New Books To Read in May

Best friends have one week in paradise to fix their friendship or fall apart in this heart-stopping, utterly romantic new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After and One Golden Summer.

It’s off to the races in the explosive eighth book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Ignore those strange glitches that are occurring with increasing frequency. Don’t listen to those whispers about what’s happening on the mysterious eleventh floor, something the system AI called A Parade of Horribles. Nobody, not even the showrunners, knows what that means. Just that the AI has ominously dubbed it “a coming-out party for the ages.” But Carl is planning a party of his own. It’s a plan so dangerous, so insane, he can’t even consult his friends lest the AI put a stop to it. Because if it goes wrong, it’s not just the end of Carl and Donut. No. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been …

Pulitzer Prize-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Strout’s new novel tells the story of a chance incident that sparks a powerful realization in a beloved teacher’s life — a poignant meditation on loneliness, friendship, parenthood, and the importance of truth in a capsizing world.

A sweeping novel about a correspondent trapped behind enemy lines during the Korean War, and the women who help her find her way home, from the national bestselling author of Daughters of Shandong. Moving and triumphant, The Young Will Remember sheds light on a “Forgotten War,” the resilience of love within our darkest histories, and the indefatigable determination of mothers to protect their children.

A dark, provocative, adrenaline-rush of a novel about a graduate student who murders bad men and justifies it in the name of feminism, by a bold new voice in fiction.

The Crayons are ready to learn how to be polite. But what do they need to know? When to say please and thank you? How to eat neatly? What to do when they have to (uh-oh!) burp? This laugh-out-loud addition to the Crayons mini book series will teach children their manners as they giggle at the Crayons’ missteps.

“America’s Government Teacher” and author of the New York Times bestselling The Small and the Mighty pens a hopeful picture book about twelve ordinary Americans who stood up to do the next needed thing. With powerful storytelling from Sharon McMahon and vivid art from award-winning illustrator Susanna Chapman, We Are Mighty celebrates courage, character, and the idea that the smallest step can create ripples we can’t yet see.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Ghosted and The Love of My Life comes an unmissable emotional thriller: An up-all-night, page-turning love story with a very dark secret at its heart.

Caught between a relentless tech job, her adoring fiancé, and an unexpected new flame, Mei must learn what it means to choose herself.

Self-Directed Complex PTSD Exercises for Women is a compassionate, self-guided workbook that offers trauma-informed tools for being able to safely inhabit your body, reengage in relationships, and step into a full-color version of your life. Created by and for women, this book is for those seeking peace, connection, and trust from the inside out. Feeling better — grounded, whole, and free — is possible. And the fact you are here means it is within reach.

A hardworking single mom returns to her seaside hometown and stumbles into a fake dating situationship with a wealthy, workaholic scion, from the New York Times bestselling author of Nora Goes Off Script.

From the New York Times bestselling author of the School for Good and Evil series comes a renegade thriller, about a teenager elected President of the United States, sparking a global revolution of young leaders — until one of them is murdered and he’s the prime suspect. With globe-spanning action, stunning twists, and an electric new brand of storytelling, Young World is a heart-stopping thriller that asks: What happens when the future really does belong to the young?

Five lives. Five stories. Four will live — one will die. Who will it be? In this slow-burn masterpiece of psychological fiction, the choice is all yours … An incredibly original novel that breaks the fourth wall and asks the reader to be judge, jury, and executioner, Five looks at some of the most complicated issues of contemporary life: Motherhood, disability, addiction. Every stranger has a story. And in Ilona Bannister’s skillful hands, five people’s stories come together to create an unforgettable novel.

The daughter of a powerful tycoon escapes to a glamorous artists’ retreat — where dark secrets and dangerous temptations await — in this gripping Prohibition-era novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Salt to the Sea. Set in the fading splendor of 1920s Detroit and inspired by real, long-buried events, A Fortune of Sand is a glittering, gothic page-turner about power, control, and the price women pay when they demand to be seen.

Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping novel from Emily Henry, now in paperback.

Hunting for a book all about K-pop? Look no further! Read all about the music, the movies, the fandoms, and the history that made K-pop a global sensation in this beautifully illustrated, star-studded Little Golden Book!

The New York Times bestselling author of Begin Again confronts America’s unfinished story in this blistering reassessment of race, freedom, and the myths that bind us. Centered around the major celebrations of America’s milestone birthdays across 250 years of history, the book offers a riveting look at the battles over who has a stake in writing the American story. Devastatingly candid, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective, America, U.S.A. is a shining meditation on how we must reckon with a grim past in order to strive for the better angels of our future.

When a member of his Cabinet is killed in a plane crash, President Jack Ryan suspects that the “accident” is anything but in this latest shocking entry in this #1 New York Times bestselling series. The quest for answers will lead the team deeper and deeper into a quagmire of lies and deception that will force President Ryan to face an unprincipled enemy with global ambitions.

Same world. Different beliefs. Different outcomes. The internationally bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and Big Potential illuminates how harnessing our beliefs can influence our success in the real world. The Power of Beliefs shows how seven core beliefs predict your present, bend the probability of future success, and, in the modern world, are the key to creating a better life for you and for others.

In the thrilling conclusion to the Webs We Weave series, ex-con artist Phoebe Graves must pull off the biggest grift she’s ever devised to keep her friends and family safe.

