“The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can’t see, whose beginning you’ve forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable.” – Joyce Carol Oates, Foxfire
Choke Point by Brad Thor
fiction / suspense / mystery.
A devastating series of bombings tears through Bangkok. Scores of American citizens are dead. The attacks send shock waves around the world.
As global assistance pours into Thailand—including the FBI’s famed Evidence Response Team—the president of the United States quietly prepares a plan B: Scot Harvath, America’s top spy, trained to operate outside the law and probe the dark corners others can’t… or won’t.
But the bomber Harvath is pursuing isn’t a terrorist. He’s something far more dangerous—one of ours.
Meanwhile, in Washington, a former United States Marine is being hunted—and he has no idea why. Desperate for answers, he turns to the one person he still trusts—his ex-fiancée, a rising star in the White House. The problem is, she isn’t sure she can trust him.
As Harvath closes in on the bomber, a devastating truth begins to emerge. China has quietly deployed its most elite intelligence unit to Thailand. Their objective: to ignite chaos, trigger a military coup, and seize control of a narrow but critical piece of land, one that could give Beijing a decisive advantage.
If the plan succeeds, Beijing will secure a key gateway between two oceans, eroding American naval dominance and tipping the balance in any war between the world’s great powers.
China will control the ultimate geopolitical choke point.
“…Brad Thor’s expertise at building tension is unparalleled. Choke Point scratches that weekend-in-a-hammock spy thriller itch like nobody’s business.” – Apple Books Review
“Summer can officially begin now as Brad Thor has delivered another Scot Harvath masterpiece… Explosive scenes partnered with intoxicating writing will drive you from page to page with ease… Thor continues to impress time after time and his amazing run of bestsellers isn’t going to end anytime soon.” – Chris Miller, The Best Thriller Books
The Cruelty of Nice Folks: Why Minneapolis Is the Story of America by Justin Ellis
nonfiction / history / politics.
It’s the “North,” they like to say, not the Midwest. It’s different. Minneapolis is a city for everyone. But in 2020, George Floyd’s murder by the city’s police left many Americans stunned and wondering, “How could this happen in Minneapolis?” To Ellis, the real question is: What made people think it couldn’t?
The Minneapolis Justin Ellis grew up in is not the idealistic metropolis it claims to be. The “City of Lakes” was built on discrimination— in its housing, its schools, its politics—much like all other American cities. Black families were systematically cut out of the prosperous neighborhoods, lush parks, and pristine lakes that make Minneapolis a haven of the heartland. Because of its image as a liberal ally in the fight for civil rights, Minneapolis has rarely been forced to confront this fact. But when George Floyd’s murder sparks a global protest movement with the city as ground zero, its residents must finally ask what being a good neighbor actually means.
In a powerful new epilogue, Ellis turns his gaze back to Minneapolis as the sweeping federal immigration operation once again thrusts the city into national headlines. If George Floyd’s murder forced Minneapolis to confront questions of policing, power, and responsibility, the events of 2026 ask what those years of reckoning ultimately changed. Where fear once threatened to overwhelm the city’s response to state violence, Ellis finds a community newly practiced in dissent and collective action. The crisis reveals a Minneapolis still wrestling with its identity, but also one transformed by experience—no longer shocked into awakening, but shaped by it.
“An urgent critique of ‘polite’ racism that demands attention.” – Kirkus Reviews
“[A] sobering blend of family memoir and urban exposé… Though Ellis retains a residual fondness for the Minneapolis of his youth, after yet another police killing of a Black man he realizes that ‘some times the only way to break the otherwise comfortable idyll that governs life in Minnesota is to be impolite.’” – Lesley Williams, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“…penetrating and moving… Ellis’s affecting research into his own family’s history forms the book’s emotional core… a searing account of Black survival in a city built on broken promises, and a damning view of liberalism as willing to pick and choose when equality is a virtue.” – Publishers Weekly
Dinner with an Astronaut: Serving Space Stories: Past, Present and Future by Leroy Chiao with Victoria Bruce
nonfiction / memoir.
Imagine if you could sit down and enjoy a meal with an astronaut. What questions would you ask? What could you learn after a few courses? Leroy Chiao invites you as his guest for Dinner with an Astronaut, an insightful and witty deep dive into the world’s most unexplored realm: the cosmos.
