The Guest by Emma Cline is a highly recommended book, recognized as one of the top releases for May by The New York Times. At first, I assumed it was just another typical summer romance novel I usually don't enjoy. However, I was surprised that it was unlike any other beach read I had encountered.
by Emma Cline
The Guest by Emma Cline is a highly recommended book, recognized as one of the top releases for May by The New York Times. At first, I assumed it was just another typical summer romance novel I usually don’t enjoy. However, I was surprised that it was unlike any other beach read I had encountered.
The protagonist, Alex, finds herself in a difficult situation after making a mistake at a dinner party in the East End of Long Island towards the end of summer. The man she’s been staying with dismisses her and sends her back to the city. With limited resources and a waterlogged phone, Alex decides to stay on Long Island and explore her surroundings. She wanders through exclusive neighborhoods and beaches, leaving a trail of destruction behind her.
According to The New York Times, Alex’s days and nights waiting for Labor Day might be “an entertaining series of misguided shenanigans interrupting the upper class’s summer vacation. However, under Cline’s command, every sentence is as sharp as a scalpel, portraying a woman who toes the line between welcome and unwelcome guest and becomes a fully destabilizing force for her hosts and the novel itself.
Although the book has no experience with themes, such as using sex to secure what she desires, as soon as I started reading it, I could not stop. Regardless of my unfamiliarity with the topics, I highly recommend The Guest.
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by Jesmyn Ward
I started reading Jesmyn Ward‘s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing today. The New York Times selected it as one of the best books of the 21st century and awarded it the National Book Award. According to The New York Times, Jesmyn Ward‘s historic second National Book Award winner is “perfectly poised for the moment.” It’s an intimate portrait of three generations of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle.
Jojo is thirteen years old and is trying to understand what it means to be a man. He has several father figures to learn from, including his Black grandfather, Pop. However, Jojo’s understanding is complicated by other men in his life: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who refuses to acknowledge him; and the memories of his deceased uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.
His mother, Leonie, is inconsistent in her and her toddler daughter’s lives. She is a flawed mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black, and her children’s father is White. She wants to be a better mother but struggles to prioritize her children over her own needs, particularly her drug use. Tormented and comforted by visions of her deceased brother, which only come to her when she’s high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the harsh reality of her circumstances.
When their father is released from prison, Leonie takes her kids and a friend in her car and drives north to Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another thirteen-year-old boy, the ghost of a deceased inmate who carries the ugly history of the South with him in his wanderings. With his supernatural presence, this ghostly figure also has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, legacies, violence, and love.
Described as a majestic and unforgettable family story, ‘Sing, Unburied, Sing‘ is rich with Ward‘s distinctive, lyrical language. As noted by The Philadelphia Inquirer, her unique narrative style takes readers on ‘an odyssey through rural Mississippi’s past and present.’
The Secrets We Left Behind by Soraya M. Lane is a historical fiction that raises the question, where were the women after Dunkirk and the fall of France? When World War II appeared to have been lost with a Nazi victory. Ms. Lane watched the movie Dunkirk and then researched that time and the women’s possible roles during that difficult moment in history.
She connected the evacuation at Dunkirk to the Massacre at Le Paradis, fifty miles away, to connect a British nurse and two French women whose strength helps them survive Nazi-occupied France. Three British male soldiers, two of whom survived the massacre and one who escaped Dunkirk, have secondary roles in the novel.
The Secrets We Left Behind is the story of the three strong women and their efforts to survive the occupation while hiding the three soldiers. This focus on the role of women has been long overdue in history. Ms. Lane, who studied to be a lawyer, has found a career as a writer. The Secrets We Left Behind is the first book I have read, but it will not be the last one by Ms. Lane that I read.
I strongly recommend this book!
The Goodreads synopsis provides an overview of the novel.
How far will they go for family, friendship, and love? Occupied France, 1940. When the staff at a field hospital draw straws to find out who will join the evacuation from Dunkirk, Nurse Cate is left behind. But when the Nazis arrive to claim prisoners of war, she takes her chance and flees into the night, taking one patient with her.
Fifty miles away, the surrendering soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment are shot dead by the advancing Germans. Beneath the pile of bodies, two men survive, crawling to the safety of a nearby farmhouse, where sisters Elise and Adelaide risk their lives to take them in. When Cate, too, arrives at their door with her injured soldier, the pressure mounts.
The sisters are risking everything to keep their visitors safe. But with the Nazis coming ever closer and relationships in the farmhouse intensifying, they must all question the sacrifices they are willing to make for the lives of others. How far will they go for family, friendship, and love?
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by Nina McConigley
“How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder” by Nina McConigley is a bold, inventive, and fiercely original debut novel. The story begins with the death of an uncle and features his tween niece’s private confession to the reader—she and her sister are responsible for his death, and they blame the British. The New York Times has listed it as one of “The Novels Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026.”
Summer, 1986. The Creel sisters, Georgie Ayyar, and Agatha Krishna, welcome their aunt, uncle, and young cousin—newly arrived from India—into their house in rural Wyoming, where they’ll all live together. Because this is what families do, that is, until the sisters decide that it’s time for their uncle to die.
