ReadingEast

Manboobs: A Memoir of Musicals, Visas, Hope, and Cake is KOMAIL AIJAZUDDIN’s story of courage, love, and bravery. Growing up in Pakistan, ashamed of his body and knowing he was different, he believed his only chance at happiness existed in a gay-friendly America. But after arriving in a post-9/11 world, he was forced to navigate prejudice and self-doubt in his quest for a meaningful life. In his part memoir-in-essays, part cultural critique Mean Boys: A Personal History, queer Chinese American writer GEOFFREY MAK speaks of boys wielding cruelty to claim their place in the pecking order.…

Believing in yourself is hard enough without saving the whole world on top of it all! Find out how much Amari is willing to sacrifice to stop a war between the Magicians and the Bureau in the action-packed third installment of B. B. ALSTON’s bestselling Supernatural Investigations series, Amari and the Despicable Wonders. RYAN GRAUDIN’s The Girl Who Kept the Castle introduces Faye, a maid for the late Wizard West, who must help him find a successor,…

In ELYSHA CHANG’s A Quitter’s Paradise, a young woman does everything she can to ignore her mother’s death, even as memories surface of her cold, strict upbringing with immigrant parents. How do you love a person who refused to make herself known? In CRYSTAL HANA KIM’s The Stone Home: A Novel, Eunju and her mother are living on the street in South Korea when they’re captured and sent to a state-sanctioned facility – a reformatory hiding a violent reality.…

I Will Do Better: A Father’s Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love is CHARLES BOCK’s frank, tender memoir of parenting his young daughter while dealing with immense grief in the wake of his wife’s untimely death. In Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones: A Memoir, PRIYANKA MATTOO chronicles her search for home across 40 years and 32 addresses. From leaving her beloved Kashmir as a child amid mounting violence and finding – and losing – friendships in a Saudi Arabian compound to finally settling in Los Angeles,…

In CRIS ASCUNCE’s My Best Plan: A Novel, Gene has it all – a wonderful daughter, a flourishing career, and the love of her life, Isa. After same-sex marriage is legalized in Spain, Gene has an idea: move there, marry, and finally secure parental rights for her daughter. But Isa refuses, and Gene must make a decision that puts their love to the test. A.J. BERMUDEZ’s Stories No One Hopes Are About Them explores convergences of power,…

But What Will People Say?: Navigating Mental Health, Identity, Love, and Family Between Cultures rethinks traditional therapy and self-care. SAHAJ KAUR KOHLI, MA.ED, LGPC, weaves personal narrative, anecdotal analysis, and comprehensive research, offering tools to navigate generational trauma, guilt, and boundaries, and breaking down stigmas around therapy as she celebrates cultural duality. RAQUEL REICHARD’s Self-Care for Latinas: 100+ Ways to Prioritize & Rejuvenate Your Mind, Body, & Spirit offers more than 100 exercises for wellness,…

In POROCHISTA KHAKPOUR’s Tehrangeles: A Novel, the Iranian American Milani family has it all – an L.A. mansion, a snack empire, and four spirited daughters: aspiring model Violet, chaotic influencer Roxanna, online overachiever Mina, and impressionable health fanatic Haylee. But on the verge of landing a reality TV show, the family realizes they all have something to hide. In My First Book, a collection of stories by HONOR LEVY, characters grapple with formative political, existential,…

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ’s The Great Divide: A Novel is the story of one of the most impressive feats in engineering history: the construction of the Panama Canal. It explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers – those who did the grueling work and have yet rarely been acknowledged by history. In RUTHVIKA RAO’s The Fertile Earth: A Novel, Vijaya, daughter of ancestral aristocrats whose power over their villagers is absolute,…

The Lucky Ones: A Memoir is a moving personal story from ZARA CHOWDHARY, a survivor of anti-Muslim violence in contemporary India. Tracing a multigenerational Muslim family back to India’s brave but bloody origins, it offers a glimpse into the precious, everyday lives of contemporary Muslims who are under siege but still offer grace as the world outside – and their place in it – falls apart. Joining her in conversation is author and journalist MEENA AHAMED.…

Grappling with violence and grief after the loss of his parents, Cyrus is an addict and a poet whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past in KAVEH AKBAR’s Martyr! A Novel. VINSON CUNNINGHAM’s Great Expectations: A Novel spans 18 months in the life of David, working on a senator’s campaign to become the first Black U.S. president and coming to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father.…

Set at a Victorian London circus, AMIEE GIBBS‘ The Carnivale of Curiosities: A Novel is a tale of Faustian bargains, jealousy, and murder, where for the right price, any wish may be granted. In DEENA MOHAMED’s Shubeik Lubeik, three wishes sold at an unassuming Cairo kiosk link three people, changing their perspectives as well as their lives. Buy The Carnivale of Curiosities: A Novel. – Gibbs Buy Shubeik Lubeik. – Mohamed…

