BY KRISTYN KUSEK LEWIS
Not Your Average Rom-Com
In Holly Gramazio’s debut, Lauren comes home after a big night out and finds a man she’s never met in her London apartment. According to the photos on the wall and the texts in her phone, he’s…her husband? But when he climbs into the attic to change a light bulb, another man climbs down, and it isn’t long before Lauren realizes that every time she sends someone up the ladder, a different spouse returns. Refreshingly original and laugh-out-loud funny, The Husbands has a sneaky-smart message about how hard it can be to make confident choices in a world with zillions of options.
Stunning Historical Fiction
It’s 2011 when a stranger knocks on Eunju Oh’s door and sends her reeling back to a past she’d hoped to forget. In the 1980s, teenage Eunju and her mother, living on the streets of South Korea, were picked up by police and taken to one of the country’s “reformatory centers”— ostensibly created to help struggling members of society but actually brutally violent work camps. Told from the perspectives of Eunju, her mother, and two teenage brothers imprisoned in the same camp, The Stone Home by Crystal Hana Kim exposes a dark reality in South Korea’s history through a gripping story about human connection and the will to survive.
Uplifting Mystery
When Clayton Stumper was just a baby, he was left on the steps of an English commune where a group of professional enigmatologists (i.e., puzzle makers) invented new games and riddles. Now in his 20s, Clayton is a quirky young man mourning the death of the woman who discovered and raised him. But she’s left him with one final mystery to solve: Where did he really come from, and what’s next? Samuel Burr’s The Fellowship of Puzzle makers takes readers along on Clayton’s quest to discover his roots, treating us to a literary mood boost about friendship and found family.
American Story
Two decades after immigrating to the U.S., the Shahs seem to be living the dream. They have a successful business, a new home in an upscale California community, three happy kids, and a close-knit network of fellow Indian Americans. Then their 12-year-old son is arrested, and they learn they might have more in common with other communities of color than they’d believed. With vivid characters and an absorbing plot, A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda asks important questions about race, class, and what it really means to “make it” in the U.S. today.
High Lit with Heart
The Limits, the latest by Nell Freudenberger, is an astonishingly realistic portrayal of everyday people facing the challenges of modern life. Set during the peak of Covid (but don’t worry—it’s not a pandemic novel!), it features unforgettable characters: Nathalie is a French biologist living on a tiny Polynesian island who sends her teenage daughter, Pia, to Manhattan to stay with her ex and his new wife, Kate, a teacher. After Pia meets one of Kate’s students, a 16-year-old caring for her toddler nephew and haunted by anxiety, everyone’s paths collide in deeply moving ways.
Photograph by Ted Cavanaugh
PROP STYLING BY MARINA BEVILACQUA