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. 

Colleen Oakley’s poignant new novel has a fascinating premise: Is it possible to dream about someone you’ve never met, over and over, and then one day meet them in real life? That’s what happens to Mia, a struggling artist married to a surgeon and living in a burg called Hope Springs. She’s been dreaming of the same stranger for years, and one day, she sees him at the grocery store. His name is Oliver, and shockingly, he’s been dreaming about her, too, though not all his dreams are happy ones.

On top of this weirdness, Mia and her husband, Harrison, are going through a hard time. Harrison is guilt-ridden over the young patient he lost during what was supposed to be a routine surgery. Mia, desperate for a child, keeps miscarrying, and it doesn’t help to learn that the reasons for the miscarriages are the mixed-up genes in some of Harrison’s sperm cells. In his mind, he not only can’t save a child but can’t help create one either.

This leads Mia to wonder if maybe Harrison isn’t “the one.” After all, they’re not even compatible on a cellular level. Maybe her true soul mate is Oliver. Oliver, who sweetly tends Mia’s vegetable patch, comes to think so. And wait until you read what a fortuneteller has to say.

The inexplicable dreams, the tension between Mia and Harrison, the fortuneteller and Oakley’s breezy writing all encourage the reader to stick with the book, which tells a sad story to a bouncy beat. Full of misdirection and a few gentle red herrings, You Were There Too ends far more satisfyingly than you might expect.

Everyone has experienced or heard of inexplicable things, but what, if anything, do they mean? In You Were There Too, the final meaning is huge, bittersweet and just the thing to happen in a place called Hope Springs.

Already a national bestseller in the author’s native France, The Braid marks director and screenwriter Laetitia Colombani’s North American debut. Tender yet provocative, it’s a captivating and compassionate exploration of the lives and situations of three very different women separated by social class, work, culture and geography.

In India, Smita makes her living cleaning out her neighbors’ toilets by hand, while determined that her daughter will not share the same fate. In Sicily, Giulia must take over her family’s wig workshop and fight to innovate it for the 21st century after a tragedy befalls her father. Finally, there is Sarah, a high-powered lawyer and single mother whose cancer diagnosis has her fighting not only for her life but for her position at her firm. Much like the hairstyle from which the novel takes its title, each woman’s story is told separately and is seemingly unconnected to the other two, loosely paralleling one another until the very end, when their interconnectedness becomes apparent and all strands of the story flow into one.

One of the greatest challenges for novels with multiple narratives is that it’s rare for all storylines and characters to be equally compelling. The Braid suffers no such issue; each heroine shines when she is the focus, each plight feels urgent, vital and interesting. Colombani’s cinematic background serves her well as the plot moves swiftly through succinct and surprising vignettes. Readers will race to see how (or if) each woman will overcome the considerable obstacles she faces and how their lives will ultimately intertwine. Colombani’s writing is earnest and unobtrusive, and her words are largely in service of keeping the story humming along, with the occasional poetic flourish. There is none of the awkwardness that can sometimes stymie literature in translation.

A soul-expanding novel of hope and resiliency, The Braid is a celebration of womanhood, connection and the power of perseverance. It would make an excellent choice for book clubs or readers looking for a short but powerful read.

India is the second most populous country on this planet, with the world’s largest democracy—yet most conversations about India seem to dance around its spicy food or perhaps a yearning for a spiritual voyage. Mahesh Rao’s Polite Society adds something fresh, funny and insightful to the age-old chatter about this fascinating country by detailing the world of the uber-rich who call it home.

Channeling his love for Jane Austen’s commentary and observations on relationships, society and power, Rao’s American debut takes us into the inner sanctum of 20-something Ania Khurana, who is a member of the wealthiest upper echelon of the capital city of Delhi (and perhaps all of India). Ania’s life resembles that of a Hollywood celebrity, complete with designer clothes, lavish parties and paparazzi. Born into privilege, Ania is an aspiring author whose motivation is slightly lacking. Her newest obsession is playing matchmaker for her muse and friend, Dimple, who is neither rich nor privileged. In Ania, we see some of the same qualities that make Austen’s Emma so irresistible: She’s self-absorbed yet compassionate, impatient yet persistent.

Supporting characters (such as Ania’s widowed father, Dileep; Ania’s childhood friend Dev, who is least affected by his wealth; the fame-chasing reporter Fahim; and a bevy of women of a certain age) complete a picture of what it’s like to chase happiness in a society riddled with codes and an endless supply of money. 

Hilarious, scandalous and fascinating, Polite Society adds an interesting, modern layer to a complex culture.

At 36, Joan Dixon sees herself as a complete failure. In the year since she lost her Los Angeles newspaper job, she’s had to move home with her parents and has just blown her last chance to sell the big story she’s been reporting. In desperation, she takes a copywriting job at Bloom, a tech startup where a 24-year-old will be her boss. That’s the setup for Liza Palmer’s latest novel, The Nobodies, which satirizes the tech industry’s affectations—its endless free food and drink, ridiculously young workforce and bro-y CEOs who believe their own nonsense.

Joan’s reporter’s instincts lead her to suspect that something’s off with Bloom’s business model. Joan makes friends with her young co-workers, and before long they’ve formed an investigative team. As they begin to pursue leads, Joan wonders if she’s leading them down a disastrous path.

Joan is stubborn, angry, self-deprecating and funny. Humor is a strength of the novel, and Joan’s first-person narration allows for lots of introspection, although it sometimes comes at the expense of the story and the development of the novel’s other characters. Joan’s co-workers fall in line with her investigative plan quickly, none of them giving more than a slight pushback, even though they stand to lose jobs and health insurance.

As I read The Nobodies, I thought of the HBO show “Silicon Valley,” for its funny, bumbling characters, and then “Younger,” whose main character connects with her 20-something publishing co-workers, and finally, The Inventor: Out for Blood, the documentary about the fraudulent tech startup Theranos. Combining elements from all of these narratives, The Nobodies is a fast-paced, contemporary novel with a main character who’s determined to get the real story and maybe find herself along the way.

Lisa Lutz’s new novel, The Swallows, is fast-moving, darkly humorous and at times shockingly vicious. The battle of the sexes within its pages couldn’t be more compelling.

The book opens as teacher Alexandra “Alex” Witt reluctantly begins a new role at the prestigious Stonebridge Academy, a boarding school in Vermont. Alex isn’t one of those teachers whose passion for the profession overrides all else. She doesn’t hate it, but she doesn’t love it. After losing a similar position following a scandal at her previous school, she’s just happy to be employed at all.

She doesn’t hate or love her students either, although they would be easy to hate after one of them hides a dead rat in her desk on the first day of class. Alex responds by assigning them five questions: What do you love? What do you hate? If you could live inside a book, what book? What do you want? Who are you?

What she gets in response is both surprising and mysterious. Many of the anonymous responses cite something called the Darkroom. It’s not long before Alex begins to match the students to their replies and discovers the school’s secret hierarchical pecking order, ruled from the top by a group of students known as the Ten. Even worse is a dark game in which the boys secretly rate and critique the girls on who gives the best blow job.

Student Gemma Russo quickly emerges as the second most important voice in the story as Alex convinces her to stand up for herself and the other girls on campus against their male counterparts, resulting in a wildly creative and hilarious episode.

Lutz delivers a frantic, morbidly funny story about what happens when girls are no longer willing to excuse bad behavior as “boys will be boys.”