If I Survive You

by Jonathan Escoffery

Fleeing to Miami after political violence consumes their native Kingston, a younger son of a Jamaican family, Trelawny, struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism and flat-out bad luck, clawing himself out of homelessness with a series of odd, often hilarious jobs.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

by Kate Beaton

Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush-part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed.

Honor: A Novel

by Thrity N. Umrigar

An Indian American journalist returns home to cover the story of a Hindi woman attacked by her own family for marrying a Muslim and deals with a society that places more weight on tradition than one’s heart.

Small Things Like These

by Claire Keegan

In a small Irish town in 1985, coal merchant and family man, Bill Furlong, while delivering an order to the local convent, makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.