If you’ve never pondered life’s contingencies—like what might’ve happened if you’d skipped the party where you met your spouse—then Matt Haig’s novel The Midnight Library will be an eye-opening experience. This gentle but never cloying fable offers us a chance to weigh our regret over missed opportunities against our gratitude for the life we have.

Fresh from the loss of her job in a dreary English town she thinks of as a “conveyor belt of despair” and not far removed from the decision to cancel her wedding two days before the scheduled date, 35-year-old Nora Seed finds herself facing profound depression. When she decides to end her life, she awakes in the eponymous library, managed by Mrs Elm, the kindly school librarian who had befriended her as a lonely teenager.

The shelves of this unique library are crammed with identical-looking volumes, each one giving Nora a chance to see how her life would have turned out if she had made different choices. After first consulting her Book of Regrets, and with Mrs Elm’s encouragement, Nora plucks one book after another from the shelf, enabling her to shed her dismal “root life” and realize her dreams to live as an Arctic researcher, an international rock star, a philosophy professor, a mother and more. In each case, a sense of dissatisfaction finally propels Nora back to the Midnight Library, looking for another path, as she gradually comes to understand that the restless search itself may ultimately prove to be her undoing.

Haig, who’s been frank about his own experiences with depression, is a sympathetic guide for Nora’s journey. His allusions to multiverses, string theory and Erwin Schrödinger never detract from the emotional heart of this alluring novel. And when Nora’s sojourn allows her to realize that perhaps “even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same,” and that “life simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough to see it,” Haig brings her story to a conclusion that’s both enlightening and deeply satisfying.

Leena Cotton was on the fast track in corporate London, where she was the youngest senior consultant at Selmount Consulting. But after her beloved sister dies, Leena loses her footing. Panic attacks are threatening to derail her career. She’s placed on a mandatory two-month sabbatical.

At the same time, Leena’s grandmother Eileen is feeling lonely and lost after her husband left her for their dance instructor. Life in the village of Hamleigh is slow, and Eileen finds herself ranking the available men. (Typical pros include "own teeth" and "full head of hair," while cons range from "tremendous bore" to "always wears tweed.")

Clearly, Leena and Eileen need shaking up, and they agree to switch homes for several weeks. Eileen—whose own London career dreams were cut short when she got pregnant so many years ago—eagerly moves in with Leena’s colorful roommates. She is immediately struck by how disconnected Londoners seem; the tenants in Leena’s apartment building don’t even know each other’s names. She begins an effort to bring the community together, particularly the lonely, isolated older residents.

Meanwhile, Leena is adjusting to just how connected Hamleigh is. Everyone knows each other’s business—and has an opinion about it. When Leena volunteers to help with the annual village celebration, she must navigate the meddling of Hamleigh’s longtime residents. She also reconnects with a childhood friend who is now a single father and the village’s most eligible bachelor. Leena finds herself wondering whether she can trade her fast-paced London lifestyle for the village, where memories of her sister are everywhere.

Despite the bucolic setting for much of the story, Beth O’Leary’s second novel is brisk and engaging. Her writing is warm, funny and oh-so-British. The characters she creates feel real—especially the older residents of Hamleigh, who are hilariously cranky and nosy but never lapse into caricature. In this time of increased isolation, The Switch offers a hopeful reminder to reach out to our neighbors with an open mind. It’s a cozy, lovely story about how community matters more than ever.

“These people. There’s such a fierceness to them, such a lovingness,” Leena says. “When I got here, I thought their lives were small and silly, but I was wrong. They’re some of the biggest people I know.”

In The Big Door Prize, a new machine at a small-town Louisiana grocery store adds excitement to bicentennial preparations. After customers submit a mouth swab sample, DNAMIX provides each person with a printout of his or her true potential, or “Life Station.” What’s the worst that could possibly happen? Better yet, what’s the best?

