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Book Club Kits by Title

Contemporary Fiction

28 Summers
Elin Hilderbrand

Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year, 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches the lives of two people, as well as the lives of the people they love.

32 Candles
Ernessa T. Carter

The deftly wry, deeply romantic story of Davie Jones -- an "ugly duckling" from small-town Mississippi with a voice like Tina Turner, who escapes to Los Angeles to try to make it big, and risks losing her soul along the way to finding her fairy tale ending.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Sherman Alexie

A humorous, gritty, autobiographical novel of a budding cartoonist, who leaves his troubled school on a Spokane Indian reservation to attend an all-white town school.

Afterlife
Julia Alvarez

Antonia Vega has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves, but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words. Now she questions: How do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves?

The Age of Miracles
Karen Thompson Walker

As the slowing down of the earth's rotation portends a coming apocalypse, Julia also faces adolescent struggles with friendships, first love, and family problems in this combination coming-of-age and science fiction novel.

Agent Running in the Field
John Le Carré

Set in London in 2018, this thriller follows a twenty-six year old solitary figure who, in a desperate attempt to resist the political turbulence swirling around him, makes connections that will take him down a dangerous path. 

All the Sinners Bleed
S. A. Cosby

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. But after years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface. Then a year to the day after Titus's election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus's deputies.

All This Could Be Different
Sarah Thankam Mathews

An electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself--a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America, set in Milwaukee.

All We Ever Wanted
Emily Giffin

Three very different people must choose between their families and their most deeply held values when one devastating photo causes scandal in an already divided community in this timely exploration of wealth, privilege, and power.
 

American Dervish
Ayad Akhtar

This coming-of-age story centers on young Hayat Shah, a Pakistani-American living in Milwaukee. His family'’s dynamics, and their various levels of engagement with Islam, are at the center of the novel.

An American Marriage
Tayari Jones

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy, the living embodiment of the New South, are settling into the routine of their life together when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the lives of of people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control, who must reckon with the past while moving forward--with hope and pain--into the future.

Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A young woman experiences racism for the first time after she leaves her native Nigeria, which is under oppressive military dictatorship, to attend college in the United States. Meanwhile, her boyfriend lives a miserable life in London as an illegal immigrant.

Anxious People
Fredrik Backman

Taken hostage by a failed bank robber while attending an open house, eight anxiety-prone strangers--including a redemption-seeking bank director, two couples who would fix their marriages, and a plucky octogenarian--discover their unexpected common traits.

Ape House
Sara Gruen

In this novel of drama and satire, the bombing of the Great Ape Language Lab and the subsequent removal of their bonobo apes to a new life on reality TV brings together married reporter John Thigpen and primate-loving scientist Isabel Duncan.

Apples Never Fall
Liane Moriarty

The Delaney family is a communal foundation. Stan and Joy are the envy of all of their friends. One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy's door. Everyone will wonder what exactly went on in that household after Savannah entered their lives that night. Because now Joy is missing, no one knows where Savannah is, and the Delaneys are reexamining their parents' marriage and their shared family history with fresh, frightened eyes.

The Art of Fielding: A Novel
Chad Harbach

Hank Skirmshander looks to be a rising baseball star, but his talents take a serious dive while playing for Westish College.  His one errant throw impacts the lives of five people in unexpected ways.

The Art of Racing in the Rain
Garth Stein

A tale of love, loyalty, child custody, death and betrayal with parallels to the sport of auto racing... narrated by a dog.

Ask Again, Yes
Mary Beth Keane

A lifelong friendship and love blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart, both children of rookie NYPD cops and neighbors in the suburbs. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next thirty years.

Bad Axe County
John Galligan

In this atmospheric thriller, the first female sheriff in rural Bad Axe County, Wisconsin, searches for a missing girl, battles local drug dealers, and seeks the truth about the death of her parents.
 

The Bean Trees
Barbara Kingsolver

Young, independent Taylor heads west from Kentucky to Tucson, seeking a life change. Young, independent Taylor heads west from Kentucky to Tucson, seeking a life change.

The Bee Sting
Paul Murray

A portrait of postcrash Ireland, a tragicomic family saga, and a dazzling story about the struggle to be good at the end of the world that asks where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil--can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written--is there still time to find a happy ending?

Before the Fall
Noah Hawley

One foggy night, a private plane takes off from Martha’s Vineyard.  Sixteen minutes later, it plunges straight into the sea.  Only two survive.  Was it an accident?  Murder?  Just a simple twist of fate?  As each of the passengers’ stories is revealed, the answer becomes more elusive. 

Before We Were Yours
Lisa Wingate

Based on one of America's most notorious real-life scandals in which the director of a Memphis adoption organization kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country, Wingate's wrenching and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though our paths can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

Big Summer
Jennifer Weiner

Six years after the fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when Drue Cavanaugh walks back into her life, looking as lovely and successful as ever, with a massive favor to ask. Daphne hasn't spoken one word to Drue in all this time--she doesn't even hate-follow her ex-best friend on social media--so when Drue asks if she will be her maid-of-honor at the society wedding of the summer, Daphne is rightfully speechless. Drue was always the one who had everything--except the ability to hold onto friends.

Birnam Wood
Eleanor Catton

An abandoned farm cut off from the Korowai Pass on New Zealand's South Island by a landslide is a thrilling opportunity for Birnam Wood, a guerilla gardening group that grows crops anywhere they can; however, American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the remote land. After he buys it to begin construction on an end-times bunker and catches Mira, the group’s leader, trespassing on the property, he’s willing to make a deal with the group to share the space... but at what cost? And can they trust him?

