Cora Lee Womble-miesner

Job: Library Assistant 3, College-rolando Library, San Diego Public Library

She recommends: “Ultraluminous” by Katherine Faw (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017; 196 pages)

Why? This book demands your attention from the onset. Faw writes with an unflinching, visceral prose that drags you into a world of Duane Reade sushi and high-end prostitution. “Ultraluminous” charts a year in the life of a New York City escort with a weekly rotation of ultra-rich clientele through paragraphs that are as vivid as they are concise — each compact scene sears with the raw intensity of an exposed nerve. The novel’s cyclical pattern creates order from the chaos of drugs, sex work and an ever-gentrifying Brooklyn, and that sense of routine adds to the mounting tension threaded throughout the plot. Beneath haunting memories, unsexy sex scenes and copious amounts of heroin lies a piercing critique of capitalism and misogyny, and the places in which the two intersect.

Seth Marko

Job: Owner, The Book Catapult

He recommends: “Mecca” by Susan Straight (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022;

384 pages)

Why? Could this be the definitive California novel of this young century? I found these interlocking stories of native Californians so profoundly moving — people who float through the Golden State, mostly Indigenous or pre-border Mexican from 300 years back, the fiery backbone of the California economy, anonymous and unseen. Stories of gentrification and inequality, immigration and race, wildfire and desert canyons. An “American epic,” as they say, just not from the usual conquering Euro-perspective. And the landscape reads exactly as it truly is, written by native eyes — the dry air, the baking desert sun, the Santa Anas, the smell of the orange groves, terrifying wildfire. Gorgeous. And the ending will absolutely break your little heart. I truly think this may be the best novel about California that I have ever read.

Welcome to our literary circle, in which San Diegans pass the (printed) word on books