“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” by Kiran Desai is a remarkable and accomplished novel that showcases the talent of one of our greatest contemporary writers. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and is a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. The story follows two young individuals as they navigate the various influences that shape their lives, including their country, class, race, history, and the complex relationships that connect different generations.

This novel combines a love story, a family saga, and an exploration of profound themes. When Sonia and Sunny first catch sight of each other on an overnight train, they find themselves captivated yet embarrassed; their grandparents once tried to matchmake them, a well-meaning effort that only drove them apart.

Sonia is an aspiring novelist who has recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont and has returned to her family in India. Sonia fears she is cursed by a dark spell cast by an artist who sought intimacy and inspiration from her. Meanwhile, Sunny, a struggling journalist who has relocated to New York City, is trying to escape his domineering mother and the violence of his feuding family.

Uncertain about their futures, Sonia and Sunny embark on a journey to find happiness together as they confront the various forms of alienation present in our modern world.

Kiran Desai is renowned for her novels, “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard” and “The Inheritance of Loss,” the latter of which won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Born in India, she moved to the United States at the age of sixteen and currently resides in New York City.

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“The Wilderness” by Angela Flournoy is a remarkable and multifaceted follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut, “The Turner House.” A true talent, Flournoy skillfully captures how five women form deep, lasting connections over a lifetime, often reflecting the complex and uncertain nature of friendship, with sharp wit and vibrant language. The book is a finalist for the 2025 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction.

This era-defining novel centers on the lives of five Black women as they navigate their twenty-year friendship, moving through the dizzying and sometimes precarious transition from young adulthood to midlife. It is a highly anticipated second book from National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.

Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are all in their early twenties, beginning their careers, marriages, and motherhood, while also settling into their big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their path through the wilderness—an overwhelming, mysterious period of life filled with both freedom and consequences.

Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has only deepened their estrangement, cope with painful family wounds in different ways. January finds herself in a relationship with a “good” man but feels ambivalent about him, especially following her unexpected pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, unexpectedly gains online fame after calling out her university for its plans to whitewash its complicated history. Meanwhile, Nakia is striving to establish her restaurant without relying on her upper-middle-class family, who question whether she should pursue a more conventional career.

As these friends transition from the late 2000s into the late 2020s, evolving from young adults into grown women, they must discover what they mean to each other amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.

Angela Flournoy is the author of “The Turner House“, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers choice. It was also an Indie Next pick and recognized as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, and she has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and UCLA. She currently lives in New York.

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!

In a raw and unflinching memoir, Eli Sharabi, a survivor of 491 days in Hamas captivity, recounts his harrowing ordeal in “Hostage: A Memoir.” He was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, 2023. In this powerful narrative, he shares the profound loss of his wife and daughters along with his unwavering determination to survive. Comparisons can be drawn to Elie Wiesel‘s “Night” and Laura Hillenbrand‘s “Unbroken.” “Hostage” stands as a significant testimony to history, ensuring that his experience will neither be forgotten nor erased.

“I refuse to let myself drown in pain. I am surviving. I am a hostage in the heart of Gaza, a stranger in this unfamiliar land, living with a family that supports Hamas. And I am getting out of here. I have to. I’m getting out of here. I’m coming home.” — Eli Sharabi.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists stormed Kibbutz Be’eri, shattering the peaceful life Eli Sharabi had built with his British wife, Lianne, and their teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel. Dragged barefoot out his front door while his family watched in horror, Sharabi was plunged deep into the suffocating darkness of Gaza’s tunnels. As war raged above him, he endured a grueling 491 days in captivity, all the while holding onto the hope that he would one day be reunited with his loved ones.

Eli Sharabi‘s story is one of hunger and heartache, of physical pain, longing, loneliness, and a helplessness that threatens to destroy the soul. But it is also a story of strength, of resilience, and of the human spirit’s refusal to surrender. It is about the camaraderie forged in captivity, the quiet power of faith, and one man’s unrelenting decision to choose life, time and time again.

In the first memoir by a released Israeli hostage, and the fastest-selling book in Israel’s history, Sharabi offers a searing firsthand account of survival under unimaginable conditions—starvation, isolation, physical beatings, and psychological abuse at the hands of his captors.

Franklin Foer‘s essay –The Existential Heroism of the Israeli Hostages – was written about Hostage. His closing paragraph eloquently summarizes how hope can persist even in our darkest days. 

