Books to End Your Winter Reading Slump

Our narrator understands good love stories-their secrets and subtext, their highs and their free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules.

Lost Lambs follows a suburban family of five unspooling at the seams, navigating a disastrous open marriage, teenage rebellion, and an unexpected human trafficking/body-hacking crime conspiracy.

A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world.

Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her “missing” boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit. A kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where Korede works is the bright spot in her life. When he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and what she will do about it.

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, the mysterious Hawthorn family tends the willow trees there. For as long as anyone can remember, the Hawthorns have paid tribute to the willow trees, honoring an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None, though, have taken up this calling more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Ester and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the trees. But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk.

June Hayward and Athena Liu were the stars of their writing program, but Athena has found success where June didn’t. Athena’s sudden and surprising death leaves a chance open for June – she knows where Athena’s unpublished manuscript is. What would be the harm in taking it for herself? Surely she deserves acclaim as well. Using the name Juniper Song, she submits the story of Chinese laborers in World War I as her own and lets people believe what they will about her background. Her secret, though, does not remain safe.