Top 30 New Contemporary Books 2026 You Absolutely Must Read
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
Hello fellow book lovers! Welcome to Cozy Book Cafe. Thank you for visiting our website. Here you will discover the most anticipated new contemporary books 2026. Dive into captivating new stories, discover new authors, and let your imagination soar.
What are new contemporary books 2026?
Craving stories that feel like right now? If you're looking for new contemporary books 2026, these fresh novels dive into messy relationships, modern culture, and the big little moments that make life interesting. They’re written in lively, relatable voices—perfect for book clubs or cozy nights in.
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New Contemporary Books 2026
Whistler by Ann Patchett
When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them.
The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives.
Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.
Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all.
Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.
The Burning Side by Sarah Damoff
When April and Leo’s house burns in the middle of the night, they escape with their two young children and the quiet knowledge that the fire is not the only thing threatening their family.
They retreat to April’s childhood home in Dallas, where her spirited parents and siblings provide both comfort and complication.
As the family reckons with the aftermath—grief, guilt, logistics, and memories scorched and intact—the fire exposes the cracks already forming in April and Leo’s marriage.
The novel unfolds in alternating perspectives: from April, who feels the crushing weight of motherhood, marriage, and self-blame; from Leo, a high school history teacher shaped by a lonely, fractured childhood; from Deb, April’s generous and no-nonsense mother who has to contend with her husband’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis; and from flashbacks that trace April and Leo’s relationship from its earliest days of connection to the devastating decisions that led them here.
The Top of the World by Ethan Joella
June 1975. Maggie Bishop has just graduated high school, the future hers to embrace—but she’s still reeling from the death of her older brother, Chip.
A devastating diagnosis the summer before prompted Chip to leave home for a few months, never revealing where he went.
Maggie’s search for clues leads her to The Red Maple Inn, a mountaintop resort in the Poconos.
At the Red Maple, Maggie is welcomed into a tight-knit community. As she unravels secrets about her brother’s final days, she begins to connect with the people he loved, and whose lives he touched.
Through the warmth of strangers, Maggie begins to heal and is able to help others cope with loss.
Set in a nostalgic resort town over two transformative summers, this dual-narrative novel explores sibling relationships, coming of age, and the quiet power of human connection.
Upward Bound by Woody Brown
Among the clients and staff are Carlos, a charismatic aide who lost his mother as a boy, and Jorge, who is gentle, nonspeaking and prone to escape despite Carlos’s best efforts.
Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy, pines for Ann, the lifeguard for the summer who feels out of her depth.
Then there’s Dave, the centre’s director. He wanted to be an actor, but finds himself on a very different path.
At the heart of Upward Bound is Walter, a recent college student returning to the company of his peers after a family tragedy.
Around him, a story unfolds of friendships forged, connections missed and the dreams – some new, others almost forgotten – that shape us.
With his wit, empathy and astonishing gifts as a storyteller, Woody Brown immerses us in life as we have never experienced it before.
Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen
All Cleo Dang has ever wanted is to be a mother.
The day she discovers she’s pregnant is the happiest of her life, especially when she learns that her best friend, Paloma, is also expecting.
It’s a wonderful surprise, and together, they enjoy their pregnancies.
But when they both go to the hospital in labor, something goes very, very wrong. Paloma comes home with a baby. Cleo does not.
Ravaged by grief, Cleo must now navigate life after losing her baby. She alienates herself from the world, particularly her best friend, who is living the life she so desperately wanted.
Forced to take leave from her demanding job as an actuary, Cleo manages to find work at a funeral home, where she meets a revolving cast of bereaved locals and discovers the power of confronting grief.
The Sky Beneath Her by Mary Ellen Taylor
It’s been seven years since a tragic diving accident took her mother’s life, leaving Tula Cassidy with a crushing fear of the sea. The ocean she once loved is no longer a part of her. And she can’t imagine it ever will be again.
Until her return to the Outer Banks changes everything.
While clearing out an old beach house, Tula receives a mysterious manuscript about the Oceanus. The passenger ship’s final voyage ended in disaster in 1942, and its underwater wreckage ultimately became her mother’s final resting place.
As Tula unravels the ship’s haunting history, she uncovers not only an unexpected family connection, but also a story of survival that helps her understand her own journey toward healing.
With help from Nathan, the charming dive instructor she left behind years ago, Tula faces her deepest fears to unlock the secrets of both past and present. Sometimes the greatest journeys begin when we find the courage to dive back in.
John of John by Douglas Stuart
Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides to find that little has changed except for him.
He returns to the windswept croft and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother.
Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair, strange clothes, and seeming unwillingness to be Saved.
But Cal isn't the only one in the croft house who is keeping secrets.
As lambing season turns to shearing season, the threads holding together the community together become increasingly frayed, and nothing will remain as it was before.
Good People by Patmeena Sabit
Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family. What’s the truth? Depends on who you ask.
The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Prosperous, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.
When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling and the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?
Like a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it is a riveting, provocative, and haunting story of family—sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most.
He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive.
But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?
And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world.
Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.
Lady X by Molly Fader
Los Angeles, 2024. After learning that her A-list actor husband sent explicit photos to multiple girls on social media, Margot Cooper runs away from the world—and the paparazzi—by fleeing to her childhood home with her teenage daughter in tow.
But home isn’t the sanctuary Margot was hoping for. In a cardboard box in the corner of the attic, she finds damning evidence of an infamous urban legend, the mysterious vigilante “Lady X”—including a blurry newspaper photo of a woman who looks an awful lot like Margot’s mother.
New York City, 1977. In the midst of an infamous summer, Ginger Daughtry and her two beloved roommates are able to shield one another from the chaos—until one of them is assaulted. Astounded by the lack of response from police, the young women decide to engage in some light payback, signing their handiwork as “Lady X.”
Soon copycats appear, and a movement inspired by acts of vandalism against terrible men spirals out of control, with criminals running amok under the guise of the enigmatic Lady X. When a body is found fallen—or pushed—from five stories high, the hunt reaches a boiling point.
Little Wonder by Sophie Chen Keller
Song is a nobody—just a food delivery worker from a village in Northeast China—but her son, River, is a little wonder.
At the age of four, he toddles to a piano and taps out his favorite song. At eight, he masters Liszt’s three Liebestraume; at ten, he blazes through the complete set of Chopin’s études. And at every step, through the valleys of loss, illness, and poverty, Song is there to light his way—until finally, at the age of eleven, River is invited to study with a preeminent teacher in Beijing.
But in the chaos of Beijing Railway Station on the busiest day of the year, Song faces every mother’s nightmare: She loses her grip on River’s little hand and is unable to find him after a desperate, harrowing search.
Over the next days, weeks, and eventually, years, Song and River fight to forge a path back to each other as they carve out new lives that carry them farther apart. An evocative exploration of a mother’s love and a son’s yearning, Little Wonder takes us on an extraordinary journey through a modern Beijing that pulses with the music of humanity and its impossible—and impossibly brave—hopes.
As every musician knows: You start in one key. You wander to other keys, strange and distant places. But in the end, you always come back home.
Life: A Love Story by Elizabeth Berg
As ninety-two-year-old Florence "Flo" Greene nears the end of her life, she writes a letter to Ruthie, the woman who grew up next door to her, describing the items Flo is leaving Ruthie in her will.
But as it goes on, telling surprising stories about those “little” things Flo will leave behind (What could possibly be the worth of a rubber band kept in a matchbox tied up in red ribbon?), an unforgettable portrait of the life she has lived emerges.
The letter starts off as an autobiography in things, but it turns out to do much more than that: ultimately, it will transform Flo and those around her.
In the time she has left, Flo decides to take herself up on tiny dares. She encourages Ruthie to reconsider her impending divorce by sharing a startling, long-buried secret about her own perfect-seeming marriage.
Flo has never had a pedicure before now, and as long as she's going to a beauty parlor, she arranges to have a blue streak put in her hair, too.
And as these adventures lead her to make new friends, Flo helps them, too, find the fulfillment that living a full life has led her to understand.
