The Crane Husband

Kelly Barnhill continues her fascinating interpretations of fairy tales in The Crane Husband, a retelling of the Japanese folk tale The Crane Wife. In a Midwestern family, a 15-year-old shoulders the responsibility of caring for her younger sibling when her mother suddenly brings home an unexpected new romantic fling: a six-foot crane whose viciousness goes unseen by the mother. Charged with protecting herself and her brother, one teenager is forced to make harrowing decisions to ensure their survival as they watch their mother fall deeper into the crane's destructive clutches. Barnhill's navigation of a teen's harrowing experience with violence and fear is expertly crafted with care and skill.

The Porcelain Moon

Set during WWI, Janie Chang's The Porcelain Moon is a captivating fiction novel following two women escaping from societal expectations and the lengths they'll go to protect their freedoms. Camille is preparing to leave her abusive husband when she meets Pauline, a young woman who recently ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage. The pair's quick connection leads Camille to offer to house Pauline, but they both realise their quick friendship threatens to unearth their dark secrets. When their secrets threaten to upend their lives, Camille and Pauline will do anything to protect themselves, resulting in an act that will ultimately affect both of their futures.

I Have Some Questions For You

In Rebecca Makkai's skillfully crafted mystery I Have Some Questions For You, a former boarding-school student returns to the scene of a tragic school murder. Bodie, a successful podcaster, tries not to reflect on her time at her new boarding school. During spring semester, her roommate Thalia was brutally murdered, and the school's athletic coach was convicted of the crime. But when she's offered a professor role she can't turn down, she returns to the site of the tragedy and begins to extract new details about the incident that may point to a completely new suspect. Bodie's reckoning of the past will bring shocking consequences to her life.