Black Cake
Charmaine Wilkerson

Two estranged siblings must set aside their differences to deal with their mother's death and her hidden past--a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake. 

Black Leopard, Red Wolf
Marlon James

In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. 

Blackouts
Justin Torres

Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book--Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns--and its devastating history.
 

Blacktop Wasteland
S.A. Cosby

A gritty, voice-driven thriller about a former getaway driver who thought he had escaped the criminal life who is pulled back in by race, poverty, and his own former life of crime. 

Blessings
Anna Quindlen

Found in a box on the doorstep of the richest woman in town, a newborn baby brings the parallel worlds of 'upstairs' and 'downstairs' together.

The Boy in the Shadows
Carl-Johan Vallgren

When Joel, whose then-7-year-old brother was kidnapped in a Stockholm subway station in 1970, suddenly goes missing, his wife reaches out to an old friend for help. Danny Katz, a brilliant computer programmer and recovering heroin addict, as well as a divorced father of two young girls, begins to dig behind the digital veil in search of Joel, even though the investigation quickly interferes with his duties as a parent.

Bread and Butter
Michelle Wildgen

Madison author Wildgen tackles sibling rivalry and the cutthroat world of restaurants when brothers Britt, Leo and Harry open rival restaurants in a small town near Philadelphia.  

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz

Sweet ghetto nerd Oscar dreams of being a famous writer… and of falling in love. He may not get either wish, due to a curse that’s dominated his Dominican family for generations. A Pulitzer Prize winner.

Brush
Penn Anderson

A glittering new adaptation of an ancient folktale, Brush is the story of two strangers. Chris is a successful entrepreneur who gets his hands on a magic paintbrush. Jo is a woman with secrets who lives above her quaint store on Main Street. Their lives intersect during one transformative year, in a mysterious journey punctuated by delightful detours. (All copies of this title are in Large Print format.)

The Burgess Boys
Elizabeth Strout

Two brothers left their hometown in Maine to become New York City lawyers. One is now a hotshot corporate attorney, the other works for Legal Aid. When their sister in Maine needs help, both go back to assist—and secrets large and small are revealed.

A Burning
Megha Majumdar

An electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise-- to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies -- and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.

Call Me By Your Name
André Aciman

Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them.

Calling for a Blanket Dance
Oscar Hokeah

A young Native American boy in a splintering family grasps for stability and love, making all the wrong choices until he finds a space of his own.

Carry the One
Carol Anshaw

A young girl is killed in a car accident following Carmen's wedding. For 25 years after Carmen, her family and friends lives head in a variety of trajectories-- yet with each person carrying an emotional burden about that night.

The Cemetery of Untold Stories
Julia Alvarez

When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she turns it into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace, but they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives.

The Chai House
Priti Srivastava

The Chai House is a haunting debut novel by a Madison-area author that explores the complexity of community when individuals are unaware of their own roles in upholding systems of oppression. Swati has spent her entire life trying to live up to her family's expectations of her. She has learned it is easiest to just do what is asked of her, without resistance; a skill that has helped her survive in the early years of the Knights, an authoritarian regime. When her mother has a request for Swati, she agrees to it as it is the only way to help her young niece have some sort of future.

Chain-Gang All-Stars
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel.

Challenger Deep
Neal Shusterman

A teenage boy struggling with schizophrenia in this deeply powerful and personal novel from one of today's most admired writers for teens.

Chemistry
Weike Wang

A luminous coming-of-age novel about a young female scientist who must recalibrate her life when her academic career goes off track. She's tormented by her failed research--and reminded of her delays by her peers, her advisor, and most of all by her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of excellence. But there's another, nonscientific question looming: the marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend.

Clock Dance
Anne Tyler

Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life. In 1967, she is a schoolgirl coping with her mother's sudden disappearance. In 1977, she is a college coed considering a marriage proposal. In 1997, she is a young widow trying to piece her life back together. And in 2017, she yearns to be a grandmother, yet the prospect is dimming. So, when Willa receives a phone call from a stranger, telling her that her son's ex-girlfriend has been shot, she drops everything and flies across the country to Baltimore.

Cloud Cuckoo Land
Anthony Doerr

Narratives from the past, present, and future intertwine in this soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope, and a book.

Commonwealth
Ann Patchett

A kiss at a christening party leads to the dissolution of marriages and the creation of a new blended family, the repercussions of which are traced through fifty years.  

Crescent
Diana Abu-Jaber

An Iraqi-American is the chef at a small Los Angeles café, where Arab-Americans come to feel at home. A folkloric family story is interwoven with this contemporary tale of love, food and home.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Mark Haddon

An autistic teen narrates this story of his adventure trying to solve a mystery surrounding the discovery of the murdered corpse of his neighbor’s pet poodle.

Cutting for Stone
Abraham Verghese

Darius the Great is Not Okay
Adib Khorram

Clinically-depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life in this young adult novel.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway
Ruth Ware

On a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person--but also that the cold-reading skills she's honed as a tarot card reader might help her claim the money. Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased...where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the center of it. 
 

Demon Copperhead
Barbara Kingsolver

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this novel inspired by Dickens’ David Copperfield tells the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. 
 

Detransition, Baby
Torrey Peters

The lives of three women--transgender and cisgender--collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires.

