Short Books To Read in a Weekend

On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, one of our great novelists delivers a playful and profound work about memory, love, and the writer’s endgame. “A culmination … shimmering with [Barnes’s] silky, erudite prose; beneath the suave surface is an earnest investigation into the mysterious ways of the human heart” (The Atlantic). (176 pages)

Baldwin’s confessional, grave novel follows an engaged American man abroad who falls in love with what he’s forbidden himself: Another man, an Italian, named Giovanni. Set in 1950s Paris, Giovanni’s Room is essential: A moving and exacting novel of ambiguity, remorse, and the difficulty of self-acceptance. (176 pages) 

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress. He’s attractive, troubling, young — young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day — partner, parent, creator, muse — and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately. (208 pages)

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I’m Glad My Mom Died comes “a thorny examination of power, lust, shame and rage” (Los Angeles Times) from “a writer able to capture some of the darkest parts of human nature with unflinching honesty and devastating humor” (NPR). (288 pages)

One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first, he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: A chance at a kind of rebirth — an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew. (208 pages)

John Green, award-winning author and passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease. (208 pages)

Megha Majumdar’s electrifying new novel, following her acclaimed New York Times bestseller A Burning, is set in a near-future Kolkata, India in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other. A piercing and propulsive tour de force. (224 pages)

McGlue is Ottessa Moshfegh’s debut novella, and it sets up the sort of strangeness — and, at times, repulsiveness — we’ve come to expect in her later works. Set in 1851 Salem, Massachusetts, McGlue is in custody after allegedly and drunkenly killing his best friend. McGlue isn’t convicted of the crime, and his remorseless thoughts drive the engine of this slow-burning narrative. (160 pages)

At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages — a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness. (192 pages)

“A vibrant, heartstrings-tugging novel” (People) about a mother’s love, in all its forms, as a woman searches for the daughter she gave up for adoption, from the prize-winning author of Golden Child. (288 pages)

Khristen is a teenager who, her mother believes, was marked by greatness as a baby when she died for a moment and then came back to life. After Khristen’s failing boarding school for gifted teens closes its doors, and she finds that her mother has disappeared, she ranges across the dead landscape and washes up at a “resort” on the shores of a mysterious, putrid lake the elderly residents there call “Big Girl.” Rivetingly strange and beautiful, and delivered with Williams’s searing, deadpan wit, Harrow is their intertwined tale of paradise lost and of their reasons — against all reasonableness — to try and recover something of it. (224 pages)

The renowned author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell — and the ones we don’t — shape our realities. Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world — and our own souls — and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths. (256 pages)

A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom. (224 pages)

This is the story of a woman in search of herself, in every sense. When we first meet Ruby, a Métis woman in her thirties, her life is spinning out of control. She’s angling to sleep with her counselor while also rekindling an old relationship she knows will only bring more heartache. But as we soon learn, Ruby’s story is far more complex than even she can imagine. Probably Ruby is a dazzling novel about a bold, unapologetic woman taking control of her life and story, and marks the debut of a major new voice in Indigenous fiction. (288 pages)

From the internationally bestselling author, a chilling fresh spin on the classic horror novel. When the voices call, don’t answer … (256 pages)

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values. This is El Akkad’s most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time. (208 pages)

Susan Minot’s first book chronicles the Vincents, a sprawling New England family of nine: A religious mother, an alcoholic father, and their seven “monkeys.” A minimalist novel-in-stories, each chapter lurches forward with new conflicts and deceptions, mining the tenderness and tragedy of a family so extensive they’re cocooned in their own universe, for better or worse. (176 pages)

A woman confronts the surprising results of an ancestry test and begins to question the meaning of family and friendship in this wise, tender novel teeming with life — from the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author of After Annie. (256 pages)

This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question, What makes a life worth living? (256 pages)

In Ed Park’s utterly original collection, An Oral History of Atlantis, characters bemoan their fleeting youth, focus on their breathing, meet cute, break up, write book reviews, translate ancient glyphs, bid on stuff online, whale watch, and once in a while find solace in the sublime. Throughout, Park deploys his trademark wit to create a world both strikingly recognizable and delightfully other. Spanning a quarter century, these sixteen stories tell the absurd truth about our lives. They capture the moment when the present becomes the past — and are proof positive that Ed Park is one of the most imaginative and insightful writers working today. (224 pages)

Set in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives. It is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms. (224 pages)

Over the course of a single year, our nameless narrator heroically tries to keep her small brood of four chickens alive despite the seemingly endless challenges that caring for other creatures entails. From the forty-below nights of a brutal Minnesota winter to a sweltering summer that brings a surprise tornado, she battles predators, bad luck, and the uncertainty of a future that may not look anything like the one she always imagined. A stunning and brilliantly insightful meditation on life and longing, Brood rewards its readers with the richness of reflection and unrelenting hope. (240 pages)

Nel and Sula’s devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the Black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal — or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald, and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life. (192 pages)