Books from United States

In Happy Land, Dolen Perkins-Valdez uncovers a remarkable chapter of African American history through the story of a family whose identity is deeply rooted in the legacy of a forgotten kingdom. Nikki Berry has been estranged from her grandmother, Mother Rita, for years. When her grandmother unexpectedly summons her to the mountains of western North Carolina, Nikki hopes to understand the family conflict that has separated generations. Instead, she discovers a story that transforms her understanding of her ancestry: her great-great-great-grandmother, Luella, was the queen of the Kingdom of the Happy Land, a real community established by formerly enslaved people after the American Civil War. As Nikki learns more about the kingdom and the lives of those who built it, she discovers how her ancestors created a place of independence and belonging in a society that continued to deny Black Americans equality. But the family’s connection to the land faces a new threat when outside interests seek to take it away. Nikki must confront both the secrets that have shaped her family and the responsibility of protecting its inheritance. Moving between Nikki’s present-day struggles and Luella’s nineteenth-century experiences, Perkins-Valdez weaves together two generations of women whose lives are shaped by the pursuit of freedom, dignity, and self-determination. The novel explores the importance of ancestral memory, the lasting consequences of racial injustice, and the deep connection between land and identity. Inspired by the historical Kingdom of the Happy Land, the novel celebrates the courage of people who dared to imagine a different future and asks what it means to preserve a legacy for generations to come.

A disgraced English professor, separated from his wife and forced out of his job, visits an idyllic country house for sale, hoping to begin again. The realtor introduces him to the mysterious Helen, the former owner who built a life close to nature and outside conventional expectations. As the evening unfolds, the viewing becomes a surreal journey through the professor’s resentments, regrets, and carefully constructed sense of self. Philosophical, darkly humorous, and formally inventive, Helen of Nowhere questions the fantasies we build around happiness, freedom, and starting over—and what we must surrender to find a more meaningful life.

A brilliant Iranian-Indian American scholar has a PhD from UCLA, an underwhelming academic career, and a growing fear that she has failed to achieve the comfortable life her immigrant parents worked so hard to build. When her best friend jokingly suggests she marry rich, she takes the idea seriously, embarking on a summer of one hundred dates with wealthy Angelenos. Armed with spreadsheets and intellectual confidence, she approaches romance as another problem to solve. But when a family emergency takes her to Tehran, an unexpected queer attraction challenges her carefully constructed plans and forces her to reconsider what she wants from love, family, and her future. Witty, provocative, and deeply perceptive, Liquid explores the contradictions of ambition, the pressures of cultural expectations, and the search for belonging between different worlds. With sharp humour and emotional honesty, it turns the familiar romantic comedy into a thoughtful examination of identity, desire, and the lives we imagine for ourselves.

Homeseeking follows Suchi and Haiwen, childhood sweethearts whose lives are transformed by the political upheavals of twentieth-century China. They first meet in Shanghai, where Haiwen’s violin draws Suchi into his world. Their young love is interrupted when Haiwen joins the Nationalist army in 1947, leaving Suchi behind with little explanation. Over the following decades, war, migration, and changing political circumstances carry them through Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States, shaping their lives in different ways. Sixty years later, they unexpectedly encounter one another again in Los Angeles. Chen moves between their perspectives to explore memory, sacrifice, and the meaning of home. The novel examines how historical forces can separate people while emotional attachments continue to endure across distance and time.

What happens when your life becomes unrecognisable overnight? In this imaginative debut collection, Ruben Reyes Jr. blends speculative fiction, magical realism, and dark humour to explore the experiences of Salvadoran immigrants and their descendants. An ordinary man wakes up to discover he has become a famous reggaetón star. An elderly grandmother gradually transforms into a marionette puppet. A researcher uncovers a disturbing programme that turns the bodies of undocumented migrants into artificial labourers. Moving between alternate histories, dystopian futures, and surreal versions of everyday life, these stories explore the forces that shape Central American identity. Family ties stretch across borders, technology offers unsettling solutions to human problems, and bureaucratic systems reduce lives to statistics. Beneath the collection’s strange and often absurd scenarios lies a serious examination of migration, colonial legacies, capitalism, and the struggle to be heard in a world that marginalises certain voices. Both inventive and deeply human, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven challenges readers to reconsider whose stories are told—and what it costs to build a new life far from home.

What happens when speaking the truth becomes dangerous—and silence begins to feel like a betrayal of everything you believe in? Eighteen-year-old Nida Siddiqui is a Pakistani American Muslim whose greatest passion is poetry. Yet she keeps her writing private, afraid of exposing too much of herself to a world that often misunderstands her faith and identity. Her uncle, Mamou Abdul-Hafeedh, is a celebrated poet who has been imprisoned on terrorism charges, leaving Nida to wrestle with his legacy and the risks of speaking out. When Nida is mistreated by law enforcement at a political rally, she channels her anger into a powerful poem. Unexpectedly, it goes viral, thrusting her into a public controversy she never wanted. As accusations mount and her family faces renewed scrutiny, Nida must confront the tension between protecting herself and using her voice to challenge injustice. Blending prose, poetry, and elements of magical realism, Hope Ablaze explores Islamophobia, family loyalty, faith, and the courage to speak when the world would rather you remain silent. It is a moving coming-of-age story about discovering that finding your voice can be both frightening and liberating.

