Published in December of 2020, Sarah Pearse’s The Sanatorium is a psychological thriller set in a luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps. It is a locked-room thriller in which the protagonist is tasked with solving a string of murders taking place in the hotel while on a trip to celebrate her brother’s engagement. The book tackles issues such as mental illness, childhood trauma, and sexual assault. The Sanatorium is the first in Pearse’s forthcoming Detective... Read The Sanatorium Summary

The Scent Keeper is a novel published in 2019 by the American author Erica Bauermeister. It chronicles the story of Emmeline Hartfell, a young woman whose mysterious magician father raises her on a remote island, which he claims is enchanted. After indirectly causing her father’s death, Emmeline must reunite with a mother she does not remember while experiencing the tender joys and gentle sorrows of first love. The book fuses familiar elements of a fairy... Read The Scent Keeper Summary

Lara Prescott’s debut novel, The Secrets We Kept, revolves around the publication of Russian writer Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago. Behind the Iron Curtain, Pasternak’s novel is seen as a threat to the Soviet State. Outside the Soviet Union, it is seen as not just an epic love story but also a device to influence Soviet citizens and destabilize the government. Prescott’s historical-fiction novel, published in 2019, concerns three women: Olga Ivinskaya, Pasternak’s real-life lover... Read The Secrets We Kept Summary

This Is How It Always Is, a novel by Laurie Frankel, was published in 2017. It was a New York Times best seller, one of People magazine’s Top 10 Books of 2017, and a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick. Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, child death, transgender discrimination, bullying, illness, graphic violence, and antigay bias. Language Note: The source material centers on a transgender individual assigned male at... Read This Is How It Always Is Summary

Tom Lake, a New York Times bestseller, is Ann Patchett’s 13th novel, published in 2023 by Harper. Patchett’s writing career began when she was still in college, and spans both fiction and nonfiction. She gained widespread recognition and acclaim with the publication of her fourth novel, Bel Canto, in 2001, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize, and was adapted into a film, starring Julianne Moore, in 2018. In 2012, Patchett appeared on... Read Tom Lake Summary

True Biz, an ASL expression that means “seriously” or “real-talk,” is the title of Sara Nović’s coming-of-age novel published in 2022 by Penguin Random House. This sophomore novel was named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist. Notably, Academy Award-winning actress Reese Witherspoon selected it for Reese’s Book Club, and The New York Times praised it as “moving, fast-paced, and spirited,” as well as “skillfully educational.” The book... Read True Biz Summary

We Were Never Here, published in 2021, is Andrea Bartz’s third novel in the thriller genre. Her novels came out in quick succession; the first, The Lost Night, was published in 2019, and the second, The Herd, in 2020. In 2021, Netflix picked up We Were Never Here for a film adaptation, and the novel was selected for Reese Witherspoon’s book club.Although the novel begins as a thriller about a murder committed in self-defense, it... Read We Were Never Here Summary

Where the Crawdads Sing is the debut novel of Delia Owens. Set in the marshes of coastal North Carolina from the 1940s to the 2000s, the novel is Southern literary fiction that tells the story of Kya, a little girl who comes of age alone after her family abandons her.  Published in 2018 by Putnam, the novel was a New York Times bestseller and a selection of Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine book club. In 2022 it... Read Where the Crawdads Sing Summary

Whisper Network, a mystery set in contemporary Dallas, is Chandler Baker’s first book written for adults. Baker draws on her past as a corporate attorney at a sports franchise in Dallas to portray her protagonists, a group of women who work in the Legal Affairs department of a large athletic wear company in Dallas. The novel uses the multitude of issues that working women face as a backdrop for a murder mystery; the mixture of... Read Whisper Network Summary

Gillian McCallister’s Wrong Place, Wrong Time (2022) is a murder mystery thriller and time travel adventure. It follows Jen Brotherhood, a successful lawyer living in Liverpool, as she tries to prevent her son, Todd, from committing a murder. She finds herself in a time spiral the morning after her son is arrested. Moving backward in time, she finds clues that explain her son’s actions.This guide uses the 2022 HarperCollins hardcover edition.Content Warning: The source material... Read Wrong Place Wrong Time Summary

You Should See Me in a Crown was written by Leah Johnson and published in June 2020 by Scholastic. The book received a Stonewall Book award for its LGBTQIA+ representation and was temporarily sold out in bookstores across the nation on its first launch. The novel is set in modern day, where a young woman, Liz Lighty, begins to put together a plan to become prom queen of her tiny Midwestern town. Liz wants nothing... Read You Should See Me in a Crown Summary