Nine Humorous Fiction and Nonfiction Books to Keep You Laughing Out Loud

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There’s no right way to keep a diary, but if there’s an entertaining way, David Sedaris seems to have mastered it. The entries here reflect an ever-changing background: new administrations, new restrictions on speech and conduct. What you can say at the start of the book, you can’t by the end. At its best, A Carnival of Snackery is a sort of sampler: the bitter and the sweet.

In July 2019, Nick took a hiking trip to Glacier National Park with his friends Jeff Tweedy and George Saunders. The trip, and the conversations between the three men, began a study and exploration of both the American West and its National Parks that addresses so many of the important issues that affect America today. This book is a humorous and rousing tour of America’s nature spots as well as a mission statement about loving, protecting, and truly experiencing the outdoors.

Tracy Flick is a hardworking assistant principal at a public high school in suburban New Jersey. Still ambitious but feeling a little stuck and underappreciated in midlife, Tracy gets a jolt of good news when the longtime principal, Jack Weede, abruptly announces his retirement, creating a rare opportunity for Tracy. Energized by the prospect of her long-overdue promotion, Tracy throws herself into her work with renewed zeal. But nothing ever comes easily to Tracy Flick, no matter how diligent or qualified she happens to be.

Peggy Rowe has been writing all of her adult life. In fact, she doesn’t know how not to write—even through those years of constant rejection from publishing houses. But between her tenacity and the encouragement of her family, Peggy’s breakthrough finally came—at the age of eighty! Vacuuming in the Nude is most likely her funniest prose to date as she shares her journey and honing her ability to see humor in everyday situations.

Mother of two Liv Green barely scrapes by as a maid to make ends meet, often finding escape in a good book while daydreaming of becoming a writer herself. So she can’t believe her luck when she lands a job housekeeping for her personal hero, bestselling author Essie Starling, a mysterious and intimidating recluse. The last thing Liv expected was to be the only person Essie talks to, which leads to a tenuous friendship.

 Most people think of themselves as “good,” but it’s not always easy to determine what’s “good” or “bad”–especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, and more so we can sound cool at parties and become better people.

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late?

The Nineties is a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history. Cult author Chuck Klosterman makes a home in every element of 90s culture: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, and changes regarding race and class. 

Nora Hamilton knows the formula for love better than anyone. As a romance channel screenwriter, it’s her job. But when her too-good-to work husband leaves her and their two kids, Nora turns her marriage’s collapse into cash and writes the best script of her life. No one is more surprised than her when it’s picked up for the big screen and set to film on location at her 100-year-old-home. When former Sexiest Man Alive, Leo Vance, is cast as her ne’er do well husband Nora’s life will never be the same.

9 New Nonfiction Books to Read This September

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David Sowers and Laura Gillice are seriously injured in a head-on collision while vacationing in Yellowstone National Park with their dogs. When they are ambulanced away, David’s fifteen-month-old Australian shepherd, Jade, disappears. The young dog faces the threats of starvation, predators, and the hostile landscape of Yellowstone. Bring Jade Home is a gripping true tale of loss, the bond between people and animals, and the power of redeeming love.

In 1948, in the most stubbornly Dixiefied corner of the Jim Crow south, society matron Idella Thompson was viciously murdered in her own home. Her daughter, Ruth Dickins, was the only other person in the house. She told authorities a Black man she didn’t recognize had fled the scene, but no evidence of the man’s presence was uncovered. Beverly Lowry–who was ten at the time of the murder and lived mere miles from the Thompsons’ home–tells a story of white privilege that still has ramifications today.

An injured, young dog trudges the city streets, trembling from cold, from fear, from lack of food. Battered by the howling wind, he searches desperately for his lost family, yet day after day, week after week, all he ever finds is heartbreaking loneliness. But then, one magical spring morning, the dog and the girl meet. In a tale as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking, As The Stars Fall explores how compassion can make us whole again and friendship can heal even the most broken of hearts.

