What to Read Next: Earth Day Edition

Smart and unexpected, funny and unforgettable, big-hearted and hopeful, The Last Animal is a story of mothers and daughters, teenage sisters, love and grief (and consequences), big ideas and bigger dreams, and a woolly mammoth.

Sisterhood is the stuff of fairytales, and Julia Phillips has written a wild story about the collision between people’s dreams and animals’ realities.

Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward is always brilliant, and this is no exception. Equally devastating and uplifting, this is the story of slavery and Black Americans’ reclamation of the South. Inspired by Dante’s Inferno, this story is told in gorgeous, lyrical prose.

Sheila Heti (Alphabetical Diaries) questions life and death, art and the making of it, in this exquisite novel about the creation of the world and our part in it.

Part desert survival story, part examination of grief — Melissa Broder mixes the absurd with the profoundly human in a feat of imagination. Weird, tender and wild, this is an unforgettable journey into the unknown.

Heartbreak, hilarity and a house full of bees. Jen Beagin pulls us into a messy love story and introduces us to an even messier protagonist — one we can’t help but love.

We’ll follow Jesmyn Ward anywhere — even back to Hurricane Katrina. From the tense days leading up to the storm and its devastating aftermath, Ward introduces us to an unforgettable, resilient community.

Lauren Groff’s take on the classic survival story is a gorgeous sprint of a novel. This breathless story reveals the abject terror and absolute beauty of our natural world. Don’t be surprised if you lose yourself in the wild of the pages.

Sometimes a short synopsis is all you need: A detective octopus helps a grieving aquarium employee solve the mystery of her missing son. It’s certainly unique in vessel, but the themes of coping, recovering, and moving forward resonate whether you have two arms or eight.

The woods can’t hide everything — the family dysfunction of Succession meets the intrigue of Liane Moriarty in this story of money and land, legacy and inheritance.

Journey through the jungle in award-winning author Ann Patchett’s wonderfully wild novel of sacrifice in the name of discovery.

Slow down and smell the skunks! Fiona Warnick explores the odd in-between of feeling not quite grown and not quite a child in this novel of crushes and coming-of-age, friendship and its follies.

Have you ever wondered what its like to live in a beehive? Buzzing with a fearsome winged heroine and a swarm of tension, this is a zinger of a tale.

The novel that earned her a Pulitzer Prize nomination, Eowyn Ivy takes us deep into snowy woods inspired by Russian folklore.

For those of us on #AppalachiaTok comes an atmospheric and twisting tale centered on two sisters growing up in the 1980s. Gothic and propulsive, this one will keep us out of the woods for a while.

The author of Land of Milk and Honey takes us to the American West in this story of family and sacrifice, home and belonging.

Imbolo Mbue’s remarkable novel about the lasting effects of greed, the power of community and the importance of environmentalism. This is a story of the force of standing up for what’s right in the face of unbelievable odds.

From the author of Spirit Car and Beloved Child comes a novel that ties the past to the present through the lives of four extraordinary women.

Step aside, Florida man. There’s a new author in town and this speculative novel of family mythologies, militias and mystery is brilliant and bewitching. State of Paradise will have you second-guessing that upcoming summer vacation…

Gardening just got even more interesting. Camille T. Dungy’s roots revival is a true story of resilience and community through a plot of land that represents way more than just plants.

American Book Award-winner, Emily Raboteu’s (Searching for Zion) collection of essays on environmentalism, motherhood and social justice is an indelible book for anyone looking to understand their place on our planet.

Our 2020 Book of the Year is a mesmerizing work of essays and tender illustrations, meditations on nature, cumulative in effect; nature as memoir, nature as metaphor, nature as simply and joyously itself. Each chapter captures a moment, each centered around a different natural phenomenon and charts the reverberations of the lived experience it evokes, be it family, identity or the notion of belonging. She urges us to start small to “start with what we loved as kids and see where that leads us.”