New Books: Faculty and Staff Recommendations! '25

CALLIE GALLO. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, lands in Harvard in 1995 and begins a correspondence with a mathematics student from Hungary, and the relationship creates a reckoning with life on the cusp of adulthood.

JAMIE RABOY, CRYSTAL FROMMERT. A woman on an airplane walks down the aisle making predictions about how and when passengers will die. Some dismiss her, they don't believe in psychics. Some are delighted with her prophecies! Their lives will supposedly be long. Others are appalled. Then, a few months later, the first prediction comes true.

KATIE SPERCO. Thriller that examines the repercussions of a fatal accident 30 years earlier on the residents of Cape Haven, a tourist town on the California coast.

JENNIFER CYRANSKI, RIVA ROSEN. In 1970s small town Missouri, girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges - Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

MARIE O'BRIEN. Recalling the past at her daughters' request, Lara tells the story of a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance, which causes her daughters to examine their own lives and reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

JULIA GLEASON. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, when her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

ARTHENE HAMMERMAN. Novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries.

NETTIE MCCORMICK. Lila is 2 years old when her angry, abusive father has her mother committed to an asylum. Lila never sees her mother again. Three decades later, having mustered everything she has—Lila rises to the pinnacle of American media as a powerful, brilliant executive editor. But Grace, her youngest daughter, feels abandoned. As she grows up, she cannot shake her resentment. She wants out from under Lila’s shadow, yet the more she resists, the more Lila seems to shape her life.

KENDRA O'DWYER. When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide in a story of inheritance and second chances, the tensions between a family and a community, and a history that will not let any of them go.

ASHLEY RAMSAWAK. Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and... no qualms about a little murder. Features two-never-before translated stories that will keep you laughing all the way to the retirement home.

ANDREW BODO. A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind

WENDY CORTES. Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes--you can call him Izzy--might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami has shaped him into someone who dreams of being the King of the 305, with the money, power, and respect he assumes comes with it. After finding himself at the mercy of a cease-and-desist letter from Pitbull's legal team and living in his aunt's garage-turned-efficiency, Izzy embarks on an absurd quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana.

ELIZABETH DAVIS. Graham Gore, a nineteenth-century British arctic explorer, becomes, much to his surprise, an expat in our era as part of a time-travel experiment being conducted by the government. While Graham is the sole traveler from the nineteenth century, companions from other times join in.

FIONA O'DOHERTY. Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. When a local physician undermines her conclusions, declaring a death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

DANO MADDEN, LORRAINE GALLUCCI. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

JILLIAN PAGLIOCCA. A historical novel about a young woman with a talent for forgery who helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis, inspired by a true story from World War II.

FIONA WILLIAMS. In 1950s Italy, Elena and Lila learn to rely on each other as they are growing up in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, but their beautiful friendship is not always a shelter from hardship.

VANESSA WILLIAMS. Set in Florida in the 1970s, this novel follows five young women in a home for unwed mothers who find a guide to witchcraft.

SIMON DYTON. An English translation of twenty-four stories from Ovid's classic "Metamorphoses," written by the Roman poet.

VIET NGUYEN. In a pre-apocalyptic world not unlike our own, a young Instagram poet starts an affair with a California billionaire who's promised a time machine that will make everything normal again

SHAANT AVANIAN. Novel on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in twenty-four hours.

MERCEDES FERNANDEZ-ASENJO. A couple and their children embark on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Arizona. When the family arrives at their destination, however, the overwhelming scale of the migrant crisis redirects their efforts, and the children eventually lose themselves in the strange, uncertain terrain.

LILLIAN RITCHIE. Deeply reported story about how the early reality TV business metastasized into a mega industry. Starting in 1948, Nussbaum pulls back the curtain on the cultural meat grinder that created a generation-defining form of entertainment, examining shows from 'The Real World' to 'Survivor' to 'The Apprentice.'

MATT SPEISER. Examines the distinct leadership roles of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during the war years and discusses the dynamics of their marriage.

FAITH YUSKO. Essays on a wide variety of topics including the farm, the planet, the city, Florida, memories, diversions and obsessions.

MARIANNE FITZGERALD. Cut off from the wider world for decades, the community has managed to evade accountability to any authority beyond itself. When Sister Catherine realises that a mesmerising cult of the personality, with the distortions it entails, has replaced the ancient ideal of religious obedience, she is faced with a dilemma. Will she submit to this, or will she be forced to speak out?

KJ HARDY. A collection of essays in which American author Fran Lebowitz offers commentary about life in New York City in the 1970s.

JUN GAO. Duccio has long been recognized as the father of Sienese painting, and he fostered a new generation of talented and innovative painters. In art history textbooks, however, his considerable contribution to European painting is often overshadowed by the work of his contemporary Giotto. Christiansen examines the fascinating connection between Giotto and Duccio, which he likens to Michelangelo's relationship with Raphael, or Picasso's with Matisse.

STEPHANIE BECKER. A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand--those having developed differently from their own--and whose power they often underestimated.

LILY HICKEY. It started with an itch, up and down her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Then, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, Suleika Jaouad was given a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. When she finally walked out of the cancer ward four years later-after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant-she was, according to the doctors, cured.