From the detective who found The Golden State Killer, Unmasked is a memoir of investigating America’s toughest cold cases and the rewards–and toll–of a life solving crime. Having experience in both forensic and investigative assignments, Paul throughout his 27-year career specialized in cold case and serial predator crimes, developing and applying investigative, behavioral, and forensic expertise in notable cases such as Zodiac, Golden State Killer, and Jaycee Dugard.  

The British Royal Family believed that the dizzy success of the Sussex wedding, watched and celebrated around the world, was the beginning of a new era for the Windsors. Yet, within one tumultuous year, the dream became a nightmare. In the aftermath of the infamous Megxit split and the Oprah Winfrey interview, the Royal Family’s fate seems persistently threatened.

 Zibby Owens has become a well-known personality in the publishing world. Her infectious energy, tasteful authenticity, and smart, steadfast support of authors started in childhood, a precedent set by the profound effect books and libraries had on her own family. But after losing her closest friend on 9/11 and later becoming utterly stressed out and overwhelmed by motherhood, Zibby was forgetting what made her whole. She turned to books and writing for help.

The Earth is All That Lasts is a magisterial dual biography of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull , the two most legendary and consequential Native American leaders.  An essential new addition to the canon of Indigenous American history and literature of the West, The Earth Is All That Lasts is a grand saga, both triumphant and tragic, of two fascinating and heroic leaders struggling to maintain the freedom of their people against impossible odds.

An immigrant mother’s long-held secrets upend her daughter’s understanding of her family, her identity, and her place in the world in this powerful and dramatic memoir. A former national television host, advice columnist, and professor, Carmen searches to understand who she really is as she discovers her mother’s hidden history, facing the revelations that seep out.

A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster—a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and one woman’s relentless battle for environmental justice.

9 New Books To Read on the Libby App

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Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the case of January Jacobs, who was found dead in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist, but she’s always been haunted by the fear that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice.

New York City, 1921: Here four extraordinary women form a bridge group that grows into a firm friendship. Dorothy Parker: renowned wit, member of the Algonquin Round Table. Jane Grant: first female reporter for the New York Times. Winifred Lenihan: beautiful and talented Broadway actress. Peggy Leach: magazine assistant by day, novelist by night. Their romances flourish and falter while their goals sometimes seem impossible to reach and their friendship deepens against the backdrop of turbulent New York City.

Special Agent Garrett Kohl has just taken down a dangerous and deadly cartel boss when he finds trouble brewing back on his family’s homestead. A powerful energy consortium, Talon Corporation, has started an aggressive mining operation that threatens to destroy Garrett’s land, his family’s way of life, and everything they hold dear. To achieve its goals, Talon is flouting the law, bribing public officials, and meeting anyone who challenges it with physical violence.

Amy Connell and Lan Honey are having the best childhood ever. They live on a 78-acre farm in the South West of England, with sisters and brothers, other kids, chickens, goats, three dogs, and even a calf, called Gabriella Christmas. Free and unsupervised, Amy and Lan play with axes and climb on haystacks, but there is grownup danger at Frith they don’t see. It’s Gail, Lan’s mother, and Adam, Amy’s father who should be more careful. They should learn what kids know: never to play with fire.

Sarah Morgan is a successful and powerful defense attorney in Washington D.C. At 33 years old, she is a named partner at her firm and life is going exactly how she planned .The same cannot be said for her husband, Adam. He is a struggling writer who has had little success in his career. Then, one morning everything changes. Sarah soon finds herself playing the defender for her own husband, a man accused of murdering his mistress.

A killer walking free. A life hanging in the balance. The ultimate choice Zach Bridger, former NFL star, has been divorced from Rebecca for five years, but he’s still named as Agent of her Medical Power of Attorney – and his ex-wife is in a persistent vegetative state on life support. The man responsible for her condition is currently walking free. To pursue him for a murder case, Zach must turn off Rebecca’s life support.

