Books to Get You Out of a Reading Rut

“Stay-up-all-night, miss-your-subway-stop, spit-out-your-beverage funny…irresistible as a snack tray, as intimately pleasurable as an Irish goodbye.” –Jia Tolentino. From Samantha Irby, beloved author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, comes a rip-roaring, edgy, and unabashedly raunchy collection of hilarious essays.

Equal parts crime thriller and family saga, transporting readers from the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the urban energy of New Delhi, Age of Vice is an intoxicating novel of gangsters and lovers, false friendships, forbidden romance, and the consequences of corruption. It is binge-worthy entertainment at its literary best.

Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. But Molly’s orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find him dead in his bed. Before she knows what’s happening, Molly’s unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different.

If you loved reading Children of Blood and Bone, you are going to love this amazing fantasy from Nnedi Okorafor. Affectionately dubbed “the Nigerian Harry Potter,” Akata Witch weaves together a heart-pounding tale of magic, mystery, and finding one’s place in the world.

Emmy Harlow is a witch, but not a very powerful one in part because she hasn’t been home to the magical town of Thistle Grove in years. But when a spellcasting tournament approaches, the pull of tradition is strong enough to bring Emmy back. On her first night home, her best friend Linden tells her that she is fresh off a bad breakup with town heartbreaker Gareth Blackmore. She had let herself be charmed, only to discover that Gareth was also seeing Talia Avramov unbeknownst to either of them. And now Linden and Talia want revenge. Only one question stands: Is Emmy in?

A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup, written as an oral history. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.

Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken with bracing urgency. Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with a resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is Mariana Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.

From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin’s quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood. Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.

Emma loves her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby. But almost everything she’s told them about herself is a lie. Even her name isn’t real. When the darkest moments of Emma’s past finally emerge, she must somehow prove to Leo that she really is the woman he always thought she was. But first, she must tell him about the other love of her life.

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

Armed with only hazy memories, a woman who long ago witnessed her friend’s sudden, mysterious death, and has since spent her life trying to forget, sets out to track down answers. What she uncovers, deep in the woods, is hard to believe. Utterly unique and captivating, The House in the Pines keeps you guessing about whether we can ever fully confront the past and return home.