Recommended Reads

Moving from Pakistan’s dazzling chaotic cities to its lawless feudal countryside, This Is Where the Serpent Lives powerfully evokes contemporary feudal Pakistan, following the destinies of a dozen unforgettable characters whose lives are linked through violence and tragedy, triumph, and love. 

England, 1842. As a boy, Alex Ivanov was pulled from the Thames, presumed drowned, with no memory of who he was. Rescued and raised by the formidable Ryder Sherbrooke, Alex has built a new life. Lady Camilla Rohman is as clever as she is desperate. When fate throws her into Alex’s path, their connection is undeniable. But as their whirlwind romance turns into marriage, danger follows. 

Combining fiber art and paper craft techniques, paper weaving is accessible, sustainable, and fun. Each project in the book includes a prompt, a technique, step-by-step instructions with photographs, and examples that will inspire readers to repurpose, recycle, and reuse papers they may already have, like maps, postcards, holiday cards, or journals. 
 

Crochet How takes new crocheters through the basics so they can develop their skills and increase their crochet confidence with each new project. The book's friendly teaching style, clear instructions, and easy to make patterns are specifically designed to make starting out fun and to inspire new crocheters to stick with the craft. 

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: They can run away. Fleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing must find a new purpose.
 

Jack Morgan, ex-Marine helicopter pilot and CIA agent, is in Italy to open the latest outpost of his international private investigation firm. But when a priest is murdered at the firm's opening party, Morgan and his newly-appointed deputy, Matteo Ricci, come under intense scrutiny. As Morgan and Ricci work the case, they discover that eight priests have died. This case rests on breaking the secret hold of the Holy See's all-powerful, all knowing inner circle.

After her medical license gets revoked, Army combat surgeon Maggie has lost her purpose but not her nerve or her passion. Then she is thrown a lifeline by a former colleague, an elite plastic surgeon whose anonymous clientele demand the best ultra-discreet care that money can buy. When one of the world's most mysterious men requires unconventional medical assistance, Maggie fulfills her end of the agreement. But after the patient disappears while still under her care, Maggie must become a fugitive herself.

Sheriff Joanna Brady is looking forward to the holidays with her busy family. But her holidays are interrupted when a body is discovered beneath a flooded bridge in the Arizona desert, and Joanna is called onto the case. A young boy was murdered, and the details of the crime scene tell Joanna two things: This was not the killer's first murder. And it's only a matter of time before he kills again.

Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while his marriage slowly falls apart. Into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will after her husband left her a small fortune. Once he hooks the richest client of his career, Simon works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar. When she is hospitalized after a car accident, Simon finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t commit: murder. To save himself, he must find the real killer.

Natural Resources police officer, Sloan Cooper, walked right into a robbery in progress in a convenience store. One gunshot from a jittery thief was about to change her world. She may be down, but she’s not out. When a woman vanishes, leaving her car behind in a supermarket parking lot, Sloan searches online for similar cases and finds them spread across three states. It will take every ounce of her endurance to get to the dark heart of this bizarre case.

High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club. But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. It is clear to Polly that this match is a mistake, but still she cannot help but comb through her family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.

Plunged into a perilous search that will take her onto the first postwar luxury passenger ship to sail across the ocean to Italy, Billie finds herself up against a dangerous adversary—someone with a mysterious grudge against her family—as she races to uncover the secrets her father left behind. And as the trail leads her towards two women whose histories may be entwined with her own, she realizes that her father’s Italian secret just might upend everything she thought she knew.
 

Book 1 in the Six of Crows series

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz's crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction--if they don't kill each other first.

Book 6 in the Throne of Glass series

Chaol and Nesryn visit Antica hoping the legendary healers of the Torre Cesme can enable Chaol to walk again, and to persuade the rulers to ally with them to save Erilea.

Book 4 in the Throne of Glass series

No masters. No limits. No regrets. Aelin Galathynius takes her place as queen.

Orphaned by the Border Wars, Alina Starkov is taken from obscurity and her only friend, Mal, to become the protegé of the mysterious Darkling, who trains her to join the magical elite in the belief that she is the Sun Summoner, who can destroy the monsters of the Fold.

Book 1 in the Inheritance Games series

When a Connecticut teenager inherits vast wealth and an eccentric estate from the richest man in Texas, she must also live with his surviving family and solve a series of puzzles to discover how she earned her inheritance.

Book 2 in the Ember in the Ashes series

After the events of the Fourth Trial, Martial soldiers hunt the two fugitives as they flee the city of Serra and undertake a perilous journey through the heart of the Empire.

Book 1 in the Matched series

All her life, Cassia has never had a choice. The Society dictates everything: when and how to play, where to work, where to live, what to eat and wear, when to die, and most importantly to Cassia as she turns 17, whom to marry. When she is Matched with her best friend Xander, things couldn't be more perfect. But why did her neighbor Ky's face show up on her match disk as well?

As a fourteen-year-old who just moved to a new town, with no friends, an abusive father, and a louse for an older brother, Doug Swieteck has all the stats stacked against him until he finds an ally in Lil Spicer--a fiery young lady. Together, they find a safe haven in the local library, inspiration in learning about the plates of John James Audubon's birds, and a hilarious adventure on a Broadway stage.

Book 1 in the Skyward series

Spensa's world has been under attack for hundreds of years. An alien race called the Krell leads onslaught after onslaught from the sky in a never-ending campaign to destroy humankind. She dreams of becoming a pilot, but her fate is intertwined with that of her father-- a pilot himself who was killed years ago when he abruptly deserted his team. When the Krell double their fleet, this may be Spensa's chance to get into Flight School.

Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

fter a dumpster fire of a Valentine's Day, Emilie Hornby escapes to her grandmother;s house for some comfort. She passes out on the couch, but when she wakes up, she's back home in her own bed-- and it's Valentine's Day all over again.

Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit-hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return.

Some summers are just destined to be pretty. Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.

Book 3 in the Arc of the Scythe series

In the finale to the Arc of a Scythe trilogy, dictators, prophets, and tensions rise. In a world that's conquered death, will humanity finally be torn asunder by the immortal beings it created?

When her brother unexpectedly inherits an English estate, the outspoken and infamously daring poet, Ivy, swaps her lively New York life for the prim and proper world of high society, and quickly faces the challenges of its revered traditions-especially once she meets the most sought-after socialite of the courting season: Freya Tallon.

Paloma is heartbroken. A year ago, her ex-boyfriend, Julio, broke up with her after his father's death. Now, her hometown of San Fermín is in danger. Selva, a massive e-commerce conglomerate, threatens to open one of their warehouses beside her high school. Can Paloma and Julio put aside their fractured relationship to save their town?

When a girl with the ability to conduct electricity discovers that the powerful House of Industry is not the benevolent organization they present to be, she teams up with two boys-former lovers-who are standing against the harm the House has caused in the name of progress.

An enemies-to-lovers romance about nemeses who are forced to share their school's Queer Alliance presidency following a tie in the election.

In this young adult speculative mystery, a teen must find a way to free a cursed witch in order to save her best friend before time runs out.

A teen investigative podcaster decides to dig into the truth behind a grisly murder spree that rocked his hometown five years ago, but soon discovers that this cold case is still hiding deadly secrets

In The Cradle of Citizenship, James Traub chronicles his year of observing public schools across the country. He finds a red-blue war incarnated in the 1619 Project and 1776 Report; a profound disagreement over what exactly civic education means; and, most dismayingly, ever-diminishing expectations of students with ever-dwindling attention spans. Shedding light on one of the most divisive issues of our time, The Cradle of Citizenship upholds a vision of civics education as it could be.

The Beginner's Cut Flower Garden is the perfect book for gardeners who are dipping a toe into growing cut flowers for the first time. Gardener and therapeutic horticulturalist Elizabeth Brown offers thoughtful, step-by-step, seasonally inspired narratives and information on the flowers to grow. With the poetry of a classic horticultural guide and the accessibility of a contemporary garden club, Brown brings a collaborative, welcoming spirit to the process of growing flowers: we're all beginners here.

Radically open-minded and unusually clear-eyed about herself and others, Evelyn Bednarz has always been a misfit. In distant Tibet, another life unfolds as remote from Evelyn's as can be: the life of a boy named Tsering, raised as a Buddhist monk who eventually becomes a high lama. And yet, their lives are strangely linked--as Evelyn discovers when a trio of Buddhist lamas show up at her door to announce that her five-year-old son Cliff is the seventh reincarnation of the illustrious Norbu Rinpoche, recently deceased. 