Turns out that reading nothing but true crime isn’t exactly conducive to modern dating—and one woman is going to have to learn how to give love a chance when she’s used to suspecting the worst. PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. It doesn’t help that she’s low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer. It’s not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier.

Newly minted professional matchmaker Sophie Go has returned to Toronto, her hometown, after spending three years in Shanghai. Her job is made quite difficult, however, when she is revealed as a fraud—she never actually graduated from matchmaking school. In a competitive market like Toronto, no one wants to take a chance on an inexperienced and unaccredited matchmaker, and soon Sophie becomes an outcast.

When the pandemic hits, Kristofer is forced to shutter his successful restaurant in Reykjavik, sending him into a spiral of uncertainty, even as his memory seems to be failing. But an uncanny bolt from the blue–a message from Miko Nakamura, a woman whom he’d known in the sixties when they were students in London–both inspires and rattles him, as he is drawn inexorably back into a love story that has marked him for life.

9 Books to Add to Your Reading List this August

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In January 1939, Pablo Picasso was renowned in Europe but disdained by many in the United States. One year later, Americans across the country were clamoring to see his art. Picasso’s War is the never-before-told story about how a single exhibition, a decade in the making, irrevocably changed American taste, and in doing so saved dozens of the twentieth century’s most enduring artworks from the Nazis.

As a historian, Buck resurrects the era’s adventurous spirit, but he also challenges familiar myths about American expansion, confronting the bloody truth behind settlers’ push for land and wealth. Weaving together a tapestry of first-person histories, Buck portrays this watershed era of American expansion as it was really lived. Life on the Mississippi is a majestic feat of storytelling from a writer who may be the closest that we have today to Mark Twain.

Sharp-tongued Kiki Banjo has just made a huge mistake. As an expert in relationship-evasion and the host of the popular student radio show “Brown Sugar,” she’s made it her mission to make sure the women at Whitewell University do not fall into the mess of “situationships”, players, and heartbreak. But when she kisses Malakai Korede, the guy she just publicly denounced as “The Wastemen of Whitewell,” in front of everyone on campus, she finds her show on the brink. They’re soon embroiled in a fake relationship to try and salvage their reputations and save their futures.

London, 1940. Bombs fall and Josie Banks’s world crumbles around her. Her overbearing husband, Stan, is called to service. Her home, a ruin of rubble and ash. Evacuated to the English countryside, Josie ends up at the estate of the aristocratic Miss Harcourt. Seeing an opportunity, Josie convinces Miss Harcourt to let her open a humble tea shop. Her newfound courage will be put to the test if she is to emerge, like a survivor, triumphant.

 In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered as many as ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent. Poison was his weapon of choice. Jobb exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women.

Imagine nine women meeting. They’ve come together to share their love of books. They are friends. It’s a happy gathering. What could be more harmless? Then scratch the surface and look closer. One is lonely. One is desperate. And one of them is a killer. When the body of a woman is discovered on a Cambridge common, DCI Barrett and DI Palmer are called in to investigate. But the motive behind the crime isn’t clear–and it all leads back to a book club.

In 1943, while the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals were winning pennants and meeting in that year’s World Series, Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, and Johnny Said practiced on a skinned-out college field in the heart of North Carolina. They and other past and future stars formed one of the greatest baseball teams of all time. They were among a cadre of fighter-pilot cadets who wore the Cloudbuster Nine baseball jersey at an elite Navy training school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kitty Talbot needs a husband who has a fortune. Left with her father’s massive debts, she has only twelve weeks to save her family from ruin. Kitty has never been one to back down from a challenge, so she leaves home and heads toward the most dangerous battleground in all of England: the London season. The only thing she doesn’t anticipate is Lord Radcliffe. The worldly Radcliffe sees Kitty for the mercenary fortune-hunter that she really is and is determined to scotch her plans at all costs, until their parrying takes a completely different turn.

