Staff Reading Picks

A powerful memoir by 25-year-old Ly Tran about her immigrant experience and her recent family history in the aftermath of the war that spans from Vietnam to Brooklyn, and ultimately to the Ivy League.

A powerful priest, an outcast seafarer, and a man born to be the vessel of a god come together in the first of Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky trilogy. The winter solstice is coming, and the elite members of the sacred Sky Made clans in the city of Tova are preparing for a great celebration, led by Naranpa, the newly appointed Sun Priest. But unrest is brewing in Carrion Crow, one of the clans. Years ago, a previous Sun Priest feared heresy among the people of Carrion Crow and ordered his mighty Watchers to attack them, a terrible act that stripped the clan of its power for generations.

Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G.H. are an older couple, it's their house, and they've arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area, with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service, it's hard to know what to believe.

Transitioning from her Jewish faith to dieting to maintain an illusion of existential control, Rachel bonds with an Orthodox woman at a frozen yogurt shop before embarking on a journey of food, desire and spiritual fulfillment.

To survive the Holocaust, a young Jewish woman must pose as a Christian farmer's wife in this story of terror, hope, love, and sacrifice, inspired by true events from the most perilous days of World War II.

Writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers Amber Ruffin writes with her sister Lacey Lamar with humor and heart to share absurd anecdotes about everyday experiences of racism.

In this memoir that spans dozens of countries worldwide, a young girl and her family adopt one new identity after another and run from both the law and the secrets that will eventually catch up to all of them.

In the middle of the night, Sheriff Winston Barnes learns that a plane has crashed at a coastal airfield, with neither pilot nor cargo in evidence and a local man found shot dead, but as Winston investigates, a devious challenger threatens his reelectionas sheriff, his daughter returns home with heartbreak of her own, and long-submerged racial bitterness comes to the fore.

Lil and Frank married young, having bonded over how they both lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they'd lost prematurely. Now, after many years in Boston, they have retired in North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries-perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know.