The Friday Five // February 27, 2026
Reading Notes from the CLS Team
For the first-ever Friday Five listed entirely through our newly-minted catalog, we are thrilled to present our latest picks, available to check out HERE or to purchase through our friends at Buxton Books. We hope you’re enjoying the upgraded features of Aspen and PressReader as much as we are, and if you’re experiencing any difficulties, please reach out. Happy reading!
★ CRITICS CORNER
Brawler: Stories by Lauren Groff
Named one of the 100 most influential people by TIME in 2024, author Lauren Groff brings us a new collection of stories, ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region – from New England to Florida to California – these nine narratives reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels.
“Lauren Groff is one of our most acclaimed writers of fiction and one of our most dedicated and generous literary citizens…Her art makes the world of literature immeasurably better for all of us. ” — The Boston Globe
★ VOICES AND VIEWPOINTS
The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet by Yi-Ling Liu
Exploring AI and Chinese society from a human-centered lens, debut author Yi-Ling Liu unpacks what it means to forge connections in a rapidly changing technological world. An indelible, deeply reported human story of contemporary China in which the country’s carefully controlled internet offers a lens into the broader national tension between freedom and control.
[ The Wall Dancers] should prompt a timely, uncomfortable global debate on whether tech has proven easier to weaponize than to democratize. . . . As much as this book is a portrait of a flourishing garden behind the Great Firewall, it’s also a map of Beijing’s insecurities.”
— Bloomberg Opinion
★ THRILLS AND CHILLS
The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me (now adapted for television!) comes an equally as spine tingling thriller, one in which you’ll never know what or who is around the next corner.
“Dave’s embrace of tension instead of action turns the novel into an effective study of suspense. Her taut prose matches the story, with moments of emotional poignancy… The First Time I Saw Him offers a sense of completion to the characters of its predecessor and provides answers… a tense story, but a surprisingly tender one.”
— Washington Post
★ A LITTLE BIT LIGHTER NOW
Clutch: A Novel by Emily Nemens
Fulfilling the college brochure promise of becoming lifelong friends, five women are now faced with a new challenge: the rest of their lives. Writer, illustrator, editor, and educator Emily Nemens unpacks friendships across decades, tragedies, and the promise of more in her latest novel.
“I rooted for these women, loved them, and cherished the omniscient asides sprinkled throughout hinting at happy endings, even far beyond the novel. . . . What I wouldn’t give to know that my friends and I will end up OK, to have someone with Nemens’s feral intelligence mapping our paths.”
— The New York Times
★ DIRECTOR OF COLLECTIONS PICK
Winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction and bestselling author of An American Marriage, and supporter of our Book Drop initiative since its launch in 2024, Tayari Jones delivers yet another moving story of blood relation, found family, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South.
“Tayari Jones once again stuns with a novel full of uninhibited love. . . . Jones develops her protagonists’ personalities slowly and with nuance, subtly evolving them into characters one just can’t help but root for.”
— BookPage