A once idyllic American landscape is home to a closely knit, rural community that, for more than a generation, has battled the polluting practices of large-scale farming that had been making them sick and damaging their homes. After years of frustration and futile attempts to bring about change, an impassioned cadre of local residents, led by a team of intrepid and dedicated lawyers, brought suit against one of the world’s most powerful corporations-and, miraculously, they won.

1.21 Gigawatts: Time Travel Books Lost in the Stacks

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Kendra Donovan is a rising star at the FBI. Yet her path to professional success waivers when a disastrous raid gets half her team killed, and she herself is severely wounded. Soon after she recovers, she goes rogue and travels to England to assassinate the man responsible for the deaths of her teammates. While fleeing from an unexpected assassin herself, Kendra travels through time leaving her stranded in the same place but in the year 1815.

 For August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train. Jane. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane is literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her.

Anne Gallagher grew up enchanted by her grandfather’s stories of Ireland. Heartbroken at his death, she travels to his childhood home to spread his ashes. There, overcome with memories of him, she is pulled into another time. The Ireland of 1921 is teetering on the edge of war, but Anne finds herself there. Caught between history and her heart, she must decide whether she’s willing to let go of the life she knew for a love she never thought she’d find.

 When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics, accidently meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter human history itself. Tristan needs Mel to translate some old documents, which, if authentic, prove that magic actually existed. And so the Department of Diachronic Operations–D.O.D.O. –gets cracking on its mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and meddle with a little history.

A time travelling serial killer is impossible to trace, until one of his victims survives. In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens on to other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women, burning with potential. He stalks them across different eras until in 1989, one of his victims—Kirby Mazrachi—starts hunting him back. Working with an ex-homicide reporter, Kirby has to unravel time to solve an impossible mystery.

 Scottish Highlands, 1945. Claire Randall, a former British combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach – an “outlander” – in a Scotland torn by war and raising clans in the year 1743. Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of a world that threatens her life, and may shatter her heart.

 After the death of her beloved twin brother, Felix, and the breakup with her longtime lover, Nathan, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she’d been born in different eras. Which life will she choose as she wrestles with the consequences of her choices?

Jake Epping is a 35 year old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine. Jake’s friend, Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret to Jake one day: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So Jake begins a new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald, and a beautiful librarian Sandie Dunhill—a life that transgressed all the normal rules of time.

If you could go back, who would you want to meet? In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee–the chance to travel back in time. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.

Take Me to Your Leader: Extraterrestrial Books Lost in the Stacks

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The future is here…in an adventure of cosmic dimension. When a signal is discovered that seems to come from far beyond our solar system, a multinational team of scientists decides to find the source. What follows is an eye-opening journey out to the stars to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who—or what—is out there? Why are they watching us? And what do they want with us?

 In the haunted city of Derry, four boys stood together and did a brave thing. Years later, the boys are now men with separate lives, but their ties endure. Each hunting season they reunite in the woods of Maine. This year, a stranger stumbles into their camp, disoriented, mumbling something about lights in the sky. Before long, the men are plunged into a horrifying struggle with a creature from another world. Their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past and in the Dreamcatcher.

Jonathan Doors. A man at the head of the world’s largest corporation, Doors International. A man of wealth and power, with the resources to change the world. The Taelons have arrived from beyond the stars on mission of mercy, to help humanity claim its destiny. Contacted by these Companions, Jonathan Doors helps introduce the aliens and their fantastic technology to the world, but there is a dark shadow behind the Taelons’ bright promises.

In Arrival’s “The Story of My Life,” alien lifeforms suddenly appear on Earth. When a linguist is brought in to help communicate with them and discern their intentions, her new knowledge of their language and its nonlinear structure allows her to see future events and all the joy and pain they may bring. In each story of this incredible collection, with sharp intelligence and humor, Ted Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by wonder.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human. While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity’s greatest and final hope.

Roaming through New York City at 3 a.m., April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. April and her friend, Andy, make a video, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day, April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world and April finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight.  All eyes are on April to figure out what the Carls are, and what they want from us.

