8 Paperback Favorites that Take You Someplace New

Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple
When teenager Bee Fox achieves perfect grades and claims a promised family trip to Antarctica as a reward, her brilliant, anxious, and agoraphobic mother vanishes, leaving Bee to piece together the mystery of her disappearance through emails, receipts, hospital bills, and other ephemera of everyday life. A wildly entertaining and energetic romp, this novel takes the reader from the elitist techie suburbs of Seattle to the stunning vistas of Antarctica.
After receiving rave reviews from the likes of Jonathan Franzen and Gillian Flynn, Where’d You Go, Bernadette is also being adapted to film, with Richard Linklater set to direct.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
A classic collection of short stories set in the Vietnam War, this book has been called one of the best pieces of war literature ever written. The Things They Carried is an important and heartbreaking look at the experiences of soldiers both during war and after they return home. It will fascinate you, it will terrify you, and it will break your heart.

Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Sometimes going somewhere new can mean seeing a familiar place from a new perspective, and that’s the case with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s masterful, funny story about race, immigration, and love. A young couple in Nigeria is separated when one of them is able to immigrate to the United States but the other is not, and is forced to live the life of an undocumented immigrant in the United Kingdom. A decade and a half later, they find each other again in a significantly changed Nigeria.
Americanah is a love story that’s also social commentary, a book that’s warm and funny, fierce and biting, important and hugely enjoyable.

What Alice Forgot, by Liane Moriarty
A do-over: that’s one of the real unattainable experiences for people who don’t live in books. It’s also the premise of What Alice Forgot, a delicious romantic comedy about a 39-year-old soon-to-be-divorced mother of three who wakes up on the floor of a gym and can’t remember the last ten years. She’s also reverted back to her younger, playful self, and she just can’t understand how she somehow transformed into an incredibly skinny supermom with a failed marriage. A deeply entertaining ride through the land of second chances, What Alice Forgot is also being adapted for Hollywood by Whip It writer Shauna Cross and The Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel.

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
The circus is already a magical place, but Erin Morgenstern takes the fantastic to a new level in her smash debut novel. Set at the turn of the last century, The Night Circus is a love story set in a magical circus that only appears at night and contains all manner of wonders. Often likened to beloved books like Harry Potter, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, here is a book for every grownup who still loves fairy tales.

11/22/63, by Stephen King
What would you do if you could take a trip into the past…and change history? That’s the question presented to high school English teacher Jake Epping when a dying friend introduces him to a portal that leads directly to September 9, 1958 and asks him to take over his mission: stop JFK’s assassination. A romantic thriller that plunges the reader into Cold War-era America, 11/22/63 is about to be turned into a miniseries by J.J. Abrams, so now’s the time to catch up.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan
A 24-hour bookstore? Sold! Oh wait, there’s more? It turns out there’s actually a great deal to discover about the mysterious all-night bookstore at the heart of Sloan’s novel, where customers check out books but never buy them. A surprising adventure story, part high-tech shine and part fairy-tale whimsy, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore debuted to fantastic reviews and has been compared to the works of authors as divergent as Erin Morgenstern, Neal Stephenson, Haruki Murakami, and Dan Brown.

Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter
Travel to 1960’s Italy, to the set of Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra, and to the Hollywood of today in Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins. Set over the course of 50 years, the book begins with a beautiful dying starlet and spins away on an extravagant ride through the decades and around the world. It even features a visit from Richard Burton himself. A big-hearted book that’s both touching and entertaining, it blends romance, tragedy, Hollywood tell-all, and history into one gorgeous read.
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