds, ‘My Friends‘ is a work of literature that resonates with its readers. Hisham Matar’s novel is not just a story but an achingly beautiful reflection on life and relationships crafted by an author at the peak of his powers.

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Crow Lake by Mary Lawson is set in northern Ontario’s rural “badlands.” The badlands are where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape of the farming Pye family. Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch-perfect, you know from the opening page that this is the real thing – a literary experience in which to lose yourself, by an author of immense talent.

Crow Lake was a page-turner for me once I read the prologue.

Two families dominate the story.

On the one hand, it is the Greek tragedy of the Pye family. On their farm, “the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occur—offstage.”

Kate Morrison has left her two brothers and sister at the lake to become a zoologist. The four siblings lost their parents and struggled to remain together. Their “tragedy looks more immediate if less brutal, but is, in reality, insidious and divisive.

As Goodreads describes the novel,

In this universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, of resentments harbored and driven underground, Lawson ratchets up the tension with heartbreaking humor and consummate control, continually overturning one’s expectations right to the very end. Tragic, funny, unforgettable, this deceptively simple masterpiece about the perils of hero worship leaped to the top of the bestseller lists only days after being released in Canada and earned glowing reviews in The New York Times and The Globe and Mail, to name a few.

I highly recommend this novel and am looking forward to reading more from Mary Lawson.

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Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye is a novel that focuses on three women who say no. Winner of the coveted Prix Goncourt, the first by a black woman, Marie NDiaye, creates a luminous narrative triptych as harrowing as beautiful. With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. I highly recommend this novel.

John Fletcher translated the Kindle version.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, an impoverished widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the Fanta above) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight.

With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. We see with stunning emotional exactitude how ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength, even as their humanity is chipped away. Three Strong Women admits to an immigrant experience rarely, if ever, examined in fiction, but even more into the depths of the suffering heart.

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Today, I started reading “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing” by Ben Jealous, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. The book highlights how the path to healing America’s broken heart begins with each of us having the courage to heal ourselves. According to Mr. Jealous, it would be transformative if every American treated each other as cousins.

Ben Jealous and Me

Ben Jealous is the son of parents who had to leave Maryland because their cross-racial marriage was illegal.

I briefly met Ben Jealous last May when I went to Washington with the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism‘s Day of Action. When I saw Mr. Jealous speaking at Temple Emanu-El in neighboring Westfield, I immediately signed up to attend in person. He is an inspiration as an advocate for the environment, civil rights, and the healing of America’s broken heart.

His lively, courageous, and empathetic storytelling calls on every American to look past deeply cut divisions and recognize that we are all in the same boat now. Along the way, Jealous grapples with hidden American mysteries, including:

• Why do white men die from suicide more often than black men die from murder?
• How did racial profiling kill an American president?
• What happens when a Ku Klux Klansman wrestles with what Jesus said?
• How did Dave Chappelle know the DC Snipers were Black?
• Why shouldn’t the civil rights movement give up on rednecks?
• When is what we have collectively forgotten about race more important than what we know?
• What do the most indecipherable things our elders say tell us about ourselves?

The book Never Forget Our People Were Always Free is told through parables. It features intimate glimpses of political and faith leaders such as Jack Kemp, Stacey Abrams, and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The book also highlights unlikely heroes such as a retired constable, a female pirate from Madagascar, a long-lost Irishman, a death row inmate, and a man with a Confederate flag over his heart.

Never Forget Our People Were Always Free offers readers hope that America’s oldest wounds can heal and her oldest divisions can be overcome.

Although I have only read a handful of pages of the book, I highly recommend it!

These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean is a poignant and thoughtful story about the transformative power of grief, love, and family—the novel delves into past secrets, present truths, and futures shaped by wild summer storms. Alice Storm has not been welcome at her family’s magnificent private island off the Rhode Island coast for five years—not since she was cast out and built her life apart from the Storm name, its influence, and untold billions.

However, the shocking death of her larger-than-life father changes everything. Alice plans to keep a low profile, pay her final respects (as complicated as they are), and leave as soon as the funeral concludes. Unfortunately, her father had other plans. The eccentric and manipulative patriarch left his family a final challenge—an inheritance game designed to disrupt their lives. The rules are straightforward: spend one week on the island, complete their assigned tasks, and receive the inheritance.

Spending an entire week on Storm Island presents challenges for Alice. The old house is chaotic in every corner: her older sister’s secret love affair, her brother displays unwavering arrogance, and her younger sister is constantly analyzing the “vibes.” All of this is under the stern, watchful gaze of Jack Dean, her father’s intriguing and too-handsome second-in-command. It will take a miracle for Alice to escape unscathed.

Sarah MacLean is the author of sixteen New York Times bestselling novels, translated into more than twenty-five languages. She co-hosts the weekly romance novel podcast Fated Mates and is a prominent voice in the romance genre. A product of Rhode Island summers and New England storms, MacLean now lives with her family in New York City.

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