Prior to WWIII, the crewed spacecraft Envoy is launched toward Mars, but all contact is lost shortly before landing. Twenty-five years later, the spacecraft Champion makes contact with the missing ship and finds one survivor, Valentine Michael Smith. Raised by Martians on Mars, Valentine is a human being who has never seen another member of his species. Sent to Earth, he is a stranger who must learn what it is to be a man.

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one. Now, it’s the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets mysterious Evan Walker.

Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over the world, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.

9 Self-Help Books to Check out this August

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 In The Plus, Greg teaches you how to brainwash yourself into better behavior, retaining the pluses in your life and eliminating the minuses. His approach to self-help is simple, and perfect for cynics; it’s not about positive thinking in the short term, it’s about positive being in the long term. In The Plus, Greg shows how skeptics too can advance themselves for the betterment of their lives and the healing of their communities.

Every day, we’re bombarded with pressure to be positive. We’re constantly told that the key to happiness is silencing negativity wherever it crops up. In this refreshingly honest guide, sought-after therapist Whitney Goodman shares the latest research along with everyday examples and client stories that reveal how damaging toxic positivity is to ourselves and our relationships, and presents simple ways to experience and work through difficult emotions.

Any given day brings a never-ending list. There’s the work thing, the laundry thing, the creative thing, the exercise thing, the family thing, the thing we don’t want to do, and the thing we’ve been putting off. After years of searching for the secret to productivity, Madeleine Dore discovered there isn’t one. I Didn’t Do the Thing Today is the call to dismantle our comparisons to others, aspirational routines, and the unrealistic notions of what can be done in a day.

Celebrated self-care storyteller Alexandra Elle delivers 15 lessons on how to overcome obstacles, build confidence, and cultivate abundance in her part memoir and part guide, After the Rain. This soulful collection is filled with illuminating reflections on loss, fear, bravery, healing, love and acceptance. Readers follow along her journey as she transforms challenging experiences into fuel for her career as a successful entrepreneur and author.

Dr. Ashton becomes both researcher and subject as she focuses on twelve separate challenges. Beginning with a new area of focus each month, she guides you through the struggles she faces, the benefits she experiences, and the science behind why each month’s challenge–giving up alcohol, doing more push-ups, adopting an earlier bedtime, limiting technology–can lead to better health.

In Joyful, designer Ingrid Fetell Lee explores how the seemingly mundane spaces and objects we interact with every day have surprising and powerful effects on our mood. Drawing on insights from neuroscience and psychology, she explains why one setting makes us feel anxious or competitive, while another fosters acceptance and delight–and, most importantly, she reveals how we can harness the power of our surroundings to live fuller, healthier, and truly joyful lives.

Sisters Emily Nagoski, Ph.D., and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of overwhelm and exhaustion, and confront the obstacles that stand between women and well-being. With insights from the latest science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, Burnout reveals what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle and return your body to a state of relaxation.

This isn’t a book about high-fiving everyone else in your life. You’re already doing that. Cheering for your favorite teams. Celebrating your friends. Supporting the people you love as they go after what they want in life. Imagine if you gave that same love and encouragement to yourself. You’d be unstoppable. In this book, Mel teaches you how to start high-fiving the most important person in your life, the one who is staring back at you in the mirror: Yourself.

How much room are you giving to shame, to regret, to being against yourself? Whatever it is, it’s too much. Life is too short for you to live bitter and discouraged, letting your circumstances hold you back. Every morning you have to empty out anything negative from the day before and put on a fresh new attitude. Power up and get your mind going in the right direction, and you’ll step into all the new things God has in store for you.

Summer Isn’t Over Just Yet: Check out these end of summer fiction reads on the Libby App

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They call themselves the May Mothers—a group of new moms whose babies were born in the same month. Twice a week, they get together for some much needed adult time. But when the women go out for drinks on this hot Fourth of July night, something goes terrifyingly wrong. One of the babies is taken from his crib. Now he is missing. What follows is a heart-pounding race to find the baby boy, during which secrets are exposed, and friendships are destroyed.

