Oprah’s bookclub: The emperor of gladness by Ocean Vuong

Expected publication: May 13

Genre: Contemporary fiction

pages: 416

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Reese’s bookclub:

Expected publication: June 3

Genre: Historical fiction, magical realism

pages: 368

As WWII rages outside their door, Yun and her cousin, Meng, learn of a special power the women in their family possess: the ability to Reforge a pencil’s words. But when the government uncovers their secret, they are forced into a life of espionage, betraying other people’s stories to survive.

 The answers and secrets that surface on the page may have the unerasable power to reconnect a family and restore a legacy.

Read with Jenna:

Expected publication: June 3

Genre: Historical fiction

pages: 240

1982: Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments. She has a daughter.

2022: Heron has just received news from his doctor that turns everything upside down. He’s an older man, stuck in the habits of a quiet existence. Telling Maggie, his only child—the person around whom his life has revolved—seems impossible. Heron can’t tell her about his diagnosis, just as he can’t reveal all the other secrets he’s been keeping from her for so many years.

GMA: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Expected publication: June 2

Genre: Historical fiction

pages: 352

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Among friends by Hal Ebbott

Expected publication: June 24

Genre: Contemporary fiction

pages: 320

It’s an autumn weekend at a comfortable New York country house where two deeply intertwined families have gathered to mark the host’s fifty-second birthday.

This weekend the two families will be ripped apart by betrayal, and drive wedges between friends, spouses, children and parents as we get to explore themes of wealth, power, class, marriage and friendship – and the lies we tell ourselves.

Girls girls girls by Shoshana Von Blanckensee

Expected publication:

Genre:

pages:

It’s the summer of ’96 and best friends (and secret girlfriends) Hannah and Sam are driving across the country from Long Beach, New York, to the fabled queer paradise of San Francisco, free from the harsh gazes of their neighbors and the stifling demands of Hannah’s devout Orthodox Jewish mother. In San Francisco, they will finally be together as a real couple, out in the open, around other queer people. Even if the move means leaving behind Hannah’s beloved Bubbe.

Don’t open your eyes by Liv Constantine

Expected publication: Junee 17

Genre: Thriller mystery

pages: 352

A woman is tormented by nightmarish visions of her future – and then they start to come true.

When she realizes they aren’t just dreams, but premonitions, she get’s one that threatens her daughters life.

Endling by Maria Reva

Expected publication: June 3

Genre: Literary fiction

pages: 352

Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick biologist who lives out of her mobile lab. She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to give up, settle down, and start a family. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides uninfluenced by feminism and modernity.

Nastia and her sister Solomiya are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother—a flamboyant protestor who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. So begins a journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt as Russia invades.

Great black hope by Rob Franklin

Expected publication: June 10

Genre: Contemporary fiction

pages: 320

An arrest for cocaine possession in the Hamptons on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a young queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation. His class protects him, but his race does not.

The girls who grew big by Leila Mottley

Expected publication: June 24

Genre: Literary fiction

pages: 352

You might remember Mottley from her debut Nightcrawling that was a sensation when it came out in 2022 and became a Oprah’s book club pick and an instant New York times bestseller, and she was only 19 years old.

This time she introduces us to young moms navigating the stigma of becoming pregnant at a very young age, motherhood, friendship and still wanting to persue your dreams.

Sign me up right away. I’m already sat for this one.

How to lose your mother by Molly Jong-Fast

Expected publication: june 3

Genre: memoir

pages: 256

Molly Jong-Fast is the only child of Erica Jong, author of the feminist autobiographical novel Fear of Flying. A sensational exploration of female sexual desire, it catapulted Erica into the heady world of fame in the early 1970s. Molly grew up with her mother everywhere – on television, in the crossword puzzle, in the newspaper. But rarely at home.

How to Lose Your Mother is Molly’s delicious and despairing memoir about an intense mother–daughter relationship, a sometimes chaotic upbringing with a fame-hungry parent, and how that can really mess you up. But with her mother’s heartbreaking descent into dementia, and Molly’s realization that she is going to lose this remarkable woman, it is also a story of love, of loss, of confusion and of deep grief.

The Slip by Lucas Schaefer

Expected publication: June 3

Genre: Fiction

pages: 496

Austin, It’s the summer of 1998, and there’s a new face on the scene at Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym. Sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Rothstein has never felt comfortable in his own skin, but under the tutelage of a swaggering, Haitian-born ex-fighter named David Dalice, he begins to come into his own. Even the boy’s slightly-stoned uncle, Bob Alexander, who is supposed to be watching him for the summer, notices the change. Nathaniel is happier, more confident—tanner, even. Then one night he vanishes, leaving little trace behind.

It said for readers of Franzen and Nathan Hill and I immediately signed up! Cannot wait for this one!