Digging to America
Anne Tyler

A humorous exploration of personal relations and cultural clashes between two families. The traditional American Donaldsons and the Iranian-American Yazdans adopt Korean girls at the same time, with different plans and parenting styles.

The Dive from Clausen's Pier
Ann Packer

A college-aged woman is faced with difficult decisions when her boyfriend dives off a pier and becomes a quadriplegic. Set in Madison, with many small details local readers will love.

The Double Bind
Chris Bohjalian

A literary thriller with a tricky, intriguing premise and a fictional backdrop from The Great Gatsby begins with the attempted rape and murder of a young woman bicyclist on a rural Vermont road and involves the mysterious past of a homeless man.

Driftless
David Rhodes

Narrated with humor, suspense, and empathy, a diverse cast of characters in small town in Wisconsin get entangled in family secrets, legal battles with a corrupt milk cooperative, gambling, dogfighting, and a miracle cure, amongst other things.

Early Morning Riser
Katherine Heiny

Jane loves most things about Duncan, aside from running into his many old girlfriends everywhere in Boyne City. While she may be able to come to terms with dating the world's most prolific seducer of women, any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash in this alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
Balli Kaur Jaswal

After her father's death, Nikki, a modern young Punjabi woman, takes a job teaching creative writing. The Sikh widows who show up expect an English literacy course. But Nikki never expected what she would learn from them. This lively, sexy, and thought-provoking debut novel is about community, friendship, and women's lives at all ages.

Every Last One
Anna Quindlen

A suburban mother raising three teenage children and running a landscaping business has an ordinary life with ordinary problems until the family is engulfed in a violent tragedy.

Every Summer After
Carley Fortune

Five summers to fall in love. One moment to fall apart. A weekend to get it right. A magazine writer has to make a choice when she returns to the lake she grew up on, and to the man she thought she'd never have to live without.

Everybody's Fool
Richard Russo

In the Rust Belt town of North Bath, New York, police chief Doug Raymer is convinced he’s ‘everyone’s fool’ as he grapples with the revelation his now-dead wife cheated on him, engages in an ongoing feud with the curmudgeon Sully Sullivan and otherwise tries to maintain order in a town filled with down-on-their-luck but lovable characters. 

Family Lore
Elizabeth Acevedo

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake--a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led--her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila. But Flor isn't the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.

Fates and Furies
Lauren Groff

Lotto and Mathilde’s marriage seems charmed, beginning with a whirlwind romance and withstanding years of poor idealism to yield financial and artistic success.  But every story has two sides, and Groff masterfully portrays a complex marriage, first from Lotto’s perspective and then a very different version from Mathilde’s point of view.

Finlay Donovan is Killing It
Elle Cosimano

The first in a witty, fast-paced mystery series following struggling suspense novelist and single mom Finlay Donovan, whose fiction treads dangerously close to the truth as she becomes tangled in real-life murder investigations. 

Fleishman is in Trouble
Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Toby Fleishman thought he knew what to expect when he and his wife of almost fifteen years separated: weekends and every other holiday with the kids, some residual bitterness, the occasional moment of tension in their co-parenting negotiations. He could not have predicted that one day, in the middle of his summer of sexual emancipation, Rachel would just drop their two children off at his place and simply not return.

Flight Behavior
Barbara Kingsolver

After witnessing a massive congregation of monarch butterflies, a young Tennessee farm wife sparks a debate between science and faith that leads her into a wider world than she knew before.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
Fannie Flagg

The novel on which the popular movie was based, this account of four women's lives in the Depression-era South is humorous, while also threaded with the more serious themes of racism, feminism, and domestic violence.

From Hardship to Hope: Crossing the Great Divides of Age, Race, Wealth, Equity, and Health
Judith Gwinn Adrian and Jaylin M. Stueber

A fictionalized autobiography of two women and the parallel worlds in which they live. The work asks us to consider where our strongly held beliefs and assumptions come from and the influence they have on our lives.

Fruit of the Drunken Tree
Ingrid Rojas Contreras

A mesmerizing debut set in Colombia at the height Pablo Escobar's violent reign about a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them both.
 

A Gate at the Stairs
Lorrie Moore

In this pre- and post-9/11 novel Tassie, a student at thinly veiled UW-Madison, hires on as a nanny for the owner of a pricey French restaurant who adopts a mixed-race child.

The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins

Rachel, whose life has spiraled into depression and alcoholism, becomes intrigued by a couple she dubs Jess and Jason who she spots from her commuter train every day.  One day as she is passing their home, she sees Jess kissing a man who is not her husband.  Shortly after, Jess disappears entirely.  Told from the intersecting perspectives of Rachel, Jess and Anna, Jess’s neighbor, an intriguing thriller unfolds.  But who is telling the truth?

Girl, Woman, Other
Bernardine Evaristo

From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through Britain and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . .

The Glass Hotel
Emily St. John Mandel

A captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it.

The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt

In this literary novel, a 13-year-old-boy survives a terrorist explosion at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which kills his mother.  He then finds himself the owner of a seventeenth century Dutch painting called “The Goldfinch,” and drawn into the dark and mysterious underworld of art dealing. 

Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn

On the fifth anniversary of a seemingly ideal couple, wife Amy disappears and her husband Nick becomes the chief suspect. The novel alternates between Nick's point of view and Amy's (via her diary entries), engaging the reader in which version of events is accurate-- if any.