This is the story of a love affair that begins on the coast of Italy in 1962 when a young innkeeper meets an American starlet, who he soon learns is dying. The story begins again when an elderly Italian man shows up on the set of a movie studio searching for a mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier. From the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, this is a dazzling, yet deeply human roller coaster of a novel.

A terrible constructions site accident takes Edgar Freemantle’s right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. Trying to get away, Edgar leaves his home and rents a house on Duma Key, off the coast of Florida. He draws and paints feverishly, but it isn’t until he meets elderly woman, Elizabeth, that he realizes the power that his paintings have, and the damage they are truly capable of.

Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a motorhome that he father won in a poker game. She’s failing out of school, and left fending for herself in a town where she’s never felt at home. After a fight with her dad, April packs her stuff and ends up in Ithaca. She finds a kindred sense of belonging, and as April moves through the world, meeting people who make her feel at home, she discovers that where she came from doesn’t dictate who she has to be.

Two truths and a lie. Emma and her friends played it all the time at Camp Nightingale. But the games ended the night that Emma watched the others sneak out into the darkness. That was the last time they were seen. Fifteen years later, Emma is a rising painting star, and the wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale asks Emma to return as a painting instructor. Emma agrees, and tries to find out what happened to her friends, but her closure could come at a deadly price.

Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, ten people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him in. “Thank the Lord we found you,” a passenger says. “I am the Lord,” the man whispers. Is this man who he claims to be? It falls to the island’s chief inspector to solve the mystery of what happened when the empty life raft, and a notebook, washes up on the island of Montserrat.

Roya finds literary oasis in Mr. Fakhri’s stationary shop. With a keen instinct for budding romance, Mr. Fakhri introduces Roya to Bahman. Their romance blossoms, but on the eve of their marriage, Roya is left waiting in the town square for Bahman. Roya tries desperately to contact Bahman, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart she moves on, but more than sixty years later, fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him questions that have haunted her for more than half a century.

Harmony Resort promises hope for struggling marriages. Johanna and Ben have a marriage that looks perfect on the surface, but in reality they don’t know each other at all. Shell and Colin fight constantly, but what has really torn them apart is too devastating to talk about. When both couples begin Harmony’s intensive program, it becomes clear that Harmony is not all it seems. As a deadly storm descends the coast, not one person will remain unchanged by what follows.

One December evening, Autumn Spencer’s twin sister, Summer, walks to the roof of their home and is never seen again. Faced with authorities indifferent to another missing woman, Autumn must pursue answers on her own, all while grieving her mother’s recent death. Autumn pretends to hold up through the crisis, but after starting an affair with Summer’s boyfriend, she begins to unravel, becoming obsessed with murdered women and the men who kill them.

Get Ready to Laugh at these Comedies Lost in the Stacks

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Inside an apartment open house, a failed bank robber has taken a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple, a wealthy bank director, a young couple, an eighty-seven-year-old woman, a real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue.

Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, One More Thing has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element just that might make a person complete. Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, the many pieces in this collection are like nothing else, but they have one thing in common: they share the playful humor.

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. Yet, despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor’s dog and uncovers a secret about his mother.

Whether Samantha Irby is talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making “adult” budgets; explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette; detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes; or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies; she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing emotional truths.

When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her mother calls for her aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at. It’s the biggest job yet for the family wedding business and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie’s perfect buttercream flowers.

Me Talk Pretty One Day narrates David Sedaris’ move to Paris from New York with hysterical stories about his struggle to learn French, along with ridiculous passages about his crazy family members like his brother, who speaks in constant hip-hop slang to his clueless father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers of food and cashiers with six-inch fingernails.

When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in her life, and we are all better for it. For every intellectual misfit who through they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud, this is a look at all the dark, yet wonderful moments of our lives.

