Shanghai Immortal

Written: A. Y. Chao

First line: The steaming Shanghai night drapes heavy over my bare shoulders. 

Why you should read this book: Fast paced, luscious, fresh, and edgy, this is the story of Lady Jing, bad girl half-vampire half-fox spirit, consigned to live under the thumb of the King of Hell (Chinese version) since her grandmother's court rejected her outright as an abomination and her mother subsequently abandoned her. Devoted to rejecting tradition and making trouble, her life is upended the day she's commanded to escort a living mortal through Hell (the King of Hell needs advice on creating a viable banking system) and ends up sent to the mortal realm for her own protection. Jazz age Shanghai is a new world, where Lady Jing discovers she has friends, mortal and otherwise, and devotes herself to unraveling the conspiracy that catapulted her from the world where she endured for ninety years, just in time to finally grow up. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You aren't stirred by the idea of a half-vampire half-demon in a world that blends Chinese mythology with the advances of the early twentieth century. 

Station Eternity

Written by: Mur Lafferty

First line: Nobody ever believed murders "just happened" around Mallory Viridian.

Why you should read this book: This fun near-future science fiction murder mystery takes place primarily on the sentient space station where Mallory has fled to escape the constellation of murders that seem to happen all around her on Earth, where nobody believes they're not her fault even though she always finds the real killer. Surely the curse cannot follow her across the cosmos if she's only one of three humans on board, but her peace of mind is shattered when she learns that more earthlings are on their way. Suddenly, she's surrounded by death and mayhem again, and needs to use all her resources to unravel a series of mysteries and save the lives of every life on the station, including the station itself.

Why you shouldn't read this book: There are a couple main characters and many supporting characters, and the narrative perspective shifts frequently, often giving entire chapters to the point of view of a minor character for an entire chapter, which, to me, can be jarring. 

Yesteryear

Written by: Caro Claire Burke

First line: This is the last day of the life I imagined for myself. 

Why you should read this book: Natalie has always known that everyone around her is stupid, and that her beliefs about marriage and family and femininity are the only intelligent ways to view those concepts, so naturally, when her marriage falters after the birth of her first child, she focuses increasingly on creating a media empire based on her identity as a "trad wife," showcasing a perfect farm life based on conservative ideals. But Natalie's perfect world is shattered when she wakes up mysteriously transported to some strange nineteenth century farm, held hostage and forced to serve as a wife and mother to a husband and children who are sort of like her real husband and children on land that is a lot like her actual home, but not quite. Told in a series of flashbacks, Natalie's journey exposes the dark side of the lifestyle and the hypocrisy of the young women influencers promoting it. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Natalie is an utterly irredeemable character, smug and self-righteous with zero self-awareness, an unreliable narrator who absolutely deserves every awful thing that happens to her, which is interesting to read, but an unusual way to write a protagonist. 

The Bog Wife

Written by: Kay Chronister

First line: On winter nights, the burned heavy bundles of dried peat in the hearth and inhaled the scent of sacred ground burning while their father paced the length of the room, reciting the history of the Haddesley compact.

Why you should read this book: All their lives, the young adult Haddlesley children have been taught to honor the ancient compact between their family and their bog, which every generation offers up one magical wife to the eldest son, to continue the family line. But their vague, eldritch bog mother has mysteriously vanished, and one of the siblings has fled the land, and there are increasing doubts about the eldest son's suitability to serve as patriarch, and meanwhile, in true southern gothic fashion, the weight of their own history is literally crushing the family home. Naturalistic and supernatural, this delightful novel chronicles the breakdown of old family narratives about power and responsibility.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You believe everything your parents told you despite all evidence to the contrary. 

Dybbuk Americana

Written by: Joshua Gottlieb-Miller

First line: I don't like to guess what kind of Jew/I could have been/in 1492, 1942; pick a year/and I would have thought, "Bad Jew,"/looking in a mirror, under my breath. 

Why you should read this book: This collection of poetry examines the questions of identity, belief, and behavior that are, perhaps, unique to American Judaism. Frankly discussing the concepts of whiteness, assimilation, mixed marriage, antisemitism, family history, world history, philosophy, child rearing, and his own relationship with his community, his relatives, and himself, the author offers an honest picture of a man haunted by the quality of Jewishness that coalesces around spirituality and ethnicity in America. This large format book allows for a layout that seems to communicate the multitude of voices and ideas informing the author's journey and evolution as he places his life in the larger context of history, culture, and family. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Some of the experimental-feeling layout makes the poetry ambiguous or difficult to read. 

Evangelina Everyday

Written by: Dawn Burns

First line: "I feel adrift," Evangelina said, sitting at the kitchen table reading but not really reading the Elkhart Truth as Russel went about his business preparing a fire for the night because on cold December nights, that is just what they had come to do over their twenty-one years of marriage. 

