Fall Reads: 11 books by BU alumni and faculty

Written by Destiny Perkins | Posted September 2024

As a familiar chill returns to the air and Terrier bookworms turn the final pages of their summer reads, we’ve compiled a list of books by BU alumni and faculty to help you to choose your next literary companion. From murder mysteries to historical fiction, illustrated novels, poetry, and more—in this list of works authored by the BU community, there’s something for everyone.

FICTION

Interpreter of Maladies

By Jhumpa Lahiri (UNI’95,’97, GRS’93)
Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, is an ensemble of nine short stories following characters who must navigate their Indian traditions in a Western world. In its title story, “Interpreter of Maladies,” the Indian American Das family hires a tour guide named Mr. Kapasi to be their driver for a day as they tour the country of their heritage. Fascinated by the Das family’s dynamics and reflecting on his discontent with his own life, Mr. Kapasi confronts feelings of loneliness, cultural dissonance, and longing for emotional intimacy.

Published in 1999, Interpreter of Maladies received a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award in 2000.

The Good Mother

By Sue Miller (GRS’80)
Sue Miller’s debut novel, The Good Mother, tells the story of Anna Dunlap, a recently divorced mother whose involvement in a passionate love affair leads her ex-husband to file for a court-ordered evaluation of her parental fitness. Just as she is starting to feel like she has everything she’s ever wanted in a relationship with her new lover, Leo, Anna’s world implodes when she is suddenly faced with losing custody of her daughter. Now in the midst of an ugly custody battle, Anna must prove that she is a good mother.

Ocean State

By Stewart O’Nan (ENG’83)
Ocean State, the most recent release from award-winning author Stewart O’Nan, unravels the events that led up to a high-school student’s murder. This gripping tale follows the aftermath of an irreversible decision made by high-school student Angel, who took her classmate Birdy’s life following a tumultuous feud over a boy. Drawing inspiration from a real-life homicide case that took place in a small Connecticut town, O’Nan explores the emotional turmoil and complexities of a tragedy at this magnitude through the eyes of Ocean State’s characters.

The Woman Back from Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty

By Ha Jin, William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, Boston University
(Completed BU Creative Writing program in 1992—did not obtain degree here)

Xuefei Jin, better known under his pen name, Ha Jin, is an award-winning author and professor of fiction and migrant literature at Boston University. The Woman Back from Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty is a novel about promising young actress Sun Weishi from China, who manages to forge a brilliant career as the country’s first female director of modern spoken drama. But this all changes during the Cultural Revolution, when she finds herself once again at odds with an old rival—a former actress who schemed her way to the top as the founder of the People’s Republic of China—Chairman Mao’s fourth and final wife.

Hatchet Girls

By Diana Rodriguez Wallach (COM’00)
A haunting novel following a group of high school students’ encounter with an ominous spirit amidst their journey to uncover the truth. When a wealthy family is found murdered by an ax, residents are quick to blame newcomer, Vik, who was found standing over the bodies with blood on his hands. But his sister, Tessa, knows he could not have committed such gruesome murders and her journey to find the truth leads her into the sprawling woods in Fall River, Massachusetts, and to the former home of Lizzie Borden.

Noura’s Crescent Moon

By Zainab Khan (CAS’97)
With Ramadan and her first month of fasting almost over, Noura hopes to get a glimpse of the faintest sliver of the crescent moon and bring the end of Eid celebration, Eid ul-Fitr, closer. Eid ul-Fitr is usually filled with family, friends, sweets, and henna—but if Noura cannot find the sliver of the moon, she will have to wait another day for the delicious celebration. Through Noura’s eventful night journey, readers learn about Ramadan, Eid, and the Islamic lunar calendar.

The Briar Club

By Kate Quinn (CFA’04,’06)
Set in 1950 Washington, DC, The Briar Club revolves around an all-female boarding house called Briarwood House. Here, everyone mostly keeps to themselves—but this changes when Grace March moves in. Grace transforms her oddball housemates into friends and hosts them for weekly attic-room dinner parties. What her new friends don’t know is that she’s keeping a secret of her own.

NON-FICTION

Killers of the Flower Moon

By David Grann (GRS’94), 2024 Commencement speaker
In the 1920s, the Native American Osage people in Oklahoma were the wealthiest people per capita in the world after oil was discovered on their land. But then, members of the Osage began dying under mysterious circumstances. The director of the newly created FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to Tom White to solve the mystery and the ensuing tale is a drama of undercover operations, greed, and racial tension. Killers of the Flower Moon was recently turned into an Oscar-nominated film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Then the War

By Carl Phillips (GRS’93)
Written during a time of heightened racial tension in the US, Phillips uses these poems as a retreat into an introspective landscape of his home. The collection of poems explores self-discovery, queerness, and morality. Then the War was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

Obama: An Intimate Portrait

By Pete Souza (COM’76)
Obama: An Intimate Portrait contains over 300 photographs from President Barack Obama’s two terms in the White House. Through his historic photographs, Souza provides a breathtakingly honest account of the relationships, stories, and responsibilities of Obama’s presidency. Souza’s visual biography captures moments ranging from the president and his advisors meeting during the bin Ladin mission, to candids of the president with his family. To accompany Obama’s moments frozen in time are captions and exclusive stories that convey the power, responsibility, and spirit of our nation’s 44th president.

Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq

By Sarah Glidden (CFA’02)
In this illustrated novel, cartoonist Sarah Gildden shares stories from a two-month long journey across the Middle East. On this journey, Glidden accompanies her two friends—reporters and founders of a journalism nonprofit—as they research potential stories of the effects of the Iraq war on the Middle East. They are especially interested in stories from the war’s refugees. Joining the trio is a friend and former Marine, whose experiences in the Iraq war offer a different and sometimes unwelcome perspective that often conflicts with the people they come across.