The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
Chronicling a young slave’s adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
by Cheryl Strayed
The story of a 1,100 mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe–and built her back up again.
Girls Girls Girls
by Shoshana von Blanckensee
Emma Cline’s THE GUEST meets Haley Jakobson’s OLD ENOUGH in this vibrant and intoxicating queer Jewish coming-of-age debut, set in 1990s San Francisco, about a young woman who finds herself torn between her fraught relationships with her childhood best friend and first love, and with an older lesbian she works for.
Into Thin Air
by Jon Krakauer
The author describes his spring 1996 trek to Mt. Everest, a disastrous expedition that claimed the lives of eight climbers, and explains why he survived.
Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual zookeeper’s son Pi Patel sets sail for America, but when the ship sinks, he escapes on a life boat and is lost at sea with a dwindling number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain.
Sky Full of Elephants
by Cebo Campbell
Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours
Taiwan Travelogue
by Shuang-zi Yang
Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships
The Odyssey
by Homer
The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home. This fresh, authoritative translation captures the beauty of this ancient poem as well as the drama of its narrative.