Wake-Up Calls by Mariah Stewart
Kit Porterfield is coping with the upheaval of her personal life when another shock blindsides her. Maxine Meadows, an aunt she never knew existed, has bequeathed to her a rustic campground in Maine. With it comes a long-buried family secret that Kit’s late mother took great pains to hide for her entire life.
When Kit arrives to tenuously claim her inheritance, she learns the town’s history and finds the lakeside sporting camp and its beautiful wooded acres in need of restoration to their former glory.
But it’s Kit’s own history that compels her to stay, and she’s not returning home until she uncovers the secrets that tore two sisters apart so many years ago.
Kit soon discovers clues in old photographs and in the tale of a tragic and enduring love story, but the most startling revelations are yet to come.
For Kit, they could be the path to understanding the mystery that defined her mother’s life—and her own.
Leave Your Mess at Home by Tolani Akinola
The Longe siblings are really botching their parents' American Dream.
Sola Longe, eldest daughter, estranged from the family, is secretly back home in Chicago for the first time in a decade. She’s a newly single and recently disgraced influencer trying to quietly put her life back together again. The other three Longe siblings aren't doing much better.
Anjola is in love with her best friend, who just got engaged to someone else; Karen, a college junior and the baby of the family, is grappling with her sexuality and self-image; and Ola, the golden child with a baby of his own on the way, is questioning his marriage and how to raise a Black son in America.
Sola’s unexpected return sets them on a crash course towards each other, and when the four siblings find themselves together again at their Nigerian immigrant parents' Thanksgiving table, a decade’s worth of secrets and a lifetime of resentments explode to the fore.
In the wreckage of their fateful reunion, each Longe is forced to reckon with the past, take stock of what really matters, and find a way back to each other.
A Far-Flung Life by M.L. Stedman
Remote Western Australia, 1958: here, for generations, the MacBrides have lived on a vast sheep station, Meredith Downs. It is a million acres, an ocean of arid land.
On an ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo.
In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered.
And then, tragedy revisits when a twist of consequences claims the life of one sibling, and leads another to give up everything for the sake of an innocent child.
Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide.
The secrets at the heart of this gutting and beautiful story force him to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness.
The House of Hidden Letters by Izzy Broom
For sale: Greek cottage. One euro.
Skye MacKinnon is desperate for an escape.
When she wins a lottery to buy a run-down cottage on a Greek island for only one euro, Skye jumps at the chance to get out of England and start over.
As she unlocks the tattered blue door of her whitewashed new cottage, the sun-kissed sea glinting in the bay outside her windows, Skye immediately feels like she’s found her true home.
Skye and the other lottery winners—the first residents in these houses since the 1940s—form a tight-knit group, finding in one another the strong relationships they’d been missing in their own lives.
When Skye and local contractor Andreas find a set of mysterious letters, they begin to unravel the history of the prior residents, and the truth about life on Folegandros during World War II.
Good Joy, Bad Joy by Mikki Brammer
For over eighty years, Joy Bridport has played by the rules: she's been a devoted wife and mother, contributing to the community in her small Hudson Valley town.
But her quiet existence is jolted when she learns that her best friend, Hazel, only has months left to live. Hazel has always been the more adventurous one of their duo, and she seems at peace with all that she’s squeezed out of her long life.
Yet Joy realizes she can’t say the same.
Determined to live boldly and make the most of the time that she and Hazel have left together, Joy steps outside of her comfort zone―and into a bit of trouble.
But as her foray into rule-breaking escalates into committing petty crime, Joy must consider what kind of legacy she wants to leave behind, and whether there's a way for her to embrace the liberation that "Bad Joy" offers without losing all that she holds dear.
Under Water by Tara Menon
An intense, atmospheric novel about the devastating power of friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic events
After Marissa loses her mother at six, the most intimate relationship of her life begins. Her marine biologist father, determined to channel his grief into completing his wife’s research, whisks her across the globe to Thailand.
