Angie Kim's Happiness Falls (2023) follows a biracial Korean family living in Virginia. Initially, their life seems picture-perfect. They are a seemingly happy family with a lot going for them; however, when the beloved patriarch of the family...

A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial (2023) is author Viet Thanh Nguyen's memoir. It follows Nyguyen's life from his birth in Vietnam to his immigration to America and ends in the present day. Early on in the book, Nguyen recounts a...

John Grisham is one of the most well-known popular fiction writers working today. Much of his work is set in the world of the law, and The Exchange (2023) is no different. The Exchange, which is a sequel to one of his most popular books called The...

The Lincoln Highway (2021) is a road-trip narrative set in 1954 America, spanning a timeline of ten days and 1,500 miles across the country. Packed into ten short days is the story of four boys’ journeys to find their respective futures, as Emmett...

Mona Awad's Rouge (2023) tells the story of Belle, a young woman who has spent much of her life obsessed with maintaining her skincare routine. However, that all changes when Noelle, her estranged mother, dies. As her mother's only living heir,...

Bryan Washington's Family Meal (2023) tells the story of Cam, a young man from Los Angeles whose life begins to fall apart after the tragic death of his beloved girlfriend, Kai. His life is further complicated by the fact that Kai's ghost...

Ayana Mathis' The Unsettled (2023) tells the story of a young woman named Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint. The novel, which is set in 1985, follows the young family as they navigate being homeless in Philadelphia—and the Glenn...

Jessica Knoll's Bright Young Women (2023) tells the story of two young women whose paths cross as a result of one man's violent behavior. At the start of the novel, which is set in January 1978, people across the United States are intrigued and...

C Pam Zhang's Land of Milk and Honey (2023) references Israel, which has been historically called the "land of milk and honey." Zhang's novel is set in a dystopian world in which a deadly, thick smog has appeared, food crops are disappearing, and...

Rupi Kaur is a Punjabi-Canadian writer and performer whose work centers on themes of womanhood, abuse, love, and loss. She self-published her first collection, milk and honey, in 2014, and just two years later it became a New York Times-...

The Faerie Queene was written over the course of about a decade by Edmund Spenser. He published the first three books in 1590, then the next four books (plus revisions to the first three) in 1596. It was originally intended to be twelve books...

"Elegy for My Father's Father," which appeared in James K. Baxter's 1966 poetry collection Pig Island Letters, is a poignant and reflective poem that explores the complex relationship between the poet and his paternal grandfather. The speaker...

Lauren Groff's The Vaster Wilds (2023) tells the story of an unnamed "servant girl" who lives in an isolated colonial settlement that has been plagued by disease and famine in the middle of the 17th-century New England wilderness. For her—and for...

Stephen King is one of the most prolific authors of all time. His second novel of 2023, simply titled Holly, follows the eponymous private investigator named Holly Gibney, who has appeared in several of King's novels. Holly sees Gibney as she sets...

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, the publisher of Alice McDermott's Absolution (2023), describes the novel as a "dark romance." The novel has three separate but inextricably linked stories (all of which take place largely during the Vietnam War): the...

Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend (2023) tells the story of slavery from a unique perspective: that of Annis, a young woman who was sold into slavery by her white father. Primarily, the novel follows Annis as she is forced to walk alongside her...

The Fraud (2023) is set in 1873 and follows Mrs. Eliza Touchet, a Scottish housekeeper. Touchet has spent much of her life living and working with the famous novelist William Ainsworth. As Ainsworth declines, Touchet begins to explore her...

Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey is a play about a working-class schoolgirl's dysfunctional relationship with her mother. First staged in 1958, the play is a pioneering work in the British cultural movement known as kitchen sink realism.

The...

Louis Sachar’s Small Steps is a young adult sequel to Holes, and it follows the storyline of Theodore “Armpit” Johnson after he returns home from Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention and Correctional Facility. Small Steps was published on January...

Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World is thought to have been first published in 1666, and is considered one of the first examples of science fiction novels. The novel follows a young woman named Lady Margaret, who discovers a portal to an...

The Vivisector, published in 1970, is Patrick White's eighth and longest novel. White dedicated the novel to the painter Sidney Nolan but denied that the main character, Hurtle Duffield, was based on him. The novel is often considered a largely...

Dennis Kelly's DNA is a play about a group of teenagers conspiring to cover up the death of a peer who falls into a ventilation shaft while being bullied by the group. It was first performed in 2008 in London.

Comprising four long scenes and...

Judith Wright was an important Australian poet, critic, and environmentalist who entwined her artistry with her activism. "Train Journey," published in the 1953 collection The Gateway, is about the relationship between the speaker and the country...