Using John Prine song lyrics as chapter titles, the novel explores idioms, preconceptions and other cultural deposits through the stories of a homemaker, a teacher, a student, a musician and scores of other citizens who try on who they “really” are. Doug and Cherilyn appear to be the ideal couple, but Cherilyn struggles with odd symptoms behind Doug’s back, and Doug’s trombone-playing aspirations get in the way of his history teaching. Jacob’s twin brother, Toby, has recently died, and when Toby’s girlfriend starts giving Jacob undue attention, he begins to question how similar or different he is from his twin. Father Pete, a chaplain at Jacob’s Catholic school, is expected to be a font of wisdom, but he’s mostly interested in listening—really listening. This cast of characters has a chance to be anyone, but can they be themselves?

The promises supplied by DNAMIX parallel the marketing-manufactured allure of online life, but ultimately, The Big Door Prize celebrates unlikely heroes, like Tipsy, the drunkard who takes up driving as a way to abstain, and Doug’s trombone teacher, who brings to mind the famous bassist Victor Wooten in his almost magical pedagogy and thrilling sounds. Over the course of the novel, these characters become genuine role models who contrast with the personalities celebrated by social media.

More than solving societal ills, The Big Door Prize calls attention to the ordinary, hard-won joys of real people. M.O. Walsh’s second novel is a feel-good read in a down-home setting, with serious undertones.

Most of us lead quiet lives, strung together by the many moments that make up the act of simply living. Our lives are shaped around the mundane as much as the unexpected. We attempt a new project, talk to that person we think is cute or have an honest, loving conversation with our family. We surprise and disappoint ourselves; we often obsess and overthink. Leonard and Hungry Paul explores two such ordinary lives.

The titular friends are two guys in their 30s, playing board games and being each other’s sounding boards. At the start of the novel, Leonard’s mom has just died, and he’s working through his grief and loneliness along with the possibility of romance. Hungry Paul is happily ambling through life, living at home with his parents and occasionally being accosted by motivational speeches from his older sister. These two lifelong friends go to work (or not, as the case may be), meet new people, try new things—the stuff of everyday life. While Leonard spends his days as an encyclopedia content supervisor, Hungry Paul spends his time absorbed in the present moment. By making friends with silence, as Hungry Paul has mastered, we can learn a lot about ourselves and the world around us.

A musician and storyteller through song for many years, Rónán Hession infuses his debut novel with tangible realness, honesty and delight. Hession takes on the familiar and mines it for its beauty and significance, as well as its whimsy. With an insightfully observant eye that’s keen on details, Hession illustrates a larger picture of what being human means and how we can confound yet ultimately support one another. Leonard and Hungry Paul is a reminder that we’re all just humans doing our best to be kind, to others and ourselves.

Charlotte Wood’s honest and humorous The Weekend follows three women in their 70s as they meet to clear out their friend’s house after her passing.

Months after Sylvie’s death, her three close friends continue to grieve. Bossy former restaurateur Jude, practical intellectual Wendy and actor Adele, who’s holding on to faded dreams, all struggle to restore what is left of their friendships now that Sylvie is gone. In their short gathering at the beach house, insecurities, bitterness and secrets are revealed, shaking the very foundation of their friendships. Antagonism, which for so long has gone unexpressed, brews just beneath the surface, as the three women question what has held them together for so long.

Adele isn’t the only one struggling to adjust to her current life. Despite the sturdy image she portrays on the outside, Jude is having a hard time coping with old age. Her love life is an unspoken issue between the friends, yet all three are aware of her clandestine relationship. Wendy’s dog, Finn, is nearing death, but despite his pain, Wendy is reluctant to let him go, convinced that her commitment to him represents her unwillingness to give up on life.

The story’s pacing is steady as the friendships’ dynamics are explored, but an oncoming storm—a metaphor for an inevitable shift—throws events into high gear. Unwelcome guests introduce an additional strand of rivalry, and the three friends must come together to defend themselves against this intruder, a testament to their loyalty despite everything going on between them.

Entertaining and insightful, Wood’s impressive novel captures characters who are hard to forget. 

Katherine Center, reigning queen of comfort reads, returns with an exuberant new novel that will have readers rejoicing. What You Wish For is a bona fide explosion of happiness packaged in book form.

