https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks daily 0.75 2025-07-17 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/graphic-novels monthly 0.5 2025-07-17 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/young-adult monthly 0.5 2025-07-17 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/mystery monthly 0.5 2025-07-17 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/poetry monthly 0.5 2025-07-17 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/magic-fantasy monthly 0.5 2025-07-17 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/illustrated+novels monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/memoirs monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/coming+of+age monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/comics monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/young+adult monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/nonfiction monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/procedural monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/suspense monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/Paranormal monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/Lyric+Writing monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/Spoken+Word monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/puzzle+fiction monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/Thriller monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/visual+storytelling monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/Verse monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/our-picks/tag/Fiction monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog daily 0.75 2025-02-25 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog/blog-post-title-three-8cbck monthly 0.5 2025-07-18 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog/blog-post-title-four-7j5x8-w9jkz monthly 0.5 2025-02-25 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog/blog-post-title-one-bral6 monthly 0.5 2025-02-25 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog/re68lnd45bywlcpm7h3lb8kklngclm monthly 0.5 2025-02-25 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog/blog-post-title-four-7j5x8 monthly 0.5 2025-02-25 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog/blog-post-title-two-fz76h monthly 0.5 2025-02-25 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog/txpyr9a4lxr32kbjf7z5hewf5zdfdp monthly 0.5 2025-02-25 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog/tag/%23Parents monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog/tag/%23students monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/blog/tag/%23educators monthly 0.5 https://www.bookmrk.org/bookclub daily 0.75 2024-11-22 https://www.bookmrk.org/home daily 1.0 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1749489385509-WLUV2ASK8AE1NQE681P3/image-asset.jpeg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1749489421035-FOLM05Z5KLI4DBP67WXU/unsplash-image-8LITuYkZRIo.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1749489474887-WGGSSY5UBYICGKO79O1M/unsplash-image-qSe5h4eAaJA.jpg Home https://www.bookmrk.org/resources-for-educators daily 0.75 2025-02-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/cd9a218e-9291-44ff-a203-39c6a52325be/resilient-educator-logo.png For Educators https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/33dc649c-18ae-47b7-a33e-5a86d00b9770/UCLogo.png For Educators https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/8b3d0364-195f-4e81-ac6b-26578bad5957/Screenshot+2024-07-09+at+10.16.50%E2%80%AFPM.png For Educators https://www.bookmrk.org/forstudents daily 0.75 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec321c2af33de48734cc929/1607694583486-2PQT0LQ193RL7MCB6DX4/20140228_Trade+151_0046.jpg For Students https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec321c2af33de48734cc929/1607694644871-IC85FNH781UNZSZEGHDR/Aro+Ha_0428.jpg For Students https://www.bookmrk.org/forparents daily 0.75 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec321c2af33de48734cc929/1618497259178-6XJGK9GR6YAVBQL5L519/20140301_Trade-151_012-2.jpg For Parents https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec321c2af33de48734cc929/1607694583486-2PQT0LQ193RL7MCB6DX4/20140228_Trade+151_0046.jpg For Parents https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec321c2af33de48734cc929/1607007355264-EQINP2XUZQO9PPNNDRZD/Aro%2BHa_0010-larger.jpg For Parents https://www.bookmrk.org/quiz daily 0.75 2025-07-18 https://www.bookmrk.org/suggest daily 0.75 2024-07-12 https://www.bookmrk.org/about-and-history daily 0.75 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/d5940167-8006-4f8e-b126-c6e55ec20ac3/1.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/12e55a6c-3051-413a-9093-f23d1df732db/2.png https://www.bookmrk.org/readinglist daily 0.75 2025-07-18 https://www.bookmrk.org/readinglist/science-fiction monthly 0.5 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596048774755-NOPIOUMTH6J4AL7GGTRU/Science+Fiction+picks+%285%29.png The Reading List - Science Fiction - Trail of Lightning By Rebecca Roanhorse Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last best hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much more terrifying than anything she could imagine. Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel the rez, unraveling clues from ancient legends, trading favors with tricksters, and battling dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology. As Maggie discovers the truth behind the killings, she will have to confront her past if she wants to survive. Welcome to the Sixth World. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596048283733-P0WSEE4HKUQ5G1UHKJ2K/Science+Fiction+picks.png The Reading List - Science Fiction - Kindred By Octavia Butler The first science fiction written by a black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of black American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she’s been given... https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596048881224-XQ4OTM17ODEAR254GSC2/Science+Fiction+picks+%286%29.png The Reading List - Science Fiction - Borderline By Mishell Baker A year ago, Millie lost her legs and her filmmaking career in a failed suicide attempt. Just when she’s sure the credits have rolled on her life story, she gets a second chance with the Arcadia Project: a secret organization that polices the traffic to and from a parallel reality filled with creatures straight out of myth and fairy tales. For her first assignment, Millie is tasked with tracking down a missing movie star who also happens to be a nobleman of the Seelie Court. To find him, she’ll have to smooth-talk Hollywood power players and uncover the surreal and sometimes terrifying truth behind the glamour of Tinseltown. But stronger forces than just her inner demons are sabotaging her progress, and if she fails to unravel the conspiracy behind the noble’s disappearance, not only will she be out on the streets, but the shattering of a centuries-old peace could spark an all-out war between worlds. No pressure. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596048416036-3LVTVOWXCJ1AQ6SG81IJ/Science+Fiction+picks+%281%29.png The Reading List - Science Fiction - Lagoon By Nnedi Okorafor When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’ s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself... from itself. Lagoon expertly juggles multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives with prose that is at once propulsive and poetic, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596048594006-LX3S6FP729ZZ4DVZTW8W/Science+Fiction+picks+%283%29.png The Reading List - Science Fiction - The Fifth Season By N.K. Jemisin This is the way the world ends. Again. Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries. Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596048996083-J121M6B2G2TZEOLYKBW3/Science+Fiction+picks+%287%29.png The Reading List - Science Fiction - Everfair By Nisi Shawl What if the African natives developed steam power ahead of their colonial oppressors? What might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier? Fabian Socialists from Great Britain join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated. Shawl's speculative masterpiece manages to turn one of the worst human rights disasters on record into a marvelous and exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history. Everfair is told from a multiplicity of voices: Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. Everfair is not only a beautiful book but an educational and inspiring one that will give the reader new insight into an often ignored period of history. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596048513727-RR3K64MUQC4H5BQ34Y1Z/Science+Fiction+picks+%282%29.png The Reading List - Science Fiction - The Best of All Possible Worlds By Karen Lord A proud and reserved alien society finds its homeland destroyed in an unprovoked act of aggression, and the survivors have no choice but to reach out to the indigenous humanoids of their adopted world, to whom they are distantly related. They wish to preserve their cherished way of life, but doing so may mean changing their culture forever. Working together to save this vanishing race, a man and a woman from two clashing societies will uncover ancient mysteries with far-reaching ramifications. And as their mission hangs in the balance, the unlikely team—one cool and cerebral, the other fiery and impulsive—just may find in each other their own destinies . . . and a force that transcends all. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596048692976-7XXFIEGP7N7VH1HROC2R/Science+Fiction+picks+%284%29.png The Reading List - Science Fiction - Lakewood When Lena Johnson’s beloved grandmother dies, and the full extent of the family debt is revealed, the black millennial drops out of college to support her family and takes a job in the mysterious and remote town of Lakewood, Michigan. On paper, her new job is too good to be true. High paying. No out of pocket medical expenses. A free place to live. All Lena has to do is participate in a secret program—and lie to her friends and family about the research being done in Lakewood. An eye drop that makes brown eyes blue, a medication that could be a cure for dementia, golden pills promised to make all bad thoughts go away. The discoveries made in Lakewood, Lena is told, will change the world—but the consequences for the subjects involved could be devastating. As the truths of the program reveal themselves, Lena learns how much she’s willing to sacrifice for the sake of her family. Provocative and thrilling, Lakewood is a breathtaking novel that takes an unflinching look at the moral dilemmas many working-class families face, and the horror that has been forced on black bodies in the name of science. https://www.bookmrk.org/readinglist/historicalfiction monthly 0.5 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596056088122-HQZ8VHY4Q97KT4T1P4G8/Historical+Fiction+picks+%283%29.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - Cherokee America By Margaret Verble A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, and a neighbor have all gone missing in the same corner of the Cherokee Nation West. Cherokee America Singer, known as Check, is none too pleased with these developments. As a wealthy farmer, the mother of five boys, and the matriarch of her family, she’s accustomed to wielding authority. And she’s determined to find out what’s going on. In the aftermath of the Civil War, complex alliances and simmering race and culture clashes unite and divide the people living on Cherokee lands. Tensions mount and violence escalates, and the long arm of white law encroaches further into Indian Territory. Determined to survive and thrive on their own terms after decades of betrayal and hardship, Check’s family, friends, and neighbors must come together to avenge a crime, outwit federal authorities, and protect their sovereignty. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596055736301-NYR7CASCCVYKT3JF827Q/Historical+Fiction+picks+%282%29.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - The Road Back to Sweetgrass By Linda LeGarde Grover Set in northern Minnesota, this novel follows a trio of American Indian women, from the 1970s to the present, observing their lives intersect on the fictional Mozhay Point reservation. Linda LeGarde Grover connects the sense of place with the experience of Native women who came of age during the days of the federal termination policy and the struggle for tribal self-determination. A powerful debut novel of love, hardship, and family bonds on an American Indian reservation—from the author of the award-winning short story collection The Dance Boots https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596056524245-CUMM2OKUWGYVK3JSZ3R5/Historical+Fiction+picks+%286%29.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - The Refugees By Viet Thanh Nguyen From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration. The second piece of fiction by a major new voice in American letters, The Refugees is a beautifully written and sharply observed book about the aspirations of those who leave one country for another, and the relationships and desires for self-fulfillment that define our lives. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596055314085-5CWUQVVG092H9IWIDE55/Historical+Fiction+picks+%281%29.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - Orhan's Inheritance By Aline Ohanesian When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather, Kemal Türkoglu, who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs, is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But Kemal has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in a retirement home in Los Angeles. Intent on righting this injustice, Orhan unearths a story that, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which Orhan’s family is built, a story that could unravel his own future. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596056221279-XIGM28EO3NPQHLHV8QKY/Historical+Fiction+picks+%284%29.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages By Saundra Mitchell Take a journey through time and genres and discover a past where queer figures live, love and shape the world around them. Seventeen of the best young adult authors across the queer spectrum have come together to create a collection of beautifully written diverse historical fiction for teens. From a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood set in war-torn 1870s Mexico featuring a transgender soldier, to two girls falling in love while mourning the death of Kurt Cobain, forbidden love in a sixteenth-century Spanish convent or an asexual girl discovering her identity amid the 1970s roller-disco scene, All Out tells a diverse range of stories across cultures, time periods and identities, shedding light on an area of history often ignored or forgotten. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596056696778-G9U1Y8LY0F5CWBFZPPY5/Historical+Fiction+picks+%287%29.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - Sanaaq By Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk (Author), Bernard Saladin d’Anglure (Translator) Sanaaq is an intimate story of an Inuit family negotiating the changes brought into their community by the coming of the qallunaat, the white people, in the mid-nineteenth century. Composed in 48 episodes, it recounts the daily life of Sanaaq, a strong and outspoken young widow, her daughter Qumaq, and their small semi-nomadic community in northern Quebec. Here they live their lives hunting seal, repairing their kayak, and gathering mussels under blue sea ice before the tide comes in. These are ordinary extraordinary lives: marriages are made and unmade, children are born and named, violence appears in the form of a fearful husband or a hungry polar bear. Here the spirit world is alive and relations with non-humans are never taken lightly. And under it all, the growing intrusion of the qallunaat and the battle for souls between the Catholic and Anglican missionaries threatens to forever change the way of life of Sanaaq and her young family. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596055193413-O0SPNK5MKBE0GWWGD0GG/Historical+Fiction+picks.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - Behold the Dreamers By Imbolo Mbue Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers, in the fall of 2007. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty—and Jende is eager to please. Clark’s wife, Cindy, even offers Jende's wife, Neni, temporary work at their summer home in the Hamptons. With these opportunities, Jende and Neni can at last gain a foothold in America and imagine a brighter future. However, the world of great power and privilege conceals troubling secrets, and soon Jende and Neni notice cracks in their employers’ facades. Then the financial world is rocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Desperate to keep Jende’s job, which grows more tenuous by the day, the Jongas try to protect the Edwardses from certain truths, even as their own marriage threatens to fall apart. As all four lives are dramatically upended, Jende and Neni are forced to make an impossible choice https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596057023797-6T0IU5YBD9XPI58FIT3O/Historical+Fiction+picks+%289%29.