Genevieve (Gwen) Kingston was just 11 years old when her mother passed away, leaving behind a chest filled with gifts and letters to celebrate the milestones of Gwen’s life and each of her birthdays until age 30. When DID I EVER TELL YOU? opens, just three packages remain: engagement, marriage and first baby. Tracing Gwen’s coming-of-age, the book reveals a treasure hunt, with each gift and letter unveiling more about her mother, her family and --- ultimately --- herself. Like CRYING IN H MART by Michelle Zauner and THE LAST LECTURE by Randy Pausch, DID I EVER TELL YOU? is a riveting book filled with unexpected twists and powerful life lessons. Through her mother’s fierce and courageous love, Gwen was granted the tools not only to move through grief but to cherish life.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events. Our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb and friendship.

Lauren Oyler has emerged as one of the most trenchant and influential critics of her generation, a talent whose judgments on works of literature have become notorious. But what is the significance of being a critic and consumer of media in today’s fraught environment? How do we understand ourselves, and each other, as space between the individual and the world seems to get smaller and smaller, and our opinions on books and movies seem to represent something essential about our souls? And, to put it bluntly, why should you care what she --- or anyone --- thinks? In her first collection of essays, Oyler writes about topics like the role of gossip in our exponentially communicative society, the rise and proliferation of autofiction, why we’re all so “vulnerable” these days, and her own anxiety.

Ever the dutiful Nigerian daughter, Joy Okafor has planned every aspect of her mother’s 70th birthday weekend on her own. As the Okafors slowly begin to arrive, Mama Mary goes to take a nap. But when the grandkids go to wake her, they find that she isn’t sleeping after all. Refusing to believe that her sister is gone-gone, Auntie Nancy declares that she has had a premonition that Mama Mary will rise again like Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. Desperate to believe that they’re about to witness a miracle, the family overhauls their birthday plans to welcome the Nigerian Canadian community, effectively spreading the word that Mama Mary is coming back. But skeptical Joy is struggling with the loss of her mother and not allowing herself to mourn just yet while going through the motions of planning a funeral that her aunt refuses to allow.

Camp counselor Cory Ansel --- who is 18 and aimless, and afraid to face her high-strung single mother’s disappointment --- is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is wealthy, divorced and magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo offers her a job, Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and the opiates manufactured by his company, she tells herself she’s in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help that only she can hear.

When the narrator of THE HEARING TEST, an artist in her late 20s, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with Sudden Deafness but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the specter of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her year --- a score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attuned --- while living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog. Through a series of fleeting and often humorous encounters --- with neighbors, an ex-lover, doctors, strangers, family members, faraway friends, and with the lives and works of artists, filmmakers, musicians and philosophers --- making meaning becomes a form of consolation and curiosity, a form of survival.

Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it: the exact amount of time they will be together. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over 20 years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, on the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake. But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t --- information that would break his heart if he found out.

Eight translators gather in the primeval forest home of the world-renowned Irena Rey. They are there to translate her magnum opus together, but within days of their arrival, Irena disappears. The translators embark on a frantic search, delving into ancient woods filled with strange flora, fauna and fungi and examining her enigmatic texts and belongings for clues. But doing so reveals secrets they are utterly unprepared for, and they quickly find themselves tangled up in a web of rivalries and desires that threaten not only their work, but the fate of their beloved author herself.

An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, Piglet has lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit. One of the many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking. But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before they’re set to be married, Piglet finds herself suddenly…hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it nears and Piglet balances family expectations, pressure at work and her quest to make the perfect cake, she finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she can’t explain. By the day of her wedding, Piglet is undone but is also ready to look beyond the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to get by.

For reasons of her own, Hero Tojosoa accepts an invitation she was half expected to decline and finds herself in Prague on a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend, Sofie. Little does she know she has arrived in a city with a penchant for playing tricks on the unsuspecting. A book Hero has brought with her seems to be warping her mind: the text changes depending on when it’s being read and who’s doing the reading, revealing startling new stories of fictional Praguers past and present. Uninvited companions appear at bachelorette activities and at city landmarks, offering opinions, humor and even a taste of treachery. When a third woman from Hero and Sofie’s past appears unexpectedly, the tensions between the friends’ different accounts of the past reach a new level.