Complex and vivid, I feel at home in Istanbul, in all the good ways of that word: warm, content, and comforted. In Elif Shafak’s equally complex and vivid THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL, my adopted hometown is as important as the foibles of the human characters. When it was published, Shafak’s portrayal of the Armenian genocide prompted her arrest for “public denigration of Turkishness.” This is an enlightening, yet entertaining, read. —Allison (Istanbul, Turkey)

In this touching and witty debut, four college roommates must grapple with how the ideals of feminism they learned at Smith College apply to their real lives in matters of love, work, family, and sex. More than a chronicle of college friendship, it is a candid examination of the tangled and contradictory world that today’s young women live in.

Some consider it “the great American novel.” The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his powerful love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale that has been essential reading since it was published.

Read the full review here.

If your favorite character is Jonathan Byers

The misunderstood, unhappy kid who yearns for an East Coast college where he can forget his modest upbringing and meet sufficiently interesting friends? Sounds like Richard Papen, the narrator of Donna Tartt’s first novel, THE SECRET HISTORY.

I will never not recommend this book, and what a perfect excuse again! The winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, Richard Russo’s novel EMPIRE FALLS follows Miles Roby (the owner of the Empire Grill), his family, and his friends in the small, blue-collar, and slowly bankrupting titular Maine town. —Julianna (Maine)

Susannah Cahalan awakes in a hospital room, strapped to the bed. Crazy? Psychotic? Mental breakdown? BRAIN ON FIRE is her story of a devastating autoimmune disease misdiagnosed over and over—all while it appears she is losing her mind.

A photo posted by Megan | Connecticut (@booksandpolkadots) on Sep 21, 2014 at 4:36pm PDT

Tom Perrotta’s novel is an exciting and hilarious read about a student election—meant to be an educational tool—gone awry due to smear campaigns, sex scandals, and other unpleasant matters. The 1999 adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick became a bona fide cult classic.

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose stubborn nonconformity was both their curse and their salvation. In this astonishing memoir—the basis of the forthcoming film starring Brie Larson—Walls recounts how her family’s dysfunction left her and her siblings to fend for themselves, weather their parents’ betrayals, and finally find the resources and will to leave home.

Read a review of THE GLASS CASTLE here.

Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin, he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer break and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella is accompanied by five short stories that range in tone from the iconoclastic to the astonishingly tender and that illuminate the subterranean conflicts between parents and children and friends and neighbors in the American Jewish diaspora.

The lives of seven disparate strangers are changed during the dramatic and historic 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. Vivid, electric, and brimming with heart, YOUR HEART IS A MUSCLE THE SIZE OF A FIST explores the power of empathy and how far we will go for family, justice, and love. —Taylor (Seattle, Washington)

A 23-year-old black veteran was beaten to death by three white men in the streets of Oxford, NC, in May of 1970. Enraged by the murder, young African Americans took to the streets and torched the town’s tobacco warehouse in retribution while the Klan raged in the shadows. Riveting and harrowing, BLOOD DONE SIGN MY NAME is an essential portrait of a town facing its bloody racial history. —Taylor (Oxford, North Carolina)