There she meets Arielle, and a fairytale friendship takes hold. During the week, the girls live at the resort owned by Arielle’s parents; on the weekends they join the tight-knit community of researchers on a nearby island.
Together the girls discover the fragile wonders of its reefs, forests, and beaches. Together they learn to dive into the deep, holding their breath for minutes at a time, as effortlessly synchronized as the manta rays they come to know by name. Together they learn to swim their way out of danger. But then comes a wave Arielle can’t outpace, leaving Marissa gutted with loss.
Years later, Marissa is back in New York, adrift and haunted by the memory of her friend. Over the course of two fateful days, as another cataclysm approaches the city and the past comes flooding back, she discovers how to sustain herself in a precarious world.
The Heart of Everything by Marc Levy
There’s nothing too unusual about a father asking his son for a favor—unless, of course, the father in question has been dead for five years.
Thomas, a young virtuoso pianist living a quiet, carefully structured life in France, is stunned when his late father, Raymond, suddenly appears in his home. He’s not a ghost in the traditional sense—he’s real enough to ask for help.
His request? That Thomas travel with him to San Francisco to find Camille, the long-lost love of his life.
For Thomas, it’s as surreal as it sounds. And yet…it might be his last-in-a-lifetime chance to know his father as a man and to square the regrets of the past.
Together they embark on a five-thousand-mile journey that questions the very nature of existence, proves that love never fades, and rekindles the curious, heart-tugging bond between a parent and child that somehow endures beyond death.
The Museum of Second Chances by Jo Leevers
Every morning, Evelyn Silver walks the shoreline before the rest of Portheast wakes, gathering what the tide leaves behind. Broken cups.
Lost trinkets. Objects others have discarded. In her small Museum of Maritime Curiosities, each one earns its place—because to Evelyn, every forgotten thing deserves to have its story told.
At the heart of the museum lies her most precious possession: a fragment of Cornish lace, found pinned to her blanket when she was abandoned as a newborn. For over sixty years, she has kept it close, hoping someone might one day recognise it and tell her who she really is.
So when the local council threatens to close the museum, Evelyn stands to lose far more than her livelihood. Forced out of her solitude, she rallies the community around the museum's curious collection—and as the objects begin to give up their secrets, lives start to intertwine in ways nobody expected.
Because sometimes, the most precious things aren't lost at all. They're simply waiting to be claimed.
More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen
No one knows you like your book club.
High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they’ve become her closest friends and, along with her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life.
Her students, her fraught relationship with her mother, her struggles with IVF—Polly’s book club friends have heard about it all.
But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. It is clear to Polly that this match is a mistake, but still she cannot help but comb through her family history for answers.
Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.
Written with Anna Quindlen’s trademark warmth, humor, and insight into the power of love and hope, More Than Enough explores how we find ourselves again and again through the relationships that define us.
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud's open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits.
Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone―or something―is monitoring the town’s citizens.
Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate.
Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep.
No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy―one that may just bring them closer together.
The Shark House by Sara Ackerman
Hawai’i, 1998. When a string of rare shark attacks unsettles the once-peaceful Kohala coast, marine biologist Minnow Gray is called in to investigate. Known for her uncanny connection to sharks, she is the island’s best hope for uncovering why the attacks are happening—a mystery that has both the local community and the tourism industry on edge—and for determining whether the same great white still haunts the coastline.
Witness to an unspeakable tragedy involving a white shark and her own father, Minnow has carried a darkness with her ever since. She knows, deep inside, that unlocking the memories of that long-ago morning is the only way to truly heal. And as she searches for answers, the past and present collide, revealing shocking and unexpected truths that cut deep as the sea itself.
The longer she's in Hawai'i, the more she comes to see that her journey here might be as much about finding herself as finding the shark.
An atmospheric exploration of the intricate/fragile dance between humans and sharks, set against a backdrop of stunning Hawaiian landscapes and deep-sea danger, The Shark House is a tale of resilience, redemption, and the raw power of the natural world—and of the courage to face what lies within.
Dive in, if you dare.
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.
Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime. Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.
My Friends by Fredrik Backman
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.
