June

Multiple perspectives; Relationship fiction

For fans of A Man Called Ove, a luminous debut novel about a widow’s unlikely friendship with a giant Pacific octopus reluctantly residing at the local aquarium and the truths she finally uncovers about her son’s disappearance 30 years ago.
*Read by Sara Amini

Romantic comedies

Agreeing to a holiday escape to the country, literary agent Nora keeps running into a bookish, hardheaded, arrogant editor she knows from Manhattan, and wishes she didn’t, even as she discovers they have more in common than previously thought.

*Read by Julia Whelan

Apocalyptic fiction; Book club best bets; Social science fiction

Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resiliency of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.
*Read by Keisuke Hoashi, Kurt Kanazawa, Matthew Bridges, Kotaro Watanabe, Greg Watanabe, Brian Nishii, Stephanie Komure, Jeanne Sakata, Brianna Ishibashi, MacLeod Andrews, Joe Knezevich, Micky Shiloah, Julia Whelan, Jason Culp

Domestic fiction

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, Olga, the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s power brokers, must confront the effects of long-held family secrets when she falls in love with Matteo, while other family members must weather their own storms.

*Read by Almarie Guerra

LGBTQIA fiction; Literary fiction; Satirical fiction

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a must-read breakout book, Less Is Lost is a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love, and the stories we tell along the way.

Contemporary fantasy; LGBTQIA romances

After he dies, a curious and powerful being gives Wallace one week to cross over to the land of the dead, and Wallace, who finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life, sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

Contemporary romances; LGBTQIA romances; Romantic comedies

Wren Roland has never been kissed, let alone been in love, but he wants that movie-perfect ending more than anything. Feeling nostalgic on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, he sends emails to all the boys he (ahem) loved before he came out. He didn’t expect a response from Derick Haverford, Wren’s #1 pre-coming-out-crush…but now that they’re working together at their hometown’s vintage drive-in theater, maybe that perfect-kiss-before-the-credits is finally within reach.

African American fiction; Contemporary romances; Multicultural romances; Romantic comedies

With her newly completed Ph.D. in astronomy in hand, twenty-eight-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls’ trip to Vegas to celebrate. She’s a straight-A, work-through-the-summer certified high achiever. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn’t know until she does exactly that. This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father’s plans for her life has Grace wondering why she doesn’t feel more fulfilled from completing her degree. Staggering under the weight of her parent’s expectations, a struggling job market, and feelings of burnout, Grace flees her home in Portland for a summer in New York with the wife she barely knows.