In the near future in Kolkata, India, a family prepares to immigrate to the United States as climate refugees. When a thief breaks into their home in search of food, his life becomes inextricably entwined with theirs as, over the course of one week, they all struggle to survive with their hope and humanity intact. It’s a powerful story made all the more urgent by Majumdar’s use of subtle, specific details and masterfully restrained writing. Nominated for the Kirkus Prize and National Book Award for Fiction, this is a story about a specific moment in history that will resonate for years to come. —Rebecca Joines Schinsky

When you promise to love your partner “in good times and in bad,” you’re probably not imagining that the bad times will include 117 days lost at sea in a tiny lifeboat with a dwindling food supply and no way to call for help. In 1973, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey accidentally put their vows to the test when a whale rammed a hole into the yacht they were sailing from England to New Zealand. This is the gripping and unforgettable tale of how they endured illness, dehydration, near-starvation, and every emotion on the spectrum and managed to stay married for decades after. It’s an unbelievable story masterfully told. —Rebecca Joines Schinsky

If Daisy Jones brought you to Taylor Jenkins Reid and Evelyn Hugo made you love her, then Atmosphere can only be described as Taylor Jenkins Reid at her very best. It’s a romance and a character study, exploring what life was like during a particular moment for a very particular set of people: queer women working on the space shuttle program at NASA in the 1970s and 80s. It’s beautiful, moving, and, at times, heart-stopping. Whether describing moments of Joan’s life in triumph or disaster, Reid will have you wrapped around her finger. You won’t be able to look away—and you’d never want to. —Rachel Brittain

Kitamura starts us out with a tight and masterful portrayal of people playing roles, and thinking about playing roles. Then, at about the halfway point, the stakes are changed, not in terms of register but in terms of what stories are and can do. 

Like many novels that contest and break expectations, Audition is not a general-purpose recommendation. (I would expect it to have the lowest Goodreads star rating of any book on this list, for example.) But for readers who are interested in what else is possible in a book, or hell, what else is possible in a life, Audition is something other than satisfying—it is confounding, provocative, and new. —Jeff O’Neal

All the coziness and character of a Becky Chambers novel with the wit and charm of Martha Wells. I never knew I needed a book about robots running a restaurant in a near-future San Francisco, but Automatic Noodle proved I did. I would die for these robots—or at least leave them lots of really, really good reviews. —Rachel Brittain

Susan Choi’s sixth novel is a masterpiece, a family saga wrapped in a mystery that haunts its characters. Young Louisa and her father are walking along a beach at night, carrying flashlights. Hours later, Louisa is found alone, barely alive, and her father is never seen again. As Louisa grows up with her mother, the loss of her father hovering over their lives, parts of their pasts are revealed, including a long-held secret. Flashlight is a sharp examination of not only the physical loss of someone, but loss of place, estrangement, and loss of self, as Louisa and her mother carry around a grief with no end. It’s a stunning heart-puncher. —Liberty Hardy

This Harlem-set, Jazz Age historical novel tells the story of the nearly forgotten Jessie Redmon Fauset, who changed the course of Black American literature and American literature as a whole. She made history as the first Black woman Editor of The Crisis, the oldest Black magazine in the world, and became known as “The Midwife of the Harlem Renaissance” because of her discovery and mentoring of writers like Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen. She wasn’t without her drama, though—it was well-known that she and her very married boss, W.E.B. Du Bois, were carrying on in the Biblical sense. And this book dives headfirst into the mess. —Erica Ezeifedi