Life, and Death, and Giants by Ron Rindo
Gabriel Fisher was born an orphan, weighing eighteen pounds and measuring twenty-seven inches long.
No one in Lakota, Wisconsin, knows what to make of him. He walks at eight months, communicates with animals, and seems to possess extraordinary athletic talent.
But when the older brother who has been caring for him dies, Gabriel is taken in by his devout Amish grandparents who disapprove of all the attention and hide him away from the English world.
But it’s hard to hide forever when you’re nearly eight feet tall.
At seventeen, Gabriel is spotted working in a hay field by the local football coach. What happens next transforms not only Gabriel’s life but the lives of everyone he meets.
The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb
Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin.
And that’s before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart. Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness and elemental kinship with a prison librarian who sees his light and some of his fellow offenders, including a tender-hearted cellmate and a troubled teen desperate for a role model.
Buoyed by them and by his mother’s enduring faith in him, Corby begins to transcend the boundaries of his confinement, sustained by his hope that mercy and reconciliation might still be possible.
Can his crimes ever be forgiven by those he loves?
The Second Chance Bus Stop by Ally Zetterberg
Edith has Alzheimer’s. The idea that she will someday forget her son, her life, even her self, plagues her constantly. So there is something important she must do beforehand: she has to find Sven, the love of her life she was supposed to meet on a bus bench twenty-seven years ago and run away with.
Her son, Blade, is struggling to keep an eye on her. His mother’s full-time caregiver, he resents the fact that he gave up most of his life to look after her. But what wouldn’t he do for his mother? Track down her decades-old flame before her mind fails her? Sure, he can do that.
Sophia is fiercely working to keep her business afloat. Her uncle left his flower shop to her and her brothers after he died, and she needs to show her family that the business is worth saving. So when an opportunity comes along that takes her all over Sweden, she can’t say no.
While Edith is desperately trying to hold on to her memories, she discovers friendship as she sits daily at the bus stop. While Blade is out looking for Sven, he learns to embrace his relationship with his mother more fully. While Sophia is fighting to keep her dream alive, she comes to terms with the therapies that were forced upon her in response to her autism diagnosis. Life is happening all around them, and like in life, there’s always still good to be found.
The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett
At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already.
But when PJ reads the obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again. Filled with a new enthusiasm for life, PJ decides he’s going to drive across the country to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona to win Michelle back.
Before PJ can hit the road, tragedy strikes Pondville, leaving PJ the sudden guardian of his estranged brother’s grandchildren. Anyone else would be deterred from the planned trip, but PJ figures the orphaned kids might benefit from getting out of town. PJ also thinks he can ask Sophie, his adult daughter who’s adrift in her twenties, to come along to babysit. And there’s one more surprise addition to the roster: Pancakes, a former nursing home therapy cat with a knack of predicting death, who recently turned up outside PJ’s home.
This could be the second chance PJ has long hoped for—a fresh shot at love and parenting—but does he have the strength to do both those things again? It’s very possible his heart can’t take it.
The One and Only Vivian Stone by Melissa O'Connor
After her grandmother’s death, thirty-something Margot DuBois prepares to sell the house quickly so she can go back to her predictable life in Santa Barbara. There, no one knows she used to write and how not succeeding wrecked her confidence.
While cleaning out the attic, she comes across eight unlabeled cassette tapes. Unable to use the damaged tape player, she calls in a favor from Leo—her first love and first epic heartbreak—and they strike a deal: he’ll fix the player if he can hear what’s on the tapes. When they manage to listen, the two are shocked to hear the voice of comedic legend Vivian Stone. Why did she record these tapes and how did Margot’s grandmother get them?
Between listening to Vivian recount everything from her forbidden love for Hollywood’s leading actor, to working under a misogynistic exec, to her chemistry with her costar-turned-husband on TV, Margot and Leo fall down a memory lane of their own. Margot is inspired by Vivian’s tenacity and courage to keep fighting for the life she wants, but everything changes when Vivian reveals a secret tied to her past in this moving exploration of how it’s never too late to start over.