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - Midnight's Children By Salman Rushdie Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596056880885-K12718NX8QOUP89EWYV2/Historical+Fiction+picks+%288%29.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - THE SAME NIGHT AWAITS US ALL By by Hristo Karastoyanov (Author), Izidora Angel (Translator) In June of 1923, a military coup established Aleksandar Tsankov as the new leader of Bulgaria. His fascist policies—especially aimed at the Bulgarian Communist Party—led to the failed September Uprising and an extended period of martial law. At that same time, Geo Milev—one of Bulgaria’s most beloved poets—started a politically charged literary magazine with Georgi Sheytanov, a notorious anarchist on the run. Eighteen months later, the government assassinated both of them, although Milev’s body wouldn’t be found for another thirty years. In this multilayered historical novel that calls to mind Laurent Binet’s HHhH, Hristo Karastoyanov deconstructs this period, blending this adventurous tale of resistance with current-day reflections on what this period meant to Bulgaria and the world. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596057315081-E6716LJ1I19R5IQC5X4T/Historical+Fiction+picks+%2810%29.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - Urnabhih By Sumedha V. Ojha Misrakesi comes to the newly-formed Mauryan court with a mission-to avenge the death of her sister. However, an encounter with Chanakya, the man she had planned to kill, sets her on an unexpected path…She lands the highly-coveted job of a spy, masquerading as a dancing girl. In a kingdom fraught with intrigue, Misrakesi must always remain one step ahead. With the help of her handsome but arrogant chief Pushyamitra, she must concoct the perfect blend of sweetness and seduction to vanquish the enemies of the state. But when she is sent to subtly conquer a powerful neighboring kingdom, she might be in for more than what she bargained for. Will she succeed in her mission? Or more importantly, will she even survive to tell the tale? Meticulously researched, this historical page-turner packs in romance, political intrigue, and mystery to make for a racy read. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596056317561-FIPX8QXL5LUB7HC5MKZE/Historical+Fiction+picks+%285%29.png The Reading List - Historical Fiction - Code Talker By Joseph Bruchac Throughout World War II, in the conflict fought against Japan, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort, sending messages back and forth in an unbreakable code that used their native language. They braved some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with their code, they saved countless American lives. Yet their story remained classified for more than twenty years. But now Joseph Bruchac brings their stories to life for young adults through the riveting fictional tale of Ned Begay, a sixteen-year-old Navajo boy who becomes a code talker. His grueling journey is eye-opening and inspiring. This deeply affecting novel honors all of those young men, like Ned, who dared to serve, and it honors the culture and language of the Navajo Indians. https://www.bookmrk.org/readinglist/mysterypicks monthly 0.5 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596046620590-8HC7OANC5KVQHCJQC76R/Mystery+Novel+Picks+%281%29.png The Reading List - Mystery - The Widows of Malabar Hill By Sujata Massey Bombay, 1921: Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father’s law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with an Oxford, legal education, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes her especially devoted to championing and protecting women’s legal rights. Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. What will they live on? Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X—meaning she probably couldn’t even read the document. The Farid widows live in full purdah—in strict seclusion, never leaving the women’s quarters or speaking to any men. Are they being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous guardian? Perveen tries to investigate, and realizes her instincts were correct when tensions escalate to murder. Now it is her responsibility to figure out what really happened on Malabar Hill, and to ensure that no innocent women or children are in further danger. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596046552339-25GKEAYN2Z5YXU4O557O/BOOKMRK+Branding.png The Reading List - Mystery - The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan Despite their many differences, Detective Rachel Getty trusts her boss, Esa Khattak, implicitly. But she's still uneasy at Khattak's tight-lipped secrecy when he asks her to look into Christopher Drayton's death. Drayton's apparently accidental fall from a cliff doesn't seem to warrant a police investigation, particularly not from Rachel and Khattak's team, which handles minority-sensitive cases. But when she learns that Drayton may have been living under an assumed name, Rachel begins to understand why Khattak is tip-toeing around this case. It soon comes to light that Drayton may have been a war criminal with ties to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. If that's true, any number of people might have had reason to help Drayton to his death, and a murder investigation could have far-reaching ripples throughout the community. But as Rachel and Khattak dig deeper into the life and death of Christopher Drayton, every question seems to lead only to more questions, with no easy answers. Had the specters of Srebrenica returned to haunt Drayton at the end, or had he been keeping secrets of an entirely different nature? Or, after all, did a man just fall to his death from the Bluffs? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596046969283-NJPBOE7SS71PNMZ0PFCM/Mystery+Novel+Picks+%285%29.png The Reading List - Mystery - Salvation of a Saint By Keigo Higashino Yoshitaka, who was about to leave his marriage and his wife, is poisoned by arsenic-laced coffee and dies. His wife, Ayane, is the logical suspect—except that she was hundreds of miles away when he was murdered. The lead detective, Tokyo Police Detective Kusanagi, is immediately smitten with her and refuses to believe that she could have had anything to do with the crime. His assistant, Kaoru Utsumi, however, is convinced Ayane is guilty. While Utsumi's instincts tell her one thing, the facts of the case are another matter. So she does what her boss has done for years when stymied—she calls upon Professor Manabu Yukawa. But even the brilliant mind of Dr. Yukawa has trouble with this one, and he must somehow find a way to solve an impossible murder and capture a very real, very deadly murderer. Salvation of a Saint is Keigo Higashino at his mind-bending best, pitting emotion against fact in a beautifully plotted crime novel filled with twists and reverses that will astonish and surprise even the most attentive and jaded of readers. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596046899937-8NXYMAL3WOH65JXJSTCS/Mystery+Novel+Picks+%284%29.png The Reading List - Mystery - Murder on the Red River By Marcie Rendon Cash and Sheriff Wheaton make for a strange partnership. He pulled her from her mother's wrecked car when she was three. He's kept an eye out for her ever since. It's a tough place to live—northern Minnesota along the Red River. Cash navigated through foster homes, and at thirteen was working farms. She's tough as nails—Five feet two inches, blue jeans, blue jean jacket, smokes Marlboros, drinks Bud Longnecks. Makes her living driving truck. Playing pool on the side. Wheaton is big lawman type. Maybe Scandinavian stock, but darker skin than most. He wants her to take hold of her life. Get into Junior College. So there they are, staring at the dead Indian lying in the field. Soon Cash was dreaming the dead man's cheap house on the Red Lake Reservation, mother and kids waiting. She has that kind of power. That's the place to start looking. There's a long and dangerous way to go to find the men who killed him. Plus there's Jim, the married white guy. And Longbraids, the Indian guy headed for Minneapolis to join the American Indian Movement. