The Art of Being Human: Literary Must-Reads

30 May 2025

Experience six unforgettable novels that capture the full spectrum of emotions—life’s messy, beautiful chaos filled with laughter, love, and a touch of magic.

Swamp-Billy Chronicles

by Nancy Holder Pressley

Release Date: February 14, 2025

“Swamp-Billy” is a unique blend of humor, heart, and insight—a collection of short stories and essays reflecting the life of a woman born inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway and shaped by the rolling hills of East Tennessee. In these tales, you’ll find the open-minded skepticism of the nation’s capital mingling with the charm and wit of the South.

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Hello Stranger: Poetry (Inside The Circle of The Sun…)

by Aubrey E. Drummond

Release Date: April 23, 2025

Take an emotional journey, from the pain of losing love, to a prayer to love again. Search for hope in this bitter world, or wish for the gift of flight to free ourselves from it? Become lost in the voices that creep into our minds, and learn just how it feels to be Black, living in today’s society.

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The Book of Records

by Madeleine Thien

Release Date: May 20, 2025

Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China.

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Growing Twigs

by Charles Tabb

Release Date: May 20, 2025

When fifteen-year-old Derek Robertson asks his friend Grayson Wingate to help him commit burglary, both boys see it as a daring adventure. The reality, however, brings the possibility of dire consequences. The crime is easily solved, and now both boys face jail time.

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The Doorman

by Chris Pavone

Release Date: May 20, 2025

Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York’s cultural elite. Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth has the perfect-looking everything, all except her husband, whom she’d quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where all the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is iron-clad, and Emily can’t bring herself to leave him. Yet.

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The Irish Daughter

by Daisy O’Shea

Release Date: May 15, 2025

Standing on the cliff above the wild Irish sea, Hannah wipes a tear from her eye and thinks about the man she called ‘Da’. She was never his daughter. Hannah has been lied to her whole life by everyone she loved. Will she ever find where she truly belongs?

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