The Faculty Lounge by Jennifer Mathieu

By the acclaimed author of Moxie, a funny, bighearted adult debut that is at once an ode to educators, a timely glimpse at today’s pressing school issues, and a tender character study, following a sprawling cast of teachers, administrators, and staff at a Texas high school

With its ensemble of warm and unforgettable characters, The Faculty Lounge shows readers a different side of school life. It all starts when an elderly substitute teacher at Baldwin High School is found dead in the faculty lounge. After a bit of a stir, life quickly returns to normal—it’s not like it’s the worst (or even most interesting) thing that has happened within the building’s walls. But when, a week later, the spontaneous scattering of his ashes on the school grounds catches the attention of some busybody parents, it sets in motion a year that can only be described as wild, bizarre, tragic, mundane, beautiful, and humorous all at once.

Jennifer Mathieu is the critically acclaimed author of seven novels for young adults including Moxie, which is now a major motion picture directed by Amy Poehler (Netflix). Her books have been translated into over twenty languages. A former journalist, Mathieu is a graduate of Northwestern and has been a teacher for nearly twenty years. She lives with her family in Houston.

Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin

Vivvy Bouchet was only ten when she saved a boy’s life by making an impossible prediction. She doesn’t want to explain it. A wunderkind scientist, she just wants to be left in peace to scan the desert Texas sky with her telescopes in one of the darkest places on earth. But when the boy she saved, now a Fort Worth cop, begs for her help on a cold case, she can’t turn him down.

In the past decade, Lizzie Solomon and the Victorian mansion where she disappeared have taken on almost mythic status. Conspiracy theorists feed the frenzy that Lizzie is still buried in the crumbling walls while her mother, who sits in prison convicted of killing her, loudly proclaims her innocence.

Paired with a skeptical detective, Vivvy falls deeper into the mystery of why Lizzie has never been found. When a vicious podcaster takes aim at Vivvy’s own secrets—and those of the vanished girl—Vivvy’s life unravels like the mysterious galaxies she chases.

Julia Heaberlin delivers a resilient and unforgettable heroine in Vivvy Bouchet, a woman who walks the line between evidence-based science and unexplained phenomenon. Sharply relevant, Night Will Find You explores the mysterious nature of belief―in science, in conspiracies, in a higher power―and the delicate dance with the things we can’t know.

The Fishermen and the Dragon by Kirk Wallace Johnson

A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster, a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and one woman's relentless battle for environmental justice. By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing. Turf was claimed. Guns were flashed. Threats were made. After a white crabber was killed by a young Vietnamese refugee in self-defense, the situation became a tinderbox primed to explode, and the Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan saw an opportunity to stoke the fishermen's rage and prejudices. At a massive Klan rally near Galveston Bay one night in 1981, he strode over to an old boat graffitied with the words U.S.S. VIET CONG, torch in hand, and issued a ninety-day deadline for the refugees to leave or else "it's going to be a helluva lot more violent than Vietnam!" The white fishermen roared as the boat burned, convinced that if they could drive these newcomers from the coast, everything would return to normal. A shocking campaign of violence ensued, marked by burning crosses, conspiracy theories, death threats, torched boats, and heavily armed Klansmen patrolling Galveston Bay. The Vietnamese were on the brink of fleeing, until a charismatic leader in their community, a highly decorated colonel, convinced them to stand their ground by entrusting their fate with the Constitution. Drawing upon a trove of never-before-published material, including FBI and ATF records, unprecedented access to case files, and scores of firsthand interviews with Klansmen, shrimpers, law enforcement, environmental activists, lawyers, perpetrators and victims, Johnson uncovers secrets and secures confessions to crimes that went unsolved for more than forty years. This explosive investigation of a forgotten story, years in the making, ultimately leads Johnson to the doorstep of the one woman who could see clearly enough to recognize the true threat to the bays and who now represents the fishermen's last hope.

