It’s a new quarter and that means new fiction and nonfiction picks have been selected for you courtesy of Bestsellers Club! Four fiction picks are available for you to choose from: diverse debuts, graphic novel, historical fiction, and international fiction. Four nonfiction picks are available for you to choose from: biographies, cookbooks, social justice, and true crime. Our fiction and nonfiction picks are chosen quarterly and are available in regular print only. If you would like to update your selections or are a new patron who wants to receive picks from any of those four categories, sign up for Bestsellers Club through our website!
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Below you will find information provided by the publishers and authors on the titles we have selected from the following categories in fiction: diverse debuts, graphic novel, historical fiction, and international fiction and the following categories in nonfiction: biographies, cookbooks, social justice, and true crime.
Acronym definitions
BIPOC: Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
LGBTQ+: Lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, and more.
FICTION PICKS
Diverse Debuts:
Diverse Debuts: Debut fiction novel by a BIPOC author, LGBTQ+ author or an author from another marginalized community.
Little Movements by Lauren Morrow
Layla Smart was raised by her pragmatic Midwestern mother to dream medium. But all Layla’s ever wanted is a career in dance, which requires dreaming big. So when she receives a prestigious offer to be the choreographer-in-residence at Briar House, an arts program in rural Vermont, she leaves behind Brooklyn, her job, her friends, and her husband to pursue it.
Navigating Briar House and the small, white town that surrounds it proves difficult—Layla wants to create art for art’s sake and resist tokenization, but the institution’s director keeps encouraging Layla to dig deep into her people’s history. Still, the mental and physical demands of dancing spark a sharp, unexpected sense of joy, bringing into focus the years she’d distanced herself from her true calling for the sake of her marriage and maintaining the status quo.
Just as she begins to see her life more clearly, she discovers a betrayal that proves the cracks in her marriage were deeper than she ever could have known. Then Briar House’s dangerously problematic past comes to light. And Layla discovers she’s pregnant. Suddenly, dreaming medium sounds a lot more appealing.
Poignant, propulsive, and darkly funny, Little Movements is a novel about self-discovery, about what we must endure—or let go of—in order to realize our dreams. – Random House
Graphic Novel:
Graphic Novel: Fiction novel for adults of any subgenre with diverse characters depicted by color illustrations, sketches, and photographs.
Sheets by Brenna Thummler
For Marjorie Glatt, being thirteen years old isn’t quite the same as it is for everyone else. Responsible for running her family’s laundromat while trying to survive middle school, Marjorie’s daily struggles include persnickety customers, snippy classmates, agonizing swim lessons, and laundry… always, always laundry.
Wendell is a bit different, too. Wendell is a ghost. His daily struggles include Dead Youth support groups and unavoidable stains. But when he escapes from the Land of Ghosts and bumbles into Marjorie’s laundromat–the perfect ghost playground–his attempts at fun and friendship begin to harm the family business.
Sheets is a powerful story about a young girl’s perseverance, even when all the odds are stacked against her. It shows that forgiveness and second chances can result in unlikely friendships. Above all, it is an invitation into an unusual, haunted laundromat that brings family, friends, and–yes–sheets to life. – Oni Press
Historical Fiction:
Historical Fiction: Historical fiction novel written by a BIPOC author, LGBTQ+ author or an author from another marginalized community, with main character(s) from a marginalized community.
The Lost Baker of Vienna by Sharon Kurtzman
An historical novel inspired by the experiences of the author’s own family after the Holocaust, a sweeping saga about survival, loss, love, and the reverberating effects of war
In 2018, Zoe Rosenzweig is reeling after the loss of her beloved grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. She becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened to her family during the war.
Vienna, 1946: Chana Rosenzweig has endured the horrors of war to find herself, her mother, and her younger brother finally free in Vienna. But freedom doesn’t look like they’d imagined it would, as they struggle to make a living and stay safe.
Despite the danger, Chana sneaks out most nights to return to the hotel kitchen where she works as a dishwasher, using the quiet nighttime hours to bake her late father’s recipes. Soon, Chana finds herself caught in a dangerous love triangle, torn between the black-market dealer who has offered marriage and protection, and the apprentice baker who shares her passions. How will Chana balance her love of baking against her family’s need for security?
The Lost Baker of Vienna affirms the unbreakable bonds of family, shining a light on the courageous spirit of WWII refugees as they battle to survive the overwhelming hardships of a world torn apart. – Pamela Dorman Books
International Fiction:
International Fiction: Fiction novel originally written in another language with main character(s) from marginalized communities.
Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues by Kim De l’Horizon, translated from the German by Jamie Lee Searle
A prizewinning, boundary-breaking debut exploring family, class, history, and the true idea of the self.
A glorious, tender, unsparing exploration of language, family, history, class, self, and the human, Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues begins with the loss of memory. As their grandmother falls into dementia, the narrator begins to ask questions—to fill in the silences and the gaps. Childhood memories resurface, revealing a path into the past. The maternal line leads toward nature, witchcraft, freedom, and power. Could this be where the narrator belongs?