At just 30 years old, Leroy was selected by NASA as one of twenty-three members of the thirteenth astronaut group. As the first full Chinese heritage professional astronaut, he flew four space missions on the Space Shuttle, Soyuz, ISS, and on spacewalks in both US and Russian spacesuits, and served as the commander of the International Space Station.
Using his unique perspective from flying with fellow American, Japanese and Russian professionals, Leroy now answers your burning universe-spanning questions, such as:
- What is the new space race, and who are the next generation of competitors?
- What is NASA working on these days?
- What feelings did you experience looking out at Earth from space?
- What does the future of space exploration look like?
- Will we ever make it to Mars?
Sharing the wonders of space with those of us on Earth, Leroy details his astronaut training and otherworldly spaceflights. Gorgeously luminary and deeply profound, Dinner with an Astronaut invites readers to join Leroy Chiao and take a seat at the table, for fans of Scott Kelly, Chris Hadfield, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and for anyone who’s been obsessed with the Artemis II moon mission.
“…enjoyable… [Chiao’s] insights, passion, awe, and gratitude combine for a memorable read.” – Kathleen McBroom, Booklist
The Frenzy: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates
fiction / short stories / suspense.
Frenzy (noun): a temporary madness; a violent mental or emotional agitation; intense usually wild and often disorderly compulsive or agitated activity
Joyce Carol Oates is a master of the short story and one of the legends of the form. Her collections of short fiction have twice been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and have won numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story. In The Frenzy: Stories, Oates plunges us into the lives of her characters at moments of crisis and confusion, when much of what they understand about themselves and those they love comes undone.
A young woman on a supposedly romantic weekend trip to Cape May, New Jersey, turns the tables on her older, married lover. A freak bicycle accident on a bridge haunts one family for decades. A girl jealous of her popular cousin discovers she is the lucky one. A widow waits at her riverside house for her dead husband’s return. A young man hiking in the woods comes upon a couple in a heated, possibly violent argument—should he intervene?
Suspenseful and psychologically astute, Oates’s short stories enthrall and captivate as they dissect her character’s deepest fears—revealing our own in turn. “Literature is a texture of words,” says Oates of her short fiction, “evoking life in the most vivid ways—psychologically, physically.” These new stories blazingly evoke life at its most vivid and perilous, when fate and free will intersect, and one ominous encounter or bad choice can be the difference between an ordinary day and the point of no return.
“…haunting… Oates is now 87 with a tower of books to her name, but she continues to unsettle and discomfit with clinical effectiveness just as she did six decades ago.” – Taylor Antrim, Vogue
“…terrific… sly and sinister… Full of parenthetical asides that call much of what the reader knows into question, the stories range from sharply compressed to vertiginously recursive. Oates has few competitors as a purveyor of deeply disturbing fiction about the porous border between life and death.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Yes, Oates’s fiction dwells on the dark side of life—‘I’m holding a mirror up to the world we’re in,’ she explained to AARP last year—but it’s also brilliant, as evidenced by these engrossing short stories that dive into the minds of characters prone to cruelty or struggling with destructive desires.” – Christina Ianzito, AARP
Ghost-Eye by Amitav Ghosh ★
fiction / historical fiction.
Varsha Gupta wants fish for lunch. Her family is shocked; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don’t allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life, in a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different mother.
Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychologist who has been investigating what are known as “cases of the reincarnation type” for years. But her understanding of the world is changed forever by Varsha’s revelations.
Half a century later, Varsha’s case file catches the attention of a group of environmental activists, and Shoma’s nephew Dinu is drawn inexorably into their plans. As Dinu finds himself caught up in the search for Varsha, buried memories of his own past begin to surface.
Traveling between late 1960s Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, Amitav Ghosh’s Ghost-Eye is an urgent and expansive novel from one of our greatest living storytellers, about family, fate, and our fragile planet.
