I was not familiar with the author of this month’s top fiction book, Jenny Jackson, and taking a look, it looks like this is her debut novel! It’s pretty impressive to end up at the top of the most-requested list with your first book. And in non-fiction, we have a followup book to the popular Evicted by Matthew Desmond.

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process; Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t have, and must decide what kind of person she wants to be.

Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.

Read-Alike 1: The Nest by Cynthia Sweeney

Every family has its problems, but even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather in New York City to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. He has single-handedly endangered the Plumbs’ joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. The Plumb siblings have watched The Nest’s value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems. Can Leo rescue his family and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the futures they’ve envisioned?

Read-Alike 2: Family Trust by Kathy Wang

Meet Stanley Huang: father, husband, ex-husband, man of unpredictable tastes and temper, aficionado of all-inclusive vacations and bargain luxury goods, newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Meet Stanley’s family: son Fred, frustrated that his years of academic striving (4.0 GPA! Harvard MBA!) haven’t protected him from career stagnation; daughter Kate, balancing a capricious boss, a distracted husband, and two small children; ex-wife Linda, familiar with and suspicious of Stanley’s grandiose ways; and second wife Mary, giver of foot rubs and ego massages. 

For years, Stanley has insistently claimed that he’s worth a small fortune. Now, as the Huangs come to terms with Stanley’s approaching death, they are also starting to fear that Stanley’s “small fortune” may be more “small” than “fortune.” A “study in the difference between expectation and reality” (npr.org), a bittersweet rumination on what we owe our families, and a sharp-eyed look at Silicon Valley’s culture of excess, Family Trust is a “dryly cynical” (Globe and Mail) satire of the American dream.

Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond

The United States is the richest country on earth, yet it has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in five of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay workers poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond sets forth a new and hard-won answer to this question, revealing that there is so much poverty in America not in spite of our wealth but because of it. Drawing on history, research, and original reporting, he argues that affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly work to keep poor people poor. The well-off exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. Those of us who are financially secure prioritize the subsidization of affluence over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside zones of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

This fiercely argued and compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original case for eliminating poverty in America and shows how we can all be part of that effort. His book calls on us to become true poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of equity.

Read-Alike 1: Evicted by Matthew Desmond

In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible. 

Read-Alike 2: Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas

Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can—except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. They rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; they lavishly reward “thought leaders” who redefine “change” in ways that preserve the status quo; and they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm.

Giridharadas asks hard questions: Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? His groundbreaking investigation has already forced a great, sorely needed reckoning among the world’s wealthiest and those they hover above, and it points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world—a call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike.