A Merry Little Meet Cute (2022) is a romantic comedy cowritten by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone. Murphy is the New York Times best-selling author of several young adult novels, and Simone is the USA Today best-selling author of erotic romances. A Merry Little Meet Cute is the first in the Christmas Notch series of novels and novellas, an ongoing collaboration between these two authors. In A Merry Little Meet Cute, Bianca “Bee” Hobbes is... Read A Merry Little Meet Cute Summary

Joy Harjo is a seminal voice in the US poetry canon, and she has long been an advocate for Native American women in the literary world. Her work has merited tremendous acclaim, such as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the American... Read An American Sunrise Summary

Anathema is a dark fantasy romance by notable dark romance author Keri Lake. Anathema is Lake’s 18th novel, and she is a USA Today best-selling author. The novel was originally published in September 2024 and intended to be the first novel in a duology, though Lake has since suggested that it may become a trilogy. Lake describes the novel as a gothic dark fantasy with elements of horror, a slow-burn romance, and cursed or shunned... Read Anathema Summary

“An Atlas of the Difficult World” (1991), by renowned American poet Adrienne Rich, is a 13-poem cycle about the US in the early 1990s, as the country wrestled with the moral implications of the unfolding Persian Gulf War. Casting an unblinking eye at a nation in turmoil, Rich investigates what it means to be a patriot of an imperfect nation, suggesting that in those imperfections lies a sustaining promise of hope in the darkest times. In... Read An Atlas of the Difficult World Summary

Anything Is Possible is a 2017 novel by Elizabeth Strout in which each chapter features a character who is separate from but interconnects with the book’s other characters. Each chapter thus serves as both an autonomous short story and a piece of a larger, cohesive narrative and echoes or parallels other chapters.Strout, whose 2008 novel Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, received the prestigious Story Prize for Anything Is Possible. The novel follows... Read Anything Is Possible Summary

A Piece of Cake is an autobiography written by Cupcake Brown and originally published in 2006. Cupcake Brown’s life was filled with one challenge after another, and she overcame all odds to survive and share her story of Perseverance, Survival, and Transformation. For Cupcake Developing, Experiencing, and Overcoming Addiction became the vehicle through which her transformation unfolded. Throughout it all, Cupcake constantly battled between Staying True to Oneself Versus Wanting to Belong. Cupcake’s memoir made... Read A Piece Of Cake Summary

Jimmy Santiago Baca, born in 1952, is an American poet and author of A Place to Stand. Poems by Baca include “Immigrants in Our Own Land” (1979) and “Who Understands Me but Me” (1979). This memoir begins with Baca’s early years at home with his drunken, abusive father and his unhappy mother. Baca loves his father, who is continually in and out of jail, but Baca’s mother abandons her three children to marry a man... Read A Place to Stand Summary

“Araby” is a short story by Irish writer James Joyce. The story is a part of Joyce’s renowned Dubliners collection, first published in 1914, which portrays daily life in the Irish city of Dublin in the early 20th century. In “Araby,” a young boy falls in love with his friend’s sister and attempts to purchase her a gift from the Araby Bazaar. The short story has been adapted as a song and a short film... Read Araby Summary

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz is a young adult fiction novel published in 2012. The novel won a Lambda Literary Award, a Pura Belpre Award, and a Stonewall Book Award. It was also named a Printz Honor Book and has achieved popularity on BookTok. Told from a first-person point of view, the book is a work of realistic fiction set in El Paso, Texas, in the late... Read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe Summary

A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea (2017) by Masaji Ishikawa, translated by Risa Kobayashi and Martin Brown, is a memoir that recounts Ishikawa’s life and eventual escape from North Korea. Born in Japan to a Korean father and Japanese mother, Ishikawa moved to North Korea at the age of 13 under false promises from the North Korean government. Ishikawa faced a life of extreme hardship, oppression, and survival under North Korea’s... Read A River in Darkness Summary

As Bright as Heaven (2018) is a historical fiction novel by American author Susan Meissner. Meissner, a USA Today best-selling author, has written 27 novels that frequently garner critical praise and appear on popular book lists. As Bright as Heaven received a starred review from Library Journal, which noted the “balanced tone of sorrow” (Panik, Tina. “As Bright as Heaven.” Library Journal, 1 Dec. 2017). Over two different time periods, 1918-1919 and 1925-1926, the novel... Read As Bright As Heaven Summary

A Single Man: A Novel was written by Christopher Isherwood and published in 1964. Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was born in England and later moved to the United States. Because Isherwood was gay and moved to escape the stifling atmosphere of England, the novel can be said to loosely resemble, or at least be inspired by, his own life, much like his 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin. Isherwood’s novel chronicling the last day in the life... Read A Single Man Summary

Maureen Callahan’s Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed is a nonfiction historical work. Published in 2024, the book covers the troubled history of the women in the orbit of the Kennedy political dynasty. A political family defined by its photogenic, charismatic young men who entered politics as vanguards of the Democratic Party, the Kennedys have both suffered and profited from media scrutiny.Callahan, a writer for Vanity Fair and the New York Post... Read Ask Not Summary

As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow (2022) is a contemporary YA novel by Zoulfa Katouh that includes speculative, historical, and romance elements based on real events and is often classified under magical realism. The story follows Salama Kassab, an 18-year-old pharmacy student living in Homs, Syria, during the Syrian Revolution. She works tirelessly at a hospital to save lives. Amid the chaos, Salama loses family and faces the agonizing decision of whether to stay... Read As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow Summary

Traci Chee’s 2022 A Thousand Steps into Night is a Japanese mythos-influenced, feminist-inspired fantasy novel depicting the epic journey of a young innkeeper’s daughter to undo her demonic curse as she bargains with gods, battles with evil spirits, and saves the world along the way. Chee is a full-time novelist and has currently written and published five books. She is the New York Times bestselling author of The Readers series, and one of her previous... Read A Thousand Steps into Night Summary

Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, published by Random House in 2021, is a self-help book subtitled “Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience.” Brown defines and explores over 80 different emotions and experiences gathered from her work as a grounded theory emotions researcher. Using her own research and extensive research from others, she defines each emotion/experience and often contrasts it with others. Brown believes that having this nuanced language helps the reader... Read Atlas of the Heart Summary

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a 1943 semi-autobiographical novel by American author Betty Smith. It tells the story of a girl coming of age in an impoverished family in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, during the early 20th century. The book was a success upon publication and has become a classic of American literature. It was adapted into a 1945 film that won Academy Awards for its child star, Peggy Ann Carson, and for actor James Dunn... Read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Summary

Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1982. He was born in Aracataca, Colombia and received a Jesuit education and studied law before becoming a journalist. After being sent to Rome on assignment, García Márquez spent much of his life travelling. Though Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier coined the term magical realism, to describe a storytelling style that blends mundane and magical elements, this term and style are now widely... Read Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon Summary

Written by Gary Soto, Baseball in April and Other Stories (1990) is a collection of middle grade short stories that features Mexican American youths who are growing up in California’s Central Valley. Set in the 1980s, the stories show protagonists navigating a range of childhood experiences in a multicultural society as they and their families also negotiate financial hardships. Soto’s collection was the winner of the 1996 Pura Belpré Award and the California Library Association’s Beatty... Read Baseball in April and Other Stories Summary

Written by Fredrik Backman in 2017, Beartown is the first of a trilogy and is followed by the similarly hockey-themed novels, Us Against You (2017) and The Winners (2021). All three novels are set in the town of the same name, and Beartown focuses on the local junior hockey team, the in-game success or failure of which deeply impacts the economy of the town as a whole. As the town's intense focus on the sport... Read Beartown Summary