Ensconced in the free-spirited island town of Galveston, Texas, Samantha Casey is living the life of her dreams. Working as a school librarian, Sam is like a second daughter to the Kempner School’s founders, Max and Babette, and she feels like she’s finally found the family she’s always craved. However, when Max tragically dies, Sam’s personal and professional life is thrown into complete upheaval. 

Then Max’s replacement is announced, and Sam can’t decide what’s worse: that her unrequited crush, Duncan Carpenter, is back in her life and is now her boss, or that this new Duncan is nothing like the man she remembers. Gone is the sweet, goofy man with an infectious joie de vivre. Duncan 2.0 is an authoritarian killjoy who is obsessed with safety and intent on transforming Kempner into a glorified prison.

Sam decides to fight for her school and her students, launching a “joy offensive” on Duncan to help him remember who he used to be. If she happens to lose her heart to him all over again in the process—well, that’s a risk she’ll have to take.

A compassionate story of grief and resilience, What You Wish For is also a vital reminder that joy is not just something that happens to us but also something we have the power to choose. As Max always told Sam, we must “never miss a chance to celebrate,” even when things get tough. Ultimately, that is what Center has created for her readers: a quirky confection that celebrates life in all its imperfect glory and delivers a much-needed dose of optimism.

What happens when the person who finds your balloon bursts your bubble? Dear Emmie Blue is a delightful story about a sweet, downtrodden woman’s journey to self-discovery after she believes she has lost everything.

Fourteen years ago, when Emmie Blue was 16, she released a balloon into the sky over Kent, England, with her email address and a message attached to it—a dark secret she could no longer keep. The balloon was discovered in France by Lucas Moreau, a boy originally from London who has the same birthday as Emmie, who quickly became her best friend and with whom she has been in love for the last six years. 

Lucas has told Emmie that he plans to ask her a question on the eve of their 30th birthdays. Emmie has rehearsed her answer to what she assumes will be a romantic invitation—but what he asks her makes her question everything about her life.

Emmie is a tremendously flawed character who might be self-pitying if she weren’t so darn self-effacing and nice. It’s hard not to sympathize with her, cheering her along as she muddles her way—repeatedly—through one disappointment after another. Her back­ story is woven into her dynamic stream-of-consciousness narration, which causes some confusing moments but also sets a pace that reflects her psychological and emotional state. She’s dealing with a lot—the truth of Lucas and his brother, Elliot; her neglectful mother; the search for her father—while struggling to make peace with her dreadful secret.

The comedic value of secondary characters, such as Emmie’s friends Rose and Fox, balances the weight of heavier themes to keep the story from getting too bogged down in drama. The dialogue, which is amply seasoned with profanity, effectively captures Emmie’s close relationships with other characters, especially with her quiet and wise landlady.

Ebbing and flowing with the ups and downs of life, Dear Emmie Blue is a delightful read that fans of Bridget Jones’s Diary and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine will enjoy.

On its surface, Laura Hankin’s debut is a quick read, a novel that could be categorized as a beach book. Certainly, Happy and You Know It is the sort of novel that can suck a reader in and hold them until a whole day has passed, but it’s also a multidimensional story with riches revealed through close attention.

After Claire is fired from her band, she’s trying to pay her way through New York City life, and a gig as a playgroup musician will have to do. The mothers in the group are wealthy and wellness-obsessed, leading lives far more polished than the existence Claire is eking out. But Claire finds herself drawn to them anyway. The women incorporate Claire into their lives, and she welcomes the inclusion.

But proximity also reveals the chinks in the armor of their carefully styled lives. When one of the women’s husbands gets sick and is forced to work from home, he pushes the women to hold their playgroup elsewhere. Claire recognizes his belief that his activities are more important than his wife’s. “Back in Claire’s hometown, the church drummed into girls at Sunday school that they were special, meant to be cherished, but that ultimately, husbands were the boss. Apparently you could get a degree from Harvard and a fancy New York apartment, and still, some things would stay the same.”

As the playgroup moms work out their insecurities—within themselves and within their friendships—the metaphorical masks they wear begin to slip. With a light hand and a touch of mystery, Hankin’s debut explores feminism, class and the expectations placed on mothers. This is a romp with substance, consumed easily as a beach read but offering ample opportunity for self-reflection.

