Three Books I'm Reading Now, 8/4/25 Edition

The Books I'm Reading Now

I'm listening to literary fiction with a story within a story that's been on my to-read list for years; I'm reading a decades-spanning story of a Northern California family after a tragic loss; and I'm reading a novel about a commune whose balance is abruptly shaken when an outsider ventures inside.

What are you reading, bookworms?

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01 Trust by Hernan Diaz

Hernan Diaz's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Trust has been on my to-read list for multiple years, and I'm finally diving in.

In 1920s New York, Benjamin Rask is a ruthless, outrageously successful Wall Street tycoon, and his beloved wife Helen is the daughter of quirky intellectual aristocrats. They have exceeded any imaginable measure of success and wealth, and their elite financial position and power has in turn catapulted them to the peaks of social status.

But dark secrets lie behind their intriguing success. Diaz's novel explores multiple versions of the couple's story through various points of view, which together present fascinating questions about the true story of two disparate personalities, their marriage, and their intertwined success.

Diaz is also the author of In the Distance.

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02 Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven

When Sally Samuelson was eight, her idolized golden-boy older brother Ellis went missing after his high school graduation. The family located him in Bug Hollow, a Northern California community where he was living his best life in a last-gasp counterculture house with a free-spirit of a new girlfriend. After pushing him to return home and head to college, he died in a freak accident.

Bug Hollow spans decades, tracking grief and then the life paths of Ellis's sisters, his parents, and his former girlfriend. Lives intersect unexpectedly, disappointments and shortfalls become clear, secrets emerge, and joy is sometimes elusive.

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03 The Colony by Annika Norlin

In Annika Norlin' novel The Colony, Emelie is looking for an escape from her bustling city life in Sweden and takes to the woods for a few days. She settles into the peaceful patterns of nature and camping near where her grandmother once lived.

She spies from a distance the comings and goings of a group of seven people, some young and some older--hugging trees, singing in a circle, and playing seemingly strictly prescribed roles within the group.

They are led by the charismatic Sara, and when Emelie meets the group, her entrance into the dynamic stirs up questions, disturbances, long-held resentments, and wonder about the outside world, all of which threaten to destroy the isolated colony they've evolved into over a period of years.

This is Annika Norlin's first novel.