Lone Stars by Justin Deabler

Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term. And in these answers lies a hope: that by uncloseting ourselves, as immigrants, smart women, gay people, we find power in empathy.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

"A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret. Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages. When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they're likely to bring about the end of days. But the children aren't the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn. An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place--and realizing that family is yours"

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Mayan God of Death sends a young woman on a harrowing, life-changing journey in this dark fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore. The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather's house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own. Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather's room. She opens it--and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea's demise, but success could make her dreams come true. In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City--and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Susan Orlean reopens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution--our libraries.

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders--a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes--and save himself in the process--before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. A rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas, Bluebird, Bluebird is an exhilarating, timely novel about the collision of race and justice in America.

News of the World by Jiles Paulette

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widower and itinerant news reader, is offered fifty dollars to bring an orphan girl, who was kidnapped and raised by Kiowa raiders, from Wichita Falls back to her family in San Antonio.

Train to Crystal City by Jan Jarboe Russell

From 1942 to 1945, secret government trains delivered United States civilians regularly to Crystal City, a small desert town at the southern tip of Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants and their American-born children. The vast majority were loyal to the United States deeply, were never charged with any crime, and did not understand why they had been forced to leave their homes. Crystal City, the only family internment camp during World War II, was the center of a secret government prisoner exchange program. During the war, hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City, including their children, were exchanged for other, ostensibly more important Americans ---- diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, physicians, and missionaries ---- behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany. Haunted by the story for decades, Jan Jarboe Russell interviewed more than fifty living internees from the camp and gained access to private journals, diaries, FBI files, camp administration records, and other documents. Focusing her story on two American-born teenage girls, Russell assembles a vivid reconstruction of their years spent in the camp, their families' subsequent respective journeys to war-devastated Germany and Japan, and their years-long attempt to survive and return to The United States. Their stories of day-to-day life at the camp, from the ten-foot-high security fence to the armed guards, daily roll call, and censored mail, have never been told. The Train To Crystal City reveals the wartime hysteria against the Japanese and Germans in America, FDR's secret tactics to rescue prisoners of war in Germany and Japan, how the definition of American citizenship changed under the pressure of war, and, above all, a tale of resilience and patriotism against overwhelming odds. -- Provided by publisher, taken from cover.

The Promise by Ann Weisgarber

1900. Young pianist Catherine Wainwright flees the fashionable town of Dayton, Ohio in the wake of a terrible scandal. Heartbroken and facing destitution, she finds herself striking up correspondence with a childhood admirer, the recently widowed Oscar Williams. In desperation she agrees to marry him. But when Catherine travels to Oscar's farm on Galveston Island, Texas - a thousand miles from home - she finds she is little prepared for the life that awaits her.

Remember Ben Clayton by Stephen Harrigan

"Francis "Gil" Gilheaney is a sculptor of boundless ambition, but bad fortune and pride have driven him and his long-suffering daughter Maureen into artistic exile in Texas just after World War I. When an aging rancher commissions Gil to create a memorial statue of his son who was killed in action, Gil believes it will be his greatest achievement. But as work proceeds on the statue, Gil and Maureen come to realize that their new client is a far more complicated man than they ever expected, and that he is guarding a secret that haunts his relationship with his son even in death.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life, something like his old life, exists beyond the airport.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

The nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center bombing searches the city for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

An acclaimed novel by the author of The Mistress of Spices , and Before We Visit the Goddess . Jhumpa Lahiri praises: " One Amazing Thing collapses the walls dividing characters and cultures; what endures is a chorus of voices in one single room."

Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but nine people remain. A punky teenager with an unexpected gift. An upper-class Caucasian couple whose relationship is disintegrating. A young Muslim-American man struggling with the fallout of 9/11. A graduate student haunted by a question about love. An African-American ex-soldier searching for redemption. A Chinese grandmother with a secret past. And two visa office workers on the verge of an adulterous affair.

When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to survive. There's little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, "one amazing thing" from their lives, which they have never told anyone before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family, political upheaval, and self-discovery unfold against the urgency of their life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself. From Chitra Divakaruni, author of such finely wrought, bestselling novels as Sister of My Heart, The Palace of Illusions , and The Mistress of Spices , comes her most compelling and transporting story to date. One Amazing Thing is a passionate creation about survival -- and about the reasons to survive.