Recommendations by C Pam Zhang

I admire restraint, and Kitamura’s novel has that—and style—in spades. Her cool, chilly prose renders an eerie Greek vacation in which a woman searches for her missing ex-husband.

Almost every page of this slim, elegant novel strikes an unsettling spark. Kwon raises questions about love and obsession, faith and loyalty; and the book beautifully elides a straight answer, leaving the reader to study the shadows.

Jacobs’ graphic memoir about navigating race and family in America is funny and smart and heartbreaking, capturing the cadence of life through the perfect medium. Expect to cry.

A swaggering defiance runs through this collection, which doesn’t shrink away from going eyeball-to-eyeball with the mess and ugliness and spunk of the immigrant experience.

Yanagihara’s luscious first novel deserves far more attention. You’ll journey to an island cut off from the world, and its strange fruits, and its brutal secret of immortality.

If you are feeling isolated and trapped in your own mind, then let Li in. Her quiet, probing essays open small doors, one after the other.

Gabel follows the lives of four young classical musicians struggling to find their way in a cutthroat career. It’s rare to see the joy-agony-joy of pursuing one’s art rendered so well.

Cha’s debut, about four young women living in South Korea, explores the destructive cult of beauty, and the place of female friendship within it.

A pregnant 18-year-old pizza girl becomes obsessed with her lonely customer. This book is funny and off-kilter and tender, capturing the pain that thrums beneath even the shiniest, most sun-drenched settings.