Anna Solomon’s The Book of V. is painted on a much larger canvas than the author’s previous novels, each of which focused primarily on one place and time period—1880s Dakota Territory in The Little Bride and 1920s Gloucester, Massachusetts, in Leaving Lucy Pear.

The novel opens in 2016 with Lily, a 40-something Brooklyn wife and mom who’s grappling with the woman she has, and hasn’t, become. The narration then drops back to early-1970s Washington, D.C., where Vivian, or Vee, the young wife of a power-hungry senator, is about to host a party. Just as quickly, the story drops all the way back to ancient Persia, where 17-year-old Esther (yes, the biblical Esther) is about to be handed off to a Persian king who has done away with his first queen, Vashti, and now plans to select a new bride from his kingdom’s population of beautiful young virgins.

Solomon keeps these three stories moving as Lily, Vee and Esther find themselves in precarious situations. Lily second-guesses her marriage and contemplates an affair while trying to care for her sick mom, who doesn’t approve of Lily’s ambivalent style of feminism. Vee is cast out of her political life, with no clear path forward, while Esther is suddenly the queen of Persia and also under house arrest. Although the characters and their stories differ markedly from one another, Solomon’s omniscient narration serves as a lovely, wry guide.

The Book of V. offers plenty of thoughtful interiority while spinning a fast-moving story. Lily’s meditations on feminism, motherhood, friendship and middle-class striving will resonate with many readers. The novel’s unexpected retelling of the Esther story is imaginative yet, in its own way, faithful to the original.

In her acknowledgments, Solomon credits inspiration for the structure of her new novel to Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which also follows three different women in three different time periods. As with The Hours, The Book of V. connects its three characters’ stories not only thematically but also narratively, with a surprising yet inevitable and satisfying conclusion.

It’s poetic that internationally bestselling author Wade Rouse uses his grandmother’s name, Viola Shipman, as the pen name for his books centered on family and heirlooms. His portrayal of strong, emotionally engaging protagonists is fresh and free of excessive sentimentality, while his unrushed pace and elegant language capture an old-world charm that makes for an enchanting reading experience. His latest novel, The Heirloom Garden, is a beautifully understated story about the loss and discovery of family and ourselves.

In the summer of 1944, Iris Maynard loses her loving husband to World War II. Four years later, she loses her beloved daughter, Mary, to polio. Flash forward to 2003, when Iris, now reclusive, finds sole comfort in the flowers she propagates. They are her friends, family and the focus of her lonely life. When the Peterson family—steadfast Abby, husband Cory, who returned from the Iraq War a changed man, and their precocious daughter, Lily—moves in next door, Iris is drawn to them. Together, the four find healing connections and become a family.

Shipman patiently and gently unearths the deeply flawed characters’ sorrows and reveals the delicate buds of happiness that eventually blossom. Iris’ anguish over the loss of her loved ones is palpable, and every memory stirs sadness, which makes bright moments—when she talks to her flowers and connects with the Petersons—so uplifting. Without making a political statement or moralizing, Shipman incorporates themes of loss and war into the story, credibly revealing how Abby’s family works through the effects of Cory’s PTSD. Iris’ and Abby’s alternating perspectives add a dynamic element to the story, while Iris’ flashbacks smoothly add backstory that deepens the connections among the characters.

At once heart-rending and hopeful, this story is a bouquet of sorrow and joy, perseverance and patience.

For over 30 years, Terry McMillan has delighted readers with tales of the lives, loves, foibles and triumphs of black women. She continues with the hilarious, poignant and bighearted It’s Not All Downhill From Here.

McMillan claims she writes about things that break her heart, but she clearly also writes about what makes her laugh or shake her head in gentle bemusement. In her latest novel, the narrator and star of the show is Loretha Curry, who is turning 68 (the same age as the author!). The owner of a successful beauty product business, Loretha is rich both monetarily and in most of her relationships. Her third husband, Carl, is doting and, despite his arthritis, ready, willing and able when he takes his little blue pill. Loretha has a fiercely loyal posse of girlfriends she’s known for decades, including statuesque Korynthia, mean-spirited Lucky, sort of God-fearing Sadie and long-suffering Poochie, a character as close to Beth March as you’re going to get in a McMillan novel. Loretha’s mother is still alive and a corker. Her granddaughter Cinnamon adores her, as does her son, Jackson, who lives in Tokyo with his wife and two girls. Loretha, generous with both her love and her money, adores them right back.

