Saara El-Arifi's Cleopatra offers a picture of a feminist, cutthroat, passionate, dedicated woman who is a mother as well as a ruler; she is a lover and a deadly enemy; and her singular focus on Egypt and its future leads her in all ways. This is not the story of how I died. But how I lived. My knowledge of Egypt is limited, but my interest was sparked by one of my favorite childhood reads, The Egypt Game . In Saara El-Arifi's Cleopatra , the author tells from Cleopatra's poi

Kitasei's stark dystopian science fiction sets sisters adrift in a future world where oceans have risen and consumed much of the earth. Leaving a stressful daily life of scarcity, two sisters embark on a far-fetched rescue mission for the third in this messy, danger-filled journey that tests each of their mettle. In a near-future world reeling from environmental catastrophe, oceans have risen and destroyed the cities along the world's coasts. Skipper and Carmen are sisters ge

The many points of view within Allegra Goodman's novel made it feel somewhat disjointed, but the peeks into each character's internal struggles, motivations, and emotions coalesced into final gathering scenes that felt poignant and hopeful for individual characters and for the family as a whole. This Is Not About Us is poignant and wryly funny. Allegra Goodman's This Is Not About Us  is a story of an extended Jewish-American family. The three matriarchs are split by a death

Bug Hollow tracks the Samuelson family from an idyllic mid-1970s Northern California summer through a tragedy that upends already-tenuous...

Knapp's novel explores three life paths for a set of characters, all set into motion by the naming of the youngest child--whimsical,...

Carr's newest novel is a captivating series of character studies within a tightly knit Irish seaside community in the late 1900s. While...

Run for the Hills is the most recent Kevin Wilson gem; his quirky characters are irresistible, and his heartwarming story is messy, strange, and lovely as a chosen-family element overshadows past tragedies and disappointments. I'm a Kevin Wilson fan, and I'm here for all of his work. His wonderfully eccentric characters and story scenarios might seem self-consciously zany in another writer's hands, but in Wilson's novels, they allow for skillful, delightful, unexpected revel

Jennifer Weiner's newest novel offers a behind-the-scenes peek at the music business, songwriting, and the pressures of fame, layered...

In Hall's Broken Country , characters do their duties, find wondrous love, feel heartbreak, suffer tragedies, sometimes act impulsively,...

This middle-grade writing collaboration inserts a clever young protagonist into the behind-the-scenes World War II British codebreaking...

Much of The Safekeep feels claustrophobic, quiet, and hopeless, but unexpected shifts late in the story turn accepted histories on their...

Blue Sisters explores three surviving sisters' messy paths into and out of grief after the loss of their fourth sister Nicky. They make...

In the first book of Blake Crouch's haunting mystery trilogy, secret agent Ethan Burke tries to grasp the shifts in time, widespread...

Intermezzo is one of my favorite Rooney novels yet, exploring complicated families, grief, unconventional relationships, forgiveness, and...

I loved this summer-camp setting, the slow build of mystery in two timelines, the privilege and working class disparities, the eventual...

The author of Disappearing Earth offers a story of bleak prospects, poverty and illness, a sister bond with fault lines ready to crack...

The Whalebone Theatre begins with offbeat children's performances on a lazy, decadent English estate in the 1920s and builds to the...

Lex Croucher's queer medieval rom-com--the author's debut young-adult novel--is an absolute gem; it's full of excellent banter and lots...

Schwab returns to the world of the four Londons in the first of a wonderfully paced new series featuring established characters, their...

Emily Tesh's debut novel is a space opera about war, duty, brainwashing, escaping limitations, and reinventing oneself--with fascinating...