From the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage comes a tale of sisterhood, mothers, and daughters in the American South. Vernice and Anne are two motherless girls who grow up as best friends in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, but whose lives are set on very different trajectories. Vernice eventually goes to Spelman, where she enters into a world of affluent and connected Black women. And then there’s Anne. The hole left by her mother’s absence sends her on an all-consuming journey, which takes her down a road of love and hardship. Throughout it all, we see the various permutations and complexities of women and girls in community.

You might love Lauren Groff for her novels Fates and Furies and Matrix, but this author is also well-known for her short stories, and Brawler is Groff’s first short story collection since her award-winning collection Florida, published in 2018. These nine stories cover a wide range of settings, from the 1950s to the present day, from (of course) Florida to California. All of the stories explore human nature and “the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels.” Just like Groff’s other works, you can expect these stories to be beautifully written and endlessly quotable. —Emily Martin

If you went through (or are still in) an Egyptology phase, enjoy books that reimagine the stories of maligned women (Circe, Kaikeyi, Malinalli) or read Stacy Schiff’s brilliant biography of the Queen of the Nile and wondered why this fascinating woman’s legacy has been reduced to seduction and womanly wiles (sexism, it’s sexism), you should probably be as excited for this book as I am. I’ve been waiting for someone to flesh out Cleopatra’s story through fiction, and Saara El-Arifi has answered my readerly prayers. —Vanessa Diaz

Inspired by real-life choreographer Katherine Dunham’s trip to Jamaica to explore Caribbean dance, Where the False Gods Dwell tells not just the story of a legendary 1930s choreographer or a Caribbean adventure, but the sisterhood of the four women who come together to help each other when they need it most. Because even as they battle their own private struggles, a deadly hurricane is hurtling directly their way. —Rachel Brittain

This final novel by Nobel Prize winning author Mario Vargas Llosa heads back to his homeland Peru, when the writer Toño Azpilcueta hears a perfromance by elusive guitarist Lalo Molfino. The performance shows Toño the importance of Peruvian music—specifically the vals genre—for society. Now, if he could just write the biography of Lalo, he could capture and share the most important parts of Peruvian culture.

Mediha, Zainab, and Ishtar are sisters, but they haven’t felt like family for some time. When an old painting of their father’s is uncovered, they, along with Zainab’s son, a war correspondent named Nizar, are reunited for the first time in many years. The discovery of their late father’s painting is just the push the family needed to finally face the traumas, betrayals, and heartbreak that pulled them apart in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq. —Rachel Brittain