Book Group Best Bets
Character-driven books rich with language -- you'll find a lot to enjoy and discuss in these titles selected by our librarians. Descriptions adapted from from Kirkus Review of Books. (Updated February 2020)
-
You Exist Too Much
Told in vignettes that occur in American and Middle East settings, a debut novel follows the experiences of a young Palestinian-American who is marginalized for her sexual orientation before the traumas of her past drive her toward self-destructive impulses. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View You Exist Too Much -
Black Buck
An unambitious college graduate accepts a job at Sumwun, the hottest NYC startup, and reimagines himself as "Buck" a ruthless salesman and begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America's sales force. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View Black Buck -
Your House Will Pay
A real-life racially-charged incident is transfigured into a riveting story about two families’ heartbreaking struggles to transcend rage and loss. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View Your House Will Pay -
Piranesi
Living in a labyrinthine house of endless corridors, flooded staircases and thousands of statues, Piranesi assists the dreamlike dwelling's only other resident throughout a mysterious research project before evidence emerges of an astonishing alternate world. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View Piranesi -
When No One Is Watching
Finding unexpected support from a new friend while collecting stories from her rapidly vanishing Brooklyn community, Sydney uncovers sinister truths about a regional gentrification project and why her neighbors are moving away. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View When No One Is Watching -
The Confessions of Frannie Langton
There's betrayal, depravity, pseudoscience, forbidden love, drug addiction, white supremacy, and, oh yes, a murder mystery with tightly wound knots to unravel. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View The Confessions of Frannie Langton -
The Last Mrs. Parrish
A wealthy woman with a handsome husband is preyed on by a ruthless con artist. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View The Last Mrs. Parrish -
Dominicana
Ana Canción is 15 when her parents marry her off to 32-year-old Juan Ruiz as part of a business arrangement, and she leaves her family farm in the Dominican Republic to move to New York City. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View Dominicana -
The Death of Vivek Oji
The author of the young adult novel Pet, a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award, offers another exploration of gender identity, this time for adults. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View The Death of Vivek Oji -
Crooked Hallelujah
An intergenerational story about mothers and daughters struggling to keep their family together in the midst of poverty, illness, and natural disasters in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the Red River region of Texas. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View Crooked Hallelujah