Why you should read this book: From the outside, Evangelina looks like an ordinary woman in an ordinary marriage, but on the inside, she's keenly aware that something about her is different, and something about her life isn't quite right, not when held up against the lives of the people around her. Told as a novel in short stories, this book gives a gripping picture of this meaningful year in her life, the year when Evangelina has to stop dismissing the quiet disconnect and occasional revulsion in her relationship with her husband and the sense of loss and longing she's felt since her best friend moved away, feelings that other women in her circles don't seem to grapple with. Evangelina is no everyday woman, and when she finds the space within herself to ask who she used to be, who she is, and who she wants to be in the future, her entire world will change. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're not ready to stop dismissing your quiet disconnect and occasional revulsion. 

The Round House

Written by: Louise Erdrich

First line: Small trees had attacked my parents' house at the foundation.

Why you should read this book: Joe Coutts's childhood comes to an end the summer his mother is brutally assaulted by an unidentified assailant on land that may or may not fall under the jurisdiction of tribal law. Distressed by his mother's trauma and retreat from the world and frustrated by the callous inefficiency of the justice system, Joe takes on his own investigation of the crime, aided explicitly by his three best friends and implicitly by his Ojibwe family and community and their history, shared and secret, old and new, and often hindered by his own adolescent sensibilities. Powerful, revelatory, upsetting, and important, this book shines a light on inequality, hypocrisy, the betrayals of the American government toward indigenous people, the power of unbroken tradition, and questions of morality in an immoral world. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: The plot turns on the violent rape and attempted murder of an indigenous woman. 

Proud Knight, Fair Lady: The Twelve Lais of Marie de France

Written by: Naomi Lewis and Angela Barrett

First line: You know that in bygone times the Bretons made lays of the happenings in their land.

Why you should read this book: Over 800 years ago, French and British nobility went crazy for these fantastic stories of brave knights and fair maidens and bold romance and strange magic. Written in the twelfth century, but ostensibly based on older oral musical tradition, these "lays" offer a fairy tale picture of a nearly forgotten aesthetic of courtly love, which faithful knights should offer to beautiful ladies, without expectation of reciprocation (but with interesting results when it was returned). Including ancient examples of tropes known to modern readers (an adventure set in King Arthur's court, a werewolf hell bent on vengeance, twins separated at birth) and offering salacious details of forbidden intimacy, tragic deaths, and joyful reunions, these twelve historical tales still resonate with readers ready to step outside standard fare. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are a jealous old man who married a beautiful young woman and then locked her away from the world but are still convinced she's betraying you. 

A Green Glow on the Horizon: Tales from the National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors

 Written by: Dawn Burns

First line: This is the story I'm learning to tell.

Why you should read this book: Beneath the structure of these surreal fictions, linked by the premise that  roadside tourist attractions leave bruises upon those who don't have the luxury of simply passing through the amusement, lies a series of hard truths about parents and children, and the disconnect and betrayal that comes from irrational adult beliefs that are too rigid to accommodate "sensitive" children. Metaphorically examining religious trauma through a uniquely American fairy tale lens, these stories showcase the reluctantly expressed pain of those (usually daughters) who feel diminished in the face of others' (usually their mother's) obsessions with strange, unyielding ideals that do not serve unbelieving children. From Roswell, New Mexico to Pedro's South of the Border in South Carolina, Iowa's Corn Palace, Arizona's The Thing to The Fort Wayne Children's Zoo, and even stranger settings, surprising locations lead to surprising maladies, anger, introspection, and sometimes, recovery, and redemption.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You know your teenager is wrong about their own identity, needs, and beliefs, and if you just keep ignoring what she wants, she'll get better. 

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated

Written by: Alison Arngrim

First line: The Los Angeles County Fair is probably not the first place you'd go if you were seeking to be forgiven of your sins, but I have a tendency to find strange things in strange places. 

Why you should read this book: If you were a kid in the '70s and '80s, you probably watched Little House on the Prairie and if you watched Little House on the Prairie, you probably hated that bitch, Nellie Oleson, and considered her the epitome of evil and deserving of any and all abuse heaped upon her by Laura and the show runners, but Nellie Oleson wasn't a real person; she was a conglomerate character brought to life by an earnest, clever, and dedicated child actress named Alison Arngrim, who spent her real life youth taking the lumps earned by a character she portrayed with such natural joy and intensity that people seemed to think Nellie was real and Alison didn't exist. This buoyant and fast-paced memoir tells all about what was going on behind the scenes of the popular, long-running show (Michael Landon never wore underwear, every adult in the cast and crew was drunk at all times, that wig was incredibly painful to wear, and the real bitch was the girl who played Mary) along with her own heart-wrenching stories of abuse and loss. Arngrin is candid and humorous, even when discussing the most painful memories, and illustrates how she managed to survive child stardom relatively unscathed and pivot into adult success in the entertainment industry without compromising her values and beliefs at all. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Trigger warning for candid discussions of child sexual abuse/incest including a somewhat disconcerting confrontation with the abuser in adulthood.