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.”

Caroline Shelby’s life has been turned upside down. First, scandal destroys the promising clothing designer’s budding career in New York. Then, Caroline’s close friend dies suddenly, leaving her the legal guardian of her friend’s two young children, Flick and Addie, a task for which she feels totally unprepared. 

With nothing to keep her in New York, Caroline drives cross-country with her two grieving charges to Oysterville, Washington, the hometown she left years earlier and to which she never envisioned returning. There, she finds her family and town both familiar and changed. She must also face her first love, Will, who married her then-best friend, Sierra. Returning to the fabric shop where she discovered her love of design, Caroline slowly begins to rebuild her life and career and even discovers her mothering skills. She also assuages her guilt in failing to help her late friend by creating the Oysterville Sewing Circle, a group for women who’ve experienced abuse. 

With The Oysterville Sewing Circle, Susan Wiggs tackles the painful subject of domestic violence in a life-affirming way. While Wiggs doesn’t shy away from addressing abuse in its myriad forms through the stories of the women in the sewing circle, a central theme of this novel is the healing power of family and community, and especially women supporting one another. Furthermore, as a resident of one of the Puget Sound islands, Wiggs writes with an intimate knowledge of the area, which makes her fictional town of Oysterville come alive on the page. Readers will long to visit and meet her characters in the local shops. 

Author of over 50 novels, including the Lakeshore Chronicles, Wiggs has written another compelling novel that will grab readers’ hearts, hold their attention and leave them with a sense of hope. 

If you’re lucky, you’ll meet someone who becomes a lifelong friend for 50 years or more. But while an encounter with a kindred soul in your 70s won’t lead to a 50-year friendship, perhaps it can provide a reason to believe that life still has pleasures to offer. That’s the insight that drives The Great Unexpected, Irish novelist Dan Mooney’s follow-up to his debut, Me, Myself and Them. Another of the book’s insights—not new, but timely in this day of polarization—is that two people of disparate backgrounds can forge the unlikeliest friendship.

And what two fellows could seemingly be less alike than Joel Monroe and Frank de Selby? Joel owned a garage before he and Lucey, his beloved wife of 49 years, moved into the Hilltop Nursing Home. Lucey had brightened their room with flowers and baby pictures of their daughter, Eva. But ever since Lucey died, Joel has been morose and distant. He is convinced that the only way out of his misery is to commit suicide.

After a second roommate dies, the home moves Frank de Selby into Joel’s room. A former soap opera actor who wears colorful silk scarves, Frank has “a youthfulness about him, a certain quality of energy and vitality that seemed to make a lie of all the wrinkles.” Soon, Joel and Frank are sharing painful secrets, concocting plans to help Joel kill himself and breaking out of the home to go to pubs—escapes that infuriate not only the head nurse known as “the Rhino” but also Eva, who insists that Joel be confined to the home for his own safety.

The Great Unexpected often plays like a sitcom, but the novel also captures the heartache of elderly people realizing that they are no longer in charge of their lives. Yet it offers a glimmer of hope. In one of their late-night escapades, Joel and Frank sneak into an old theater where Frank used to perform: “Another aging monument that someone had once loved allowed to fall to ruin because not enough people cared.” The parallel between that theater and a senior’s life is obvious. With a little help, good days may lie ahead, so maybe don’t get out the wrecking ball just yet.

Three’s a crowd, as the old saying goes. But what if the three are polite, sophisticated, creative women? How Could She tackles societal pressures, biological clocks, jealousy, infidelity and more in an insightful yet comfortable manner. Debut author and Vogue book columnist Lauren Mechling has a gift for creating elaborate, realistic pretense and then marching straight through it with a machete, slicing it to bits in a way that is both shocking and frankly fun.

