The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas

Catalina desperately needs a date to her sister’s wedding. Especially since her lie about her American boyfriend has spiraled out of control. Now everyone she knows–including her ex and his fiancé–will be there. She only has four weeks to find someone willing to cross the Atlantic and aid in her deception. Enter Aaron–her tall, handsome, condescending colleague–who surprisingly offers to step in. She’d rather refuse; never has there been a more aggravating man. But Catalina is desperate…

Enemies to Lovers; Fake Relationship

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

After her sister is killed in an air battle versus aliens, young Zetian avenges her death and becomes an Iron Widow, a much-feared kind of female pilot.

Vengeance is Mine; Women of Steel

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

In the early 1960s, chemist and single mother Elizabeth Zott, the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show due to her revolutionary skills in the kitchen, uses this opportunity to dare women to change the status quo.

Misogyny; Strong Women

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years-from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives-the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness-are inextricable from the history playing out around them.

Family Saga; Thought-provoking

Verity by Colleen Hoover

Lowen is a struggling writer when she is hired by Jeremy Crawford to complete the remaining books in a successful series for his injured wife, author Verity Crawford. Lowen sorts through Verity’s notes, but finds an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended anyone to read. In it are bone-chilling admissions, including the recollection of the night their family was forever altered. At first Lowen keeps the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, but eventually realizes that a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love his wife…

Toxic Relationships; Menacing

Lie With Me by Phillippe Besson

A man passing through the French village of his youth revisits the passionate and secret love affair he had with another boy when they were teens after seeing someone who strongly resembles his long lost lover. Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back at the relationship he’s never forgotten, a hidden affair with a gorgeous boy named Thomas during their last year of high school.

Coming-of-age; Reflective

When We Collided by Emery Lord

Can seventeen-year-old Jonah save his family restaurant from ruin, his mother from her sadness, and his danger-seeking girlfriend Vivi from herself?

Dealing with Mental Illness; Emotionally Intense

Before The Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

At a century-old Tokyo coffee shop rumored to offer patrons the chance to travel back in time, four customers reevaluate their formative life choices.

Time Slip; Magical Realism

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Patroclus, an awkward young prince, follows Achilles into war, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they have learned, everything they hold dear. And that, before he is ready, he will be forced to surrender his friend to the hands of Fate. Set during the Trojan War.

Men and Women in Love and War; Lyrical

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

The great-granddaughter of Iran’s last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists describes growing up in Tehran in a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contradictions between public and private life.

Autobiography; Thought-provoking

A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder by Holly Jackson

The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it. Almost everyone. Having grown up in the small town that was consumed by the crime, Pippa Fitz-Adeleke chooses the case as the topic for her final project. But when Pip starts uncovering secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden, what starts out as a project begins to become Pip’s dangerous reality…

Twists and Turns; Engaging

This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron

Teenaged Briseis, who possesses a supernatural power over plants, even poisonous ones, inherits a dilapidated estate in rural New York and must protect herself and her family from centuries-old secrets that threaten their lives.

Paranormal; Atmospheric

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Agreeing to a holiday escape to the country, literary agent Nora keeps running into a bookish, hardheaded, arrogant editor she knows from Manhattan, and wishes she didn’t, even as she discovers they have more in common than previously thought.

Enemies to Lovers; Rom-Com

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

A transfer student from a small town in California, Richard Papen is determined to affect the ways of his Hampden College peers, and he begins his intense studies under the tutelage of eccentric Julian Morrow.

Complex; Atmospheric

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

A stunning first novel about two young Black artists in London falling in and out of love by a new literary virtuoso, and finalist for the BBC Short Story Award, twenty-six-year old writer and photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson.

Lyrical; Complex