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by Sheila Sundar (2025)

Vega Gopalan, still grieving her sister’s death, leaves South India for graduate school in New York. As she navigates academia, immigrant life, and single motherhood, Vega grapples with identity, belonging, and the meaning of home. Habitations is a sharply observed debut about love, loss, and the complex ties that bind women to family, culture, and self.

by Tom Franklin (2011)

In a small Mississippi town, two former childhood friends—one Black, one white—are forced to confront their shared past when a local girl goes missing. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter blends crime and Southern gothic fiction in a haunting story of friendship, secrets, and redemption. Tom Franklin delivers a powerful, atmospheric novel about the lingering weight of choices and the possibility of forgiveness.

by Dustin Parsons (2018)

In Exploded View, Dustin Parsons blends lyric essays with diagrams and illustrations to explore memory, fatherhood, and identity. Drawing on his childhood surrounded by mechanical manuals and his father’s hands-on creativity, Parsons uses “exploded view” graphics to reflect on raising his own biracial sons. This inventive memoir fuses the technical with the emotional, offering a unique, visual narrative about how we understand family, craft, and the complexity of our inner lives.

By Beth Anne Fennelly (2017)

Heating & Cooling gathers 52 sharp, poetic micro-memoirs that capture the humor, heartache, and oddities of everyday life. Blending the brevity of poetry with the honesty of nonfiction, Beth Ann Fennelly crafts a vivid portrait from fleeting yet powerful moments—by turns funny, tender, and deeply human.

By Michael Wang (2022)

In 1930s China, shy gunsmith Ping falls for the bold, ideological Yong. After a tragic act of sabotage kills his best friend, Ping joins Yong on the Red Army’s Long March, their growing bond shadowed by guilt. When Yong becomes pregnant, they leave their son behind, hoping to reunite after the war. Years later, the boy enlists in the Japanese army to find them. Lost in the Long March is a haunting, intimate story of love, sacrifice, and the personal costs buried within a nation’s history.

by Matt Bondurant (2022)

Set in the aftermath of the 1900 Galveston hurricane, Oleander City follows six-year-old Hester—the sole survivor of a decimated orphanage—through a city in chaos. As the Red Cross battles disaster and vigilante violence erupts, a legendary boxing match between Jack Johnson and “Chrysanthemum Joe” Choynski offers hope and heroism. Based on true events, this powerful novel weaves together survival, justice, and the rise of an American sports icon.

by William Boyle (2025)

In 1986 Brooklyn, Risa kills her abusive husband in a moment of desperation. With her sister Giulia and a trusted friend, she hides the crime—hoping to move on. Over the next eighteen years, the secret haunts their lives in the tight-knit Gravesend neighborhood. Saint of the Narrows Street is a gripping, character-driven novel about loyalty, guilt, and the lasting impact of a single, life-altering decision.

by Melissa Ginsburg (2021)

Fourteen-year-old Ava, reeling from her mother’s death, is sent to live with Lane, the eccentric grandmother she barely knows. A reclusive artist lost in memory and pot smoke, Lane is shaken by Ava’s arrival, which stirs painful reminders of her estranged daughter. Set against the heavy heat of New Orleans, this haunting novel explores grief, art, and the fragile bond between two women trying to make sense of the past.