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Featured Guide

Xochitl Gonzalez, author of Olga Dies Dreaming

It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, are boldfaced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s power brokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can’t seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets. Olga and Prieto’s mother, Blanca, a Young Lord turned radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.

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Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers

Frida Liu doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough. Until Frida has a very bad day. The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion. Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed.

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Karen White, author of The Attic on Queen Street

Melanie Trenholm’s husband, Jack, has asked for a separation. But their relationship issues are pushed aside when longtime nemesis Marc Longo comes to them with a proposition: allow their Tradd Street house to be used as the filming location for the movie adaptation of Marc’s bestselling book, and he will help Jack reestablish his stalled writing career. Despite Melanie’s hesitation, Jack jumps at the chance. But Melanie’s doubts soon prove to be well founded when she uncovers ulterior reasons for Marc wanting to be back in their house --- reasons that include a hidden gem so brilliant that legend links it to the most infamous jewel of all, the Hope Diamond.

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Kirthana Ramisetti, author of Dava Shastri's Last Day

Dava Shastri has always lived with her sterling reputation in mind. However, a brain cancer diagnosis at the age of 70 changes everything, and Dava decides to take her death into her own hands. Summoning her four adult children to her private island, she discloses shocking news: in addition to having a terminal illness, she has arranged for the news of her death to break early, so she can read her obituaries. Dava expects to read articles lauding her philanthropic work. Instead, her "death" reveals two devastating secrets, truths she thought she had buried forever. In the time she has left, Dava must come to terms with the decisions that have led to this moment --- and make peace with those closest to her before it's too late.

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Marissa Stapley, author of Lucky

Lucky Armstrong is a tough, talented grifter who has just pulled off a million-dollar heist with her boyfriend, Cary. She’s ready to start a brand-new life, with a new identity, when things go sideways. Lucky finds herself alone for the first time, navigating the world without the help of either her father or her boyfriend, the two figures from whom she’s learned the art of the scam. When she discovers that a lottery ticket she bought on a whim is worth millions, her elation is tempered by one big problem: cashing in the winning ticket means she’ll be arrested for her crimes. As Lucky tries to avoid capture and make a future for herself, she must confront her past.

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Jodi Picoult, author of Wish You Were Here

Diana O’Toole is an associate specialist at Sotheby’s, and her boss has hinted at a promotion if she can close a deal with a high-profile client. She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows that her boyfriend Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galápagos. But then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and on the eve of their departure, Finn breaks the news: It’s all hands on deck at the hospital. He has to stay behind. You should still go, he assures her. It turns out the whole island is now under quarantine, and Diana is stranded until the borders reopen. Slowly, she carves out a connection with a local family when a teenager with a secret opens up to Diana, despite her father’s suspicion of outsiders.

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Beatriz Williams, author of The Wicked Widow: A Wicked City Novel

June 1925: Audacious Appalachian flapper Geneva “Gin” Kelly prepares to trade her high-flying ways for respectable marriage to Oliver Anson Marshall. But just as wedding bells chime, the head of the notorious East Coast rum-running racket turns up murdered at a society funeral, and their short-lived honeymoon bliss goes up in a spectacular blaze. June 1998: When Ella Dommerich’s ninetysomething society queen aunt Julie ropes her into digging up dirt on Senator (and Presidential candidate) Franklin Hardcastle, she couldn’t be less enthusiastic. But then the Hardcastle secrets lead to a web of shady dealings Ella has uncovered in her job as a financial analyst, and the bodies start to tumble out of the venerable woodwork.

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Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof that bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings, and eventually to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he's searching for lost love.

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Nicole Baart, author of Everything We Didn't Say

Juniper Baker had just graduated from high school and was deep in the throes of a summer romance when Cal and Beth Murphy, a childless couple who lived on a neighboring farm, were brutally murdered. When her younger brother became the prime suspect, June’s world collapsed, and everything she loved that summer fell away. She left, promising never to return to tiny Jericho, Iowa. Until now. Officially, she’s back in town to help an ill friend manage the local library. But really, she’s returned to repair her relationship with her teenage daughter --- and to solve the infamous Murphy murders once and for all. She knows the key to both lies in the darkest secret of that long-ago summer night, one that’s haunted her for nearly 15 years.

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Elizabeth Strout, author of Oh William!

Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are. So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret --- one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us.

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