The Great Alone
Kristin Hannah

Leni and her troubled family embark on a new way of life in Alaska’s wilderness in 1974 – hoping this is finally the solution for her troubled POW father. In Alaska, Leni and her family are tested and when change comes to their small community her father’s anger threatens to explode and divide the town. (from LibraryReads)
 

The Guncle
Steven Rowley

A warm and deeply funny novel about a once-famous gay sitcom star whose unexpected family tragedy leaves him with his niece and nephew for the summer.

The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood

This 1986 classic has found a new audience through a popular adaptation on Hulu. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate "Handmaids" under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred's persistent memories of life in the "time before" and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. 

Happy Place
Emily Henry

A couple who broke up months ago pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends. 

Hell of a Book
Jason Mott

Full title: Hell of a Book, or the Altogether Factual, Wholly Bona Fide Story of a Big Dreams, Hard Luck, American-Made Mad Kid

Hello Beautiful
Ann Napolitano

William Waters, who grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him, finds his life changed when he meets spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano and her three sisters in his freshman year of college in this poignant and engrossing family story that pays homage to Louisa May Alcott's timeless classic, Little Women.
 

Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi

This novel follows the fate of two half-sisters born in eighteenth century Ghana, and their descendants.  One sister marries the British head of a slave trading colony, while the other is captured in the same colony and sold into American slavery. 

Homeland Elegies
Ayad Akhtar

A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

Honey and Spice
Bolu Babalola

Kiki Banjo has just made a huge mistake: she kissed Malakai Korede, the guy she just publicly denounced. They're soon embroiled in a fake relationship to try and salvage their reputations and save their futures.

Horse
Geraldine Brooks

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.

The House of Broken Angels
Luis Alberto Urrea

In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. This indelible portrait of a complex family reminds us of what it means to be the first generation and to live two lives across one border.
 

The House in the Cerulean Sea
TJ Klune

Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He's tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world. Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn. And his secrets will come to light.

House Rules : a novel
Jodi Piccoult

Jacob Hunt, a teen with Asperger’s syndrome, becomes a suspect in a terrible murder which shines the spotlight on his family.  This medical courtroom drama deals with issues of what it means to be different, how autism affects the family, and how the legal system can fail people who cannot communicate well.

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
Julia Alvarez

Interwoven stories of four Latina sisters chronicling their assimilation into the United States and their visits back to the Dominican Republic.

I Could Live Here Forever
Hanna Halperin

A gripping portrait of the tumultuous, consuming relationship between Leah, a graduate student at UW-Madison, and Charlie, a recovering heroin addict.

I Have Some Questions for You
Rebecca Makkai

Bodie Kane, a successful film professor and podcaster, must reckon with her past when new details surface about a tragedy at her elite New England boarding school.

I Know What You Did
Cayce Osborne

When a bestselling novel fictionalizes the death of her childhood best friend-and accuses her of the murder-Petal Woznewski must figure out who wrote it and why in this debut novel by a Madison-area author.

The Immortalists
Chloe Benjamin

If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life? In 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, four teenage siblings visit a fortune-teller who is reputed to be able to predict the date of a person’s death; this bestselling novel by Madison author Chloe Benjamin follows them across the country and through next five decades.
 

In the Unlikely Event
Judy Blume

This novel, based on true events in the author’s childhood, portrays the community of Elizabeth, New Jersey in the early 1950’s, when it was hit by  three major plane crashes within a few months, leaving residents to struggle with the repeated tragedies.

Infinite Country
Patricia Engel

Moving their family to what they believe will be a safer but temporary home in Houston, two young parents are forced to choose between an undocumented status in America and returning to the violence of war-torn Bogotá.
 

The Inheritance of Loss
Kiran Desai

Winner of the Booker Prize, this novel has two story threads: a granddaughter in the Himalayan foothills fall in love with her tutor, and an immigrant from the same place tries to make it in NYC.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
V.E. Schwab

Making a Faustian bargain to live forever but never be remembered, a woman from early eighteenth-century France endures unacknowledged centuries before meeting a man who remembers her name.

It Ends with Us
Colleen Hoover

A workaholic with a too-good-to-be-true romance can't stop thinking about her first love in this unforgettable tale of love that comes at the ultimate price.

The It Girl
Ruth Ware

After John Neville, the man convicted of killing her best friend April ten years earlier, dies in prison, expectant mother Hannah Jones, after new evidence surfaces proving his innocence, reconnects with old friends to solve the mystery of April's death and realizes they all have something to hide--including a murder.

Jewelweed
David Rhodes

Paroled after serving time for a crime he might not have committed, Brock Bookchester is back in his hometown of Words, Wisconsin.  As he slowly tries to reconnect with family and friends, the residents of Words find that only by taking risks and making sacrifices can a community make one of its own whole again.  Revisiting the world he created in Driftless, Rhodes creates a detailed, poignant portrait of those who call small towns home. 

Killers of a Certain Age
Deanna Raybourn

They've spent their lives as assassins in a clandestine international organization, but at 60 years old, four women find they can't just retire - it's kill or be killed. 

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
Cho Nam-Joo

The runaway bestseller that helped launch Korea's new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman's psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny. 

Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro

From her place in the store that sells artificial friends, Klara--an artificial friend with outstanding observational qualities--watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. 

LaRose
Louise Erdrich

After a tragic hunting accident in which Landreaux Irons accidentally shoots and kills his neighbor’s five-year-old-son, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition - the sweat lodge - for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and his wife will give their own five-year-old-son, LaRose, to their grieving neighbors to raise as their own. 
 

