Some of the Best Books of the Year Are on Sale Right Now

This refreshing, gripping historical fiction takes place in occupied Malaya during WWII and the decade that led up to it, telling the story of a family brought to the brink both by their oppressors and the guilt of a mother who’s kept a crushing secret. Told by four deeply real characters, you’ll find yourself rooting for them even as they butt up against the limits of right and wrong.

From the author of The Silent Patient comes another perfectly-paced thriller that will have you looking at your friends with a hint of suspicion. This classic locked-room mystery follows a former movie star trapped on a private Greek island with her best friends and a murderer, not to mention plenty of simmering grievances and thirst for revenge. It unfolds so satisfyingly well, you just might want to block off a weekend to read it all in one.

Calling all Great British Baking Show fans: When you’ve salivated your way through the latest season (and the entire back catalog), this charming novel will fill the cake-shaped hole in your heart. The story of an older woman who enters a televised baking show is as cozy as a night in grandma’s kitchen with the kind of feel-good suspense we love from the likes of Paul Hollywood.

If you loved the smash hit Such a Fun Age, don’t sleep on Reid’s newest. It’ll take you right back to college, as a residential assistant finds herself entangled with a visiting professor in more ways than one. This is a story of indiscretions and gray areas, power dynamics and privilege that’s wound as tight as a violin string. Just don’t forget to breathe while you’re reading (go ahead and thank us later).

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Told in prose as intoxicating as a swig of bathtub gin, this 1920s gumshoe novel takes place in the fictional city of Cahokia where indigenous people are major players in the tenuous peace that rules the city. That is, until a body appears butchered atop a skyscraper, arranged in a way that appears to be a symbolic message. When an outcast detective and his partner are put on the case, wheels start turning in gasp-inducing twists through the very last page.

An eternal staircase that ruins the lives of those who stray too far. A group of middle schoolers who use dark forces to torment a hated classmate. A woman whose allegiance to her artist boyfriend scaffolds her entire life—literally. A glossary of flowers that’s really something else entirely. Fans of Karen Russell will love these bizarre, absurdist stories that feel like twisted versions of the fairytales that dance around the edges of nightmares, and might just worm their way into yours.

You don’t have to be a mother to find bone-deep truth in this memoir. You don’t have to have loved hard and then lost, gone through a divorce with a kind man who turns cruel, or weathered the COVID-19 pandemic as a single working mom. You just have to be a person with a heart to feel the beauty, the pain and above all, the humanity that runs through this force of nature in book form.

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Three teens come back from the dead (well, sort of), and in order to get back to their lives, they’ve got a series of magical tasks to complete. They can’t tell their families and friends where they’ve been, or what they’re doing, and that causes its own issues. On top of that, their efforts don’t go unnoticed by other supernatural forces, and before long, the teens have to solve the mystery of their own passing, or risk losing everything—again. If you’ve also been waiting for this Pulitzer Prize-winning author to put out a novel, we can promise this rollicking adventure is worth it.

When Raquel, a first-gen art history student starts dating a well-connected older beau, her social world gets unexpectedly rocked. And then the rest of her life follows, when she discovers the long-forgotten artist Anita de Monte, who died suspiciously decades before. She can’t help but notice strange parallels between Anita’s life and her own, in this beautifully woven tale that dances between timelines as it examines who gets access to the hallowed halls of art and legacy.

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Daphne leaves nothing to chance, where her love life is concerned. She can’t: Every time she meets someone new, she gets a piece of paper with the length of their relationship on it. She’s been dating on a deadline for decades, so when she gets a blank one after a blind date with the charming Jake, she figures he’s the one. But Daphne has another secret, one that colors her ability to trust her heart, and might ruin everything. This is a romance novel that feels as sweetly predictable as the California sun, until the shocking moment that will have you reaching for the tissues—don’t say we didn’t warn you.

It’s 1951, and divorce is illegal everywhere in the U.S. except Nevada. Women with the means decamp to that state’s “divorce ranches” where they must spend six weeks to establish residency before the court will grant them their freedom. At the Golden Yarrow ranch, the ladies form the kind of uniquely tight, time-limited friendships many of us know from summer camp, complete with horseback riding, flirting with boys and card games at a nearby casino. That is, until the enigmatic Greer arrives. A darkness comes with her, one that will speed this story toward an unforgettable conclusion.

At the precipice of Y2K, Lily and Matthew fall in love. It’s a tale as old as time: Lily is the broke daughter of Chinese immigrants; Matthew is the heir to a pharmaceutical company. Fast forward to 2021, and Lily is raising her son Nick alone. When Nick sets out to find his bio dad, the journey raises questions of striving and belonging, race and class, destiny and forgiveness. It’s a story as American as its characters that will feel like a homecoming to many.