Our Missing Hearts is a gripping novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear. Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left when he was nine years old, and her books have since been banned.

Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, pulling him into a quest to find her. His journey takes him through the many folktales she once shared, into an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he uncovers the truth about his mother and the future that awaits them both.

Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, exploring the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore searing injustice. It delves into the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children and the power of art to create change.

Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying book of essays—some as short as a paragraph; some as long as five pages—that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives.

His is a meditation on delight that takes a clear-eyed view of the complexities, even the terrors, in his life, including living in America as a black man; the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture; the loss of those he loves.

Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: the way Botan Rice Candy wrappers melt in your mouth, the volunteer crossing guard with a pronounced tremor whom he imagines as a kind of boat-woman escorting pedestrians across the River Styx, a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, pickup basketball games, the silent nod of acknowledgment between black people.

And more than any other subject, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world—his garden, the flowers in the sidewalk, the birds, the bees, the mushrooms, the trees.

This is not a book of how-to or inspiration, though it could be read that way. The Book of Delights is about our connection to the world, to each other, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. Gay’s pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.

Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution after witnessing soldiers brutally beat his father. Selling off his parents' jewelry, he paid for passage to the United States. Now, he finds himself running a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C. His only companions are two fellow African immigrants who share his feelings of frustration and bitter nostalgia for their home continent.

He realizes that his life has turned out completely different and far more isolated from the one he had imagined for himself years ago. Soon, Sepha's neighborhood begins to change. Hope comes in the form of new neighbors—Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter—who become his friends and remind him of what having a family is like for the first time in years.

But when the neighborhood's newfound calm is disturbed by a series of racial incidents, Sepha may lose everything all over again. Told in a haunting and powerful first-person narration, the novel casts the streets of Washington, D.C., and Addis Ababa through Sepha's eyes. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is a deeply affecting and unforgettable debut novel about what it means to lose a family and a country—and what it takes to create a new home.