Hollywood, 1942. Jacqueline Love's acting career is flailing. Desperate to cling to stardom, Jackie takes the only gig that will have her- the Hollywood Victory Caravan, a train full of movie stars crossing the country to fundraise for the war effort. When a fellow star dies on board, Jackie enlists the help of Grace, one of the few women in the police force, to investigate as the train sits at Union Station. 

Told in two voices, Andy, a serious journalism student adamant about reinventing herself, and her influencer cousin, Dominique, who is on the verge of securing a major deal, navigate their own respective love stories over the New Year.

Beth March’s sisters will stop at nothing to track down her killer—until they begin to suspect each other.

There's a ghost haunting Drew Tarpin's new room. Liam Orville has been dead for ten months and has no idea how to move on. After a run-in with a ghost-eating monster leaves Drew and Liam desperate for answers, they strike up a deal. But Liam's time is running out, and if Drew doesn't help him move on, he risks becoming a monster himself.

A harrowing, edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller about a queer homeless teen who, in a bid for safety, assumes the identity of a boy who went missing ten years ago...only to find that his new home is anything but a safe haven.

A Chinese American teen navigates a high-stakes coding competition, sabotage, and first love when she is invited to a summer hackathon at MIT

After a botched high-profile murder investigation, Corporal Elderick Cole is exiled to the remote, rugged landscape of Nunavut, a vast territory in the Arctic Circle known for its untamed beauty, frigid temperatures, and endless winter nights. His bleak existence takes a sinister turn when he discovers the hanging body of Pitseolala, a troubled Inuit girl whom he had sworn to protect. Cole turns to Pitseolala’s younger brother, Maliktu, on a mission to find her killer.
 

In November 1913, a recruitment notice appeared in the first issue of an underground newspaper in San Francisco, the Hindustan Ghadar. The paper was founded by a charismatic anarchist from India named Har Dayal with the help of a group of Indian students at the University of California, Berkeley. Under the leadership of Dayal and fellow radical Sohan Singh Bhakna, this group hatched an audacious plan to put their words into action: they would convince other Indians, many of them Sikh lumber workers and farmhands on the west coasts of the United States and Canada, to launch a violent insurrection against the British Raj.
 

The Great Shadow uses extensive historical research and first-person accounts to tell a vivid story about sickness and our responses to it, from very ancient times until the last decade. In the process of writing, historian Susan Wise Bauer reveals just how many of our current fads and causes are rooted in the moment-by-moment experience of sickness—from the search for a balanced lifestyle to plug-in air fresheners and bare hardwood floors. 

Carter is caught in an unusual condition that causes him to relive his sixteenth year repeatedly. Each time he approaches his seventeenth birthday, his memory resets and his body reverts, while the rest of the world continues forward. Maggie, who previously had a relationship with Carter, remembers what he cannot. As she prepares for college and faces the limits of Carter's condition, the two navigate questions of memory, attachment, and continuity. 

Mia Yoon has a plan for everything, including producing her own dating show starring other people and their crushes. But everything goes off the rails when she has to enlist the help of her own secret crush, Noah Cho, a boy she'd rather hate. As Noah goes on more and more romantic dates on The Cuffing Game and Mia watches from behind the camera, something feels off. With the showrunner and contestant slowly falling for one another, can the show still go on?

High-achieving Eva dreams of attending Oxford, but her dream turns into a nightmare when her friend George dies during interview week and suspicion falls on Eva.

An internet star crafts a fake relationship with a small-town boy to rehab her image only to develop real feelings.

Sixteen-year-old Kyra teams up with new boy Logan to uncover the truth behind a mysterious drug with disturbing side effects that is plaguing their town.

When Tilly Nightingale receives a call telling her there’s a birthday gift from her husband waiting for her at her local bookshop, it couldn’t come as more of a shock because Joe died five months ago. When she goes to pick up the present, Alfie, the bookshop owner with kind eyes, explains the gift—twelve carefully chosen books with handwritten letters from Joe monthly to help her turn the page on her first year without him. Tilly becomes immersed in the pages, and a new chapter begins to unfold in her own life. 

County Clare, 1848: In the scant few years since the potato blight in Ireland, Maggie O’Shaughnessy has lost everything. She can see no future until the mysterious Lady Catherine arrives to whisk her away. Lady Catherine wants Maggie to impersonate her late daughter, Wilhelmina, to receive Wilhelmina’s widow pension. But something in Lady Catherine’s house is reawakening long-buried memories in Maggie.