How Could She is not so much plot-driven as it is a study of dynamics. It centers on three women in their late 30s who have maintained some semblance of friendship for over a decade. Sunny and Rachel didn’t get along as carefree mid-20-somethings in Toronto, where they worked together with Geraldine before print media became a sinking ship. Years later in early 2017, Geraldine decides to move to New York, where Sunny and Rachel both live. Rachel and Sunny secretly bristle: Will Geraldine come begging for scraps of mercy, needing help to make friends and get a job? Will she want to move in? Instead, Geraldine makes her own contacts and forges her own career path, which creates new ripples of contempt through the trio.

Mechling excels at creating realistically complex hopes, needs and disappointments. The tension builds for months toward an inevitable clash, and when it comes to a head, it’s hard not to root for each woman. At the novel’s core are three individuals searching for truth in an overly complicated world, and it is evident that, despite all their flaws, Mechling loves each of her protagonists.

How Could She is the perfect summer read. It’s entertaining, insightful and at times agonizingly true to life.

If the idea of flatmates sharing a bed at alternate hours without meeting sounds too farfetched, hold your skepticism. If it sounds like a meet cute waiting to happen, you’re in luck. Regardless of your starting point, The Flatshare is a charming love story that’s likely to warm your heart.

Tiffy loves her job as assistant editor for a publisher of DIY books. That’s the only reason she can justify sticking around despite the dismal pay. But after her boyfriend dumps her—for real, this time—she’s got to find a flat with rent she can afford. Leon needs extra cash, and he’s willing to get creative. Working overnight shifts as a palliative care nurse means his place is vacant when most people are home. Why not rent it out? Though it means designating which side of the bed is his and sharing it with a stranger, Leon is willing to go to extremes. His family needs his help.

The flatmates follow a strict schedule to ensure that they won’t meet—a rule Leon’s girlfriend establishes before agreeing to this arrangement. But they begin to get to know each other through notes. Their correspondence starts when Tiffy leaves a sticky note next to a plate of oatmeal bars, and Leon continues it as he realizes how much of the snack he’s consumed. The pair builds a friendship, sight unseen, and their curiosity about each other grows.

The central conceit of The Flatshare may seem unlikely to some readers, but debut novelist Beth O’Leary has created a sweet, never saccharine tale. She drew inspiration from her doctor boyfriend’s long night shifts, as the couple sometimes wouldn’t see each other for long stretches of time, and she would follow his life based on his empty cups of coffee and other remnants he left behind.

Peppered with amusing quips and multidimensional characters, this quick, engaging read is labeled a romantic comedy, but it also grapples with some of life’s more difficult moments. Even readers skeptical of the novel’s fanciful premise may find themselves surprised by the thoughtful way O’Leary faces not only new love but also the traces of individual pasts.

At the outset, Jennifer Weiner’s new novel, Mrs. Everything, pays homage to Little Women: Older sister Jo, a tomboy and athlete, wants to be a writer, while younger sister Bethie just wants to be a sweet, pretty daughter. But in Alcott terms, these two sisters are more like Jo and Amy: They scrap, they fail to understand each other, and sometimes they just don’t get along.

Told by turns in Jo’s voice and then Bethie’s, Mrs. Everything follows the two sisters from their Jewish girlhood in post-World War II Detroit right on through the present and into the near future, 71 years in all. The cultural changes of the 1960s and ’70s—civil rights, the antiwar movement, gay rights, the women’s movement and more—roll over Jo and Bethie, changing them as each struggles to find her way, and as they sometimes rescue or betray each other.

Jo and Bethie reverse their roles multiple times, so that what the reader expects from the novel’s opening chapters is not what follows. The novel is especially strong during Jo’s observations on race relations and the way even well-intentioned white people can thoughtlessly enforce institutionalized racism.

With its long timespan and its focus on cultural change, Mrs. Everything is a departure for Weiner, a founding godmother of fun, fluffy, women-centric popular fiction. In its period details, Mrs. Everything is a little reminiscent of Judy Blume’s In the Unlikely Event, and in themes reminiscent of Meg Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion. Some of Weiner’s previous novels have taken on difficult social issues like prescription drug abuse, and Mrs. Everything’s flawed but approachable female characters, well-examined friendships and romantic relationships and often-joyful sex scenes make this vintage Weiner.

