Nothing to See Here is a 2019 novel by New York Times best-selling author and short story writer Kevin Wilson. The novel, which is set in Tennessee, includes a dedication to fellow Tennessean writer Ann Patchett. This is not Wilson’s first work about unusual characters and their families. He achieved success with his first novel, The Family Fang, and another called Perfect Little World. In these works, Wilson developed the prototype for the unique brand... Read Nothing to See Here Summary

Gordon Korman’s 2025 middle-grade novel, Old School, tells the story of 12-year-old Dexter Foreman, a boy raised by his grandmother and the other residents of The Pines Retirement Village. When a truancy officer discovers that Dexter has never attended a formal school, he is forced into the bewildering world of Wolf’s Eye Middle School. Dexter’s old-fashioned sensibilities and practical skills, learned from his elderly mentors, immediately clash with the social norms and expectations of his... Read Old School Summary

One! Hundred! Demons! is a semi-autobiographical genre-defying graphic novel by American cartoonist and pedagogue, Lynda Barry. Over the course of her career as a prominent cartoonist with nationally syndicated comic strips, published collections, and illustrated novels, Barry has received many national and state-wide awards for her work, including two Eisner awards and MacArthur Genius Grant.Originally published serially in Salon magazine, the collected cartoon chapters were collected and published by Sasquatch Books in 2002, and later... Read One! Hundred! Demons! Summary

Kate Kennedy’s New York Times best-selling One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In is a collection of 12 essays examining the effects of media, culture, and technology on millennials. Kennedy’s writings are inspired by the conversations and commentaries she has developed through her podcast Be There in Five. In One in A Millennial, Kennedy takes a feminist stance as she examines distinct facets of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. She particularly... Read One in a Millennial Summary

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston is a 2021 romance novel with elements of humor, science fiction, dystopian fiction, and magical realism. The story centers on two women in New York City. August Landry is 23 and has just moved to New York City to finish college. Biyu “Jane” Su is from the 1970s, and she’s trapped on the Q line of the New York City Metro in 2020. The story spans roughly nine months... Read One Last Stop Summary

In his national best-selling book One Summer: America, 1927, author Bill Bryson recounts the dramatic history and legacies of the summer of 1927 in the United States. Though it is a work of nonfiction, Bryson writes the story with a structured narrative complete with foreshadowing and cliffhangers. Readers progress through the summer with hints of the dramatic twists and turns to come while experiencing Bryson’s analysis of the implications and importance of this period in... Read One Summer: America, 1927 Summary

William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, published “One Thousand Dollars” in his 1908 collection of short stories The Voice of the City: Further Stories of the Four Million. The stories explore New York City at the turn of the 20th century. Believing every person had a story to tell, O. Henry wrote about the poor and the rich and the shared experience of being human. This study guide references the 1908 edition of... Read One Thousand Dollars Summary

Open Throat (2023) is a stream-of-consciousness novel by Henry Hoke that follows the adventures of a queer and gender non-conforming mountain lion living in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Though the novel primarily focuses on themes of Ecological Decay and Urban Wilderness, The Disillusioning Nature of Human Society, and Forging Queer Identity Through a Desire to Belong, it also captures the impact of climate change on wild animals, particularly those affected by habitat loss and... Read Open Throat Summary

Operation Bounce House (2026), by Matt Dinniman, is a darkly satirical stand-alone science fiction novel in the GameLit subgenre. In it, protagonist Oliver Lewis leads a fight to save the planet of New Sonora from an attempted genocide orchestrated by a gaming company that is using its player-customers as remote mercenaries for Earth’s government. The novel critiques The Gamification of War and The Toxicity of Online Culture and examines the complex relationship between In-Group/Out-Group Dynamics... Read Operation Bounce House Summary

Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great (1972) is the second book in the beloved Fudge series by American author Judy Blume. While the first book, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), follows Peter Hatcher and his mischievous brother Fudge, the second novel in the series focuses on Peter’s classmate and neighbor Sheila Tubman, with whom he shares a mutual dislike.Blume’s books have sold over 90 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 32... Read Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great Summary