“This weekend, on the cusp of the release of the last 20 living hostages in Gaza, Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner stood in the plaza in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, dubbed Hostages Square, to address a jubilant throng. He called the hostages’ release the end of a nightmare. In reality, the nightmare never ends; trauma that endures for generations is the surest outcome of this war. But we also know that the hostages are going home, living proof that hope can persist even in the darkest hole.”

Eli Sharabi is a former hostage who survived 491 days in Hamas captivity after being abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, 2023. Since his release, Sharabi has become a global advocate for the remaining hostages. He has met with world leaders, including former US President Donald Trump, spoken at the United Nations, and shared his story with audiences around the world. His memoir, *Hostage*, which is the first published account by a released Israeli hostage, quickly became a number one bestseller in Hebrew and the fastest-selling book in Israeli history.

Born in Tel Aviv to Yemenite and Moroccan parents, Sharabi moved to Be’er Sheva as a teenager. He later married Lianne, a British woman, and they have two daughters, Noiya and Yahel, aged sixteen and thirteen. A longtime resident of Be’eri, Sharabi worked as the Kibbutz’s business manager and served as the Chief Financial Officer for Be’eri Printing and other private companies in Israel. He continues to work tirelessly as a leader in the campaign for the release of captives.

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!

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!

“North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther” by Ethan Rutherford is a finalist for the fiction category of the 2025 National Book Award. With one foot firmly planted in the traditional sea-voyage narrative, and another in a blazing mythos of its own, this debut novel looks unsparingly at the cost of environmental exploitation and predation, and in doing so feverishly sings not only of the past, but to the present and future as well.

Setting out from New Bedford in 1878, the crew of the Esther is confident the sea will be theirs: in addition to cruising the Pacific for whales, they intend to hunt the teeming northern grounds before the ice closes. But as they sail to their final destination in the Chukchi Sea, where their captain Arnold Lovejoy has an urgent directive of his own to attend to, their encounters with the natural world become more brutal, harrowing, ghostly, and strange.

Ethan Rutherford‘s fiction has appeared in BOMB, Tin House, Electric Literature, Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, and The Best American Short Stories. He is the author of two story collections–Farthest South (Deep Vellum, 2020) and The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories (Ecco, 2013)–and for these works has been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a finalist for the John Leonard Prize and CLMP’s Firecracker Award, received honorable mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and was the winner of a Minnesota Book Award.

Born in Seattle, Washington, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and now teaches Creative Writing at Trinity College. He lives in Hartford, Connecticut, with his wife and two children.

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“Heart the Lover” by Lily King, the bestselling author of “Writers & Lovers,” is a beautifully intimate novel that explores themes of desire, friendship, and the lasting impact of first love. It renewed my belief that love is the most potent force in the world. Wise and unforgettable, with a delightful connection to “Writers & Lovers,” this is King at her best, solidifying her reputation as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists writing today.

You knew I’d write a book about you someday.

Our narrator has a deep understanding of good love stories—their secrets, subtext, highs, and lows. However, her most incredible love story, which she experienced herself, does not adhere to the conventional rules.

In the fall of her senior year in college, she meets two star students from her 17th-century Literature class: Sam and Yash. These best friends, who live off campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, invite her into their captivating world of academic enthusiasm, quick-witted banter, and lively card games. They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the joys of friendship, love, and her own intellectual ambition. Yet, youthful passion is unpredictable, and before long, she finds herself at the center of a complex and charged triangle. As graduation approaches, the choices made will alter the lives of the three of them forever.

Decades later, the vulnerable days of Jordan’s youth seem comfortably behind her. However, when a surprise visit and unexpected news bring the past crashing into the present, she returns to the world she left behind and must confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self.

Written with the sharp wit and emotional sensitivity that fans and critics of Lily King admire, Heart the Lover is a profoundly moving love story that celebrates literature, forgiveness, and the transformative bonds that shape our lives.

Lily King is a bestselling author on the New York Times list, known for her six novels, including Euphoria and Writers & Lovers, as well as a collection of short stories titled Five Tuesdays in Winter. Her writing has garnered several prestigious awards, including the Kirkus Prize, the New England Book Award for Fiction, the Maine Book Award for Fiction, and a Whiting Award. Her books are read worldwide in twenty-eight different languages. She resides in Portland, Maine.

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!

