Isle McElroy's novel covers a deep exploration of marriage, love, and the ways we know one another — while also touching on how so much of how we navigate the world depends on how it sees us.

An excellent work of people-first journalism, Donovan X. Ramsey's book offers a vivid and frank history and highlights how communities tend to save themselves even as they're being targeted.

Mai Nguyen's debut novel centers on the family of Tuyết and Xuân Tran, Vietnamese refugees who settle in Toronto. It simmers with questions about work, class and generational divides.

Karin Boye's novel is an outlier in that it was authored by a woman and, though narrated by a man, still expresses interest in women's inner life and acknowledges the subtleties of sexism.

The 22 stories in Sidle Creek charm, surprise, and convey a deep love of the people and place — the Appalachian plateau of western Pennsylvania — that author Jolene McIlwain has long called home.

John Wray's latest novel is a powerful and juicy story about a particular time, subculture, and the ways people can find themselves in — or can deliberately disappear into — fandom.

Sarah Cypher's debut novel ponders how stories can unite or divide as narrator Betty considers a big decision with her great-aunt Nuha's own mysterious life — and the tales she told — in mind.

A study finds that we are happier the more we talk with different categories of people — colleagues, family, strangers — and the more evenly our conversations are spread out among those groups.

Washington Post reporter Casey Parks' first book, Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery, follows her attempts to uncover Roy Hudgins' story while rediscovering her own along the way.

Gabino Iglesias' barrio noir may not be a cheerful book, but it still allows glimpses of love, moments of connection, and glimmers of beauty to exist.

Though winding at times, Sam Knight's book is thought-provoking and deeply researched, presenting the oddity of realized premonitions while allowing readers to come to their own conclusions.

Melissa Febos' book in itself is an example of the strength of personal narrative; it's also an argument for how such narratives inevitably create space for community as well as a freer self.

NoViolet Bulawayo's book expresses a people's frustration, terror, resilience, uprising and hope in a way that can be applied to a multitude of nations and political realities around the globe.

Sarah Weinman's book excels as an in-depth exploration of how outside influence and support can affect the criminal justice system — and as the narrative of a con artist who hurt a lot of people.

There are notable parallels to The Brothers Karamazov in Lan Samantha Chang's new novel about three brothers and the contentious relationship between them and their domineering father.

Bustle editor Rachel Krantz's memoir is a sincere and curious reckoning with the cultural messaging we all receive about gendered expectations and power dynamics in romantic and sexual relationships.

In Dana Schwartz's novel, it's 1817 and Lady Hazel, set to marry a cousin, just wants to study medicine. She meets a boy who helps her — and the journey is an adventure from there.

Jean Chen Ho's debut work of fiction focuses on a long-standing friendship that rings, sometimes terribly, true, as the girls-turned-women face the trials and tribulations of life.

Faith Jones, a successful lawyer, is the granddaughter of David Berg, founder of The Family. She tells of how she was raised in the cult from infancy until managing to leave it in her early 20s.

Rebecca Solnit's latest is a deeply political collection of interlinked essays, of which George Orwell is a part but not the whole; one of its joys is its unexpected turns from one topic to the next.