Your TBR Needs Backup: Trending Books to Help You Crush Your Reading Goal

The time for lessons is over. War is here. Violet Sorrengail has survived nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, but survival isn’t enough anymore. With enemies closing in from all sides, she must venture beyond Navarre’s borders to forge alliances—before it’s too late. The journey will push her to the edge, testing her strength, her wit, and her heart. But the truth she seeks is as dangerous as the war itself. A secret powerful enough to shatter everything she loves. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And only Violet can find the truth that will change the fate of Navarre forever. The storm is coming. And not everyone will survive.

On a rain-drenched bridge in East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge, ready to disappear. But before he can jump, a voice calls to him—Grazina, an elderly widow slipping into the fog of dementia. With nowhere else to go, Hai becomes her caretaker, forging an unlikely bond built on memory, loss, and the quiet mercies of human connection. As he navigates Grazina’s shifting world, he is forced to confront his own ghosts—of family, of love, of the life he thought was beyond his reach. Sweeping yet intimate, The Emperor of Gladness is a luminous meditation on survival, chosen family, and the stories we tell ourselves to keep going. What does it mean to be seen, to be saved, to start again? Ocean Vuong’s latest novel dares to ask.

Four women. Four lives entwined by love, longing, and the weight of their choices. Chiamaka, a Nigerian travel writer in America, is alone in the midst of the pandemic, haunted by past lovers and the roads not taken. Zikora, her best friend, has always been in control—until heartbreak forces her to lean on the one person she never expected. In Nigeria, Chiamaka’s cousin Omelogor is a powerhouse in finance, but as she rises in the corporate world, she begins to question the woman she has become. And Kadiatou, a housekeeper striving for a better life in America, faces an unimaginable hardship that threatens everything she has built. Dream Count is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at her finest—searing, luminous, and unflinchingly honest. What does it mean to love, to lose, and to dream again?

Before Microsoft. Before billions. Before changing the world—there was a kid obsessed with code. In Source Code: My Beginnings, Bill Gates shares, for the first time, the deeply personal story of how he became one of the most influential figures in technology and philanthropy. From his childhood in Seattle to late-night hacking sessions at a local computer center, Gates reflects on the friendships, family, and pivotal moments that shaped his drive and vision. This isn’t just a memoir of success—it’s a candid look at failures, lessons learned, and the relentless curiosity that fueled a revolution. What sparks greatness? What fuels innovation? In Source Code, Bill Gates reveals the origins of a mind that reshaped the future.

A snowstorm. A journey. A truth buried beneath history’s silence. When Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon, she doesn’t hesitate. Inseon is injured and begs her to return to Jeju Island to save her beloved pet. But as Kyungha braves the brutal winter storm, she has no idea what awaits her at Inseon’s house—or the darkness she’s about to uncover. Blurring the line between dream and reality, We Do Not Part is a haunting tale of friendship, survival, and the weight of forgotten history. Han Kang, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Vegetarian, delivers a powerful novel that resurrects voices lost to time. In a world of snow and silence, some stories refuse to be forgotten.

Family, loyalty, and survival—when the flames rise, how far will you go? Roman Carruthers walked away from his small-town past, but when his father’s car crash lands him in a coma, he’s forced back to Jefferson Run. There, he finds his sister, Neveah, barely holding the family crematorium together, and his reckless younger brother, Dante, drowning in debt to dangerous men. Roman has money. He has connections. But what he doesn’t have is time. Because this wasn’t just an accident—someone wants his family destroyed. And when his last bargaining chip goes up in smoke, there’s only one thing left to trade: himself. As Neveah digs into the mystery of their mother’s disappearance, Roman plays a deadly game with real gangsters. Because in Jefferson Run, everything burns.

A shattered heirloom. A family secret. A past that refuses to stay buried. When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. Her brother, Baz, lay lifeless on the floor—next to the remains of a centuries-old jar that had been in their family for generations. The crime was never solved. And as one of the only Black families in their wealthy New England enclave, the Freemans became an object of public speculation. Eighteen years later, fleeing from a media storm surrounding her high-profile breakup, Ebby escapes to France. But as she searches for peace, she finds herself drawn back to the jar and the history it carried. Because that handcrafted piece of pottery didn’t just hold the past. It may hold the answers she’s been searching for all along.

Sixty years apart. One chance to rewrite the past. When Haiwen spots Suchi in a California grocery store, time stops. She was his first love, the girl he left behind in Shanghai with nothing but a violin and a note: Forgive me. Now widowed and longing for connection, he sees this as fate. But for Suchi, survival has meant never looking back. Spanning decades and continents—from the war-torn streets of China to the song halls of Hong Kong, the refugee camps of Taiwan, and the bustling avenues of New York—Homeseeking is an epic tale of love, sacrifice, and the cost of choices made in a world unraveling. Can love survive six decades of war, distance, and silence? Or is home a place that exists only in memory?