To discover the truth behind her mother's mysterious death, a teen girl infiltrates a magical secret society claiming to be the descendants of King Arthur and his knights.

Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.

Book 2 of the Legendborn Cycle series

When the leaders of the Order reveal that they will do everything in their power to keep the approaching demon war a secret, Bree and her friends go on the run so she can learn how to control her devastating new powers.

When a student's younger brother becomes seriously ill after an encounter with a mysterious shopkeeper, she seeks assistance from a classmate who practices magic. With his help, she attempts to use supernatural abilities to protect her brother.

After breaking Uxlay University's sacred laws and inviting the rogue Nefrasi vampires into its halls, Kidan Adane finds herself trapped between betrayal and desire. Determined to protect her house and the artifact it guards, Kidan forges a perilous alliance with the ruthless Nefrasi leader.

Eighteen-year-old Prince Arris hopes to escape the cursed fate of his predecessors, each of whom dies shortly after marriage, so he strikes a deal with Demelza, a seventeen-year-old veritas swan maiden who can separate truth from lies.

Zora Lyon agrees to pretend to date the insufferably good-looking fan-favorite streamer, Ivan Hunt, in an attempt to boost her popularity in an e-sport competition. With her unmatched skill and in the video game world, and her new status as Ivan Hunt's girlfriend, she is sure to win the title of National Champion.

When a night of babysitting turns fatal, a girl burdened with survivor's guilt becomes increasingly convinced that someone is responsible for the gas leak that killed her family member--and that she was the intended target all along.

In 1965, twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows her brother, who has shipped out to serve in Vietnam. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. But the real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam. 

Playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But it's not likely to be performed in a still-misogynistic theater world -- until the play is submitted under a male pseudonym. In 1581, Emilia Bassano is forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, overseer of all theatre productions in England. When she sees how playwrights' words move audiences, Emilia pays an actor named William Shakespeare to bring a work of her own to the stage.

Nash has a wife and a daughter and a very high-level position at Sybaritic Investments, where his innate skills and dogged tenacity have carried him to the top of the pyramid in his business career. Then Nash is approached by the FBI to become an 'inside man.' His purpose: To expose an enterprise, led by Victoria Steers, that is laundering large sums of money through Sybaritic. But when Steers discovers that Nash is working with the FBI, she turns the tables on him in a way he never could have contemplated. 

Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man, K. J. Boone. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s post-death future.

A dark, magical realist debut family saga that moves through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Cultural Revolution, and the present day to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism, and the inescapability of fate.

Dr. Ashely Alker manages to shock readers while making them laugh, educating them on how to outsmart a wide range of deadly situations and conditions. Many of the chapters include stories from her experiences in life and medicine, at times heartwarming, others heartbreaking. Sections include explorations of sex, poison, drugs, biological warfare, disease, animals, crime, the elements, and much more.

In this long-awaited follow-up to his New York Times bestseller Endure, Alex Hutchinson dives headfirst into a fascinating and provocative new field of research, examining how exploration is a fundamental part of what makes us human and revealing how, even in our fully mapped modern world, the pursuit of the unknown remains an indispensable mindset in all walks of life.

A YA paranormal fantasy about vampires in the Paris underground, where a young woman's bohemian dream turns into a chilling nightmare. Now her survival hinges on bringing to light the city's darkest and deepest secrets. 

A seventeen-year-old vlogger known as Storymancer is determined to get to the bottom of what's wrong in his town. A few years ago, his little brother went missing in the woods and no one, not even his parents, seemed to care enough to try and find him. When a body is found, Storymancer takes the opportunity to investigate the monsters that lurk in the shadows, and the people in town who might just want the monsters there after all.

a We Were Liars novel

When eighteen-year-old Mathilda is invited to spend the summer with the father she has never met, she discovers far more than she expected within his seaside home.

Determined to exist beyond the limitations of misogynistic social norms, a group of teenage girls form a powerful friendship and transform into werewolves.

Seventeen-year-old Anna accepts her aunts offer to come work and live at her seaside bookshop. There are plenty of distractions in this sleepy little town: the infuriatingly hot local surfer who keeps crossing her path, for instance, plus the celebrity book launch Anna unwittingly agrees to host at the bookshop. This summer is going to be anything but boring!

