Set in the not-too-distant future, the Red Rising series can best be described as sci-fi Game of Thrones. Pierce Brown does a beautiful job of crafting characters who are complex and thought-provoking set in an intriguing future society where an elite group of meta humans rule over a mostly colonized solar system. Overall, I really enjoyed the entire series. It is packed with epic battles, Ancient Roman style laws and political intrigue, spy craft, murder, betrayal, love, shocking twists, and so much more. However, like Game of Thrones, don't get too attached to any of the characters...

-Orion

Bestselling author Lisa See once again brings the past alive with her latest novel, a deeply researched story about the intersecting lives of three Chinese women who immigrate to Los Angeles in 1870 – a time when virulent anti-Chinese sentiment makes violence and brutality a very real part of their lives. Dove is a foot-bound young girl from a wealthy family that has arranged her marriage; Petal is a peasant girl sold by her destitute father to a trafficker; and Moon, an older woman married to a physician, lives a more stable life in the new land. Despite their vastly different circumstances the three women form deep bonds, demonstrating both endurance and resistance against forces seemingly beyond their control. The story culminates with the historical events of October 24, 1871, known as the “Night of Horrors,” when mob violence took the lives of eighteen Chinese residents and became one of the deadliest mass lynchings in U.S. history. This story will not only educate readers on historical events - its portrayal of friendship, loyalty and resistance will resonate long after the book is finished.

-Karen

Murderbot is back — and this time it has to spend extended time with human children, which is exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds. Platform Decay sends our favorite antisocial SecUnit on a rescue mission to a torus space station circling a dead planet, alongside Three. The eighth installment leans harder into action, but the voice is as sharp as ever.

The tenth floor. Carl and Donut are racing (think Mario Kart, but the last finisher in each race is eliminated) while chaos spreads outside the dungeon and Carl has a plan so dangerous he can't even tell his friends about it. If you've been along for the ride, this is the one you've been waiting for. If you haven't, start with book one and clear your calendar.

The second Amina al-Sirafi novel — pirate captain, magical artifacts, a sorceress's island. Chakraborty built a devoted readership with the Daevabad Trilogy; this series is looser, funnier, and just as lush. Helena is very excited for this one.

Eli Raphael's debut concocts quite an atmosphere, featuring an aging houseboat moored in Port Angeles, a boarding school where the children of the Pacific Northwest's wealthiest families send their heirs, and a secret society that doesn't stay secret. Fifteen-year-old Lenny Winter arrives on the Olympic Peninsula carrying grief she can't name and walks into a world of privilege, obsession, and eventually a murder. Part mystery, part coming-of-age, and the kind of debut that announces a writer worth watching.

Publishers Weekly called the prose "vivid and immersive." On May 29, Raphael launches Night Objects at the Carver Room (NOLS) in conversation with Port Townsend novelist Adrianne Harun. A hometown debut, celebrated where it's set.

Seventeen years after The Help, Kathryn Stockett returns with a 650-page novel set in 1933 Oxford, Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur lives at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum after her mother walks away. Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and sharp-tongued, arrives in town to ask her socialite sister for help with the family she's left behind. What follows is Depression-era female friendship — messy, brave, built from necessity.

Louise Penny teams up with journalist Mellissa Fung to author a fast-paced all-to-real thriller where politics become personal. It opens with security systems across the globe screaming of danger, navigates the reader through the corridors of power from the White House to Beijing, and follows an estranged mother and daughter as they franticly search for answers trying to prevent catastrophe.

Hass collects more than twenty essays from the late 1980s to now: Zen Buddhism to California ecopoetics, a remembrance of Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild, Galway Kinnell's forgotten novel, the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. This is a book about reading as a way of being in the world.