Part nature portrait, part family tale, this fictional story about two Black brothers climbing Mount Everest will have you holding your breath and experiencing all the emotions. The story jumps from the brothers on the mountain, to the planning and preparation for the climb, to the aftermath of the adventure.

An epic saga that spans the Sonoro family line from 1895 to 1964 in Mexico. It's more humorous than it sounds, and it includes an otherworldly visitor who is chasing the eternal debt that family patriarch Antonio Sonoro has been putting off for centuries. It includes revenge, sacrifice, intergenerational choices, and beauty. It felt like a punch in gut but in the best literary way possible.

A book about The Panama Canal? Sounds like a bore, right? Wrong! This fictional novel shows the impact that the building of the Panama Canal had on the local residents and those who came to Panama chasing wealth or knowledge or power. Like me, you'll love this book and then promptly search all you can about the Panama Canal.

It's becoming increasingly popular to include podcasts as a plot device, but this book does it so well. Lucy is found with her dead best friend's blood on her, but she was never charged, and now has moved to L.A. to escape the whispers around her small town. She flies home for her grandmother's birthday party and comes face to face with a (handsome) podcaster intent on discovering what really happened the night Lucy's friend Savvy died. Secrets are revealed and you won't know who did it until the last minute.

What if your entire adult life, every time you started to date someone, the universe delivered a slip of paper letting you know exactly how long that relationship would last? This is what Daphne Bell has experienced, until she goes on a blind date, and the message only has the guy's name -- no end date. What ensues is a love story that unfolds with hidden secrets and big questions surrounding free will and destiny.

Lara's memoir will grab you from the first sentence. From perfect upper-class mom to drug-addicted prisoner, her story was both shocking and inspiring. You'll never believe the heights she achieves or the lows she experiences. She shares her life with honesty and vulnerability, and it made me want to fight to reform our judicial and jail system. You will cry but you will also root for her with your whole heart.

A beautiful story of friendship with the Vietnam War as a backdrop. Two wives -- one a seasoned pro, the other an anxious newcomer -- meet and become fast friends in 1963. They could not be more different, but they need each other, especially when one of them experiences a personal tragedy. We see how much the relationship meant when the aged and surviving friend writes letters to the daughter of her long-departed friend. It's a moving look at the hardships of war and the relationships that sustain us.

The book everyone was talking about really lives up to the hype! Lara and her husband live on a cherry orchard in Northern Michigan. During the pandemic, their three grown daughters migrate home. With nothing to distract them, they beg their mother Lara to re-tell them the story of her days as an actress performing Our Town with a theater company at Tom Lake. Lara's rise to stardom puts her in the path of famous actor Peter Duke, with whom she shared a romance. It's a gorgeous tribute to family and live theater.