A quest toward understanding, a story of liberation—from generational trauma, gender constructs, class identity, the limits of language—this narrative invents its own forms, words, and bodies to conjure and cast out the very idea of the unspeakable. It searches for other kinds of knowledge and traditions, other ways of becoming, and reaches for wisdom beyond the human. In Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues, Kim de l’Horizon reimagines family narratives, abandoning the linear in favor of a fluid, incantatory, expansive search into who we are. – Farrar, Straus and Giroux
NONFICTION PICKS
Biography pick
John Hancock: first to sign, first to invest in America’s independence by Willard Sterne Randall
A compelling, intimate portrait of John Hancock, going beyond the flamboyant signature to reveal the pivotal role that he had in the American Revolution
A contemporary of Samuel Adams, John Adams, George Washington, and the Marquis de Lafayette, Hancock had a list of contacts that read like a who’s who of the American Revolution. But shockingly little has been written about Hancock himself. John Hancock tells the story of a man who deserves far more credit for his contribution to the American Revolution than he previously received—and award-winning scholar Willard Sterne Randall is determined to give him his due at last.
Born into relatively modest means, Hancock was sent to live with his wealthy uncle and aunt as a child. The couple raised him as their own and prepared him to take over the family company. A remarkably successful businessman, Hancock got involved in politics in the mid-1760s. He quickly rose in the ranks, eventually serving as the president of the Continental Congress and the first governor of Massachusetts.
John Hancock details all of the major moments in the Revolution, from the Boston Tea Party to the battles of Lexington and Concord to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Hancock’s actions fundamentally altered each of these events—and ultimately the course of the United States—in ways never taught in the history books. Randall also dives into lesser-known parts of Hancock’s life with nuance and compassion, including his education and controversial work with Harvard; his long courtship and complicated marriage to Dorothy Quincy; and his close relationship and eventual bitter rivalry with Samuel Adams.
John Hancock enjoyed great popularity in Massachusetts during the Revolution, but he left behind few personal writings, making it hard to tell his story. Through extensive research, Randall aims to restore Hancock to his rightful place, celebrated for his achievements as one of our Founding Fathers at last. – Dutton
Cookbook pick
Good Things by Samin Nosrat
With all the generosity of spirit that has endeared her to millions of fans, Samin Nosrat offers more than 125 of her favorite recipes—simply put, the things she most loves to cook for herself and for friends—and infuses them with all the beauty and care you would expect from the person Alice Waters called “America’s next great cooking teacher.” As Samin says, “Recipes, like rituals, endure because they’re passed down to us—whether by ancestors, neighbors, friends, strangers on the internet, or me to you. A written recipe is just a shimmering decoy for the true inheritance: the thread of connection that cooking it will unspool.”
Good Things is an essential, joyful guide to cooking and living, whether you’re looking for a comforting tomato soup to console a struggling friend, seeking a deeper sense of connection in your life, or hosting a dinner for ten in your too-small dining room. Here you’ll find go-to recipes for ricotta custard pancakes, a showstopping roast chicken burnished with saffron, a crunchy, tingly Calabrian chili crisp, super-chewy sky-high focaccia, and a decades-in-the-making, childhood-evoking yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Along the way, you’ll also find plenty of tips, techniques, and lessons, from how to buy olive oil (check the harvest date) to when to splurge (salad dressing is where you want to use your best ingredients) to the best uses for your pressure cooker (chicken stock and dulce de leche, naturally).
Good Things captures, with Samin’s trademark blend of warmth, creativity, and precision, what has made cooking such an important source of delight and comfort in her life. – Random House
Social Justice pick
Let Us Play: Winning the Battle for Gender Diverse Athletes by Harrison Browne and Rachel Browne
A crucial subversion of the misconceptions around the participation of gender diverse athletes—advocating for the inclusion of trans and nonbinary athletes across all levels of sport
The debate over the inclusion of gender diverse people in sport has become the latest battleground in the fight for basic human rights and equality. Trans and nonbinary people around the world are facing physical harm and violence—including death—at unprecedented rates. In Let Us Play, trans athlete Harrison Browne and investigative journalist Rachel Browne reveal how the opposition towards gender diverse athletes is fueled by fear and a moral panic as opposed to facts around what makes “a level playing field.”
Interweaving Harrison’s first-hand experience as a transgender athlete with exclusive accounts—from athletes, coaches, policymakers, and advocates on the front lines—Let Us Play dismantles the illusion that sports have ever been fair, that trans athletes pose a threat to women’s sports, and that gender-affirming healthcare for athletes should be prohibitive to play.
Calling for a reframing of the binaries from youth and high school levels all the way to the national leagues, Browne and Browne offer a new path forward, led by solutions proposed by gender diverse athletes themselves. – Beacon Press
True Crime pick
The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA by Jesse Katz
Baby-faced teen Giovanni Macedo is desperate to find belonging in one of LA’s most predatory gangs, the Columbia Lil Cycos—so desperate that he agrees to kill an undocumented Mexican street vendor. The vendor, Francisco Clemente, had been refusing to give in to the gang’s shakedown demands. But Giovanni botches the hit, accidentally killing a newborn instead. The overlords who rule the Lil Cycos from a Supermax prison 1,000 miles away must be placated and Giovanni is lured across the border where, in turn, the gang botches his killing. And so, incredibly, Giovanni rises from the dead, determined to both seek redemption for his unforgivable crime and take down the gang who drove him to do it.
With The Rent Collectors, Jesse Katz has built a teeth clenching and breathless narrative that explicates the difficult and proud lives of undocumented black market workers who are being extorted by the gangs and fined by the city of LA—in other words, exploited by two sets of rent collectors. – Astra House
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