By Charmaine Wilkerson
Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. 

By Anissa Gray
Althea, the eldest sister of the Butler family, is a force to be reckoned with and her younger sisters have appreciated and chafed at her strong will. They are as stunned as the rest of the small community when she and her husband are arrested.

By Erik Larson
It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters.

by Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant is an out-of-the-ordinary heroine with deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit. Her life consists of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and unhygienic IT guy from her office.

by Tembi Locke
It was love at first sight when Tembi met professional chef, Saro, on a street in Florence. There was just one problem: Saro’s traditional Sicilian family did not approve of him marrying a black American woman, an actress no less. However, the couple, heartbroken but undeterred, forges on.

by JoJo Moyes
When a call goes out for women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice Wright signs on. The leader is Margery, a self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They are joined by three other women who become known as the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky.

by Maggie Shipstead
After encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots, Marian Graves commences her lifelong love affair with flight and decides to pursue her dream: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles. A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film about Marian’s disappearance in Antarctica.

by John Cohen
When Thirty-four-year-old Harry Crane’s wife dies suddenly, he is unable to cope. Leaving his old life behind, Harry makes his way to the remote woods of northeastern Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains, determined to lose himself. But fate intervenes in the form of a fiercely determined young girl named Oriana.

by Patricia Engel
Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her.

By Bonnie Garmus
Set in 1960s California, this is the hilarious story of Elizabeth Zott, a scientist whose career is derailed by the idea that a woman’s place is in the home, only to find herself starring as the host of a TV cooking show. Elizabeth’s singular approach to cooking (‘take one pint of H2O and add a pinch of sodium chloride’) and independent example are proving revolutionary.

By Kaitlyn Greenidge
Libertie Sampson is all too aware that her mother, a physician, has a vision for their future together: Libertie is to go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie is hungry for something else—is there really only one way to be independent?

By Sarah Penner
Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual clientèle. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives.

by Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan
Olivia McAfee’s perfect life was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father’s beekeeping business.

By Marie Benedict
In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Her husband has no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and providing no explanations for her time away.

by Tolson Whitehead
Elwood Curtis is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides “physical, intellectual and moral training” so the delinquent boys in their charge can become “honorable and honest men.” In reality, the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students.

by Shelby Van Pelt
Tova works the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, vanished over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium and he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova, deducing what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared.

by Shari Lapena
In a quiet suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses–and into the owners’ computers–learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too. After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point.

by Lisa See
A powerful story about a family, separated by circumstances, culture, and distance, Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region of China and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters.

by Laurie Frankel
Claude is five years old, the youngest of five brothers. He loves wearing a dress and dreams of being a princess. When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl. Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

by Debbie Irving
For twenty-five years, Debby Irving sensed inexplicable racial tensions in her personal and professional relationships. Then, in 2009, one “aha!” moment launched an adventure of discovery and insight that drastically shifted her worldview and upended her life plan.

by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Hiram Walker was born into bondage but is also gifted with a mysterious power. He almost drowns in a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn’t understand that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. So begins a journey into the covert war on slavery.

by Alyssa Cole
Sydney Green is a Brooklyn native, but her neighborhood is quickly changing and neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. Sydney finds help in Theo, one of the new arrivals to the block. But Sydney and Theo discover their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.

by Etaf Rum
Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra finds herself betrothed, married, and soon living in Brooklyn. There, Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law, Fareeda. Eighteen years later Deya, Isra’s oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda’s insistence, though her only desire is to go to college.

by Sarah M. Broom
Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in New Orleans. This is the story of a mother’s struggle against a house’s entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina.