National Bestseller & Women’s National Book Association Great Group Reads 2025 Pick

Alice Austen’s novel, 33 Place Brugmann, takes its name from the address of an apartment building in a prosperous Brussels neighborhood. Set in 1939, just as the Nazis occupy the city, and told in the shifting voices of the building’s residents, the novel explores what happens to individuals faced with the choice between loyalty to the regime and loyalty to each other, and reminds us of the power of love, courage and art in times of peril.  Prior to publishing 33 Place Brugmann, Austen established herself as an acclaimed filmmaker and playwright. She is a past resident of the Royal Court Theatre and her internationally produced plays include Animal Farm (Steppenwolf Theatre), Water, Cherry Orchard Massacre, and Girls in the Boat. Austen won the John Cassavetes Award for her debut film Give Me Liberty. She studied creative writing under Seamus Heaney at Harvard, where she also received her JD, after which she moved to Brussels and lived on Place Brugmann. Austen currently lives in Milwaukee and is working on a new film and her next novel.

 Crème de la WWII novel.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review).

“A vivid portrait of the world during WWII . . . Quite an accomplishment — full of pathos, suspense, and drenched in humanity.” — The Center for Fiction.

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

The Correspondent introduces readers to Sybil, a retired lawyer and avid letter-writer, who corresponds with friends, family, literary figures, and even the younger generation (on paper with ink), revealing her strong personality, regrets, and grief. The arrival of letters from her past forces Sybil to confront a painful event and ultimately seek forgiveness, both for herself and others. Raised on the East Coast, Virginia Evans earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature from James Madison University and a master’s of philosophy in creative writing from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. She currently lives in North Carolina with her husband, two children, and her red labrador, Brigid.

“Subtly told and finely made, The Correspondent is a portrait of a small life expanding. Virginia Evans shows how one woman changes at a point when change had seemed impossible. … Google Books.

National Bestseller & April 2025 Read with Jenna Pick

Amity Gaige’s novel, Heartwood, tells the story of Valerie Gillis, a nurse who goes missing while hiking through the remote woods of Maine on the Appalachian Trail.  As a search and rescue team, led by Maine’s only female State Game Warden, Beverly Miller, races against time and possibly a clandestine paramilitary group to find her, a separate investigation is launched by seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher Lena who lives in a Connecticut retirement community.  Through the lenses of Beverly and Lena and Valerie’s own journal entries, readers explore the many ways in which we may be lost and found. Heartwood is Amity Gaige’s fifth novel. A national bestseller, it was selected as a Read with Jenna Pick for April 2025. In 2018, Gaige was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction.  She lives in Connecticut with her family and teaches creative writing at Yale.

“A terrifically moving and tense thriller…genius.”  — The Washington Post.

“As gratifying as a daffodil at the end of a long winter.” — The New York Times. 

Most Anticipated Book: LitHub, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads

In Aftertaste, young Russian immigrant Konstantin, haunted by his father’s death, develops the ability to taste the lingering flavors of the deceased through their favorite food, which he calls “aftertastes.” Driven by a desire to help others find closure, Konstantin ascends from being a dishwasher at a bar to a talented chef with the skills to open a one-of-a-kind New York City restaurant. No other chef has been capable of serving such spectral and transporting flavors, but will Konstantin’s ambition blind him to the dangers lurking in the afterlife? Lavelle’s short fiction has appeared in Dark Matter, The Deadlands, Dread Machine, and more, and has been shortlisted for prizes by The Masters Review and The Molotov Cocktail Zine. Lavelle holds a degree in Comparative Literature and Creative Writing from Princeton University, and an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, with a focus on Speculative Fiction. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, three children and hyperactive goldendoodle.

“Delectable….the exuberant prose leavens the story’s bittersweet pathos, and the novel brims with tantalizing descriptions of international cuisines. This inventive tale of food and family is likely to whet readers’ appetites.”— Publishers Weekly.

Long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, one of Amazon Best Books of 2025 & New Yorker “Briefly Noted” 

The Girls Who Grew Big opens with the unforgettably raw scene of Simone, sixteen years old and thirty-six weeks pregnant, giving birth to twins in the back of an old, dirty pickup truck. Through Simone and her friends, Adela and Emory, readers come to know and cheer for a group of teenage mothers navigating life in tiny Padua Beach on the Florida Panhandle. Exiled from their homes or facing difficult circumstances, these young women find strength and a sense of belonging in the community they forge together. Mottley’s first novel, Nightcrawling, was an Oprah’s Book Club Pick and a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of a poetry collection, woke up no light, and was named the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate in 2018. Mottley was born and raised in Oakland where she continues to live with her wife.

“Blistering, wise, empathetic. . . Mottley has brought the physicality and pain and beauty of birth and new motherhood into the light. That she has done so by way of teenage girls who have too often been shamed and shunned and told to hide themselves away makes her novel all the more vital to behold.” —  The New York Times Book Review.

Finalist for the National Book Award

The Antidote, longlisted for the National Book Award, is a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters — including a “Prairie Witch” who serves as a bank vault for memories, a Polish wheat farmer with a mysteriously spared crop, and a New Deal photographer whose magical camera reveals the town’s past and potential future.  Their fates become entangled after a dust storm ravages their small Nebraska town. Ultimately, the novel serves as a reckoning with national forgetting, particularly America’s history of “settler amnesia” and its impact on the land and the lives of those within it. Karen Russell is the author of six books of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She has received MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, son, and daughter. 

“To embark on the adventure of reading The Antidote is to place yourself under the enchanting and challenging care of a writer who is guilty of actual witchcraft.” —The Washington Post. 

“Russell’s lyrical writing dazzles on every page.” —The New York Times.

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

In Susanna Kwan’s “Awake in the Floating City” a submerged San Francisco of the future, ravaged by climate change, becomes the backdrop for a poignant story of connection and resilience. The novel follows Bo, a grieving artist, who chooses to stay and care for Mia, a 130-year-old woman, rather than evacuate. Through their unlikely bond, Bo rediscovers her purpose and finds solace in creating art that honors the past while navigating a world slowly being reclaimed by water. Susanna Kwan is an artist and writer from San Francisco. Her work has been supported by fellowships from Kundiman, Storyknife, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and Vanderbilt University. She teaches creative writing with The Dream Side.

“The book asks haunting questions about the ability of art to contain or transmit memory.” — The Washington Post. 

“[A] tender, speculative novel that imagines [Kwan’s] home city flooded and largely abandoned—and how two of its last remaining residents find unlikely connection in disaster.” — San Francisco Chronicle.

National Bestseller & Today Best Book of the Summer

The Satisfaction Café, by Kathy Wang, follows the life of Joan Liang, a Taiwanese woman who emigrates to California and navigates multiple marriages, motherhood, unexpected wealth, and assimilation in the white, upper class society that appears to accept her. Throughout her life, Joan grapples with the desire for genuine connection in an increasingly lonely world. A trip to Taiwan reveals a way for Joan to connect people to one another and to find connection for herself. The Satisfaction Cafe is Wang’s third novel.  She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Business School and lives in the Bay Area.

“An antidote to our global dissatisfaction… winsome… ironic but rarely biting, Wang’s narration moves nimbly just above Joan’s perplexed perspective while catching the notes of absurdity and hypocrisy around her.” — The Washington Post.