REQUIRED READING

The Futures by Anna Pitoniak (Little, Brown)

There’s certainly no dearth of novels about privileged twentysomethings making their way in the big city, but this one stands out for its beautiful writing, emotional depth and evocative feel. Set on the eve of the 2008 financial meltdown, a young couple graduates from Yale full of hopes and plans but realizes it’s hard to make your way in a world that seems to be falling apart.

The Girl Before by JP Delaney (Ballantine)

One Folgate Street is an architect’s dream: stylish, sleek and clutter-free. There’s just one catch — a lengthy list of rules detailing how a prospective tenant must treat the house. (Think Marie Kondo’s “Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.”) Yet tenants are clamoring to live there — until it becomes apparent the house has a dark past and a landlord that’s anything but welcoming.

Valley of the Gods A Silicon Valley Story by Alexandra Wolfe (Simon & Schuster)

An inside look at Silicon Valley and the ambitious men and women who are hoping to change the world. Wolfe follows three people trying to become the next Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk.

Insane Clown President Dispatches from the 2016 Circus by Matt Taibbi (Spiegel & Grau)

In case you had forgotten what an outright free-for-all the 2016 election was, journalist Taibbi will remind you, taking readers month by month through a presidential race that was anything but typical.

The Spider and the Fly A Reporter, a Serial Killer, and the Meaning of Murder by Claudia Rowe (Dey Street Books)

A literary true-crime book recounting the tale of the unusual connection between journalist Claudia Rowe and a Poughkeepsie serial killer who murdered eight women in the late 1990s and hid them in the house he shared with his mother, father and sister. Driven by a need to understand why someone would do this, Rowe begins writing letters to the killer in jail — and an unlikely rapport forms.