1.  Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (2025)

As the day dawns on the 50th annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves. When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight ... and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

2. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (2024)

When Barbara Van Laar is discovered missing from her summer camp bunk one morning in August 1975, it triggers a panicked, terrified search. Losing a camper is a horrific tragedy under any circumstances, but Barbara isn't just any camper — she's the daughter of the wealthy family who owns the camp, as well as the opulent nearby estate, and most of the land in sight. And this isn't the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared in this region: Barbara's older brother also went missing 16 years earlier, never to be found. How could this have happened yet again? Out of this gripping beginning, Liz Moore weaves a richly textured drama, both emotionally nuanced and propelled by a double-barreled mystery. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the community working in its shadow, Moore's multi-threaded drama brings readers into the hearts of characters whose lives are forever changed by this eventful summer: Barbara's wounded, grieving mother; the "townie" whose family makes a living off this land; the 13-year-old camper struggling to find her way; and the outsider tasked with seeing the bigger picture, and uncovering the truth.

3. All Fours by Miranda July (2024)

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. 20 minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

4. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (2025)

After nearly 18 months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there's no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty. Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it's impossible to know who to trust. Now, Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves — her dragons, her family, her home, and him. Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find — the truth. But a storm is coming ... and not everyone can survive its wrath.

5. The Wedding People: A Novel by Alison Espach (2024)

It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she's the only guest at the Cornwall who isn't here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she's dreamed of coming for years — she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she's here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield, except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan — which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can't stop confiding in each other. In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach's The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined — and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

6. Intermezzo: A Novel by Sally Rooney (2024)

Set in Dublin and rural Ireland, the novel follows two brothers in the aftermath of their father's death: Ivan, a 22-year-old former chess prodigy who begins a relationship with Margaret, a 36-year-old arts program director; and Peter, a 32-year-old human rights lawyer navigating complicated relationships with both his younger girlfriend Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia. The novel explores themes of grief, age-gap relationships, sibling dynamics, and power structures in romantic relationships.

7. James: A Novel by Percival Everett

From Percival Everett — recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards — comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, this begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river's banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin...), Jim's agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a "cult literary icon" (Oprah Daily) and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of 21st-century American literature.

8. Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life. He calls his wife, Abby, to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes when she sees something in the road ahead. Over Grady's protests, Abby gets out of the car. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge, the headlights are on, the driver's door is open, her phone is still there ... but his wife has disappeared. A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can't sleep, and he can't write, so he travels to a tiny, remote Scottish island to try and get his life back on track. And then he sees the impossible: a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

9. Three Days in June by Anne Tyler (2025)

Gail Baines is long divorced from her husband, Max, and not especially close to her grown daughter, Debbie. Today is the day before Debbie's wedding. To start, Gail loses her job — or quits, depending on who you ask. Then, Max arrives unannounced on Gail's doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay and without even a suit in which to walk their daughter down the aisle. But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband-to-be. It will not only throw the wedding itself into question but also send Gail back into her past and how her own relationship fell apart. Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the height of her powers.

10. Dog Man 13: Big Jim Begins by Dav Pilkey (2024)

Join Dog Man and your favorite supa buddies as they save the city from a dastardly new wrongdoer!

1. The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who You Are by Black Thought (2023)

Through vivid vignettes, the platinum-selling, Grammy-winning co-founder of The Roots tells dramatic stories of the four powerful relationships that shaped him, each a complex weave of love, discovery, trauma, and loss, illuminating the redemptive power of the upcycle.

2. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (2024)

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on most measures. Why? In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the play-based childhood began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the phone-based childhood in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this great rewiring of childhood has interfered with children's social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies. Most importantly, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the collective action problems that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood. Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes — communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children — and ourselves — from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.

3. The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins (2024)

If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn't you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple words — Let Them — will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you. The Let Them Theory puts the power to create a life you love back in your hands — and this book will show you exactly how to do it. Robbins teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can't control and start focusing on what truly matters: YOU. Your happiness. Your goals. Your life. Using the same no-nonsense, science-backed approach that's made The Mel Robbins Podcast a global sensation, Robbins explains why The Let Them Theory is already loved by millions, and how you can apply it in eight key areas of your life to make the biggest impact.

4. Crying in H-Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner (2023)

From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band, and meeting the man who would become her husband, her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was 25, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

5. The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes (2025)

From the NYT-bestselling author and television and podcast host comes a powerful, wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society.

6. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2024)

Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories — our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking —expose and distort our realities. The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist and named for the Nubian pharaoh, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the "steampunk" city of "old traditions and new machinery," meeting with strangers and dining with local writers who quiz him in French about African-American politics. But everywhere he goes, he feels as if he's in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind, the pan-African homeland he was raised to believe was the origin and destiny for all Black people. Finally, he travels to the slave castles off the coast and touches the ocean that carried his ancestors away in chains, and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream. Back in the USA, he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he explores a different mythology, this one enforced on its subjects by the state. He enters the world of the teacher whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates's books and discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed and even radicalized by the stories they discovered in the "racial reckoning" of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths and stories of the community, a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. In Palestine, the longest of the essays, he discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we've accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians — the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels to Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality that the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him, and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

7. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams (2025)

An insider account charting one woman's career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

8. Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results - An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear (2018)

James Clear, an expert on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. He draws on proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible.

9. Abundance by Ezra Klein (2025)

This book discusses the history of the 21st century as a story of unaffordability and shortage in America. It highlights the national housing crisis, labor shortages due to limited immigration, insufficient clean-energy infrastructure, and delayed, over-budget public projects. The author argues that the root cause of these problems is a lack of sufficient building and proactive planning over the decades. Many of today's issues stem from past policies and regulations that, while intended to address issues of the 1970s, now hinder progress in areas like urban density and green energy. The book stresses that while we have become more aware of these problems, our ability to solve them has diminished. The book proposes that both liberals and conservatives need to recognize when government is failing or needed, and advocates for a politics of abundance — building solutions for the future, rather than adhering to past approaches focused on scarcity. This approach aims to address current challenges and the growing dissatisfaction with the status quo.

10. Revenge of the Tipping Point Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell (2024)

Why is Miami ... Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in 25 years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time to explain the dark side of contagious phenomena. Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world's most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell's most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of the modern world. It's time we took tipping points seriously.