Yet there’s that heartbreak. An early tragedy in the book sends Loretha reeling, though her loved ones rally around her. Relations with her twin half-sister are sketchy, and her daughter is anchorless and an alcoholic. Loretha, who’s a bit hefty and loves her soul food, finds out she has diabetes. 

McMillan has no trouble creating a crowd-​pleaser—even her “unlikable” women redeem themselves in the end—but she also promotes radical self-love for her characters, whether it’s through taking care of their bodies, minds and spirits, deciding who to love or deciding, indeed, whether to live at all. This is another winner from McMillan.

The Henna Artist is set in the pink city of Jaipur, India, and follows Lakshmi, a namesake of the goddess of wealth. Lakshmi has abandoned her husband, Hari, and now works in Jaipur applying dizzying henna designs to the city’s most elite women. Lakshmi is also a skilled herbalist, and she creates delicious Indian treats to ease her clients’ ailments and issues, as well as tea sachets that serve as birth control. She learned all of these skills from her mother-in-law, a kind and talented woman.

Lakshmi’s business is booming. She’s even planning to meet the maharani at the palace. But Lakshmi’s world is turned on its head when her sister, Radha, shows up with Hari. Radha, called “Bad Luck Girl” by her small town’s gossip-eaters, didn’t know Lakshmi existed until she realized her mother was burning letters as soon as they arrived. Lakshmi didn’t know Radha existed either until she saw her sister in the flesh. Their green-blue eyes match perfectly. 

Lakshmi dutifully takes Radha under her wing, but her spirited little sister wants to explore her new city and all its delights, and soon several missteps lead to all hell breaking loose.

Rich in detail and bright with tastes and textures, The Henna Artist is a fabulous glimpse into Indian culture in the 1950s. You’ll notice certain remnants of British colonization, and you’ll see how Western culture permeates Jaipur. Throughout her first novel, Alka Joshi explores the complex relationships of women in India, offering an introduction into the caste system that separates and defines people, and comments on the often invisible yet deeply important labor that’s deemed “women’s work.” 

Joshi’s prose is rhythmic and alluring, and her characters are multidimensional and alive. This is a novel of hope, ambition and healing.

In his 1962 novel, Mother Night, the late Kurt Vonnegut let loose the tale’s moral on the first page: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Clare Pooley revisits that theme in The Authenticity Project, but with a twist: “Everyone lies about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth instead?”

“Keeping up appearances” was a posh British blood sport long before the days of social media, but in the era of Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and a hundred more, many of us succumb to the siren song of “building our brand” by relentlessly editing the public-facing image of our lives. While that curated presentation has an element of truthiness to it, it’s ultimately unsatisfying and leaves followers believing their own lives fail to measure up. 

So what happens when an aging, formerly semi-famous artist decides to entitle a blank journal The Authenticity Project, launch into an admission of how his life is not meeting expectations and leave the book in a public place for the next person to expand, ignore or discard? As you might guess, the person who finds it, a café owner named Monica, decides to contribute. And so, as much by happenstance as through intentional actions, the journal makes its way halfway around the world (and back again), with contributors adding their respective warts-and-all memoirs.

The secret sauce that spices this book is that all the diarists are busybodies to some degree, so they wind up interacting in strange and unexpected ways. Much like a Twitter or Facebook feed, the book is composed of fairly short chapters (each from a different character’s point of view), and while it moves along at a bracing clip, the thread is always easy to follow.

The story’s confessional tone is in many ways a logical extension of Pooley’s popular pseudonymous blog, Mummy Was a Secret Drinker, but TMI is always balanced by TLC. And while Pooley’s characters’ lives, much like our own, often look better from the outside, they all ultimately reconcile what they pretend to be with what they actually are.