All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr (2014)
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Bryn Greenwood (2016)
A beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people and the hard-won relationship that elevates them above the Midwestern meth lab backdrop of their lives. A powerful novel you won’t soon forget, Bryn Greenwood’s All the Ugly and Wonderful Things challenges all we know and believe about love.
An American Marriage
Tayari Jones (2018)
This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.
The Death of Vivek Oji
Akwaeke Emezi (2020)
Propulsively readable, teeming with unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel of family and friendship that challenges expectations—a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader.
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
John Boyne (2017)
From the beloved New York Times bestselling author, a sweeping, heartfelt saga about the course of one man’s life, beginning and ending in post-war Ireland. In this, Boyne’s most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart’s Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.
A Knock at Midnight
Brittany K. Barnett (2020)
A “powerful and devastating” (The Washington Post) call to free those buried alive by America’s legal system, and an inspiring true story about unwavering belief in humanity—from a gifted young lawyer and important new voice in the movement to transform the system. Brittany’s riveting memoir is at once a coming-of-age story and a powerful evocation of what it takes to bring hope and justice to a system built to resist them both.
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee (2017)
In this gorgeous, page-turning saga, four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan, exiled from a home they never knew. Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee’s complex and passionate characters–strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis–survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.
Salvage the Bones
Jesmyn Ward (2011)
The National Book Award-winning novel from the author of Let Us Descend and Men We Reaped―a gritty but tender story of family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. As the twelve days that make up the novel’s framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family–motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce–pulls itself up to face another day. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward (2017)
A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and Jesmyn Ward’s second National Book Award winner, this majestic, stirring, and widely praised novel is an intimate portrait of three generations of a family, the story of a family on a journey through rural Mississippi, and an epic tale of hope and struggle.
We Were Once a Family
Roxanna Asgarian (2023)
The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children―and a searing indictment of the American foster care system.
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