The Last Story of Mina Lee
Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Margot Lee's mother isn't returning her calls. It's a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown and finds her mother, Mina, dead under suspicious circumstances. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the facts of Mina's life as a Korean War orphan and undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother. 

The Last Thing He Told Me
Laura Dave

When her husband of a year disappears, Hannah quickly learns he is not who he said he was and is left to sort out the truth with just one ally- her husband's teenage daughter, who hates her.

Learning to Stay
Erin Celello

When her husband Brad returns from Iraq, Elise is thrilled to have him home.  But the traumatic brain injury he suffered on duty has turned the patient, thoughtful man she married into someone quite different.  Faced with potentially losing the man she loves, Elise receives help from an unlikely source.  

Leave the World Behind
Rumaan Alam

A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong.

The Leavers
Lisa Ko

One morning, Deming Guo's mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. Set in New York and China, The Leavers is the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he's loved has been taken away--and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.

Less
Andrew Sean Greer

In this 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, after receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend's wedding, Arthur Less, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.

Life of Pi
Yann Martel

An Indian boy, Piscine Patel (aka ‘Pi’) and his zookeeping family are emigrating to Canada. While on a container ship enroute to their new life, an accident at sea leaves Pi and a tiger in a lifeboat floating on the Pacific Ocean.

Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders

On February 22, 1862, two days after his death, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, shattered by grief, Abraham Lincoln arrives at the cemetery under cover of darkness and visits the crypt, alone, to spend time with his son's body. The bold, imaginative first novel from critically acclaimed author Saunders.

Little Faith
Nickolas Butler

A Wisconsin family grapples with the power and limitations of faith when one of their own falls under the influence of a radical church. 

Little Fires Everywhere
Celeste Ng

This story of a community and a family, whose attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby dramatically divides the town, explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood - and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

The Lowland
Jhumpa Lahiri

Luster
Raven Leilani

Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties -- sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick and clocking in and out of her admin job. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including a wife who has agreed to an open marriage -- with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric's home -- though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.

Maame
Jessica George

Maddie, a young British Ghanaian woman and self-acknowledged late bloomer, navigates her twenties and finds her place in the world in this novel that explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.

Mad Honey
Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

Olivia McAfee left her husband and moved with her son, Asher, to a small town. When tragedy occurs and Asher becomes a suspect, Olivia must face whether he is revealing the same dark side as his father.

The Maid
Nita Prose

A charmingly eccentric hotel maid discovers a guest murdered in his bed, turning her once orderly world upside down--and inspiring a motley crew of unexpected allies to band together to solve the mystery.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Helen Simonson

In this humorous love story a proper, retired British army officer and a shopkeeper of Pakistani heritage begin a romance despite family problems and cultural barriers.

Malibu Rising
Taylor Jenkins Reid

Set against the backdrop of the Malibu surf culture of the 1980s, this novel follows four famous siblings as they throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer; over the course of twenty-four hours, the family drama that ensues will change their lives forever.

A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman

Ove has always lived his life according to strict principles, earning him the status of lead curmudgeon in his neighborhood.  But when life threatens to overwhelm even the firmly stoic Ove, a comedic cast of characters comes to the rescue—and proves that help can come from the most surprising of sources. 

The Martian
Andy Weir

Left for dead after an accident, astronaut Mark Watley is stranded on the surface of Mars.  Left with only enough food and supplies for a few months, Watley has to rely on his wits and ingenuity to survive.

Me Before You
JoJo Moyes

A young Englishwoman, Louisa Clark finds herself unemployed when the restaurant she works in is closed.  She takes a job as caretaker for Will Traynor, a recently paralyzed man, and throws herself into trying to convince him to stay alive, despite his losses.

Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides

Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is an intersex person, a situation with roots in her grandparent's desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.

The Midnight Library
Matt Haig

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of a person's life as it is, along with another book for the other life they could have lived if they had made a different choice at any point in their life. While everyone wonders how their lives might have been, what if someone had the chance to go to the library and see for themself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

The Mighty Red
Louise Erdrich

In North Dakota farming country in 2008, Gary Geist is about to marry young Kismet Poe. Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet, and he is determined to steal her and is eager to be a homewrecker. Meanwhile, Kismet's mother also works for the farm and has dark visions for their futures.

Mink River
Brian Doyle

This stream-of-consciousness novel tells the story, part realistic and part fantastic, of a quirky little town on the Oregon coast, and the lives of its inhabitants, including Salish Indians, Irish immigrants, and a crow who talks.

Mrs. Fletcher
Tom Perrotta

A coming-of-age novel about the sexual awakening of a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Fletcher is a provocative, witty look at contemporary sexual politics and timeless moral dilemmas - a moving and funny examination of sexuality, identity, and the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they’re no longer sure who they are and where they belong.
 

The Nest
Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

In this humorous novel about a dysfunctional family, three siblings find that their reckless brother has drained the $2 million dollar bank account their father left them at his death, money they have all been planning to use to solve their own financial problems. 

The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern

Le Cirque des Reves (The Dream Circus) appears unexpectedly on the outskirts of towns and treats its audiences to dazzling illusions. Danger lurks behind the scenes, however, as two powerful teachers have set up a duel-to-the-death between their two magician proteges.

 

Nine Perfect Strangers
Liane Moriarty

Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are there to lose weight, some are there to get a reboot on life, some are there for reasons they can't even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might involve some real work. 
But none of them could imagine just how challenging the next ten days are going to be.
 