“…thoroughly gratifying… Moving seamlessly between decades, Ghosh intertwines family, sociopolitical history, capitalism, environmental crises, and a myriad of (sur)realities. Always an exceptional storyteller, he brilliantly combines what can be touched and seen with the documented otherworldly… a magnificent story ready to be believed, appreciated, and celebrated.” – Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness
“The term ‘one of a kind’ gets bandied about in the arts quite a lot but the writer Amitav Ghosh not only deserves the encomium, he could function as a handy benchmark for assessing whether others merit it… Transnational and translingual, with a planet-spanning curiosity, Ghosh is a synthesist of the highest order, able to weave big, genre-bending ideas, vast sweeps of History and nuanced characterizations into compulsively readable narratives… Like nearly all Ghosh’s work, Ghost-Eye contains multitudes that themselves contain multitudes. The scholar Rosalind Morris once wrote (in relation to ancestors): ‘We can think what we cannot know.’ Ghost-Eye, like our natural world, is a magnificent testament to this.” – Junot Díaz, New York Times
“Ghosh uses crisp prose to examine the fault lines between faith and science in a manner reminiscent of Ian McEwan and posits supernatural elements at work in the everyday that will engage fans of Ruth Ozeki… Featuring a fascinating storyline with lots of big ideas, this book is sure to encourage meaty discussions and provoke strong opinions.” – Jon Jeffryes, Library Journal
“Even after the last page of Ghost-Eye, Amitav Ghosh’s latest novel, the spell lingers. The magical realism of his world is slow to loosen its grip; the real world seems subtly altered. The book sharpens one’s attentiveness—even the sound of leaves rustling assumes new significance. This enduring effect is a testament to Ghosh’s formidable narrative control… With its multiple storylines and timelines held together by motifs of reincarnation and climate crisis, Ghost-Eye is an expansive novel—a wide canvas where several colourful elements coexist beautifully.” – Shubhangi Shah, The Week
Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages by Jenny Colgan
fiction / romance.
Janey Carter has a lot to be grateful for—a home by the sea in the Scottish isles, a job that she loves, two kids who have successfully launched, and a network of kind and supportive friends. But since her husband left, her confidence has taken a nosedive. And then, out of the blue, her thirty-year-old daughter Essie announces she’s moving back home. Janey loves Essie dearly, but she was never the easiest to live with, and Janie has been enjoying the empty nest life.
Yes, Essie Carter has just lost her job, can’t afford her rent in Edinburgh, and her boyfriend isn’t ready to commit. She hates to admit defeat and isn’t wild about moving back to the remote island community where she was raised. But maybe the sea air will clear her head?
No sooner is Essie back under her mother’s roof than an unusual opportunity pops up: the shabby and unloved Seaside Cottages next door come up for sale. Janey has some experience renovating the island’s famous stone fisherman’s cottages, Essie needs something to do, and they could both use a little Air B&B income to warm their pockets. Mother and daughter slowly bond over the shared challenge, which delivers some much-needed revelations for Essie, and offers Janey a surprise second chance at love as well.
“Colgan hits the mark in her eighth Scottish Island of Mure novel… fans will be delighted.” – Catherine Field, Library Journal
“…this gloriously uplifting story – set amidst the unspoilt splendours of the Highlands – has everything that a true romantic could want. Brimming with the author’s wit, warmth and emotional insight, Janey and Essie’s rollercoaster journey is a dazzling delight… this is the perfect reading companion for summer getaways.” – Pam Norfolk, Lancashire Post
Murder at the Spirit Lounge by Jess Kidd
fiction / mystery / historical fiction.
When Dolores Chimes, a famous medium, arrives in Gore-on-Sea, even surly Detective Inspector Rideout is lured in by her promises of messages from the afterlife.
But after a reading goes disastrously wrong, Dolores loses her life—and the six sitters at the séance with her fall victim to supernatural deaths themselves in the days following the nightmare of a reading.
Determined to unveil the truth, Nora finds herself chasing a ghostly serial killer she believes to be responsible, before the sixth victim—Detective Rideout himself—perishes along with the others.
“[A] charming and often funny cozy mystery… With its plucky female protagonist with a past yet to explore, the promise of romance, and plenty of characters to bump off in the next installment, the Nora Breen Investigates series is one worth picking up.” – Sarah Reida, Crimespree Magazine
“Kidd’s narrative is absorbing and the overall tone is a blend of bright dialogue and the dark shadows of the many lost and lonely souls in an England still recovering from the traumas of WWII.” – Jane Murphy, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
“Kidd has fun dreaming up apparently impossible deaths for her victims, and the resolution satisfies. For cozy fans, this is a treat.” – Publishers Weekly
Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat-and the American Revolution-Transformed Britain by Danielle Allen
nonfiction / history / biographry.