According to Georgie, the British are to blame. And to understand why, you need to hear her story. She details the violence hiding in their house and history, her once-unshakeable bond with Agatha Krishna, and her understanding of herself as an Indian-American in the heart of the West. Her account is, at every turn, cheeky, unflinching, and infectiously inflected with the trappings of teendom, including the magazine quizzes that help her make sense of her life. At its heart, the tale she weaves is:
a) a vivid portrait of an extended family
b) a moving story of sisterhood
c) a playful ode to the 80s
d) a murder mystery (of sorts)
e) an unexpected and unwaveringly powerful meditation on history and language, trauma and healing, and the meaning of independence
Or maybe it’s really:
f) all of the above.
Nina McConigley is the author of the story collection Cowboys and East Indians, which won the PEN Open Book Award and the High Plains Book Award. She has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Radcliffe Institute, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
McConigley was awarded the Wyoming Arts Council’s Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Writing Award and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for her columns in High Country News. Her work has appeared in several prominent publications, including The New York Times, Orion, O: The Oprah Magazine, and The Virginia Quarterly Review.
Born in Singapore and raised in Wyoming, she currently resides in Colorado.
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by Karen Russell
Karen Russell‘s The Antidote, a finalist in the fiction category for the 2025 National Book Award, serves as a profound reckoning with a nation’s tendency to forget. It addresses the settler amnesia and deliberate omissions that have been passed down through generations, revealing not only horrors but also shimmering possibilities. The Antidote resonates with urgent warnings about our current climate emergency, prompting readers to reflect on what might have been and what is still possible.
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories.
The Antidote follows a “Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
Karen Russell is the author of six fiction books, including the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
She has received two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane Prize, and the 2024 Mary McCarthy Prize, and was selected for the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award and The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list (she is now decisively over forty).
She serves on the board of Street Books, a mobile library for people living outdoors. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, son, and daughter.
Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!
by Regina Black
“August Lane” by Regina Black is a captivating small-town romance that explores love, forgiveness, and the significance of Black women’s voices in country music. As the author of “The Art of Scandal,” Black brings her storytelling expertise to this narrative. Fans of “The Final Revival of Opal & Nev” by Dawnie Walton, which focuses on Black female empowerment, will find similar themes in “August Lane.”
Every Thursday night, former country music heartthrob Luke Randall has to sing “Another Love Song.” God, he hates that song. But performing his lone hit at an interstate motel lounge is the only regular money he still has. Following another lackluster performance at the rock bottom of his career, Luke receives the opportunity of his dreams, opening for his childhood idol–90’s era Black country music star, JoJo Lane, who’s being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
But the concert is in Arcadia, Arkansas, the small hometown he swore he’d never see again. Going back means facing a painful past of abuse and neglect. It also means facing JoJo’s daughter, August Lane — the woman who wrote the lyrics he’s always claimed as his own. This story holds personal significance for Regina Black, as it reflects her own experiences and struggles.
August also hates that song. But she hates Luke Randall even more. When he shows up ten years too late to apologize for his betrayal, she isn’t interested in making amends. Instead, she threatens to expose his lies unless he co-writes a new song with her and performs it at the concert, something she hopes will launch her out of her mother’s shadow and into a songwriting career of her own. Desperate to keep his secret, Luke agrees to put on the rogue performance, despite the risk of losing his shot at a new record deal.
When Luke’s guitar reunites with August’s soulful alto, neither can deny that the passionate bond they formed as teenagers is still there. As the concert nears, August will have to choose between an overdue public reckoning with the boy who betrayed her or trusting the man he’s become to write a different love song. This story is a testament to the transformative power of love and forgiveness, offering hope and optimism to all who read it.
Regina Black, a former civil litigator and current law school administrator, is a lifelong romance reader with a deep passion for the representation of Black women in popular culture. Her residence in Little Rock, Arkansas, with her husband and daughter, is a testament to her commitment to this cause.
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by Nora Lange
Today, I embarked on the journey of Us Fools by Nora Lange. This poignant and personal American narrative is about two remarkable sisters who, against all odds, come of age during the Midwestern farm crisis of the 1980s. In her debut novel, Nora Lange has crafted a lively, ambitious, and heart-wrenching portrait of two unique sisters determined to persevere despite the harsh realities of capitalism and their circumstances. After a pivotal national election, this seemed like the perfect book to read.
Joanne and Bernadette Fareown, born and raised on a family farm in rural Illinois, are deeply impacted by their parents’ tumultuous relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the unsettling history of the women in their family. Left to fend for themselves, the sisters delve into Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf. As they grapple with these trying circumstances, they must devise unique coping mechanisms and question the validity of the American Dream. At the same time, the rest of the nation disregards their struggling community.
Jo and Bernie’s imaginative efforts to escape their parents’ harsh realities ultimately fall short, prompting the family to relocate to Chicago. There, Joanne—free-spirited, reckless, and struggling to manage her inner turmoil—rebels in increasingly desperate ways. After undergoing her most significant breakdown yet, Jo goes into exile in Deadhorse, Alaska. Bernadette takes it upon herself to apply everything she has learned from her sister to rekindle a sense of hope in a failing world.