When Kate Campbell’s life in Manhattan suddenly implodes, she is forced to return to Sea Point, where she grew up. Meanwhile, Miles Hoffman has also returned home to prove to his mother that he’s capable of taking over the family business. Kate and Miles converge in Sea Point as the town faces an identity crisis. Full of heart and humor-and laced with biting wit, Rock the Boat proves that even when you know all the back roads, there aren’t any shortcuts to growing up.

When Mackenzie, Sunna, and Maude move into a rental house, they are strangers with only one thing in common–important people in their lives have “ghosted” them. Mackenzie’s sister, Sunna’s best friend, and Maude’s fiancé–all gone with no explanation. But the more they learn about each other, the more questions they begin to have. And creepy sounds and strange happenings on the property suggest that the ghosts from their pasts might not be all that’s haunting them.

Nebraska Stories Lost in the Stacks

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At the age of 17, Randall Hunsacker shoots his mother’s boyfriend, steals a car and comes close to killing himself. His second chance lies in a small Nebraska farm town, where the landmarks include McKibben’s Mobil Station, Frmka’s Superette, and a sign that says The Wages of Sin is Hell. This is Goodnight, a place so ingrown and provincial that Randall calls it “Sludgeville”-until he starts thinking of it as home.

After the death of his parents, Jim Burden is sent to live with his grandparents on the Nebraska plains. On that same train is Ántonia, his soon to be neighbor and lifelong friend. Her family has emigrated from Bohemia to start a new life but soon lose their money and must work hard just to survive. Through it all, Ántonia retains her natural pride and free spirit. In My Ántonia, Willa Cather paints a rich picture of life on the prairie at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In 1973 the small southwest Nebraska railroad town of McCook became the unlikely scene of a grisly murder. More than forty years later, author James W. Hewitt returns to the scene and unearths new details about what happened. Hewitt takes readers through the evidence, including salacious details of sex and intrigue between the Hoyts and the Nokeses, and draws new conclusions about what really happened between the two families on that fateful September night.

Burt and Vicky, a couple trying to save their marriage, are driving to California for a vacation and to visit Vicky’s brother. Driving through the cornfields in rural Nebraska, they accidentally run over a young boy—only to discover that he was already hurt and they may not be responsible for his death. They decide to report the incident to the police and go to the nearest two to look for help. Out in the corn, something is watching them, and help is nowhere to be found.

During the war, American soldiers rolled through North Platte on troop trains. The town transformed its railroad depot into the North Platte Canteen –a place where soldiers could enjoy coffee, music, and home-cooked food. In this heartwarming eyewitness history, based on interviews with North Platte residents and the GIs who passed through, Bob Greene unearths and reveals a classic American story of a grateful country honoring its brave and dedicated sons.

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt called for the largest arms buildup in our nation’s history. A shortage of steel, however, quickly slowed the program’s momentum, and arms production fell dangerously behind schedule. Henry Doorly, publisher of the Omaha World-Herald, had the solution. Prairie Forge tells the story of the great Nebraska scrap drive of 1942—a campaign that swept the nation and yielded five million tons of scrap metal.

Ten years after the Seventh Cavalry massacred more than two hundred Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, J.B. Bennett, a white rancher, and Star, a young Native American woman, are murdered in a remote meadow on J.B.’s land. The deaths bring together the scattered members of the Bennett family and as the mystery of these twin deaths unfolds, the history of the dysfunctional Bennetts and their damning secrets is revealed.

Matthew Worth is a mess. Somewhere between a good cop and a bad screwup, he botched a marriage and a career. Busted to night patrol at a robbery-prone Omaha supermarket, Worth is doing time, wearing his uniform and asking shoppers if they want paper or plastic. If that isn’t enough, he suspects he might be falling for Gwen, the shy checkout girl who may be an even bigger mess than he is. It couldn’t get any worse. Until it does.

In June, 1954, Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska from the work farmwhere he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, and the family farm foreclosed upon, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his brother and start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden in the trunk of the car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.