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Alexander McCall Smith

This is the first in a series of gentle mysteries. Precious Ramotswe operates in Botswana, running an agency where the solving of the ‘mystery’ is often secondary to the exploration of family, customs and alternate methods of justice.

Normal People
Sally Rooney

At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers--one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain.

Northwoods
Amy Pease

Working for his mother, the sheriff of an idyllic resort town in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, Eli North, when the body of a teenage boy is found in the lake, is drawn into an investigation related to America's opioid epidemic that becomes much more than just a hunt for a killer.

Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami

In Murakami’s poignant coming-of-age story, Toru, a college student in 1960s Japan, is devoted to Naoko, a thoughtful young woman who shares Toru’s sense of isolation and yearning for beauty.  But while Naoko struggles with the harsh realities of life, Toru discovers that he must make a choice between his love for her and the unknown possibilities of adulthood. 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman

The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories
Danielle Evans

The award-winning author brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history.

Olga Dies Dreaming
Xochitl Gonzalez

A status-driven New York City wedding planner grapples with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots--all in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

Olive Kitteridge
Elizabeth Strout

This ‘novel in stories,’ set in small town Maine, centers on Olive Kitteridge, a difficult-to-like retired teacher and her friends and acquaintances. Together they reveal their follies, foibles, difficulties and capacity for change.

Olive, Again
Elizabeth Strout

Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout continues the life of her beloved Olive Kitteridge, a character who has captured the imaginations of millions.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born -- a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam -- and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.

The Other Black Girl
Zakiya Dalila Harris

A whip-smart and dynamic thriller about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.

Our Missing Hearts
Celeste Ng

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn't know what happened to her--only that her books have been banned--and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him. Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled into a quest to find her.

The Overstory
Richard Powers

A novel of activism and natural-world power presents interlocking fables about nine remarkable strangers who are summoned in different ways by trees for an ultimate, brutal stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest.

Painting Beyond Walls
David Rhodes

In 2027, August Helm is working as a biochemist at the University of Chicago. After he finds out about a liaison between the director of his lab and a much younger student, his position is eliminated. With his world in shambles, August goes to visit his parents in Wisconsin, where he reconnects with old friends, takes a job in a gated community, and falls madly in love with a woman whose revelations will change everything.

The Paper Palace
Miranda Cowley Heller

A story of summer, secrets, love, and lies: in the course of a singular day on Cape Cod, one woman must make a life-changing decision that has been brewing for decades. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.

People We Meet on Vacation
Emily Henry

A travel writer has one last shot at reconnecting with the best friend she just might be in love with. (Kirkus)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky

The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky follows observant "wallflower" Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.
 

Pineapple Street
Jenny Jackson

A deliciously funny, sharply observed novel of family, wealth, love and tennis, this zeitgeisty debut follows three women in an old Brooklyn Heights clan: one who was born with money, one who married into it, and one, the millennial conscience of the family, who wants to give it all away. 

A Place for Us
Fatima Farheen Mirza

A deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging, A Place for Us follows an Indian family through the marriage of their daughter, from the parents' arrival in the United States to the return of their estranged son.
 

Plainsong
Kent Haruf

Set in a small town in the plains of Colorado, this novel tells the interrelated stories of eight characters whose lives undergo radical change during the course of one year.

The President is Missing
Bill Clinton and James Patterson

The White House is the home of the President of the United States, the most guarded, monitored, closely watched person in the world. So how could a U.S. President vanish without a trace? And why would he choose to do so? An unprecedented collaboration between President Bill Clinton and the world's bestselling novelist, James Patterson, The President Is Missing is a breathtaking story from the pinnacle of power. 
 

Prodigal Summer
Barbara Kingsolver

Summer in a corner of southern Appalachia serves as the setting for the adventures and struggles of three free-spirited women, who have intimate ties to the natural world.

Prophet Song
Paul Lynch

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland's newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning toward tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what-or who-is she willing to leave behind?
 

Purple Hibiscus
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

When she visits her liberated and loving aunt, life dramatically changes for a 15-year old Nigerian girl who has grown up in sheltered privilege with a wealthy father who is politically courageous but religiously fanatic.

The Rabbit Hutch
Tess Gunty

A stunning debut novel about four teenagers--recently aged out of the state foster-care system--living together in a crumbling apartment building in the post-industrial Midwest, exploring the quest for transcendence and the desire for love.

Real Life
Brandon Taylor

Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends--some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness.

Red at the Bone
Jacqueline Woodson

Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy.

Remarkably Bright Creatures
Shelby Van Pelt

A luminous debut novel about a widow's unlikely friendship with a giant Pacific octopus reluctantly residing at the local aquarium-and the truths she finally uncovers about her son's disappearance 30 years ago.

The Removed
Brandon Hobson

Steeped in Cherokee myths and history, a novel about a fractured family reckoning with the tragic death of their son long ago.

Romantic Comedy
Curtis Sittenfeld

A comedy writer thinks she's sworn off love, until a dreamy pop star flips the script on all her assumptions.
 

The Rosie Project
Graeame Simsion

In this unconventional love story, scientist Don sets out to overcome his Asperger’s syndrome and find the Perfect Wife by concocting an exhaustive, mathematically precise questionnaire.  And then he meets Rosie, who should be all wrong for him but for some reason seems just right.   

The Round House
Louise Erdrich

Run
Ann Patchett

Adoption, race, class, and family are explored in this novel about three brothers and their widowed father.

