The Road to Tender Hearts ~ Annie Hartnett PJ Halliday, an alcoholic hoarder who lives down the street from his best friend, who is also his ex-wife. He doesn’t need to work because he won 1.5 million in the lottery, which makes him popular at the local bar. He and his wife had 2 daughters, but the elder daughter died on her prom night many years prior, an event which contributed to his heavy drinking and the dissolution of their marriage. Pancakes is a strangely prescient cat who has the ability to know when someone is going to die. When he senses their imminent demise, he goes to them, so they…

Wave ~ Sonali Deraniyagala A woman, her husband, their kids, her parents, her friend and her friend’s mom are vacationing in Sri Lanka, where she grew up, in late December, 2004. Looking from the hotel window, she can see that something is wrong with the ocean. At first she is curious, then she realizes that something is very wrong, and she and her husband grab the kids and start to run. They run past her parents’ hotel room without stopping to warn them, and they make it to a jeep, where they pile in and drive for safety. The tsunami wave overtakes their car and they are separated. She is…

Wellness ~ Nathan Hill Jack and Elizabeth meet in 1993. They are neighbors who have been creepily spying upon each others through their windows, kind of like the cast of Friends spying on Ugly Naked Guy. They fall in love quickly and completely after finally meeting in a bar when Jack rescues Elizabeth from a creeper trying to pick her up. 20 years later, they’re trying to figure out how to maintain their marriage, planning the layout of their new luxury condo. Will they have open shelving or cabinets? One en-suite bedroom, or two? Can they find the meaning that they are missing by making such decisions? They are unhappy.…

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store ~ James McBride This is the story of Chicken Hill, a black and Jewish community in Pottstown, PA, that starts in the early 1970s when the skeleton of a man is found in a well, then travels back to the 1930s, where we meet the characters of Chicken Hill, and eventually discover the identity and story behind the discovery. There is Chona, who owns The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, and refuses to sell it and move when her husband, Moshe, makes good money running his jazz theater. Then there is Dodo, a young voiceless black boy with special needs, who is being cared…

The Vanishing Half ~ Brit Bennett Desiree and Stella Vignes are identical twin sisters from the fictional town of Mallard, Louisiana, a town inhabited by very light skinned black people. The sisters witness the lynching of their father in the 1940s, and their mother pulls them out of school in order to help support their household by becoming housekeepers for a local family, where Stella is assaulted. At the age of 16, the sisters run away. In order to find a job, Stella starts passing for white, and eventually falls in love with a white man and moves away, leaving her heartbroken sister behind. Stella marries and lives in Los…

The Women ~ Kristin Hannah Frances “Frankie” McGrath is a San Diego nursing student from a wealthy family turned Army nurse, who goes to war in Vietnam. She is dropped into a field hospital with barely any training, and quickly learns the ropes and shows herself to be a gifted trauma nurse. While there, she makes close friendships and falls in love with an (unbeknownst to her) married man. She comes home after her second tour and faces a world that is hostile to veterans in general, and an absolute lack of support for female veterans. Again and again she tries to get help for her trauma, and again and…

The Monsters of Templeton ~ Lauren Groff The corpse of a 50-foot underwater creature surfaces from Lake Glimmerglass. Like Nessie, there were stories about a monster in the lake, but no one really believed them before now. Willie Upton returns to her home in Templeton, New York, to her mother’s home near the lake shore. Willie has had a rough time of it lately. She’s a Stanford graduate student who is pregnant with the child of one of her (married) professors, whose wife she tried to run over with a prop plane in Alaska. Willie’s mother, Vi, drops a bombshell on her. Willie has been told her entire life that…

Playground ~ Richard Powers Todd Keane is a middle-aged white tech billionaire diagnosed with dementia. He had a privileged childhood in Illinois, and develops an extremely popular online app, Playground. Rafi Young is a worker with an NGO who went to prep-school and college with Todd. He is a black man from a poor neighborhood, whose parents sacrifice in order to give him the education he clearly craves, as his is a gifted mind. Ina Aroita is a sculptor from the South Pacific who meets Todd and Rafi in college. She and Rafi fall in love and start a tumultuous relationship. Evelyne Beaulieu is a gifted deep sea diver who…

The God of the Woods ~ Liz Moore Barbara Van Laar is a 13 year old girl at a summer camp owned by her wealthy parents. One morning in 1975, her bunk is empty, and she is discovered to be missing. Her camp counselor is worried that she will be blamed, and for just reason. The mystery behind The God of The Woods is what happened to Barbara. Her older brother, Bear, went missing at the age of 8, a year before Barbara was born, and was never found. Are their fates entwined? There are plenty of suspects. There is her camp counselor. There is the son of the family…