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596047097202-2OPLAKP0NJR35HH5E30L/Mystery+Novel+Picks+%286%29.png The Reading List - Mystery - These Ghosts Are Family By Maisy Card Stanford Solomon’s shocking, thirty-year-old secret is about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford has done something no one could ever imagine. He is a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley. And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead. These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of a single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the houseboy who loved Vera, whpose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596046814599-4GY8UPVTS08MGM8BV24C/Mystery+Novel+Picks+%283%29.png The Reading List - Mystery - The Little Death By Michael Nava In the first book of the acclaimed Henry Rios series, a lawyer doggedly pursues a murder investigation into the lion’s den of San Francisco’s moneyed elite Henry Rios meets Hugh Paris when Paris is arrested for drug possession and being high on PCP. A burnt-out public defender battling alcoholism, Rios has reached a crossroads in his life. While interviewing Paris in jail, Rios goes through the motions, but notices that Paris is far more polished and well-off than the usual drug suspects. Paris is mysteriously bailed out—but a few weeks later, he turns up on Rios’s doorstep. Skittish and paranoid, he admits to using heroin and says he’s afraid that his wealthy grandfather wants to murder him. Rios tries to help Paris get clean, but when Paris is found dead of an apparent heroin overdose, Rios is the only one who considers foul play. Determined to find Paris’s killer, Rios knocks on San Francisco’s most gilded doors, where he discovers a family tainted by jealousy, greed, and hate. They’ve been warped by a fortune someone’s willing to kill—and kill again—to possess. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596046707134-QTVMGXRD7TFBA1KNVDI0/Mystery+Novel+Picks+%282%29.png The Reading List - Mystery - A Rising Man By Abir Mukherjee In the days of the Raj, a newly arrived Scotland Yard detective is confronted with the murder of a British official—in his mouth a note warning the British to leave India, or else... Calcutta, 1919. Captain Sam Wyndham, former Scotland Yard detective, is a new arrival to Calcutta. Desperately seeking a fresh start after his experiences during the Great War, Wyndham has been recruited to head up a new post in the police force. He is immediately overwhelmed by the heady vibrancy of the tropical city, but with barely a moment to acclimatize or to deal with the ghosts that still haunt him, Wyndham is caught up in a murder investigation that threatens to destabilize a city already teetering on the brink of political insurgency. The body of a senior official has been found in a filthy sewer, and a note left in his mouth warns the British to quit India, or else. Under tremendous pressure to solve the case before it erupts into increased violence on the streets, Wyndham and his two new colleagues—arrogant Inspector Digby and Sergeant Banerjee, one of the few Indians to be recruited into the new CID—embark on an investigation that will take them from the opulent mansions of wealthy British traders to the seedy opium dens of the city. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596047172561-V5YE9A3GTLC88BCGS4GG/image-asset.png The Reading List - Mystery - If He Hollers Let Him Go: A Novel By Chester Himes A powerful story of racism that's as pertinent today as when the book was first published This story of a man living every day in fear of his life for simply being black is as powerful today as it was when it was first published in 1947. The novel takes place in the space of four days in the life of Bob Jones, a black man who is constantly plagued by the effects of racism. Living in a society that is drenched in race consciousness has no doubt taken a toll on the way Jones behaves, thinks, and feels, especially when, at the end of his story, he is accused of a brutal crime he did not commit. https://www.bookmrk.org/readinglist/thriller monthly 0.5 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596044776702-Z65BPQ4OR3Y7BNHHXLV8/Thriller+Novels+Picks++%282%29.png The Reading List - Thriller - August Snow By Stephen Mack Jones Detroit. The son of an African-American father and a Mexican-American mother, August grew up in the city’s Mexicantown and joined the police force only to be drummed out by a conspiracy of corrupt cops and politicians. But August fought back; he took on the city and got himself a $12 million wrongful dismissal settlement that left him low on friends. He has just returned to the house he grew up in after a year away, and quickly learns he has many scores to settle. It’s not long before he’s summoned to the palatial Grosse Pointe Estates home of business magnate Eleanore Paget. Powerful and manipulative, Paget wants August to investigate the increasingly unusual happenings at her private wealth management bank. But detective work is no longer August’s beat, and he declines. A day later, Paget is dead of an apparent suicide—which August isn’t buying for a minute. What begins as an inquiry into Eleanore Paget’s death soon drags August into a rat’s nest of Detroit’s most dangerous criminals, from corporate embezzlers to tattooed mercenaries. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596045190593-CUQ0BVUFW6OHIQ7V2VPE/Thriller+Novels+Picks++%286%29.png The Reading List - Thriller - A Burning By Megha Majumdar Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely—an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor—has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear. Taut, symphonic, propulsive, and riveting from its opening lines, A Burning has the force of an epic while being so masterfully compressed it can be read in a single sitting. Majumdar writes with dazzling assurance at a breakneck pace on complex themes that read here as the components of a thriller: class, fate, corruption, justice, and what it feels like to face profound obstacles and yet nurture big dreams in a country spinning toward extremism. An extraordinary debut. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596044863250-MTY29Z19L35XI0MRSBYT/image-asset.png The Reading List - Thriller - The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong, Chi-Young Kim (Translator) Who can you trust if you can't trust yourself? Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything's all right at home - he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can't remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life? Thus begins Yu-jin's frantic three-day search to uncover what happened that night, and to finally learn the truth about himself and his family. A shocking and addictive psychological thriller, The Good Son explores the mysteries of mind and memory, and the twisted relationship between a mother and son, with incredible urgency. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596044588578-2UAUCE64WAUPGVE68Z2U/BOOKMRK+Branding.png The Reading List - Thriller - The Perfect Nanny By Leïla Slimani When Myriam decides to return to work as a lawyer after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their son and daughter. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family’s chic Paris apartment, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a compulsive, riveting, bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, motherhood, and madness—and the American debut of an immensely talented writer. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596045117223-VP1455HDEIF1EKCKCSLI/Thriller+Novels+Picks++%285%29.png The Reading List - Thriller - Quotients By Tracy O’Neill Two people search for connection in a world of fractured identities and aliases, global finance, big data, intelligence bureaucracies, algorithmic logic, and terror. Jeremy Jordan and Alexandra Chen hope to make a quiet home together but struggle to find a space safe from their personal secrets. For Jeremy, this means leaving behind his former life as an intelligence operative during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. For Alexandra, a high-powered job in image management for whole countries cannot prepare her for her missing brother's sudden reappearance. In a culture of limitless surveillance, Jeremy and Alexandra will go to great lengths to protect what is closest to them. Spanning decades and continents, their saga brings them into contact with a down-and-out online journalist, shadowy security professionals, and jockeying technology experts, each of whom has a different understanding of whether information really protects us, and how we might build a world worth trusting in our paranoid age. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596044492552-9QHI5W2TOJXGCWCNVLL5/Thriller+Novels+Picks+.png The Reading List - Thriller - Lucky By Henry Chang Chinatown gang leader "Lucky" Louie awakens from a long coma and intends to retake Chinatown's Underworld. But NYPD Detective Jack Yu, Lucky's boyhood blood brother, fears his friend's luck is about to run out. When Lucky embarks on a daring series of crimes against the Chinatown criminal underground, Jack races to stop him before his enemies do so-- permanently. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596045035353-9C5M8R6KDL1A82ONJ6K7/Thriller+Novels+Picks++%284%29.png The Reading List - Thriller - The Only Good Indians By Stephen Graham Jones Ten years ago outside Browning, Montana, four Blackfeet shot some elk, and then went on with their lives. It happens every year, it’s been happening forever, it’s the way it’s always been. But this time it’s different. Ten years after that fateful hunt, these men are being stalked, are being hunted themselves. By who? By . . . what? And why? Some hunting expeditions, they’re never really over. This one’s just beginning. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596045269072-FBZHB48DCD86Z51YPOI7/Thriller+Novels+Picks++%287%29.png The Reading List - Thriller - EGG DROP DEAD By Vivien Chien It was supposed to be a fancy, intimate dinner party by the pool. Instead, Lana Lee’s first-ever catering event turns into full-course madness when a domestic worker is found dead. Is the party’s host Donna Feng, the sweet-and-sour owner of the Asia Village shopping plaza where Ho-Lee is situated, somehow to blame? That’s what Lana―whose plate is already plenty full with running the restaurant, pleasing her often-disapproving mother, and fretting over her occasionally-serious boyfriend Detective Adam Trudeau―must find out. Before the police arrived at the crime scene, Donna had entrusted an odd piece of evidence to Lana: a thumb drive shaped like a terra-cotta soldier. Now it’s up to Lana to lead her own investigation, digitally and in real life, into a world of secrets involving Donna’s earlier life in China, whether the victim had a dark agenda, and if the killer is still out there. . .and plans to strike again. https://www.bookmrk.org/readinglist/magic monthly 0.5 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1595802096032-RQ8GZ5B5VZ7JWX7UB04Q/Copy+of+Pink+and+Peach+Freeform+Art+Instagram+Post.png The Reading List - Magic & Fantasy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1595802211732-P9BM9VXXPCW3WW885NS0/Bookmrk+Logo.jpg The Reading List - Magic & Fantasy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596042763791-5F1VZJ541W1M4VS067HH/Magic+%26+Fantasy+Pick+Covers.png The Reading List - Magic & Fantasy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1595803676291-0DIWQCT4H9F0C6HJM5RL/Copy+of+Pink+and+Peach+Freeform+Art+Instagram+Post+%287%29.png The Reading List - Magic & Fantasy https://www.bookmrk.org/readinglist/bildungsroman monthly 0.5 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596051938258-JCE1QFX9ZOZSDS3EKVA3/Bildungsroman+Picks+%283%29.png The Reading List - Bildungsroman - Tyler Johnson Was Here By Jay Coles When Marvin Johnson's twin, Tyler, goes to a party, Marvin decides to tag along to keep an eye on his brother. But what starts as harmless fun turns into a shooting, followed by a police raid. The next day, Tyler has gone missing, and it's up to Marvin to find him. But when Tyler is found dead, a video leaked online tells an even more chilling story: Tyler has been shot and killed by a police officer. Terrified as his mother unravels and mourning a brother who is now a hashtag, Marvin must learn what justice and freedom really mean. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596052490052-8QOJFEFIMJB4EHD2BGF2/Bildungsroman+Picks+%284%29.png The Reading List - Bildungsroman - Running By Natalia Sylvester WHEN FIFTEEN YEAR-OLD CUBAN AMERICAN MARIANA RUIZ'S FATHER RUNS FOR PRESIDENT, MARI STARTS TO SEE HIM WITH NEW EYES. A NOVEL ABOUT WAKING UP AND SPEAKING UP, AND WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU STOP SEEING YOUR DAD AS YOUR HERO—WHILE THE WHOLE COUNTRY IS WATCHING. In this thoughtful, authentic, humorous, and gorgeously written novel about privacy, waking up, and speaking up, Senator Anthony Ruiz is running for president. Throughout his successful political career he has always had his daughter’s vote, but a presidential campaign brings a whole new level of scrutiny to sheltered fifteen-year-old Mariana and the rest of her Cuban American family, from a 60 Minutes–style tour of their house to tabloids doctoring photos and inventing scandals. As tensions rise within the Ruiz family, Mari begins to learn about the details of her father’s political positions, and she realizes that her father is not the man she thought he was. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596050526275-D8XTAMWBK3YKTPMEQ0OS/Bildungsroman+Picks+%281%29.png The Reading List - Bildungsroman - The Pearl That Broke Its Shell By Nadia Hashimi Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi's literary debut novel is a searing tale of powerlessness, fate, and the freedom to control one's own fate that combines the cultural flavor and emotional resonance of the works of Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Lisa See. In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to the market, and chaperone her older sisters. But Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom. A century earlier, her great-great grandmother, Shekiba, left orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596052840964-GRW5LMRDKR7SXT81BHZ7/Bildungsroman+Picks+%286%29.png The Reading List - Bildungsroman - Firsts: Coming of Age Stories by People with Disabilities By Belo Miguel Cipriani Take a step back in time with some of the best writers with disabilities as they recount their first adventure, their first heartbreak, and the first time the unexpected treaded into their life. From body transformations to societal setbacks, to love affairs and family trauma, Firsts collects the most thought-provoking and exciting stories of our time by people with disabilities. Contributors include Nigel David Kelly, Kimberly Gerry-Tucker, Caitlin Hernandez, Andrew Gurza, and David-Elijah Nahmod. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596053442665-D2H1MXD2E8F7E7F66QW4/Bildungsroman+Picks+%287%29.png The Reading List - Bildungsroman - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian By Sherman Alexie, Ellen Forney (Illustrator) Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596050639248-QQHTRAJD02ZGTKP1R3JE/Bildungsroman+Picks+%282%29.png The Reading List - Bildungsroman - Jufresa By Umami-Laia Translated by Sophie Hughes In five extraordinary apartments live five extraordinary families. Designed in the shape of a tongue, each apartment takes the name of a flavour – sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. And the tenants are no less eccentric. In Umami lives retired food anthropologist Alf, landlord and creator of the building. At Bitter lives manic depressive Marina, who neither eats nor paints but invents colours with words; at Sour lives newly parented (as well as New Age) couple Daniel and Daniela; and at Salty lives the Perez-Walkers with their daughter Ana, aka Agatha Christie, a precocious twelve-year-old who spends her days buried in detective novels to forget the unresolved death of her younger sister. Alf is also grappling with the death of a loved one. Recently bereaved, he types letters to his dead wife in the hope she will somehow respond, and together Alf and Ana lean on and support one another – until their lives threaten to spiral out of control. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596050365187-ZT1BQKP20XJOO4456NNE/Bildungsroman+Picks.png The Reading List - Bildungsroman - Girl at War By Sara Nović Zagreb, 1991. Ana Jurić is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatia’s capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Ana’s idyllic childhood. Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire. Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Ana’s sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world. New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though she’s tried to move on from her past, she can’t escape her memories of war—secrets she keeps even from those closest to her. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home. As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her country’s difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596052645842-1GP4FQTGNBVGGVDIYCPL/Bildungsroman+Picks+%285%29.png The Reading List - Bildungsroman - No Ashes in the Fire : Coming of Age Black and Free in America By Darnell L. Moore From a leading journalist and activist comes a brave, beautifully wrought memoir. When Darnell Moore was fourteen, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire. They cornered him while he was walking home from school, harassed him because they thought he was gay, and poured a jug of gasoline on him. He escaped, but just barely. It wasn't the last time he would face death. Three decades later, Moore is an award-winning writer, a leading Black Lives Matter activist, and an advocate for justice and liberation. In No Ashes in the Fire , he shares the journey taken by that scared, bullied teenager who not only survived, but found his calling. Moore's transcendence over the myriad forces of repression that faced him is a testament to the grace and care of the people who loved him, and to his hometown, Camden, NJ, scarred and ignored but brimming with life. Moore reminds us that liberation is possible if we commit ourselves to fighting for it, and if we dream and create futures where those who survive on society's edges can thrive. No Ashes in the Fire is a story of beauty and hope-and an honest reckoning with family, with place, and with what it means to be free. Lambda Literary Award - Gay Memoir/Biography (Winner - 2019) A New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2018) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596053533248-LN95OHAV90AXNDLLCPUA/Bildungsroman+Picks+%288%29.png The Reading List - Bildungsroman - Crooked Hallelujah By Kelli Jo Ford It’s 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated, and loyal women, presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine’s father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church — a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But Justine does her best as a devoted daughter, until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever. Crooked Hallelujah tells the stories of Justine—a mixed-blood Cherokee woman—and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma’s Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn’t easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see their struggle to survive in a world intent on stripping away their connections to one another and their very ideas of home. https://www.bookmrk.org/readinglist/romance monthly 0.5 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596058517614-PWWBV7R8JUAHGH5O3VOE/Romance+%283%29.png The Reading List - Romance - The Trouble with Hating You By Sajni Patel A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy debut about first impressions, second chances, and finding the love of your life in the most unexpected way. Liya Thakkar is a successful biochemical engineer, takeout enthusiast, and happily single woman. The moment she realizes her parents’ latest dinner party is a setup with the man they want her to marry, she’s out the back door in a flash. Imagine her surprise when the same guy shows up at her office a week later — the new lawyer hired to save her struggling company. What’s not surprising: he’s not too thrilled to see her either after that humiliating fiasco. Jay Shah looks good on paper…and off. Especially if you like that whole gorgeous, charming lawyer-in-a-good-suit thing. He’s also arrogant and infuriating. As their witty office banter turns into late night chats, Liya starts to think he might be the one man who truly accepts her. But falling for each other means exposing their painful pasts. Will Liya keep running, or will she finally give love a real chance? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596058369773-N26C54VFPZLMUO7XON1N/Romance+%282%29.png The Reading List - Romance - Owls Don't Have to Mean Death By Chip Livingston As a Florida Creek child, Peter Strongbow learned owl sightings were bad luck. A hooting in the night, eerie screeches that echoed into your bedroom, these were omens. And recently, while on a romantic drive, his car has struck one down. His ancestors taught you walked the land when a relative returned after some extended absence, you walked the land when you needed to think things over, which Peter found himself doing more and more often now, since coping with Cache, the love of his life, learning he has AIDS. Peter turns to his community and family for help in understanding how to heal and hold on to an ailing earth in this novel of hope amid adversity. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596058135926-XLCKUYD43RL8U8OVOAPG/Romance+%281%29.png The Reading List - Romance - Next Year, for Sure By Zoey Leigh Peterson In this moving and enormously entertaining debut novel, longtime romantic partners Kathryn and Chris experiment with an open relationship and reconsider everything they thought they knew about love. After nine years together, Kathryn and Chris have the sort of relationship most would envy. They speak in the shorthand they have invented, complete one another’s sentences, and help each other through every daily and existential dilemma. But, as content as they are together, an enduring loneliness continues to haunt the dark corners of their relationship. When Chris tells Kathryn about his feelings for Emily, a vivacious young woman he sees often at the Laundromat, Kathryn encourages her boyfriend to pursue this other woman—certain that her bond with Chris is strong enough to weather a little side dalliance. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596059041182-O0DETC1YYT8BEGTNQVYE/Romance+%285%29.png The Reading List - Romance - Take A Hint, Dani Brown By Talia Hibbert Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits—someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom. When big, brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it’s an obvious sign: PhD student Dani and former rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can explain that fact to him, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Suddenly, half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae—and Zaf is begging Dani to play along. Turns out his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity. Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse? Dani’s plan is simple: fake a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf is secretly a hopeless romantic—and he’s determined to corrupt Dani’s stone-cold realism. Before long, he’s tackling her fears into the dirt. But the former sports star has issues of his own, and the walls around his heart are as thick as his... um, thighs. The easy lay Dani dreamed of is now more complex than her thesis. Has her wish backfired? Is her focus being tested? Or is the universe just waiting for her to take a hint? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596059861384-IN2AI5Y1YITTHJ6MD95S/Romance+%288%29.png The Reading List - Romance - Love from A to Z By By S. K. Ali A marvel: something you find amazing. Even ordinary-amazing. Like potatoes—because they make French fries happen. Like the perfect fries Adam and his mom used to make together. An oddity: whatever gives you pause. Like the fact that there are hateful people in the world. Like Zayneb’s teacher, who won’t stop reminding the class how “bad” Muslims are. But Zayneb, the only Muslim in class, isn’t bad. She’s angry. When she gets suspended for confronting her teacher, and he begins investigating her activist friends, Zayneb heads to her aunt’s house in Doha, Qatar, for an early start to spring break. Fueled by the guilt of getting her friends in trouble, she resolves to try out a newer, “nicer” version of herself in a place where no one knows her. Then her path crosses with Adam’s. Since he got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in November, Adam’s stopped going to classes, intent, instead, on perfecting the making of things. Intent on keeping the memory of his mom alive for his little sister. Adam’s also intent on keeping his diagnosis a secret from his grieving father. Alone, Adam and Zayneb are playing roles for others, keeping their real thoughts locked away in their journals. Until a marvel and an oddity occurs… Marvel: Adam and Zayneb meeting. Oddity: Adam and Zayneb meeting. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596058683717-WOT0D3KQXSDR07GWNPMM/Romance+%284%29.png The Reading List - Romance - You Exist Too Much On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother's response only intensifies a sense of shame: "You exist too much," she tells her daughter. Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East--from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine--Zaina Arafat's debut novel traces her protagonist's progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as "love addiction." In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596058835936-GXEK4RSGRVZTKJIQFAE7/Romance+%284%29.png The Reading List - Romance - The Kiss Quotient Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases–a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old. It doesn’t help that Stella has Asperger’s and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice–with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can’t afford to turn down Stella’s offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan–from foreplay to more-than-missionary position… As Michael and Stella’s no-nonsense partnership takes them out of the bedroom and into a fulltime practice relationship, being together starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic… https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596059548061-8ML7NQWWOBLCS037DN02/Romance+%287%29.png The Reading List - Romance - God in Pink By Hasan Namir The debut book by Hasan Namir is a revelatory novel about being queer and Muslim, set in war-torn Iraq in 2003. Ramy is a closeted university student whose parents have died, and who lives under the close scrutiny of his strict brother and sister-in-law. They exert pressure on him to find a wife, leaving him anguished and struggling to find a balance between his sexuality, religion, and culture. Desperate for counsel, he seeks the advice of Ammar, a sheikh at a local mosque, whose tolerance is challenged by the contradictions between Ramy's dilemma and the teachings of the Qur'an, leading him to question his own belief system. Alternating between quiet moments of beauty and raw depictions of violence, God in Pink poignantly captures the anguish and the fortitude of gay Muslims in Iraq. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596057582936-VQZOEYTEPOR5CL72Z2B8/Romance.png The Reading List - Romance - Under the Udala Trees By by Chinelo Okparanta Inspired by Nigeria's folktales and its war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly. Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie. As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti's political coming of age, Okparanta's Under the Udala Trees uses one woman's lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a glimmer of hope — a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love. https://www.bookmrk.org/readinglist/poetry monthly 0.5 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596061720324-7X2PKYIHJD0LBNAPSK4A/image-asset.png The Reading List - Poetry - Praise Song for the Day On January 20, 2009, Elizabeth Alexander served as the fourth ever inaugural poet and a central participant in one of the most closely watched inaugurations in American history. Selected by Barack Obama, Alexander composed and delivered her original poem "Praise Song for the Day" to an audience of millions, and now the poem can be read and savored for posterity. Printed on heavy, uncoated stock, with French flaps, and a silver foil stamp, this collectible chapbook is a cherished reminder of this monumental presidential event. Also available in Spanish. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596060848249-TKBRHW8O7JIZU1NRCO7Y/Poetry+%282%29.png The Reading List - Poetry - Black Mountain Poems Jonathan C. Creasy Edited by An essential selection of the poetry of one of the most important twentieth-century creative movements. Black Mountain College had an explosive influence on American poetry, music, art, craft, dance, and thought; it’s hard to imagine any other institution that was so utopian, rebellious, and experimental. Founded with the mission of creating rounded, complete people by balancing the arts and manual labor within a democratic, nonhierarchical structure, Black Mountain was a crucible of revolutionary literature. Although this artistic haven only existed from 1933 to 1956, Black Mountain helped inspire some of the most radical and significant midcentury American poets. This anthology begins with the well-known Black Mountain Poets— Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov—but also includes the artist Josef Albers and the musician John Cage, as well as the often overlooked women associated with the college, M. C. Richards and Hilda Morley. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596060394067-QEAOZWTXCA4292CKNPYV/Poetry.png The Reading List - Poetry - Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability by Jennifer Bartlett (Editor),Sheila Black, Michael Northen, Jillian Weise, Daniel Simpson Beauty is a Verb is a ground-breaking anthology of disability poetry, essays on disability, and writings on the poetics of both. Crip Poetry. Disability Poetry. Poems with Disabilities. This is where poetry and disability intersect, overlap, collide and make peace. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596060718321-73UWDU87AK5O5MDZ76LR/Poetry+%281%29.png The Reading List - Poetry - The Date Fruit Elegies by John Olivares Espinoza In his first full-length collection of poetry, award-winning poet John Olivares Espinoza defies the common portrayal of the typical Southern Californian and depicts a much harsher yet deeply touching reality for one working class family that struggles to make ends meet and save for the children's education. These poems elegantly yet accessibly chronicle the family's experiences in Southern California's Coachella Valley: a mother and her boys share a meal of two cheeseburgers; two wage-earning teens take a late night odyssey in search of a dinner other than cheese and vanilla pudding; a college student kneels next to his landscaper father. Dignified and never sentimental, these poems create vivid imagery that does not soon fade from the reader's mind. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596062905206-085NI1IFD5J3JANJCKTH/Poetry+%289%29.png The Reading List - Poetry - Homie By Danez Smith Homie is Danez Smith’s magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family—blood and chosen—arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez’s friends and for you and for yours. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596063061672-HD5XEUUHJDELJQ4OZQWJ/Poetry+%2810%29.png The Reading List - Poetry By Gwen Benaway In her third collection of poetry, Holy Wild, Gwen Benaway explores the complexities of being an Indigenous trans woman in expansive lyric poems. She holds up the Indigenous trans body as a site of struggle, liberation, and beauty. A confessional poet, Benaway narrates her sexual and romantic intimacies with partners as well as her work to navigate the daily burden of transphobia and violence. She examines the intersections of Indigenous and trans experience through autobiographical poems and continues to speak to the legacy of abuse, violence, and colonial erasure that defines Canada. Her sparse lines, interwoven with English and Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), illustrate the wonder and power of Indigenous trans womanhood in motion. Holy Wild is not an easy book, as Benaway refuses to give any simple answers, but it is a profoundly vibrant and beautiful work filled with a transcendent grace. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596062626487-8W71A9MOSBDRLZDSML7F/Poetry+%288%29.png The Reading List - Poetry - Minor Feelings By Cathy Hong Park Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world. Binding these essays together is Hong’s theory of “minor feelings.” As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these “minor feelings” occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe the lies you’re told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small, they’re dissonant—and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her. With sly humor and a poet’s searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche—and of a writer’s search to both uncover and speak the truth. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596061992245-G82GJZRXMO5N9J5GLPEP/Poetry+%285%29.png The Reading List - Poetry - Collected Poems: 1974-2004 By Rita Dove By Rita Dove’s Collected Poems 1974–2004 showcases the wide-ranging diversity that earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the position of U.S. poet laureate, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Medal of Art. Gathering thirty years and seven books, this volume compiles Dove’s fresh reflections on adolescence in The Yellow House on the Corner and her irreverent musings in Museum. She sets the moving love story of Thomas and Beulah against the backdrop of war, industrialization, and the civil right struggles. The multifaceted gems of Grace Notes, the exquisite reinvention of Greek myth in the sonnets of Mother Love, the troubling rapids of recent history in On the Bus with Rosa Parks, and the homage to America’s kaleidoscopic cultural heritage in American Smooth all celebrate Dove’s mastery of narrative context with lyrical finesse. With the “precise, singing lines” for which the Washington Post praised her, Dove “has created fresh configurations of the traditional and the experimental” (Poetry magazine) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596060998016-UJ0P6ZZLZ7PYJSMBSSRE/Poetry+%283%29.png The Reading List - Poetry - New Poets of Native Nations By Heid E. Erdrich New Poets of Native Nations gathers poets of diverse ages, styles, languages, and tribal affiliations to present the extraordinary range and power of new Native poetry. Heid E. Erdrich has selected twenty-one poets whose first books were published after the year 2000 to highlight the exciting works coming up after Joy Harjo and Sherman Alexie. Collected here are poems of great breadth—long narratives, political outcries, experimental works, and traditional lyrics—and the result is an essential anthology of some of the best poets writing now. Poets included are Tacey M. Atsitty, Trevino L. Brings Plenty, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Laura Da’, Natalie Diaz, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Eric Gansworth, Gordon Henry, Jr., Sy Hoahwah, LeAnne Howe, Layli Long Soldier, Janet McAdams, Brandy Nalani McDougall, Margaret Noodin, dg okpik, Craig Santos Perez, Tommy Pico, Cedar Sigo, M. L. Smoker, Gwen Westerman, and Karenne Wood. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596062506156-8K2W82NZT5GG1B7FRQ7G/Poetry+%287%29.png The Reading List - Poetry - The Tradition By Jericho Brown Beauty abounds in Jericho Brown’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection, despite and inside of the evil that pollutes the everyday. A National Book Award finalist, The Tradition questions why and how we’ve become accustomed to terror: in the bedroom, the classroom, the workplace, and the movie theater. From mass shootings to rape to the murder of unarmed people by police, Brown interrupts complacency by locating each emergency in the garden of the body, where living things grow and wither—or survive. In the urgency born of real danger, Brown’s work is at its most innovative. His invention of the duplex—a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues—is an all-out exhibition of formal skill, and his lyrics move through elegy and memory with a breathless cadence. Jericho Brown is a poet of eros: here he wields this power as never before, touching the very heart of our cultural crisis. https://www.bookmrk.org/readinglist/graphic-novels monthly 0.5 2025-07-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596064079113-9KUQEQNKJNFRL1C2MJMW/Graphic+Novel+Picks+%282%29.png The Reading List - Graphic novels - My Brother's Husband, Volume 2 By GENGOROH TAGAME Translated by Anne Ishii The concluding volume in the story of Yaichi, his daughter Kana, and how their meeting Mike Flanagan—Yaichi’s brother-in-law—changes their lives and their perceptions of acceptance of homosexuality in their contemporary Japanese culture. As Mike continues his journey of discovery concerning Ryoji’s past, Yaichi gradually comes to understand that being gay is just another way of being human. And that, in many ways, remains a radical concept in Japan even today. In the meantime, the bond between Mike and young Kana grows ever stronger, and yet he is going to have to return to Canada soon—a fact that fills them both with impending heartbreak. But not before more than a few revelations come to light. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596064347771-AJG652JTX1VXP8YRWHPS/Graphic+Novel+Picks+%283%29.png The Reading List - Graphic novels - Puerto Rico Strong Editors: Hazel Newlevant / Desiree Rodriguez Puerto Rico Strong is a comics anthology that explores what it means to be Puerto Rican and the diversity that exists within that concept, from today's most exciting Puerto Rican comics creators. All proceeds go to UNIDOS Disaster Relief And Recovery Program to Support Puerto Rico. Despite being a US territory, Puerto Rico is often thought of as a foreign land, if it's even a thought in the mind of the average American at all. Its people exist in all corners of America; some of them have parents who immigrated from the home island, others are a part of families that have been on the mainland for generations. Then there are those who have come to the states in search of a dream but struggle to integrate into an unfamiliar culture, while there are those who have lived in the United States all of their lives but still have the same struggle because of the color of their skin or their sexual identity. These stories follow individuals from diverse walks of life but are all part of the culture that is Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico Strong features art and writing by Rosa Colon, Vita Ayala, Naomi Franquiz, Javier Cruz Winnick, Sabrina Cintron, Ronnie Garcia, Fabian Nicieza, Joamette Gil, and many more! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596063870284-5HVCVFB2KNWJP3YWAPAT/Graphic+Novel+Picks+%281%29.png The Reading List - Graphic novels - Bingo Love By Tee Franklin, Jenn St Onge (Artist), Joy San (Artist) When Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray met at church bingo in 1963, it was love at first sight. Forced apart by their families and society, Hazel and Mari both married young men and had families. Decades later, now in their mid-'60s, Hazel and Mari reunite again at a church bingo hall. Realizing their love for each other is still alive, what these grandmothers do next takes absolute strength and courage. From TEE FRANKLIN (NAILBITER's "THE OUTFIT," Love is Love) and JENN ST-ONGE (Jem & the Misfits), BINGO LOVE is a touching story of love, family, and resiliency that spans over 60 years. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596063623941-VRF8WUNCCKL5ENQFH8SV/Copy+of+Copy+of+Copy+of+Copy+of+Copy+of+Copy+of+Copy+of+Thriller+Novels+Picks+.png The Reading List - Graphic novels - Real Cost of Prisons Comix By Lois Ahrens, Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Introduction), Craig Gilmore (Preface) One out of every hundred adults in the U.S. is in prison. This book provides a crash course in what drives mass incarceration, the human and community costs, and how to stop the numbers from going even higher. This volume collects the three comic books published by the Real Cost of Prisons Project. The stories and statistical information in each comic book is thoroughly researched and documented. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596064758783-JB1HVXOLSTXITDSD016Q/Graphic+Novel+Picks+%284%29.png The Reading List - Graphic novels - Fat Girls From Outer Space Frederic (Freddy) Gold is smart, talented, funny and overweight. She hates her name, her body and the school bully. As if that weren’t enough, her parents are newly divorced and her dad has a young girlfriend. Excited about turning twelve and starting middle school, Freddy meets Dolly, and African-American girl and Eva, a Latina, who are also fat. They discover a mutual love and talent https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f172fe8094ed0047dbb57d0/1596063730700-SJWL6BMV7XVACAR4T2N3/Graphic+Novel+Picks.png The Reading List - Graphic novels - I Am Alfonso Jones By Tony Medina, llustrated by Stacey Robinson, John Jennings Alfonso Jones can’t wait to play the role of Hamlet in his school’s hip-hop rendition of the classic Shakespearean play. He also wants to let his best friend, Danetta, know how he really feels about her. But as he is buying his first suit, an off-duty police officer mistakes a clothes hanger for a gun, and he shoots Alfonso. When Alfonso wakes up in the afterlife, he’s on a ghost train guided by well-known victims of police shootings, who teach him what he needs to know about this subterranean spiritual world. Meanwhile, Alfonso’s family and friends struggle with their grief and seek justice for Alfonso in the streets. As they confront their new realities, both Alfonso and those he loves realize the work that lies ahead in the fight for justice. In the first graphic novel for young readers to focus on police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, as in Hamlet, the dead shall speak—and the living yield even more surprises.