Because the novel covers so much time and ground, some details and secondary characters are skated over, and some sections feel rushed. Still, this is a warm, readable novel about figuring out what it means for a woman to be true to herself, and then figuring out how to act on that knowledge.

Summer beckons a reading list that is as light, fun and feel-good as the season itself. Roselle Lim’s Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune definitely fits that need. Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Lim’s debut is the story of 20-something Natalie, who has just returned home to the worst news possible: the unexpected passing of her mother, Miranda. Her shock and sadness are compounded by the guilt of parting ways seven years ago over a disagreement that now seems extraneous.

Natalie had wanted to become a chef, a profession that Miranda profoundly opposed even though her own mother had once owned the most famous restaurant in all of Chinatown. But Natalie found it hard to comply with her mother’s wishes; she was young and full of dreams. So for Natalie, there was no other choice but to leave her mother and Chinatown. Seven years later, here she stands in her childhood apartment, without a mother and without the culinary degree that was more elusive than she had assumed. Sharing Natalie’s bad luck is the neighborhood itself, with its failing businesses and gentrification.

But this is a story of luck and fortune, so it isn’t long before Natalie is given a chance to fix it all. She inherits her grandmother’s restaurant, a space boarded up under the very apartment where she grew up, along with a surprising heirloom from her mother: her grandmother’s cookbook, which reads more like a book of spells than recipes. Together they reveal the secrets of the past and the possibility of what the future might hold. Will this be enough to breathe life back into Natalie’s heart and her neighborhood?

Lim’s magical storytelling, excellent cast of supporting characters and mouth-watering recipes make this book a must for your summer reading list.

There are a number of compelling arguments for surrogacy. Some would-be mothers are unable to conceive. Gay couples may wish to become parents. But, as with any legal arrangement, complications can arise, especially when mercenaries try to exploit people’s emotions for monetary gain.

Joanne Ramos imagines such complications in The Farm, her ambitious dystopian debut. The novel’s effectiveness lies in the power of its premise. Financially straitened women, most of them Filipina immigrants—Ramos, an American, was born in the Philippines and moved to Wisconsin when she was 6—are recruited to carry the babies of an ultra-rich, typically white clientele in exchange for a huge payout.

Among the immigrants is protagonist Jane Reyes, the Filipina mother of a 4-year-old girl who left her husband after she discovered his affair. After Jane loses her nanny job, she takes a tip from her 67-year-old cousin with whom she lives, and applies for a job at Golden Oaks, a fancy resort in New York’s Hudson Valley. At Golden Oaks, surrogate mothers reside in luxury, and this opulence includes organic meals, private fitness trainers, daily massages—all for free. But the pregnant women are constantly monitored, and they are restricted from leaving the grounds or from having any contact with the outside world.

The person running Golden Oaks is Mae Yu, a high-achieving Chinese-American woman who, in a marvelous phrase, has “a lusty Ayn Randian love of New York.” Her job is to recruit Hosts who are willing to carry babies for the company’s wealthy Clients. Not all Hosts, however, are treated the same. A few are Premium Hosts, which means they’re white. They include Jane’s roommate Reagan, who represents the holy trifecta of Premium Hosts because she’s white, pretty and educated. She aspires to a career in photography and wants to break free of her domineering father. Another Premium Host is Lisa, who sees Golden Oaks for what it is and recruits Jane and Reagan in her plans to undermine its authority. And then there’s Jane’s cousin, whose motivations may not be what they seem.

Although The Farm has too many digressions and sometimes makes its points too obviously, Ramos still does an excellent job posing complex questions surrounding surrogacy, immigration, capitalism and more. At one point, Reagan tells Jane, “Everything’s conditional. Everything’s got strings attached.” The Farm shows how intricately laced those strings can be.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Joanne Ramos for The Farm.