When Danielle Allen unearthed a parchment of the Declaration of Independence buried away in Sussex, England, little did she know that she had discovered a story of historical magnitude that would alter our understanding of British and American history. Revealing that the Age of Revolution began earlier than we thought―not with the Boston patriots nor with the Parisian Jacobins, but in Britain itself―Allen demonstrates in Radical Duke that the rights of man, the theory of revolution, and calls for popular sovereignty all emerged from the radical energies of London before they spread across the Atlantic and the Channel.
At the center of this new age was Charles Lennox, the progressive Third Duke of Richmond, a rarely cited historical figure who becomes the biographical focus of Allen’s groundbreaking work. Even with royal blood coursing through his veins, the handsome, gallivanting Duke (1735–1806) preferred to rub shoulders with ordinary folk―supporting the rights of jurors, freedom of the press, and religious toleration. As Allen shows, from 1767 to 1782, he was England’s leading voice of opposition to the Crown, and, as the leader of the Sussex militia, even a threat to the King’s power. But the Duke did not challenge the Crown alone. The archives have long hidden the covert alliance between the young Duke and his age-mate Thomas Paine, the future author of Common Sense. While working as an obscure tax collector, Paine was engaged by the Duke to contribute to the most influential but anonymous newspaper essays of the age, The Letters of Junius, which spawned sedition trials, defined the rights of man, and brought England to the brink of revolution. Along with a small cadre of radicals, Paine and the Duke fired hearts across two continents and secretly stoked a burgeoning political movement.
Throughout Radical Duke, Allen sets the record straight. Through archival evidence, confirmed with computational tools, she reveals the anonymous authors of the inflammatory Junius letters; she also identifies a new Paine work, his first book, The Juryman’s Touchstone, cowritten in 1771. In the end, the Duke swerved. He did not advocate the overthrow of the monarchy but remained loyal to both Crown and people, launching an age of reform. With her penetrating prose, Allen resuscitates a seminal political figure who has been egregiously neglected throughout history.
“An exemplary account of the American Revolution as seen from—and anticipated and abetted in—the mother country.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“[The book] advances a singularly bold case for the English origins of the American Revolution.” – Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
“…excellent… [Allen’s] meticulous and stylish study has the potential to significantly rewrite the history of the American Revolution’s intellectual origins… a major work of interpretation…. In the 250th year of the Declaration of Independence… Danielle Allen is to be commended for her own act of resistance. She has written one of the most important, original studies of the American founding and its background to appear in many years.” – Jeffrey Collins, Wall Street Journal
Someone Else’s Husband by Kimberly McCreight
fiction / suspense / mystery.
Gretchen Falk, a Park Avenue sophisticate born into great wealth and blessed with a storybook marriage, knows she lives a charmed life, and she’s not about to risk losing any part of it. That’s why she tried to convince Richard, her devoted husband and the father to their three children, not to join his old college friends on an expedition to the imposing peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Little did she know that the beautiful artist climbing alongside him might prove the far greater danger.
Frankie Callahan’s dream of artistic success is within reach, with her career-making exhibition at a celebrated New York gallery only weeks away. If all goes well, the show will leave her financially independent, free of the tainted money that ties her to a past—and a man—she’s desperate to escape. To mark this new beginning, she is going to climb Kilimanjaro. But when she learns she’s the sole female accompanying a group of male friends, Frankie realizes that nothing about the trip will be as she expected. She certainly hasn’t counted on meeting anyone like the very charismatic, very rich, very married Richard Falk. By the time they descend—with one fewer in their group than when they began—they have lost more than they ever could have imagined.
Now, less than two weeks after their return to New York, Frankie’s East Village loft is a blood-soaked crime scene, and Richard has been charged with her murder. It falls to Gretchen to figure how the life she so carefully constructed could have imploded so completely. There are only two things she knows for sure: she’s the only woman Richard has ever loved, and he would never hurt anyone.
“McCreight’s delicious, character-driven thriller will have you guessing to the end.” – Kim Hubbard, People
“With its blend of psychological tension and emotional depth, Someone Else’s Husband is already shaping up to be one of the most talked-about thrillers of 2026.” – Nina Derwin, Parade
“Though savvy mystery readers might identify Frankie’s killer early on, McCreight delivers plenty of surprising secondary twists. Dynamic characters and expert pacing further bolster the proceedings. This should satisfy the author’s fans and win her new ones.” – Publishers Weekly
Three Hitmen and a Baby by Rob Hart
fiction / mystery / suspense / comedy / action.
