Your Shelf Life

Kiss Me First

By Lottie Moggach

Leila meets the glamorous Tess online and starts learning everything about her. Soon she will become her, as Tess wants to commit suicide but maintain an online presence so that family and friends think she’s alive and happy on the other side of the world. Gripping.

Snow Hunters

By Paul Yoon

A North Korean war

refugee confronts the wreckage of his past. Yohan defects after the Korean War and tries to build a new life on the coast of Brazil. But half a life spent under occupation or immersed in the horrors of war means a slow recovery.

Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish

By David Rakoff

Fans of public radio and This American Life will recognize the name David Rakoff. He completed this slender book, written in verse, right before he died last year at the age of 47. Ira Glass described it as “very funny and very sad, which is my favorite combination.”

Visitation Street

By Ivy Pochoda

In the blue-collar dockside community of Red Hook, Brooklyn, two 15-year-olds take a raft out on the bay at night. They disappear, but one survives and eventually washes ashore. The mystery of what happened that night permeates the community of characters, many with secrets of their own.

The House of Rumour

By Jake Arnott

This decades-spanning, continent-hopping novel follows a writer turned fighter pilot searching for connections between random events that begin to look like one big conspiracy. Spies, occultism, pulp science fiction, and new wave music all play a role in this genre-melding novel.