REQUIRED READING
This Time Tomorrow
Emma Straub (f iction, Riverhead Books) Alice is facing down her 40th birthday, with few complaints. Life is good: She’s got independence, a place to live, a great relationship and best friend. But when she wakes up on the morning of her birthday, she’s stunned to find herself in 1996 — and she is 16.
Marrying the Ketchups
Jennifer Close (fiction, Knopf) “Ketchups” takes the reader on a delightful tour of three generations of a Chicago restaurant family and the three months when their patriarch Bud, founder of JP Sullivan’s, dies, and everything is upended.
The Shore
Katie Runde (f iction, Scribner) Brian and Margot Dunne live in Seaside with their two teenage daughters. They run a small real estate company, renting houses to tourists in search of a Shore vacation. But in this particular summer, things are falling apart: Brian is dying of a brain tumor that has transformed his personality, the rental returns are modest, and Margot wants nothing more than to sell their house and move away.
Outside Ragnar Jonasson (f iction, Minotaur Books)
From the master of Icelandic suspense comes this slim novel about four friends who embark on a hiking adventure — when a freak snowstorm forces them to take shelter in an abandoned hunting lodge. When one of them goes for help, the others aren’t sure what to do — and then they discover they aren’t alone in the lodge.
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
Akwaeke Emezi (f iction, Atria Books) Five years after an accident killed the love of her life, Feyi Adekola is ready to start embracing life again. She’s now an artist with her own studio, living with her best friend, who insists it’s time for her to hit the dating scene. When she starts dating the perfect guy, things are looking up — until she falls for his father.
A Bright and Blinding Sun: A World War II Story of Survival, Love, and Redemption
Marcus Brotherton (nonf iction, Little, Brown) Joe Johnson Jr. was an adolescent runaway at 12, hopping a freight train and talking his way into the US Army a few years later. He was seeking adventure and that’s what he got: He was sent to the Philippines in 1941. He ended up fighting in Bataan and Corregidor and was taken a prisoner of war, all the while dreaming of a lost love he’d met at the beginning of his tour.