Assassins Anonymous isn’t just a weekly recovery meeting for reformed killers—it’s also a family.
When Valencia receives troubling news that her brother has gone missing, she wants to rush off to LA to find him. But she can’t bring her baby girl, Lucia. Enter the other members of Assassins Anonymous—Mark, Astrid, and Booker, who offer to watch the toddler while she’s gone. After all, they’re three of the deadliest, most highly skilled people on the planet; what could go wrong?
Turns out, a lot. Shortly after Valencia leaves, Mark is summoned to the lair of Zmeya, a Russian mob boss calling in a deadly favor—she wants him to kill Astrid, his protege and friend. Mark refuses, but Zmeya reveals that she knows the identity of Mark’s ex-girlfriend… and his son. Either Astrid goes, or they do.
Meanwhile, Lucia spikes a dangerously high fever, and when Booker and Astrid take her to urgent care, they realize too late, that their fabricated identities are a real liability. Also, they don’t know Valencia’s last name, let alone Lucia’s. They can hardly blame the staff for calling the NYPD.
Suddenly the splintered group is on the run from both the Russian mob and the police, dodging bad guys and do-gooders while trying to find refuge in a city full of surveillance cameras—all without killing anyone. That is, until Zmeya captures Sara and Bennett, and Mark is ready to throw his sobriety out the window.
“This is such a fantastic and clever series… With Three Hitmen and a Baby, Rob Hart delivers a third straight banger in this distinctive, entertaining and pulse-pounding series. It’s well constructed, brilliantly executed, emotionally gripping, and fun as hell.” – Steven Netter, The Best Thriller Books
“High tension? Yep. Funny? Yep, that too. Heartwarming? Without a doubt. Oh, and a major twist in the final pages. What more can you ask for from a mystery?” – BookPage
“…nimbly balances humor with genuine suspense… Hart’s ability to generate sympathy for characters with so much blood on their hands remains impressive, as does his ability to match laughs with gasps. This killer series continues to balance thrills and heart like few others.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
Trash!: A Garbageman’s Story by Simon Paré-Poupart; translated by Pablo Strauss ★
nonfiction / memoir.
A Montreal garbageman’s sharp and funny memoir/exposé, in which he attempts to convince people to “stop imagining that your garbage magically disappears”…
This fascinating no-bullshit account of twenty years in waste management paints a vivid portrait of the heroic labor, anarchic spirit, and violent conditions of the people who keep our cities clean.
Paré-Poupart’s story is he started working as a garbageman to pay for school, and after earning graduate degrees and working in more “respectable” fields, he is still on a truck — out of love for the physical rush, for his rough-and-tumble colleagues, and for an honesty and freedom that no other job has yet given him.
His sociology background informs his inquiry into our collective wastefulness and individual failure to confront the trash we produce. Every abstract observation comes with hilarious and hair-raising stories from the collection route to his days off spent hunting down furniture and toys for family and friends, as a committed freegan.
Trash! — the French edition of which is a runaway bestseller in Canada — explains and questions efforts to “clean up” a business with longstanding conventions of its own, a last bastion of well-paid employment for people who cannot fit in anywhere else.
Aligned with great books about work from Zola to Orwell to Lucia Berlin, and in dialogue with societal critiques like How To Do Nothing, Trash! will change how you think about your waste and the people who handle it.
“A sharp and engaging reckoning with the detritus of our times—and the people who clean it up.” – Kirkus Reviews
“[A] rare delight… a beautifully hybrid text. Part exposé of the hidden lives of trash collectors, part critique of consumer society, this account mixes in blue-collar curse words with references to labour history and Émile Zola… Paré-Poupart elegantly and effectively makes the case that we should all think more about the people who collect our trash.” – Amanda Perry, Literary Review of Canada
“Enlightening, unpretentious, and gently political, Pare-Poupart’s fascinating account will help readers view their garbage in a whole new light. It’s a treasure.” – Publishers Weekly
“[A] raffish and spirited memoir… Usually, comparisons to [Anthony] Bourdain are fatuous. This time it’s accurate… Like Bourdain, he raises the blinds on his industry… Like Bourdain, too, Paré-Poupart is in love with almost all of it… His book is a nonconformist cri de coeur. It demands we see garbage collectors as human beings. It asks we come to understand why many love the work… It’s been a long time since I’ve read so good and rowdy a memoir about blue-collar work.” – Dwight Garner, New York Times
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