Luna: New Moon is the perfect read for those killing time before the next Pierce Brown release. It's got family-dominated space societies, backstabbing, and a cast of morally complex characters. Am I describing Game of Thrones in space? Guess you better read to find out.
Caleb
Following up on the pregnancy guide Expecting Better, Oster points her "what does this study actually say and how much does this really matter?" analysis at parenting.
Sarah
Because there's a lovable grouch in everyone's life, and because sometimes we're the lovable grouch.
Stacey
A quiet, poetic meditation, the sort of book you slip to a friend in need of some peace.
Marika
Mikhat Kamal arrives in France from Nablus in 1914 to study medicine. By the time he returns to Palestine, he has been subtly & indelibly changed by his experience. The next 20 years of the story takes him through currents of early 20th century Arab nationalism, Jewish settlement, & British rule in the years before Israeli independence, all through the lens of his dominating father's pressure to marry &join the family business. The writing is expansive & poignant, the story both intimate & wide-ranging.
David
I love cooking, but I HATE shopping for food, so this cookbook has saved/changed my life. This has become an important part of Wednesday Night Dinner at my house: cook time under half an hour, cost under $20, and several meals worth of food that tastes as fancy as eating out! Try the Flaky Pastry Chicken Pesto (pg 114)!
Caleb
From the queen of The Netherlands to the Earl of Suffolk, Paratroopers to civilians turned underground rebels, traitors to double agents, the victories and defeats, triumphs and tragedies of the resistance during WW2.
John
April is National Poetry Month! Celebrate it with Fatimah Asghar's IF THEY COME FOR US. I started marking my favorite poems and eventually gave up when I realized every page was dog-eared. This collection entwines poems about the India/Pakistan Partition and Asghar's family history with personal explorations of queerness, the loss of her parents, and growing up as a Pakistani Muslim girl in post-9/11 America. There's truly something in here for everyone.
Kate
This is a beautifully written book about two young people struggling with anxiety, relationships, and social pressures. Set in Ireland, the book follows the on-again, off-again relationship of Connell and Marianne as they meet in high school and attend college together. Sally Rooney nails the millennial voice here.
Heather
I love the X-Men. But honestly superheroing is not actually a practical way to make the world hate and fear you less. This is the X-Men team I never knew I always wanted, a group of people trying to save the world with compassion and truth rather than punching. Yes, some punching happens, but it is never presented as a solution to their problems.
Plus, they reprogram a mutant-hunting sentinel robot and paint rainbows on it. What's not to love?
Shana
We Play A Game is intimate, poignant, playful, confessional, hilarious, strange, searing, and clever -- often all in the same poem. Duy Doan writes about being Vietnamese-American, about the Tootsie Pop owl and soccer, about lovers and prayer, language and family. Winner of the Yale Prize (2017), this book was recently named a Lambda finalist in the bisexual poetry category.
Catherine
Sea People is a fascinating historical and anthropological detective story about the peoples that settled the wide expanse of Pacific islands we today call Polynesia. It’s a book as much about how we’ve learned their story as well as the epic itself of how these lands were populated.
Dale
A moving portrait of an extraordinary man, one who could have found his place in the pages of Plutarch. Amidst his “nation of inconsistencies, completely made up of inconsistencies,” Douglass' story endures through the work of a historian writing at the height of his powers.
James
The Hole is a cross between Blood Meridian, Train Dreams, and Jean Genet’s works set in prisons. Yes, Revueltas fits all of that into into this little explosive seed. Reading it is about a four hour experience; one hour to read it and three hours to stare at a wall recovering from it.
Josh
N.K. Jemisin may be the best speculative fiction author writing today. Pick this one up if you've read her others--or if you haven't.
Rebecca