Staff Picks

This book broke me open and then put me back together differently. I hand it to anyone who thinks they've read everything about resilience.

— Sarah Mitchell

Two sisters in a Mennonite colony must decide whether to stay silent or fight back after years of abuse. Toews writes with devastating precision and extraordinary compassion.

Peters doesn't write for the comfortable. She writes for the curious. And this book will make you very curious indeed.

— Sarah Mitchell

A sharp, funny, and devastating novel about three women — trans and cis — navigating the possibilities of parenthood and reinvention.

When someone asks me for a book about grief, I hand them this. Didion doesn't soothe — she shows you the shape of the thing.

— Sarah Mitchell

Didion's devastating account of the year her husband died and her daughter fell ill. Spare, precise, and impossible to forget.

Satrapi shows you what it looks like when a whole society transforms around you and you're just trying to be a teenager.

— Sarah Mitchell

A graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during the revolution. Witty, heartbreaking, and absolutely essential.

Keegan can do more in eighty pages than most novelists do in four hundred. This is precision as an art form.

— Sarah Mitchell

A child is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland. A small story that contains an entire universe of feeling.

If you want a book that will make you kinder, read this. Not because it instructs — because it demonstrates.

— Sarah Mitchell

A dying minister writes a letter to his young son. Robinson's quiet masterpiece about grace, time, and the weight of love.

I didn't know I needed to think about what's beneath my feet until Macfarlane made me. Now I can't stop.

— Marcus Chen

A deep time journey beneath the Earth's surface — from burial chambers to mycorrhizal networks. Macfarlane writes about the dark with luminous clarity.

The kind of nonfiction that reads like a thriller and stays like a scar. I couldn't put it down and I couldn't forget it.

— Marcus Chen

A gripping account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, centered on the disappearance of a mother of ten. Masterful narrative nonfiction.

I recommend this to everyone. Not because it's important — though it is — but because it reads like the best novel you've never read.

— Marcus Chen

The epic story of the Great Migration, told through three lives. Wilkerson makes history feel like it's happening to you right now.

This isn't a book you read — it's a book you inhabit. Drew and Wortham have created something that breathes.

— Marcus Chen

A multimedia anthology of Black art, culture, and ideas. Part book, part archive, part conversation.

Hartman writes history like jazz. She lets the silenced speak and the forgotten dance. Not a single wasted word.

— Marcus Chen

Hartman explores the lives of young Black women in the early twentieth century, finding radical experiments in intimacy and freedom in the margins of history.

Every person who walks into a hospital should read this book. Skloot tells a story that medicine tried to forget.

— Marcus Chen

The story of the woman whose cells — taken without consent — became one of the most important tools in medicine. Science, ethics, and family.

Ozeki writes the kind of book that makes you look up from the page and see the world differently. I've given this to more people than any other title.

— Elena Vasquez

A novelist finds a diary washed up on a beach in Canada, written by a teenage girl in Tokyo. Two lives entwine across the Pacific.

Bachelard made me believe that a corner of a room could contain the entire universe. Read it slowly.

— Elena Vasquez

A philosophical meditation on the spaces we inhabit — from drawers to nests to the cosmos itself. Essential for anyone who thinks about where they think.

Hustvedt wrote the novel I didn't know I was waiting for. If you've ever been underestimated, this book sees you.

— Elena Vasquez

A female artist's work is only taken seriously when presented under male pseudonyms. A novel about art, gender, and who gets credit.

If you've never read Mary Oliver, start here. If you have, come back here. This is the one I keep on my nightstand.

— Elena Vasquez

A curated collection spanning Oliver's career — the best of the best from one of America's most beloved poets.

Roy doesn't write for the impatient. Give this book time and it will reward you in ways you didn't expect.

— Elena Vasquez

Roy's second novel is a sprawling, passionate, infuriating love letter to India — its beauty and its betrayals.

Machado reinvents the memoir form with every chapter. This book trusts you to hold contradictions.

— Elena Vasquez

A memoir of domestic abuse in a queer relationship, told in second person through a series of genre vignettes. Genre-bending and heartbreakingly inventive.

Stevens makes you work for it, and every line you decode becomes yours forever. I open this at random when I need to remember that language can do anything.

— Elena Vasquez

The definitive collection from one of America's most philosophical poets — luminous, challenging, and endlessly rewarding.

Rankine doesn't let you look away. This book changed how I see the country I live in. That's the highest compliment I can give.

— Elena Vasquez

A genre-defying meditation on race in America — part poetry, part essay, part visual art. Essential and devastating.

Le Guin makes you question everything you assume about identity, loyalty, and what it means to be human. Fifty years later, it's still ahead of us.

— Daniel Okafor

An envoy from an interstellar civilization arrives on a planet where gender is fluid. Le Guin's masterpiece about prejudice, politics, and connection.

Johnson takes Poe's worst novel and spins it into something brilliant. This is what happens when a satirist goes on an adventure.

— Daniel Okafor

A Black professor becomes obsessed with finding the island of pure Blackness from Poe's only novel. Hilarious, sharp, and deeply strange.

Ishiguro writes like someone telling you a secret they've carried for years. This book is the secret.

— Daniel Okafor

An Artificial Friend observes the world with extraordinary attentiveness. Ishiguro's meditation on love, sacrifice, and what makes a life worth living.

Chiang doesn't write stories — he writes thought experiments that happen to have characters. Every one of these is perfect.

— Daniel Okafor

Nine stories that interrogate the nature of consciousness, free will, and what it means to make choices. Speculative fiction at its philosophical best.

I will not say much about this book because it deserves to be discovered. But I will say: trust it. It knows where it's going.

— Daniel Okafor

A man lives in a vast house of infinite halls, tides, and statues. He believes there are only fifteen people in the world. He might be wrong.