New Adult Reading Lists: Contemporary Fiction

The story of the unrivaled desire for healing and the power of familial bonds across five generations of Métis women and the land and bison that surround them.

In this big-hearted debut about ambition, race, and class, a family grapples with how much of their lineage they're willing to unearth in order to participate in the nation's first federal reparations program. Almost a decade ago, Willie Revel gave up her burgeoning journalism career in New York to help run her father's struggling construction company in Philadelphia. An ambitious single mother, Willie has reluctantly put family first without being able to forget who she might have become. Now, as the president of the United States prepares to pass the Forgiveness Act, a bill that would allow Black families to claim reparations if they can prove they are the descendants of slaves, Willie delves deeper into her family's history, while also trying to keep the family from going into bankruptcy. Acts of Forgiveness reveals the ways historical discrimination can manifest in the present. Could reparations help uncover her forgotten roots and right generational wrongs, while also helping save their beloved home and her father's life work? But for reasons both justifiable and cryptic, the rest of the family is hesitant and wary of what pursuing Forgiveness could mean. Her mother who was adopted is not eager to dig up the past; her father doesn't trust the government; and her daughter is just trying to make it through the fifth grade at her elite private school. It's up to Willie to verify their ancestry and save her family from financial ruin--but as she delves into their history, Willie begins to learn just how complicated family can really be. With warm insight and powerful prose, Acts of Forgiveness asks how history shapes who we are, to consider the weight of success when it is achieved despite incredible odds, and what leaving behind a legacy truly means.

Clayton Stumper might be in his twenties, but he dresses like your grandpa and fusses like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by a group of eccentric enigmatologists and now finds himself among the last survivors of a fading institution. When the esteemed crossword compiler and main maternal presence in Clayton's life, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle on him: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for life beyond the walls of the commune. So begins Clay's quest to uncover the secrets surrounding his birth, secrets that will change the Clay-and the Fellowship-forever. The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers is pure joy, a story about love and family and what it means to find your people-no matter what age you are.

With the publication of Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, the literary world realized that Yoshimoto was a young writer of enduring talent whose work has quickly earned a place among the best of contemporary Japanese literature. Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father) Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart.

Mab is the "normal" one, never mind Bourne Memorial High School has banned that term, and besides, she's a stickler for words and definitions and knows normal isn't normal in Bourne. Monday is a stickler for everything else. She doesn't like abbreviations, contractions, lies, typos, or wearing green clothes on yellow days. When the Bourne library shut down-funds desperately needed elsewhere-she stashed the books under her bed, behind the sofa, along the stairs, inside the microwave, and lends them from home. Mirabel's the smart one, the slow one, the stuck one. Much of her body requires augmentation-she needs a wheelchair to navigate the world, a voice app to speak to it-but her right arm and hand work flawlessly. And so do her brain and her heart. Nora gave her girls "M" names with escalating syllables so she'd be able to keep them straight. As if single parenting sixteen-year-old triplets weren't enough, her two jobs-Bourne's only therapist and its only bartender-are both in unusually high demand. And then there's the job she can't let go-lead plaintiff in Bourne's class-action lawsuit against Bison Chemical. Seventeen years ago, the Bison plant was pumping toxic chemicals into Bourne's river. Flowers stopped blooming. Pets got sick, then their owners did too. A generation was born not quite whole. Nora assures her daughters they're perfect just the way they are, but she's still spent their whole lives fighting to make Bison pay. When a new student at Bourne Memorial High turns out to be the grandson of Bison's CEO, everyone realizes that in a town where nothing ever changes, suddenly everything has. And when Bison announces plans to reopen the plant, the girls take up their mother's cause in a race to find what Bison is hiding and to stop them. Part small-town mystery, part girl-superhero story, One Two Three is Laurie Frankel's specialty, a timely, topical novel about love and family that will make you laugh and cry and laugh again.

Set over the course of three summers, Small Worlds follows Stephen, a first-generation Londoner born to Ghanaian immigrant parents, brother to Ray, and best friend to Adeline. On the cusp of big life changes, Stephen feels pressured to follow a certain track-a university degree, a move out of home-but when he decides instead to follow his first love, music, his world and family fracture in ways he didn't foresee. Now Stephen must find a path and peace for himself: a space he can feel beautiful, a space he can feel free.

From the critically-acclaimed novelist and essayist, the hilarious, heartwarming story of the Milanis-an Iranian American family who live in wealth and whose recent foray into the spotlight will force them to divulge long-kept family secrets and bring them closer than ever before When Ali and Homa Milani first immigrated from Iran to the United States, they struggled to make ends meet. Now multimillionaires and self-proclaimed American Fast-Food Moguls, they've established a name for themselves: they'rethe Milanis, derisively dubbed "Persian Royalty" by prominent Los Angeles gossip rags. On the precipice of getting their own reality TV show, they have it all-a mansion in downtown L.A., a lucrative business, and four spirited daughters. The shy Violet, whose budding modeling career will force her to reckon with her wicked sweet tooth; the outspoken and fiery Roxanna whose manicure is rivalled only by her perfectly curated Instagram; the reclusive Mina who spends most of her days on online fandom forums;the youngest, Haylee, who finds herself falling down internet conspiracy rabbit holes. Each of the Milanis has something to hide, and in front of the glaring lights of a TV camera, the truth threatens to come out at the powerful climax. What will happen when the world discovers the secrets they've been keeping? Sharply observed and compulsively readable, Tehrangeles is a dramatic family saga about the difficulty of healing dysfunctional familial relationships and the ever-present struggle to find acceptance of one's true self.

A mother and daughter on vacation in Paris unpack a lifetime of secrets and hopes. Every daughter has her own distinctive voice, her inimitable style, and her secrets. Laurie is an artist, a collector of experiences. She travels the world with a worn beige duffel bag. Every mother has her own distinctive voice, her inimitable style, and her secrets. "Dr. Liz," Laurie's mother, is an elegant perfectionist who travels the world with a matched set of suitcases. When Laurie surprises her mother with a dream vacation, it brings an unexpected sparkle to her eyes. So begins Things I Wish I Told My Mother.

In the heady days before a New Year's Eve party on the bustling sands of Brazil's Copacabana Beach, a family reckons with a matriarch's long-awaited return, causing old secrets to come to light in this infectiously vibrant debut that explores the heartbreak and hope of what it means to be from two homes, two peoples, and two worlds.

It's March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold--anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed--has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she'd marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen. Then the hives that've plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules's uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls' mother--a newly devout Messianic Jew--starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules's online mommies. A trip home to Florida ends in disaster. Amy Klobuchar may or may not have rabies. And Jules struggles halfheartedly to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly coming to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, Jules and Poppy-comrades, competitors, permanent fixtures in each other's lives-must ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they'll spend them together or apart. Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.