These three books at once tender and unsentimental, heartbreaking and humorous. Exploring grief, love, and identity, you’ll cry till you laugh and laugh till you cry. Kristen Arnett’s debut novel, Mostly Dead Things, finds Jessa grieving for her father while trying to keep the family taxidermy business afloat, trying to figure out how she fits in with her family. Profound and deceptively funny, Morgan Parker’s Magical Negro is an archive of everyday Blackness, exploring the troubling tropes and stereotypes of Black Americans and connecting themes of loneliness, displacement, grief, ancestral trauma, and objectification. Kimberly King Parsons’s debut story collection Black Light, longlisted for the National Book Award, explores the darkest hollows of desire, from first love to addiction. Moderated by Megan Labrise of Kirkus Reviews.
