1984 is often ranked as one of the most quintessential books in the dystopian genre. But while I was reading it, I couldn’t look past the main character’s attitude toward women. Eventually, I found myself questioning whether the attitude belonged to the character, or to the author himself.

The Great Believers is staggering in its level of detail, in the number of characters you fall in love with, in the beauty of the prose, and in the scope of the tragedy it covers. Rebecca Makkai paints a picture of the 1980s AIDS epidemic in Chicago that is devastating and poignant, but also hopeful.

Have you ever wondered how your life might have turned out differently? What would your life be like if you had taken a different job or if your family hadn’t moved when you were a kid? These are impossible questions that we’ll never be able to answer for ourselves, so in Life After Life, Kate Atkinson answers them for us. The book tells the story of Ursula Todd, a girl with an odd ability to die and be reborn again and again into the exact same life.