Today, I began reading Sayaka Murata‘s Vanishing World, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori. This novel, from the author of the bestselling literary sensations Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings, presents a surprising and highly imaginative story set in an alternate version of Japan where sexual relations between married couples have disappeared, and all children are conceived through artificial insemination.

Sayaka Murata has established herself as a remarkable observer of society’s peculiarities, delving into our contemporary world with bizarre and unsettling insights. Her portrayals of a contentedly unmarried retail worker in Convenience Store Woman and a young woman who believes she is an alien in Earthlings have resonated with millions of readers globally. In Vanishing World, Murata takes her vision to a bold new level, envisioning an alternative Japan where attitudes toward sex and procreation diverge significantly from our own.

As a girl, Amane is horrified to learn that her parents “copulated” to conceive her rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. She seeks to escape what she perceives as her mother’s indoctrination into this peculiar “system.” Despite her efforts, Amane’s attractions to both anime characters and real people carry an undeniable sexual weight.

As an adult in a suitably sexless marriage—where sex between married couples is regarded as taboo, akin to incest—Amane and her husband, Saku, decide to relocate to a mysterious new town called Experiment City, or Paradise-Eden. In this community, all children are raised collectively, and every person is considered a mother to all children. Men are beginning to experience pregnancy through artificial wombs that exist outside their bodies, resembling balloons, and children are nameless, referred to simply as “Kodomo-chan.” Will this new world finally cleanse Amane of her strangeness?

Sayaka Murata is the author of several books, including Convenience Store Woman, which won the Akutagawa Prize, Earthlings, and Life Ceremony. Freeman has recognized her as a “Future of New Writing” author, and Vogue Japan has honored her as a Woman of the Year.

Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated works from more than a dozen Japanese writers, including Ryu Murakami. She resides at the foot of a mountain in Eastern Japan.

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I recently started reading “The Heat Will Kill You First” by Jeff Goodell, which delves into the extreme ways our planet is already changing. The book explores how spring is arriving earlier and fall is arriving later and how this will impact our food supply and disease outbreaks. As I have stated in my Action Alert: EPA’s Carbon Rule, the time to act is now.

The book also predicts the consequences of summer days in cities like Chicago and Boston, reaching temperatures as high as 110°F. Goodell explains that heat waves are used only to affect the most vulnerable people, but as they become more intense and familiar, they will affect everyone.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the world is facing a new reality. In California, wildfires are now seasonal, while the Northeast is experiencing less and less snow each winter. Meanwhile, the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets are melting alarmingly. Heat is the primary threat that is driving all other impacts of the climate crisis. As temperatures rise, it exposes weaknesses in our governments, politics, economy, and values.

The basic science is straightforward: If we stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, the global temperature will also stop rising. However, if we wait for 50 years to stop burning them, the temperature will continue to rise, making parts of our planet uninhabitable. The responsibility to act is in our hands. The hotter it gets, the more our underlying issues will surface and expand.

Jeff Goodell has been an award-winning journalist in the field of environmental reporting for several decades. His latest book explains how extreme heat will cause significant changes in the world. The book is an excellent blend of scientific insights and on-the-ground storytelling, and Goodell explores some of the most significant questions surrounding the topic. He reveals that extreme heat is a force we have yet to comprehend fully.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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The novel Commitment by Mona Simpson delves into the complexities of family and duty when a parent falls ill. It sheds light on the significant impact of untreated mental health crises and highlights the under-appreciated role of friends in shaping the lives of children left to their own devices.

A hardworking single mother, Diane Aziz falls into a deep depression after dropping off her oldest son, Walter, at college. Despite her struggles, her closest friend is vital in keeping the family together and their mother’s dreams alive.

This is a story of one family’s struggle to navigate the crisis of their lives, a struggle that may resonate with many readers. Walter discovers a newfound passion for architecture, but financial struggles threaten his academic pursuits. Meanwhile, Lina fights to attend an Ivy League school, and Donny, the youngest sibling, battles a dangerous drug addiction.

As someone with different personal experiences, I still found Commitment to affirm the importance of biological and chosen families.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I started reading Anna Quindlen‘s “After Annie: A Novel” today. Forty years ago, my wife Jan and I used to read Ms. Quindlen’s column “Life in the Thirties” in The New York Times, even if we didn’t have time to read anything else. We clipped and saved each column, which helped us manage getting older with children. I am reading “After Annie,” which is about how love can overcome loss.