Some families carry their history in photographs and stories. Others bury it in silence, leaving the next generation to piece together the fragments. Kiều, a Vietnamese-German journalist living in Berlin, calls herself Kim because it is easier for Europeans to pronounce. She has spent years distancing herself from her Vietnamese heritage, content to live without asking too many questions about her family’s past. But when an unexpected message arrives from her estranged uncle in California announcing that her grandmother is dying, the carefully maintained distance begins to collapse. Travelling to America with her parents, Kiều encounters a family divided by the Vietnam War. Her father supported the communist revolution, while his brother sided with the Americans. Decades of silence have left their competing memories unresolved, and the family reunion brings buried conflicts, painful loyalties, and forgotten stories back to the surface. Moving between generations and continents, Brothers and Ghosts explores how war shapes families long after the fighting ends. Khuê Phạm examines the complicated inheritance of migration: the languages lost, identities reshaped, and histories passed down incompletely. It is a moving story about belonging, memory, and the courage to ask questions that previous generations could not bear to answer.

In a world choked by smog, where crops are disappearing and food is becoming scarce, an unnamed young chef accepts a job at an isolated mountain estate reserved for the wealthy elite. Behind its borders, the sky is clear, rare ingredients flourish, and extravagant meals offer a taste of a world that no longer exists. Working for a mysterious benefactor and his enigmatic daughter, the chef discovers unexpected pleasures, forbidden desires, and unsettling truths about the people determined to survive at any cost. Sensuous and quietly dystopian, C Pam Zhang’s novel explores the morality of privilege, the politics of appetite, and the question of who deserves pleasure when the world is falling apart.

Natural Beauty follows a talented young pianist whose promising musical career is interrupted when an accident leaves her Chinese immigrant parents unable to care for themselves. Forced to abandon her ambitions, she takes a job at Holistik, an exclusive beauty and wellness store in New York City that caters to wealthy customers seeking increasingly extreme forms of physical perfection. As she becomes immersed in this glamorous world, she discovers an industry where experimental treatments promise to reshape bodies, erase imperfections, and transform people’s appearances. Her growing fascination with Helen, the niece of the store’s charismatic owner, further draws her into a world of privilege, desire, and manipulation. Yet beneath the seductive promises of self-improvement lies something deeply disturbing.

What does it mean to witness someone else’s suffering—and what responsibility comes with seeing the truth? Set in contemporary New York City, Witness brings together ten stories about people caught between the desire to care for one another and the uncomfortable truths that make connection difficult. A young girl tries to navigate tensions within her family as the home she knows faces an uncertain future. A man struggles with memories he cannot escape. A woman living with the aftermath of violence searches for a way forward. Across these lives, ordinary encounters become moments of revelation, exposing the quiet decisions that can shape a family, a friendship, or an entire community. Jamel Brinkley writes about the spaces between people: the affection that survives disappointment, the secrets that fracture trust, and the moments when silence becomes its own kind of betrayal. His characters are neither wholly innocent nor easily condemned; they are human, complicated, and often uncertain about what doing the right thing actually requires. Tender, unsettling, and deeply observant, Witness explores grief, belonging, inequality, and the moral weight of looking away. It asks whether truly seeing another person is enough—or whether we must also find the courage to act.

Set in the politically charged atmosphere of an American university on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, The Laughter follows Dr. Oliver Harding, an aging white professor of English who considers himself a progressive, liberal intellectual. His carefully constructed worldview begins to unravel when he becomes infatuated with Ruhaba Khan, a younger Pakistani Muslim law professor whose confidence, intelligence, and political activism both attract and unsettle him. When Ruhaba’s teenage nephew, Adil, arrives from France, Oliver uses his growing relationship with the boy as a way to get closer to his aunt. At the same time, campus protests over diversity and representation challenge the university’s established power structures, forcing Oliver to confront questions about privilege, race, and his own supposedly liberal beliefs. As his obsession intensifies, his behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, and the gap between how he sees himself and how others might see him grows more dangerous. Told through Oliver’s unreliable perspective, the novel gradually reveals the prejudices and insecurities concealed beneath his intellectual sophistication. With dark humour and psychological suspense, Jha examines how people rationalise their own behaviour, how racial and cultural differences can become objects of both fascination and hostility, and how easily a sense of entitlement can disguise itself as virtue. The Laughter is a provocative exploration of power, misogyny, identity, and the contradictions of contemporary American liberalism.

When Ikemefuna, a young Nigerian dancer, boards a plane from Lagos to Texas, she imagines a new life filled with opportunity, freedom, and the promise of a happy marriage. Instead, she finds herself trapped in the home of her new husband’s parents, where her movements are controlled, her independence stripped away, and the pressure to produce a male heir grows increasingly intense. Her husband, Nna, initially struggles to reconcile his self-proclaimed feminist beliefs with his family’s expectations. As secrets emerge and the household becomes increasingly suffocating, the boundaries between victim and perpetrator, tradition and cruelty, begin to blur. Ikemefuna’s apparent obedience conceals something far more complicated, and the family’s carefully maintained facade begins to unravel. Blending domestic thriller, psychological horror, and Nigerian diasporic fiction, House Woman explores patriarchal power, forced marriage, intergenerational trauma, and the devastating consequences of silencing women. It also questions whether moving to another country necessarily brings freedom when oppressive social structures travel with you.