Indie Bookstore Recommendations

In this National Book Award finalist, one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

In one of the most anticipated books of 2022, a spellbinding debut novel traces three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy.

Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief–a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi’s phenomenal debut, Homegoing.

A rollicking feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are.

Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets.

A Taiwanese American woman’s coming-of-consciousness ignites eye-opening revelations and chaos on a college campus in this outrageously hilarious and startingly tender debut novel.

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston, but they’re not sure why they’re still a couple. When Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his mother, Mitsuko, arrives for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together in an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they’ve ever known.

A provocative debut of sex and sexuality–”depicting the liquid frequencies of need and power with a thoughtful, savage eye” (Raven Leilani, author of Luster)–as a twenty something New Yorker pursues a sexual freedom that follows no other lines than her own desire.

Picking up just a few months after A Reaper at the Gates left off… Prepare for the jaw-dropping finale of Sabaa Tahir’s beloved New York Times bestselling An Ember in the Ashes fantasy series, and discover: Who will survive the storm?

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth–all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.

A mythic love story set in Trinidad, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s radiant debut is a masterwork of lush imagination and exuberant storytelling–a spellbinding and hopeful novel about inheritance, loss, and love’s seismic power to heal.