Anna Quindlen, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Still Life with Bread Crumbs and One True Thing, is known for her insightful wisdom on family, friendship, and the bonds that unite us. Her latest novel explores the power of love to overcome loss and adversity.

The story centers around the Brown family and their matriarch, Annie. When Annie suddenly passes away, the family is forced to navigate life without their beloved wife, mother, and friend. Bill, Annie’s husband, struggles to cope with the loss, while Annemarie, her best friend, must confront the bad habits she once overcame with Annie’s help. Ali, Annie’s eldest child, must take on new responsibilities to care for her younger brothers and father.

Although Annie is no longer physically present, her memory continues to guide and inspire those who love her. Her voice resonates in their minds, offering them comfort, wisdom, and clarity. Through the power of her love, Annie gives her family the strength they need to move on without her. They learn that even though their beloved Annie is gone, she will always be with them in spirit.

“After Annie” is a poignant and touching story exploring the unanticipated ways adversity can transform our lives. With her signature style that strikes an emotional chord, Quindlen delivers a heartwarming tale about the tenacity of love and how it can triumph over even the most formidable obstacles. This story of hope is a testament to the enduring strength of the human spirit and its ability to rise above life’s challenges. It inspires us to believe in the power of love and its capacity to reshape our lives for the better.

“Watching Over Her,” a novel by the acclaimed French author and Prix Goncourt winner Jean-Baptiste Andrea, is described by The New York Times as a “sprawling fresco and star-crossed love story.” The narrative follows a dwarf and talented sculptor as he reflects on the moments in his life that inspired his mysteriously powerful masterpiece. This book is perfect for readers who enjoyed “Martyr!” and “The Covenant of Water.”

In an Italian monastery, a sculptor named Mimo lies on his deathbed. For decades, he has lived among the monks who watch over his masterpiece, an arresting statue that haunts all who see it. During his final hours, he reveals his life story: his impoverished childhood, brutal apprenticeship, and, most importantly, his meeting with Viola Orsini, the only daughter of a powerful and dangerous aristocratic family.

Mimo and Viola are instantly drawn to one another, viewing themselves as outsiders—Mimo, for his dwarfism, Viola, for her ability to remember everything she has ever read or experienced. Together, they traverse the unrest of the twentieth century, from the rise of fascism to the violence of the world wars. While Mimo becomes a celebrated artist, Viola chases her own dreams of becoming an emancipated woman. Over the decades, they will lose and find each other time and again, but never will they give up on the love they share.

Immersive and full of heart, Mimo’s adventures are ribald and hilarious, challenging conventions of his day. Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s Prix Goncourt–winning novel has captivated audiences worldwide and is now available to readers in English for the first time, thanks to Frank Wynne’s wonderfully vivid translation.

Jean-Baptiste Andrea is a writer, screenwriter, and director. His novel Watching Over Her won the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize. He is also the author of Ma Reine, A Hundred Million Years and a Day, and Devils and Saints.

Frank Wynne is an Irish literary translator, writer, and editor known for his translations of various French and Hispanic authors, including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, Javier Cercas, and Virginie Despentes. Over his career, which has spanned more than twenty-five years, he has won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award twice and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Additionally, he has received the Scott Moncrieff Prize three times and the Premio Valle Inclán twice. Most recently, his translation of “The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild” by Mathias Énard won the 2024 French-American Prize. Wynne has also edited two significant anthologies: “Found in Translation: 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Translated” and “Queer: LGBT Writing from Ancient Times to Yesterday.”

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!

Revolutionary Mothers by Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of American Colonial and Revolutionary History; Women’s History Professor at Baruch College, is one of four books I purchased after my first One Day University Class on February 9, 2019. It should be required reading!

The book explains how women of the Revolution were most active at home, organizing boycotts of British goods, raising funds for the fledgling nation, and managing the family business while struggling to maintain a modicum of normalcy as husbands, brothers, and fathers died.

It was not just the men who fought on the front lines, as in the story of Margaret Corbin, who was crippled for life when she took her husband’s place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth. She explains the mystery of Molly Pitcher (she was not a person but a group of women), camp followers, women who spied for their country, Loyalist women, and the impact on African American and Native women.

This intelligent and comprehensive history brings these forgotten stories to their rightful place in the struggle for American independence. Dr. Birkin also highlights how their efforts set the stage for the continuing campaign for gender equality.

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