Sandwich
Catherine Newman

While on her family's yearly escape to Cape Cod, Rocky, sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, relives the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers, coming face-to-face with her family's history and future and accepting she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
J. Ryan Stradal

A story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them.

The School for Good Mothers
Jessamine Chan

One lapse in judgment lands Frida Liu, a 39-year-old Chinese-American single mother in Philadelphia, in a government reform program where bad mothers are retrained using robot doll children with artificial intelligence, and custody of her 18-month-old daughter Harriet hangs in the balance.

Sea of Tranquility
Emily St. John Mandel

A novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

The Secret History
Donna Tartt

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.

The Seed Keeper
Diane Wilson

This haunting novel spanning several generations follows a Dakhóta family's struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most, told through the voices of women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools.

The Sellout
Paul Beatty

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court.
 

The Sense of an Ending
Julian Barnes

This Booker Prize winner is suspenseful tale of memory and self-knowledge. When Tony receives a classmate's diary from 40+ years before, it leads to a re-examination of his younger years and what he thought was true.

The Sentence
Louise Erdrich

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

Seven Days in June
Tia Williams

A hilarious, romantic, and sexy‑as‑hell story of two writers discovering their second chance at love over seven days during a steamy Brooklyn summer.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Taylor Jenkins Reid

An unforgettable and sweeping novel about one classic film actress's relentless rise to the top, the risks she took, the loves she lost, and the long-held secrets the public could never imagine.

Shotgun Lovesongs
Nickolas Butler

This novel tells the story of five friends who grew up together in the fictional small town of Little Wing, Wisconsin: a famous musician, a wealthy commodities trader, a former rodeo star, and a married couple who stayed in the community as farmers.

Shoulder Season
Christina Clancy

The small town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin is an unlikely location for a Playboy Resort, and nineteen-year old Sherri Taylor is an unlikely bunny. But when her parents die in quick succession in 1981, she leaves the only home she's ever known for the chance to be part of a glamorous slice of history. 

Shuggie Bain
Douglas Stuart

The unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland, and his alcoholic mother Agnes, whose love is only matched by her pride.

Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward

An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippi's past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power--and limitations--of family bonds. 

Small Great Things
Jodi Picoult

Ruth, an experienced African-American delivery nurse, is forbidden to tend to the baby of a white supremacist family, but when the child goes into cardiac arrest and no one else is able to help, she makes a fateful decision.  When the baby dies in her care, she is charged with a serious crime, and must reconsider what she thought she knew about others—and herself.  

A Spark of Light
Jodi Picoult

The bestselling author returns with a powerful and provocative new novel about ordinary lives that intersect during a heart-stopping crisis at a women's reproductive health services clinic.
 

A Spot of Bother
Mark Haddon

In this darkly comic novel, the family patriarch mistakenly believes he is dying of cancer (it’s really eczema) while his wife and grown children swirl around him getting ready for a wedding.

State of Terror
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny

This high-stakes thriller follows a novice Secretary of State who has joined the administration of her rival, a president inaugurated after four years of American leadership that shrank from the world stage. A series of terrorist attacks throws the global order into disarray, and the secretary is tasked with assembling a team to unravel the deadly conspiracy, a scheme carefully designed to take advantage of an American government dangerously out of touch and out of power in the places where it counts the most. 

Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel

In this National Book Award-nominated novel, a rag-tag group of traveling Shakespearean actors struggle to survive in a landscape that has been decimated by a global pandemic that wipes out 99% of the population.  In flashbacks, members of the group recall their lives during the pandemic and what it took for them to survive, with some surprising connections. 

Still Alice
Lisa Genova

The Storyteller
Jodi Picoult

Such a Fun Age
Kiley Reid

A page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Swamplandia!
Karen Russell

A thirteen-year-old girl tries to save her family’s rundown alligator-themed Florida park after the death of her mother. A novel of magical realism, with a strong heroine, yet in a credible, believable world.

A Tale for the Time Being
Ruth Ozeki

In Japan, a teenage girl is struggling-- and writing to a future anonymous reader about it in a diary. Ten years later the diary, along with letters in Japanese and French, wash ashore in a metal lunchbox on the coast of British Columbia. The woman who finds it sets out to identify the girl to see how she's fared in the intervening years.

That Old Cape Magic
Richard Russo

Cape Cod is the home of memories good and bad for Jack Griffin. When he returns there post-divorce for his daughter’s wedding, comedy and pathos join forces to create a memorable event.

There There
Tommy Orange

Twelve Native Americans came to the Big Oakland Powwow for different reasons. As we learn the reasons that each person is attending--some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent--momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything.  
 

Three Junes
Julia Glass

A rich, layered family saga triptych that spreads over Greece, Scotland, New York City and Long Island during three summers. The family patriarch and his son are the focus of this 2002 National Book Award winner.

The Thursday Murder Club
Richard Osman

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

Tom Lake
Ann Patchett

Recalling the past at her daughters' request, Lara tells the story of a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance, which causes her daughters to examine their own lives and reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin

A modern love story about two childhood friends, Sam, raised by an actress mother in LA's Koreatown, and Sadie, from the wealthy Jewish enclave of Beverly Hills, who reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives.

The Tortilla Curtain
T.C. Boyle

Two couples, an undocumented Mexican husband and wife camping in a canyon and well-heeled Americans living in a gated community, cross paths repeatedly and usually unknowingly in this novel set in Southern California.