Our Country Friends, Gary Shteyngart’s fifth novel, was published on November 2, 2021, by Random House. Shteyngart, who writes literary fiction and often approaches topics from a satirical lens, tackles the global COVID-19 pandemic in Our Country Friends. The novel belongs to the emergent genre of “pandemic literature” and takes place over the first six months of the crisis, using circumstances similar to the early stages of the pandemic lockdowns. There are virtual doctors’ appointments... Read Our Country Friends Summary

Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, a 1958 satirical spy novel, evokes the political atmosphere in Cuba on the cusp of the Communist takeover and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Relevant and well-received, the novel has been adapted into a film, a play, and an opera. Greene was himself a member of M16, the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, and his background allowed him to portray both accurately and comically the behind-the-scenes espionage antics that make... Read Our Man in Havana Summary

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void is one of several bestselling nonfiction works by science writer and humorist Mary Roach. Published in 2010, the work focuses on the human side of space travel and offers behind-the-scenes accounts of peculiar and taboo topics such as sex, vomit, and toilets in space. Roach writes from a candid, outsider’s point of view and demystifies some of the grandeur of space travel by reporting... Read Packing for Mars Summary

Part of Your World is a 2022 novel by best-selling novelist Abby Jimenez. A romantic comedy about status, secrets, and standing up for yourself, Part of Your World alternates between the perspectives of Alexis—a wealthy doctor facing extreme pressure from her family—and Daniel—a small-town mayor who does not belong in Alexis’s world. By employing many of the classic tropes of contemporary romance, Jimenez explores the ways in which love transcends social boundaries, along with themes... Read Part of Your World Summary

Gary D. Schmidt’s 2019 middle-grade novel, Pay Attention, Carter Jones, is a coming-of-age story that blends humor with emotional depth. The narrative follows Carter Jones, a sixth grader whose chaotic home life is thrown into further disarray by the unexpected arrival of an English butler. As Carter’s father is deployed with the military, the butler, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick, arrives as part of an inheritance and begins to instill a new sense of order and decorum. He... Read Pay Attention, Carter Jones Summary

Emily Henry is an American fiction writer living in Cincinnati, Ohio. In a May 10, 2021 interview with Henry on Shondaland.com, Katie Tamola writes, “Henry has made a name for herself in taking typical romance-novel tropes and adding modern twists.” Her latest novels Beach Read (2020) and People We Meet on Vacation (2021) were New York Times best sellers. Both novels are contemporary romances which are primarily set on vacation and feature the attraction of... Read People We Meet on Vacation Summary

Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods (2014) by Rick Riordan is a short story collection in which Riordan’s fictional character Percy Jackson narrates stories about the Greek gods that inhabit his world. The collection focuses on the Greek creation myth, the Titans, and the Olympian gods, providing additional context to Riordan’s New York Times best-selling Percy Jackson series (the first book of which is The Lightning Thief), which was followed by Percy Jackson’s Greek Heroes. A New... Read Percy Jackson's Greek Gods Summary

Peter and the Starcatchers (2004) is a children’s fantasy adventure novel by humorist Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. Barry won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988 and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2005; Pearson is an author of several bestselling adult thriller novels and children’s adventure stories. Though sometimes considered a prequel to J.M. Barrie’s classic children’s novel Peter and Wendy, Peter and the Starcatchers is an entirely new re-imagining... Read Peter and the Starcatchers Summary

Picking Daisies on Sundays, published in 2023, is a contemporary second-chance, friends-to-lovers, young-adult romance novel by self-published author Liana Cincotti, who authored the novel while still in college. The novel, set in New York City, focuses on Dani’s quests of Overcoming Fear to Embrace Love, Listening to One’s Instincts as a Path to Self-Discovery, and Growing Up by Letting Go of Expectations. Cincotti writes character-focused fiction that explores themes of love, grief, and personal transformation... Read Picking Daisies on Sundays Summary

The debut novel of British author Charles Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (commonly known as The Pickwick Papers) was first published as a series by Chapman and Hall between 1836 and 1837. The Pickwick Papers chronicles the adventures of the members of the Pickwick Club, a group of travelers who journey around England and share their experiences. Because of the original serial format of the novel, the chapters contain individual but interconnected... Read Pickwick Papers Summary