Ilana Masad

Ursula Villarreal-Moura's debut novel movingly portrays its protagonist coming to terms with an imbalanced, difficult, and sometimes harmful friendship that was also a key part of her life for years.

Jennifer Croft's novel, centered on a group of translators working on a book, is surprising at every turn, moving from profound observations about nature, art, and communication — to surreal events.

In different variations of her signature, beautifully frank language, Leslie Jamison writes about her fantasy of stability and her uncertainty as to whether it's a dream she actually wants fulfilled.

The novel is an ambitious project, written by 36 authors yet achieving a unified voice of sorts, as every character narrates their story simply, casually, allowing themselves digressions and asides.

Métis writer Michelle Porter has created beauty from the ugliness of colonization, loss, addiction, abandonment, and grief in her debut novel that finds motherhood at its heart.

Isle McElroy's novel covers a deep exploration of marriage, love, and the ways we know one another — while also touching on how so much of how we navigate the world depends on how it sees us.

An excellent work of people-first journalism, Donovan X. Ramsey's book offers a vivid and frank history and highlights how communities tend to save themselves even as they're being targeted.

Mai Nguyen's debut novel centers on the family of Tuyet and Xuan Tran, Vietnamese refugees who settle in Toronto. It simmers with questions about work, class and generational divides.

Karin Boye's novel is an outlier in that it was authored by a woman and, though narrated by a man, still expresses interest in women's inner life and acknowledges the subtleties of sexism.

The 22 stories in Sidle Creek charm, surprise, and convey a deep love of the people and place — the Appalachian plateau of western Pennsylvania — that author Jolene McIlwain has long called home.