Transcendent Kingdom
Yaa Gyasi

A novel about faith, science, religion, and family that tells the deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief, narrated by a fifth year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford school of medicine studying the neural circuits of reward seeking behavior in mice. Chosen as the 2021-22 UW-Madison Go Big Read selection. For information about Madison Public Library book discussions and more, see madisonpubliclibrary.org/gobigread.

True Biz
Sara Nović

True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history final, and have doctors, politicians, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf in a story of sign language and lip-reading, cochlear implants and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. 

Truly Madly Guilty
Liane Moriarty

A last-minute invitation to a weekend barbeque has lasting effects for three couples, and leaves them questioning their friendships and the guilt underlying even the most commonplace moments. 

The Turner House
Angela Flournoy

The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts--and shapes--their family's future.

Unsheltered
Barbara Kingsolver

The compulsively readable story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum in Vineland, New Jersey, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future.
 

The Vacationers
Emma Straub

The Post family and friends embark on a celebratory two-week vacation in the island paradise of Mallorca.  But humorous revelations of secrets and infidelities promise to turn their holiday into one they’ll never forget. 

Vintage
Susan Gloss

Opening up a vintage clothing shop in Madison has always been Violet’s dream, but making it a success is entirely different challenge.  Teenager April is trying to recover from a broken engagement and the looming birth of her child.  Amithi struggles with the betrayal of her husband and tension with her tradition-averse daughter.  These different women connect over vintage cloth and learn to face down the upheavals of their lives to emerge stronger together. 

The Violin Conspiracy
Brendan Slocumb

Ray McMillian is a Black classical musician on the rise--undeterred by the pressure and prejudice of the classical music world--when a shocking theft sends him on a desperate quest to recover his great-great-grandfather's heirloom violin on the eve of the most prestigious musical competition in the world.

Wandering Stars
Tommy Orange

In this masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel, There There, Tommy Orange extends his constellation of narratives into the past and future, tracing the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

The Waters
Bonnie Jo Campbell

Spending the days searching for truths on an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp, eleven-year-old Dorothy Zook, the granddaughter of an herbalist and eccentric healer, finds her childhood upended by family secrets, passionate love, and violent men where the only bridge across the water is her wayward mother.

We Are Not Like Them
Christine Pride and Jo Piazza

Told from alternating perspectives, an evocative and riveting novel about the lifelong bond between two women, one Black and one white, whose friendship is indelibly altered by a tragic event--a powerful and poignant exploration of race in America today and its devastating impact on ordinary lives.

We Are the Brennans
Tracey Lange

When twenty-nine-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. But it's not easy. She deserted them all--and her high school sweetheart--five years before with little explanation, and they've got questions.

We Need New Names
NoViolet Bulawayo

In Bulawayo’s semiautobiographical novel, young Darling describes her chaotic but still happy childhood during Zimbabwe’s strife-filled Lost Decade.  In the second half of the novel, the teenage Darling reflects on the promises and failures of America after she emigrates to Destroyedmichigan (Detroit).  A work that considers what one embraces in a new culture and what can’t be left behind, We Need New Names was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Award. 

The Wedding Date
Jasmine Guillory

A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in a fun and flirty debut novel. 

The Weird Sisters
Eleanor Brown

Three sisters, all named after Shakespearean characters by their English professor father, reunite in an Ohio college town when their mother is stricken with cancer. Drama ensues, but with a light comedic touch.

Welcome to the Great Mysterious
Lorna Landvik

A Broadway actress returns home to small town Minnesota to care for her Down's syndrome nephew. This larger-than-life woman learns how far she's drifted from her core values, but with trademark Landvik humor.

What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez
Claire Jiménez

A powerful novel of a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island who discovers their long‑missing sister is potentially alive and cast on a reality TV show, and they set out to bring her home.

Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved.

Where'd You Go Bernadette?
Maria Semple

In this unconventional and funny novel, a teenage girl assembles a mixed collection of documents  to try to solve the disappearance of her mother, a former award-winning architect  who found herself increasingly at odds with her life in Seattle.

While Justice Sleeps
Stacey Abrams

An inside-Washington thriller about an ambitious law clerk thrown into a life-or-death treasure hunt with major national implications when the Supreme Court justice she works for slips into a sudden coma.

Winter Counts
David Heska Wanbli Weiden

A groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx. 

The Witch Elm
Tana French

Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer until a night out with friends takes a turn that will change his life - he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden - and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.
 

The Woman in the Window
A.J. Finn

Anna Fox lives alone -- a recluse in her New York City home, drinking too much wine, watching old movies ... and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move next door: a father, a mother, their teenaged son. The perfect family. But when Anna sees something she shouldn't, her world begins to crumble -- and its shocking secrets are laid bare. In this gripping Hitchcockian thriller, no one and nothing are what they seem.

Yellowface
Kuang R. F.

After the death of her literary rival in a freak accident, author June Hayward steals her just-finished masterpiece, sending it to her agent as her own work, but as emerging evidence threatens her success, she discovers how far she'll go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

You Had Me at Hola
Alexis Daria

After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy for the number one streaming service in the country, Jasmine figures her new "Leading Lady Plan" should be easy enough to follow, until a casting shake-up pairs her with telenovela hunk Ashton Suárez.
 

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
Akwaeke Emezi

A New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and "one of our greatest living writers" (Shondaland) reimagines the love story in this fresh and seductive novel about a young woman seeking joy while healing from loss.