Blood Brothers is a musical written by English dramatist and composer Willy Russell. It depicts the lives of twin brothers, Mickey and Eddie, who were separated at birth. One ends up being raised by a rich family and becoming a local politician...

Eragon, author Christopher Paolini's first novel, was published in 2022, when Paolini was 19. After spending much of his early career writing novels in the world of Eragon, Paolini took a break. Murtagh (2023) is his return to that world. Murtagh...

The Future (2023) is author Naomi Alderman's novel, which envisions a world run by a few billionaires called "The Future." Those billionaires have the world on a crash course towards climate destruction because of their decision to pollute the...

How to Say Babylon (2023) is author Safiya Sinclair's memoir. The book traces Sinclair's upbringing in a strict Rastafarian (a religion whose God is Haile Selassie) to her eventual decision to leave her religion and become a person of her own. As...

Angie Kim's Happiness Falls (2023) follows a biracial Korean family living in Virginia. Initially, their life seems picture-perfect. They are a seemingly happy family with a lot going for them; however, when the beloved patriarch of the family...

A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial (2023) is author Viet Thanh Nguyen's memoir. It follows Nyguyen's life from his birth in Vietnam to his immigration to America and ends in the present day. Early on in the book, Nguyen recounts a...

John Grisham is one of the most well-known popular fiction writers working today. Much of his work is set in the world of the law, and The Exchange (2023) is no different. The Exchange, which is a sequel to one of his most popular books called The...

The Lincoln Highway (2021) is a road-trip narrative set in 1954 America, spanning a timeline of ten days and 1,500 miles across the country. Packed into ten short days is the story of four boys’ journeys to find their respective futures, as Emmett...

Mona Awad's Rouge (2023) tells the story of Belle, a young woman who has spent much of her life obsessed with maintaining her skincare routine. However, that all changes when Noelle, her estranged mother, dies. As her mother's only living heir,...

Bryan Washington's Family Meal (2023) tells the story of Cam, a young man from Los Angeles whose life begins to fall apart after the tragic death of his beloved girlfriend, Kai. His life is further complicated by the fact that Kai's ghost...

Ayana Mathis' The Unsettled (2023) tells the story of a young woman named Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint. The novel, which is set in 1985, follows the young family as they navigate being homeless in Philadelphia—and the Glenn...

Jessica Knoll's Bright Young Women (2023) tells the story of two young women whose paths cross as a result of one man's violent behavior. At the start of the novel, which is set in January 1978, people across the United States are intrigued and...

C Pam Zhang's Land of Milk and Honey (2023) references Israel, which has been historically called the "land of milk and honey." Zhang's novel is set in a dystopian world in which a deadly, thick smog has appeared, food crops are disappearing, and...

Rupi Kaur is a Punjabi-Canadian writer and performer whose work centers on themes of womanhood, abuse, love, and loss. She self-published her first collection, milk and honey, in 2014, and just two years later it became a New York Times-...

The Faerie Queene was written over the course of about a decade by Edmund Spenser. He published the first three books in 1590, then the next four books (plus revisions to the first three) in 1596. It was originally intended to be twelve books...

"Elegy for My Father's Father," which appeared in James K. Baxter's 1966 poetry collection Pig Island Letters, is a poignant and reflective poem that explores the complex relationship between the poet and his paternal grandfather. The speaker...

Lauren Groff's The Vaster Wilds (2023) tells the story of an unnamed "servant girl" who lives in an isolated colonial settlement that has been plagued by disease and famine in the middle of the 17th-century New England wilderness. For her—and for...

Stephen King is one of the most prolific authors of all time. His second novel of 2023, simply titled Holly, follows the eponymous private investigator named Holly Gibney, who has appeared in several of King's novels. Holly sees Gibney as she sets...

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, the publisher of Alice McDermott's Absolution (2023), describes the novel as a "dark romance." The novel has three separate but inextricably linked stories (all of which take place largely during the Vietnam War): the...

Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend (2023) tells the story of slavery from a unique perspective: that of Annis, a young woman who was sold into slavery by her white father. Primarily, the novel follows Annis as she is forced to walk alongside her...

The Fraud (2023) is set in 1873 and follows Mrs. Eliza Touchet, a Scottish housekeeper. Touchet has spent much of her life living and working with the famous novelist William Ainsworth. As Ainsworth declines, Touchet begins to explore her...

Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey is a play about a working-class schoolgirl's dysfunctional relationship with her mother. First staged in 1958, the play is a pioneering work in the British cultural movement known as kitchen sink realism.

The...

Louis Sachar’s Small Steps is a young adult sequel to Holes, and it follows the storyline of Theodore “Armpit” Johnson after he returns home from Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention and Correctional Facility. Small Steps was published on January...