Martial arts legend and international movie star Jet Li distills ten powerful insights from his iconic career, his personal life and philosophies, and his thirty-year Buddhist practice.

“In a time of increasing loneliness, this book provides a steady guide, teaching us how to foster closeness, show up intentionally, and genuinely care for the people in our lives” (Nedra Glover Tawwab, author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace).

A richly drawn, captivating, and endlessly amusing novel of love and subterfuge between a lady’s maid and her clandestine lover, set in the country estates of nineteenth-century England. A deliciously funny, gorgeously detailed, utterly enthralling novel, A Perfect Hand is a glorious novel of class, gender, and England on the cusp of enormous change.

Discover the universal allure of the hero’s journey captured in these global folktales, powerfully retold and gorgeously illustrated by the author and artist behind Tarot of the Divine and Beneath the Moon. Readers will be transported by Around the Sun’s lush artistic details and gripping mythologies.

Meet Phoebe Berman: Despite being a hopeless romantic, she’s about to be a thirty-year-old virgin. With one month before her milestone birthday, she’s determined to finally lose it … if her own anxiety doesn’t slow her down. The can’t-miss debut novel from podcaster and comedian Brooke Averick, Phoebe Berman’s Gonna Lose It is a brutally honest and completely relatable story for anyone who’s ever felt stuck between coming of age and coming apart.

How do we do more with less? From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Range, Inside the Box explains why limits are the key to stimulating creativity, innovation, collaboration, and personal contentment. Original, galvanizing, and deeply researched, Epstein reveals how boundaries create breakthroughs, and how setting the right constraints can help you become the most creative, productive, and satisfied version of yourself.

A gripping drama and chilling prophecy about the possible path to war for a planet devastated by climate change. A fascinating and disturbingly plausible extrapolation from current realities, 2084 deploys a global cast of characters, all protecting their interests as the fate of human civilization hangs in the balance. Individuals often seem small in the face of the forces that drive global change, but in the end human agency proves surprisingly decisive. Big doors can swing on small hinges. We have it within ourselves to write a different destiny, if only we can imagine it.

A tender, moving, and insightful account of queer motherhood and an interrogation of life on the margins of American culture as a self-described “ugly” woman. Interlacing cultural history and analysis with memoir, Ugly is a probing investigation into cultural norms and the formation of our aesthetic sense of self. By sharing the history of her troubled self-image, Fairyington invites us to go rogue, to invent a new language and logic to overthrow all the ways that women have been cultivated to hate themselves.

Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband, Norman, get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of life and … disappear. How could Norman desert him after a lifetime together? Where did he go? Will he ever return? Jesse knew they were both feeling stuck, but was their rut so deep that Norman’s only option was to leave Jesse behind? In Take Me With You, Steven Rowley brings his resonant wit and emotional insight to an epic love story — an exploration of the forces that draw two people into the same orbit and the gravity that threatens to pull them apart.

We all feel it, the teetering toward a place in America from which there is no return. The battle to remain hopeful in spite of injustice after injustice. In this powerful story of one lawyer’s fight for his community, both justice and hope are redeemed. Redeem a Nation offers a way forward for communities across the nation through systemic change and community love. The time is now to resist, repair, and redeem a land once promised.

In this sweeping sapphic sports romance, two college softball stars compete for each other’s hearts — if only they can get past their fear of striking out — from the nationally bestselling author of Play You For It.

In the heart-pounding sequel to the New York Times bestselling dystopian romance Silver Elite, lines will be crossed, loyalties will be tested, and the fight for the Continent is only just beginning as Wren Darlington finds herself caught in the middle of two wars: One for the fate of her home and another for the fate of her heart.

Two scholars of magical veterinary science must put aside their lust and loathing to save the world in the first installment of his whimsical, romantic, dark academia duology.

As millions walk away from faith and countless others water down biblical truth to fit cultural preferences, Aaron Graham, pastor of one of the fastest growing and most diverse churches in the country, exposes seven pervasive lies threatening Christian faith today and how to maintain authentic faith without compromising conviction.

From historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands comes an inspiring portrait of George Washington that examines his unrivaled leadership in the birth of America. Arriving in time for the 250th anniversary of American independence, American Patriarch casts Washington as the icon of American virtue who wrested America free from British control, gave credibility to the Constitution, and crafted the norms that would steady America as a nation for generations to follow.

New York Times bestselling authors Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski travel the world in a hilarious and heartwarming celebration of fans and the things they love: Baseball, basketball, chess, darts, football, futbol, Indigenous North American stickball, pickleball, WWE, Taylor Swift, Star Wars, and more.

From award-winning sociologist Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve comes the first account of mass wrongful conviction in America, indicting a system purposefully designed to ensnare Black youth in order to close cases. These “crime fictions” are actively produced, perfected by police, enshrined in our legal records by the courts, and reinforced by the media. Crime Fictions is a devastating, systemic account that leaves us to wonder just how many innocent souls have been claimed by the racist lies police tell.

A probing essay collection that chronicles one woman’s complicated quest to find home in a fractured America, from the award-winning author of Field Study. Spanning continents, geographies, and states of mind, Sebree lights a pathway for the wanderer, the seeker — anyone propelled into the unknown by the desire for a place to truly belong.