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Best Fiction Reads for the Cozy Readers 🤍

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These have been my favorite reads from the past few years! Perfect for an evening of curling up with a cup of tea wherever you love to read uninterrupted - get a copy for yourself or the reader in your life! 📚
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R.F Kuang

The first book I read by Kuang was Babel, which is my favorite book of hers by far. While it remains unmatched in my opinion, I would also recommend all of the below.

 
Carmen Ibrahim profile picture
This is my favorite book by Kuang so far - A dark academia standalone that dives into the power of language and evils of imperialism, student revolutions, and colonial resistance.
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford ...
 
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Two students make their way through the underworld in search of their professor and confront themselves and each other in the process.
Katabasis (Standard Edition): Fantastical Descent
 
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After seeing her friend die in front of her, struggling author June Hayward steals her friend's manuscript, passing it off as her own. This novel grapples racism and cultural appropriation in the publishing world.
Yellowface (Reese's Book Club Pick)|Paperback

Isabel Allende

Allende is absolutely my favorite author. I would recommend any book by her any day.

 
Carmen Ibrahim profile picture
All Isabel Allende books are an automatic must-read for me
My Name Is Emilia del Valle: A Novel - Amazon.com
 
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This is the story of Eliza Sommers, who in 1843 was left as a baby at the doorstep of Rose and Jeremy Sommers, siblings living in the British colony of Valparaiso, Chile. This novel follows Eliza's coming of age and her journey to find love and indep...
Daughter of Fortune: A Novel|Paperback
 
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Portrait in Sepia is a sequel to Daughter of Fortune, focused on Eliza Sommers' granddaughter, Aurora del Valle, who cannot remember the first five years of her life following a trauma.
Portrait in Sepia: A Novel|Paperback
 
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At 100 years of age, Violeta (who was born in 1920 when the Spanish flu reached Chile) recounts her life in letters to her grandson and reflects on the revolutions, unrest, peace, grief, and happiness she lived through and experienced.
Violeta|Paperback
 
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The lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazi-occupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twenty-first-century El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate novel about war and immigration.
The Wind Knows My Name: A Novel|Paperback
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This epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home.
A Long Petal of the Sea: A Novel|Paperback
 
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This story follows Eva Luna, a poor orphan with a gift for storytelling who grows up meeting people from all walks of life. Through her experiences, the novel explores survival, love, rebellion, and the power of imagination.
Eva Luna: A Novel|Paperback
 
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This is a love story and multigenerational epic that stretches from San Francisco in the present-day to Poland and the United States during World War II.
The Japanese Lover|Paperback

Family Sagas

Books in this category all explore difficult family dynamics, from different cultural backgrounds.

 
Carmen Ibrahim profile picture
This was one of my favorite books I read in 2025; it tells the story of an older couple, one of whom is faced with their mortality, leaving the other to take stock of what their life looks like on their own.
The Days I Loved You Most: A Novel by Amy Neff, Paperback
 
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Three very different sisters—and their free—spirited mother—must grapple with life, responsibilities, and family secrets. A brilliant debut novel!
The Garnett Girls: A Novel|Paperback
 
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After thirty years of marriage, Annie's husband Graham passes away in his sleep. As she processes her grief, she discovers a terrible secret about Graham that causes her to question everything.
Monogamy: A Novel|Paperback
 
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In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger. When she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing th...
Pachinko|Paperback
 
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An extraordinary cross-cultural love story that unfurls across Egypt, England, and the United States over the course of a century.
The Map of Love: A Novel|Paperback
 
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This is the story of three generations of Palestinian American women struggling to express their individual desires in the wake of shocking intimate violence in their community.
A Woman Is No Man|Paperback

Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie

I've loved and admired Adichie's writing for a very long time.

 
Carmen Ibrahim profile picture
This novel follows 4 women, all connected in some meaningful way, recounting past relationships and exploring friendship, identity, and race.
Dream Count: A Novel (B&N Exclusive Edition)|Paperback
 
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Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be Black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtfu...
Americanah|Paperback
 
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This story is set during Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s and follows five characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor f...
Half of a Yellow Sun|Paperback

Emily Henry

Emily Henry is my favorite romance author.

 
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Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve.
Great Big Beautiful Life (Reese's Book Club)|Hardcover
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A relatable, hilarious and cathartic rom-com built around the struggle of making friends as an adult and the familial relationships that shape who we are.
Funny Story|Paperback
 
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With small town vibes and Hallmark movie-worthy side characters, Book Lovers is a refreshing take on the enemies to lovers trope.
Book Lovers|Hardcover

Thrillers/Mysteries

Thrillers & mysteries I've read and recommend!

 
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Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darker family must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide goes out and all is revealed.
Daisy Darker: A Novel|Paperback
 
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Eighteen-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom’s mysterious disappearance sixteen years ago. Bel was the only witness, but she has no memory of it. The case is dredged up from the past when the Price family agrees to a true c...
The Reappearance of Rachel Price|Paperback
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Jet is the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Woodstock, Vermont. Twenty-seven years old and back home, she’s still waiting for her life to begin. I’ll do it later, she always says. She has time. Until Halloween night, when she is violentl...
Not Quite Dead Yet (GMA Book Club Pick)|Paperback
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SWANA

Books I've read from Southwest Asian and North African authors.

 
Carmen Ibrahim profile picture
A searing, beautiful novel meditating on war, violence, memory, and the sufferings of the Palestinian people
Minor Detail|Paperback
 
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From the rubble-strewn streets of U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Hadi—a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café—collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the part...
Frankenstein in Baghdad|Paperback
 
Carmen Ibrahim profile picture
This powerful novel presents a searing, darkly funny, and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.
Against the Loveless World: A Novel|Paperback
 
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In Montreal's restless immigrant community, our unnamed narrator is living in despair. Forced to visit a therapist after a suicide attempt, he brings us back to his childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky émigré ca...
Cockroach|Paperback
 
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Mornings in Jenin is a heart-wrenching multi-generational account of one family's struggle and survival through the decades before and after Zionist colonization and theft of Palestine. Carrying us from Ein Hod to Jenin to Jerusalem, to Lebanon, then...
Mornings in Jenin|Paperback
 
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Beautifully weaving together haunting stories of survival and loss, love and devastation, memory and dream, Khoury humanizes the complex Palestinian struggle as he brings to life the story of an entire people.
Gate of the Sun|Paperback
 
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Three Daughters of Eve is set over an evening in contemporary Istanbul, as Peri arrives at the party and navigates the tensions that simmer in this crossroads country between East and West, religious and secular, rich and poor. Over the course of the...
Three Daughters of Eve|Paperback
 
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An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make-up and the woman draws a moustache on her face.
The Gaze|Paperback