"Mistakes By the Lake by Tampa author (and good friend) Brian Petkash is a newly published collection of nine short stories and one novella, each set in the city of Cleveland or, in the case of the opening story, the forbidding wilderness that would one day become Cleveland. Petkash's tales are often grim, but humor worms its way in, as well, tying together stories of loss and longing from many different epochs. Recommended for dedicated Clevelanders, the Cuyahoga-curious or just anyone who enjoys sharp prose." —Cooper Levey-Baker, senior editor

“I’ve been going through a lot of old books at home prior to donating them, and one I happened upon that I had somehow never read is Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson, by William McKeen, which came out in 2008. It’s a flashback to those heady days of the New Journalism of the 1960s when writers like Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese and others were changing the style of newspaper and magazine writing, but it’s also a more personal glimpse into Thompson’s often riotously troubled life—given his predilections for guns, booze and fights, he must have been challenging to put up with!” —Kay Kipling, executive editor

"Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. It’s about a stiff-upper-lip retired British Army officer who falls in love with a Pakistani shop owner. It’s warm, sweet and funny, and at the same time addresses serious issues of bigotry and nationalism. I loved it." —Ilene Denton, senior editor

"The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett, is unputdownable. The story is about two identical twin sisters living in a racist small town in Louisiana in the 1950s, and how race and identity inform both their paths in life and that of their daughters. It's about starting over and reinventing ourselves, and how our past affects our present and future—ideas that have never felt more relevant than they do today." —Megan McDonald, digital editor