To Those on Both Sides of the Book Removal Issue by Author Ellen Hopkins

Author Ellen Hopkins wrote the best case against the current scourge of book banning. Most, if not all, of her deep dives into the challenges teens face are banned. Why? Because they’re real. There is no sugar coating. There is no topic she refuses to explore. She has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of young adults who needed to read what she has written in book after book. In this essay, she unapologetically stands tall in the case against book banning. Please read, and if you ever face a book banning enthusiast, you’ll be armed with the truth.

Vacationland by Meg Mitchell Moore

A delicious summer read and an exploration of family, responsibility, ambition and loss, Vacationland is sure to be a novel to embrace and get lost in.

Our Last Days in Barcelona by Chanel Cleeton

Chanel Cleeton continues her engrossing Perez Sisters saga with Isabel’s story (1964) and her mother Alicia’s story (1936), not in their former home in Havana, Cuba, or their current home in exile, Palm Beach, Florida, but primarily in Barcelona, Spain.

The Emma Project by Sonali Dev

In a fitting conclusion to her Jane Austen-inspired quartet about The Raje Family, Sonali Dev offers the steamiest entry of the series with her gender-reversing novel, The Emma Project.

In the Face of the Sun by Denny S. Bryce

In this haunting novel, the author of Wild Women and the Blues weaves together two stories as they unfold decades apart, as a woman on the run from an abusive husband joins her intrepid aunt as they head across the country from Chicago to Los Angeles, and confront a painful and shadowy past that has reverberated across generations.

It All Comes Down to This by Therese Anne Fowler

For the Geller sisters, all is not what it seems, and everything is about to change. Join them as they mourn the loss of a parent, face the quagmires of their existence, and find the way to their best lives.

The Last Queen: A Novel of Courage and Resistance by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s new book, “The Last Queen: A Novel of Courage and Resistance,” tells the story of Maharani Jindan, the last queen of the Sikh Empire.

The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian

“God, they’d christened themselves the lions of Hollywood at the wedding, and raised champagne to the idea. The seven of them, minus Katie and David, who were already in Paris, had greeted each other that way, half kidding but also a little smug, when they’d rendezvoused at the airport in L.A. a week later. The movie mags even called them that when they wrote about the safari: the lions of Hollywood.”

Crazy to Leave You by Marilyn Simon Rothstein

Looking for a fun, laugh-filled novel full of heart that will run the gamut of emotions (but mostly you’ll be laughing)? Marilyn Simon Rothstein has outdone herself with Crazy to Leave You, her third novel published by Lake Union.

Circa by Devi S. Laskar

Heera Sanyal, the protagonist of Devi S. Laskar’s new novel “Circa,” struggles to be something other than a dutiful Bengali daughter, even as she manages the grief of losing her best friend to a drunk driver.