For fans of The Bear, Elizabeth Strout, and Jennifer Egan, The Reservation explores the loves and labors of an ensemble of more than a dozen restaurant workers as they strive to get a perfect meal to the table
On the morning of the most important booking in the long history of the celebrated restaurant, Aunt Orsa’s erupts into chaos with the discovery that twenty-two rib eye steaks have been stolen. Hers is the most august of fine-dining establishments in this Midwestern college town, and tonight Orsa is set to host a large party honoring a very special guest—a bestselling author of national renown.
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Amid the turmoil of the 2008 recession that threatens her career, Lea Johnson, a behavioral researcher dedicated to curing post-traumatic stress disorder, is also struggling to save her marriage.
When her husband, Jay, is brutally attacked during an attempted robbery, Lea is shaken to realize that being an expert in fear doesn’t make her an expert in healing her own husband’s trauma.
Things take a dark turn when Jay confronts a young trespasser outside their home, only for the boy to be reported missing shortly after.
Lea begins to suspect that Jay is hiding something,
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Every Happiness is a dazzling debut that explores the ties that bind two women across decades and continents despite rivalry, class difference, and the conflicting needs of family and self.
Deepa and Ruchi are 12 years old when they meet at their Catholic school in India, but their connection is swift and lasting. As the two girls grow up and face their families’ expectations and the limits of their ambitions, their friendship is marked by intimacy, jealousy, and suppressed desire.
When, in their twenties, Deepa marries a doctor and moves from India to the suburbs of Connecticut,
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A Most Anticipated Book of 2026 from LitHub
Emily Nemens’s Clutch follows a group of five friends as they navigate the biggest challenges of their lives, asking: When you’re hanging on by your fingernails, how can you extend a hand to the ones you love?
As undergrads, Gregg, Reba, Hillary, Bella, and Carson formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise—friendship that lasts a lifetime. Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They’ve made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges,
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In the dog days of an Estonian summer, Liine flees to the countryside to put a conclusive end to her toxic 14-year relationship.
She undergoes every stage of separation in a lone farmstead amid forests. Physical labor and gardening help her withstand her ex-partner’s threats, the incredulity of friends and family, and her own anguish. Dread is pervasive in this novel. Set in the near future, it is filled with vivid depictions of the threat of climate change. All around Liine, nature is facing acute drought and heat. No less menacing is the presence of an expanding NATO base close to the cottage at the Russian border.
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Set during the Great Depression, The Resettlement of Vesta Blonik is the story of two strong-hearted strangers, bent but not destroyed by grief and financial destitution. Vesta Blonik, an unmarried farm woman from Minnesota and Gordon Crenshaw, confined to a North Carolina mental institution after the death of his wife and child, meet through misleading letters written by Gordon’s family members. But reality doesn’t look at all like what was promised, and when they learn the truth, the two must find a path forward, together or apart.
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