The story Julian promises to deliver is a love story, that of two friends he met at university in the 1960s, that time of touted but rarely experienced sexual freedom. Julian played matchmaker to Stephen (tall, gangling, uncertain) and Jean (tart and attractive); as the third wheel he was deeply invested in the success of their love and insulted when they broke up. Time is swift, and forty years later, he tries again, watching as their rekindled affair produces joys, betrayals, and disappointments of a different order.

Dan and Tamma are two teenagers in their last year of high school in the southern Mojave Desert. One is a gifted golden child, the other a mouthy burnout. Climbing boulders in trash-strewn parking lots during cold desert nights, they seal their unique bond and dream of a life of adventure. As the year progresses and adult reality looms, they are rocked by change and pulled apart by irreconcilable obligations. It feels inevitable, finally, that something must give.

Nothing could prepare Ruby, a servant to the royal family, for the king's decision to name her as the next heir to the throne just before his death. Thrown into the viper's nest of court, Ruby is forced to contend with a kingdom in crisis, the dead king's angry wife, and the three entitled and annoyingly handsome princes. When she discovers a note left by the king that claims he was murdered and she might be next, Ruby must make uneasy alliances with each of the princes as she tries to solve the king's murder. 

Aromantic and asexual students Sophie and Jo, engaged in an online feud as the creators of popular relationship advice accounts "Dear Wendy" and "Sincerely Wanda," unwittingly become real-life friends and navigate their shared aroace identities as they face the challenges of college life.

Maggie Atkins will never forget what happened when she and six other elementary school kids were kidnapped. She will never forget that her friends left her alone to escape. Ten years later she's forced to go on a school trip to the mountains with the very same people who abandoned her. When a brutal storm separates her group from their chaperone they realize there is someone else on the mountain. Someone who knows what really happened all those years ago. Someone who wants them dead and is willing to take them out one by one. 

When her father is investigated by the FBI, Indy's life begins to fall apart--including her friendships--but when she finds herself locked in her school's bathroom with one of her ex-best friends, Beau, the two have one final chance to understand what went wrong.

Are the four Farthing sisters really descended from Persephone? This is what their aunt has always told them: that the women in their family can trace their lineage right back to the Goddess of the Dead. When one of the sisters falls in love with a ghost named Henry, and another banishes him to the Underworld, the sisters are faced with even bigger questions about who they are. If they really are related to Persephone, and they really are a bit magic, then perhaps it’s up to them to save Henry, to save the world, and to save each other.

You press send and your message disappears. Full of secrets about your neighbors, it’s meant for your sister. But it doesn’t reach her – it goes to the entire local community WhatsApp group instead. As rumor spreads like wildfire through the picture-perfect neighborhood, you convince yourself that people will move on. But then you receive the first death threat. The next day, a woman has been murdered. She had the same address as you but in a different part of town. Did the killer get the wrong house? 

Daring to Be Free portrays the struggle for liberation from the perspective of the enslaved and, wherever possible, in their own words. It highlights the power of collective action, stressing the role of maroon communities, conspiracies, insurrections, and spiritual movements, from Haiti and Brazil to Cuba, Mauritius, and the American South. These acts of resistance involved entire communities, with women often at the heart of the story as warriors, organizers, and agents of radical change. 

The Wounded Generation tells the indelible stories of the veterans and their loved ones as they confronted the aftershocks of World War II. Veterans suffering from recurring nightmares, uncontrollable rages, and social isolation were treated by doctors who had little understanding of PTSD. The true cause of their distress would remain undiagnosed for decades to come. 

With the help of insider and society maestro Ward McAllister, among others, Alice and Cora launch into the social season of 1884, scheming their way through grand balls, private dinners, and opera nights, ensnaring Alice's targets one by one. But as they hurtle toward their ultimate swindle, a sprawling orchestrated scheme at their fabricated embassy to rob their targets blind, pressures close in from all sides. This sting is sure to be the event of the season. Or else ruin Alice and Cora both.

Stranger Than Fiction Book Club Pick February 2026
 

Stranger Than Fiction Book Club Pick January 2026
 

Stranger Than Fiction Book Club Pick December 2025

Romance Me Book Club Pick February 2026

Romance Me Book Club Pick January 2026