Set on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s, the novel follows Bigger Thomas, a young Black man shaped by crushing poverty and social isolation.

Two contrasting societies — one organized around communal, anarchist principles and the other structured by more conventional hierarchy and market relations — come into contact.

A novel told through letters that follow a Black woman’s life in the American South across early adulthood, tracing how she survives sexual and domestic abuse, discovers personal voice, and finds connection with other women.

A first-person narrator from a small Black community near Los Angeles stands before the Supreme Court and reflects on the chain of incidents that led him there, including provocative attempts to respond to historic racial injustice in his hometown.

A formally inventive novel that stages an Asian American life through the language and beats of television scripts, focusing on how roles and stereotypes shape a character’s ambitions and relations.

Set in an imagined Antebellum United States, the novel follows Cora, an enslaved woman who flees a Georgia plantation via an Underground Railroad visualized as an actual subterranean railway.

A man with intellectual disability undergoes an experimental medical procedure intended to raise his intelligence, and the narrative records the aftermath through dated personal entries.

Set in a near-future America broken by economic collapse, climate effects, and violence, the novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman who records her experiences and develops a practical belief system called Earthseed.

Set primarily inside an Oregon psychiatric hospital, the narrative is told through the vantage of a patient who presents as deaf and mute. The plot focuses on tensions between the ward’s controlling staff and a charismatic newcomer whose actions unsettle the ward’s fragile order.

An American living in Paris confronts his feelings for another man while his fiancée is away, forcing him to face desire, social expectations, and his own self-image.

An academic family in the American Midwest navigates everyday routines, consumer culture, and family dynamics while an external technological/industrial threat forces questions about death, risk, and how people manage fear.

Presented through a collage of documents, memoir excerpts, and alternate accounts, the novel orients on a secretive, immensely wealthy financier and the contested stories about him and his wife.