JON CLINCH’s historical The General and Julia: A Novel explores how Ulysses S. Grant’s views on race and Reconstruction changed over time. In AANCHAL MALHOTRA’s The Book of Everlasting Things: A Novel, a perfumer’s apprentice and a calligrapher’s apprentice make a series of fateful decisions that will change the course of their lives forever. In KIRTHANA RAMISETTI’s Advika and the Hollywood Wives, a shocking stipulation in an ex-wife’s will compels a man’s current wife to investigate her new husband.…

In Starstruck: A Memoir of Astrophysics and Finding Light in the Dark, Egyptian American astrophysicist SARAFINA EL-BADRY NANCE shares how she carved out a place in her field, grounding herself in a lifelong love of the stars to face life’s inevitable challenges and embrace the unknown. In ELIO MORILLO’s The Boy Who Reached the Stars: A Memoir, he chronicles an itinerant childhood and unique journey from the farthest expanse of human endeavor – space – to AI and robotics.…

In First Gen: A Memoir, ALEJANDRA CAMPOVERDI retraces her trajectory as a Mexican American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles with candor and heart. In AVA CHIN’s Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming, she traces her decadeslong quest to understand her family’s story, from the Pearl River Delta to a Mott Street building in New York’s Chinatown. In A Living Remedy: A Memoir,…

On Defiant Dreams: The Journey of an Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education, Indian American human rights activist MALAINA KAPOOR and Afghani mathematician SOLA MAHFOUZ share the story of Mahfouz’s extraordinary escape from her Taliban-ordained future. In SAFIYA SINCLAIR’s How to Say Babylon: A Memoir, she shares her struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing and find her own voice as a woman and poet, which stemmed from an inevitable collision course between her and her strict patriarchal father.…

In Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself, and Impostor Syndrome, comedian APARNA NANCHERLA delivers a collection of essays marked by her signature humor, sharing hilarious and incredibly insightful meditations on body image, productivity culture, the ultra-meme-ability of mental health language, and who, exactly, gets to make art “about nothing.” In her memoir Living My Best Life, Hun: Following Your Dreams is No Joke, LONDON HUGHES recounts disastrous experiences in friendships, relationships, and career choices, but reminds readers that however bad things get,…

In The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, TANANARIVE DUE’s second collection of short fiction, there are classic tales of horror, several stories set in a Florida town, and two sections of post-apocalyptic futures. From the mysterious, magical town of Gracetown to the aftermath of a pandemic (chillingly, written before 2020), Due masterfully evokes a sense of dread and fear, balanced with heart and hope. Buy The Wishing Pool and Other Stories. – Due   Sponsored by…

The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America is SAKET SONI’s gripping account of migrant workers trapped in squalid Gulf Coast “man camps” in 2006, who against all odds remained steadfast in their heroic journey for justice. In RACHEL L. SWARNS’ The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church, she offers a groundbreaking story of nearly two centuries of indentured servitude and enslavement to uncover the harrowing origin story of the Catholic Church in the United States.…

In DUNYA MIKHAIL’s The Bird Tattoo: A Novel, a young Yazidi woman’s life is changed forever when her husband, a journalist, goes missing, and her search for him results in her captivity. In JAMILA MINNICKS’ Moonrise Over New Jessup: A Novel, a young woman who flees to a 1950s all-Black town in Alabama falls in love with a man who challenges the town’s long-standing status, actions that could lead to the couple’s expulsion – or worse.…

ALLEGRA GOODMAN’s Sam: A Novel is the story of a 7-year-old with a nearly absent father and a mother struggling to make ends meet. But all Sam wants to do is climb, hang from the highest limbs of the tallest trees, and scale the side of a building. In JESS ROW’s The New Earth: A Novel, a family reckons with the harms of the past and confronts an uncertain future. And in THRITY UMRIGAR’s The Museum of Failures: A Novel,…

In NIGAR ALAM‘s Under the Tamarind Tree: A Novel, it is 1964 in Karachi, Pakistan, and Rozeena is about to lose her home as the lives of her childhood best friends seem to be unraveling. Fifty-five years later, she receives a call – and a voice she never thought she’d hear again unearths long-buried secrets. In ETAF RUM’s Evil Eye: A Novel – a striking exploration of the expectations of Palestinian American women – when Yara is placed on probation at work for fighting with a racist coworker,…

Fire Index: Poems by BETHANY BREITLAND measures the interior life of a survivor against the world she creates through her own fractured marriage, motherhood, and religion, reckoning with her complicit, and often dishonest life to demand her full attention, forgiveness, and responsibility. Drawing its title from the 1863 federal act that banished the Dakota people from their homelands, Removal Acts: Poems by ERIN MARIE LYNCH reckons with the present-day repercussions of historical violence, assembling an intimate record of recovery from bulimia and insisting that self-erasure cannot be separated from the erasures of genocide.…

The collection comprising JAMEL BRINKLEY‘s Witness: Stories are set in New York City and feature a range of characters – from children to grandmothers­ – living the responsibility of perceiving and the moral challenge of speaking up or taking action. RU FREEMAN addresses subjects as diverse as Bowie and Dylan, personal and cultural identity, and #MeToo in Bon Courage: Essays on Inheritance, Citizenship, and a Creative Life, and explores crossing borders, both real and imagined, in Sleeping Alone: Stories.…