The Tigers Wife by Tea Obreth

The Tiger's Wife is set in an unnamed Balkan country after a civil war. Natalia is a doctor who travels across the new border to inoculate orphans. While there, locals dig up a vineyard looking for a dead relative. Her visit also coincides with her grandfather's death. She knew he was dying of cancer, but she doesn't understand why he traveled to a remote village to die alone. While trying to resolve this mystery, she remembers two of the tales he used to tell her. The first was a "deathless man," who never seemed to grow old. The other was about a tiger that escaped from a zoo during the Nazi invasion. It found a home in the forest outside the village. The villagers feared the tiger, except for two: an abused, deaf-mute woman, and a young boy who would become her grandfather. Tea Obreht's debut novel has received positive reviews with the New York Times saying, "Ms. Obreht has not only made a precocious debut, but she has also written a richly textured and searing novel."

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

In Sing You Home, Max and Zoe Baxter's marriage collapses under the strain of infertility, leaving behind three frozen embryos from in-vitro fertilization attempts. Zoe's life leads in a new direction, an attraction to a woman named Vanessa and a faux marriage in a bowling alley. Max turns to drink and moves in with his religious brother and his wife. Eventually, he comes under the influence of an ultraconservative preacher. Zoe wants to pursue starting a family with Vanessa, so she asks Max for his consent to use the frozen embryos. Spurred on by his new pastor, Max sues Zoe to have the embryos given to his brother and his wife instead. Jodi Picoult's novel has received positive reviews with BookReporter.com saying, "Regardless of where you stand on the issue of same-sex marriage and the ability of these couples to raise children, you cannot help but be compelled by the desires of Zoe, Max and Vanessa. The court case and its outcome is continuously unpredictable and will have readers glued to their chairs right up to the startling conclusion."

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

With Started Early, Took My Dog, Kate Atkinson brings back private investigator Jackson Brodie for the fourth time. He's been hired by an adoptee to find her birth parents, but he's also enjoying his time in rural parts of England. When he encounters a man abusing his dog, he attacks the man and takes the dog. Retired police officer Tracy Waterhouse sees a prostitute abusing a four-year-old girl, and in a moment of frustration and madness, buys the girl. Witnessing this transaction is Tilly, a soap opera actress suffering from moments of dementia. All their stories apparently are connected to a murder and missing child case from the 1970s. Kate Atkinson's novel has received positive reviews with the St. Petersburg Times saying, "She layers plots and time periods with consummate skill, creating novels that work like elegant jazz improvisations, taking us onto amazing yet believable paths that eventually weave together into an even more astonishing result. Each separate plot in Started Early, Took My Dog plays in its own way with the same themes: lost children, lost parents, found families. Themes as old as storytelling, but Atkinson, as always, brings something fresh to them."

Say Her Name by Fransisco Goldman

Say Her Name is Francisco Goldman's fictional memoir of his romance and short marriage to the much younger Aura Estrada. Two years after they were married, Aura died in a body surfing accident. This novel not only chronicles her life and their short time together, but the depths of his grief and his desire to keep her memory alive. Goldman revels in telling her story, and questions his role in her accidental death. Say Her Name has received positive reviews with the Boston Globe saying, "To call Francisco Goldman's book about the death of his young Mexican wife an elegy hardly represents it. Lament is closer, but insufficient. It is a chain of eruptions, a meteor shower; not just telling but bombarding us in a loss that glitters. With the power and fine temper of its writing, it is as much poem as prose."

Emily, Alone

In Emily, Alone, Emily Maxwell is an elderly widow living a mostly isolated life. Her children don't visit enough and she's outlived many of her friends. She has a few rituals, one of them being accompanying her sister-in-law Arlene to a two-for-one breakfast buffet. When Arlene collapses at the buffet, Emily is forced to do something she hasn't done in decades, drive a car. This simple change to her life brings a freedom and independence to her life that she hadn't realized she had missed. In many ways, though, Emily's life stays rooted in the past while life moves on all around her. Stewart O'Nan's novel has received positive reviews with the Boston Globe saying, "This quiet novel unfolds in chapters that feel like short stories, with a pause inviting reflection at the end of each. The effect is one of richness and insight. At times, Emily feels that death would be a welcome caller, and while preparing her children for that eventuality, the novel ends with the sense that she's reluctant to go. The reader is equally reluctant to see her story end."