The Huntress by Kate Quinn 

A gripping thriller about the hunt for a woman, who as a Nazi killer hunted children.  The tale is told in two timelines; one about a Russian girl who wanted to fly airplanes and the other, after World War II where she and her ‘husband’ look for the Nazi killer.  The story exposes the bravery of Russian women who flew planes and bombed the enemy Germans to defend and then to drive back the invaders.  And the dangerous escape of one such woman after the government chose to imprison her over something her father said in a drunken brawl.  She then rescues an escaped British soldier, only for him to get killed by the huntress, who tried to kill them both.  But the Russian woman escaped and survived.  Later, the soldier’s brother, a journalist, finds her in a field hospital and to save her, he marries her in the field and has her sent to England.  A few years later, after the war is over, he has been chasing down Nazi criminals to bring them to justice and she appears to help him find the Huntress (who has gone to America).

The Buried World by Jeff Wheeler 

The second book in his series about the Grave Kingdom, wherein Bingmei is taken by the evil Emperor Echion and forced to release his dead queen Xisi.  Together they plan to rule the world.  So it is Bingmei’s obligation to escape and travel into the Grave Kingdom to find the one thing that will defeat evil.

 The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo

Edward Tulane is a rabbit.  A figurine and a toy.  He is the companion of a very rich little girl.  And he has the dignity his position affords him.  But his position is not as secure as he thinks.  While on a trip with his little girl on the RMS Queen Mary, he falls overboard into the Atlantic.  He rests on the ocean floor for quite a while.  After most of a year, a storm tosses him into a fishing net.  The fisherman takes him home to his wife, who dresses him as a girl rabbit and sings to him everyday.  The Woman’s daughter thinks the situation is ridiculous and tosses him in the garbage, which leads to him being put in a dump.  From there he finds himself the property of a hobo, who tells stories at night to other hobos. Then he lives with a little boy and his tubercular sister until she dies.  In anger at this sister’s death, he damages the rabbit.  He tries to get him fixed-up, but cannot afford the repairs and lets the toymaker keep him for sale.  A woman comes in the store to look around and spies the rabbit.  She is the little girl, grown up now with her own daughter, who originally owned the toy.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie 

A collection of two dozen interlinked short stories starring his usual cast of characters on the reservation. It was the basis for his movie, Smoke Signals.

Each story can stand on its own, but together they draw a canvas of stories that could only be found on the reservation. Victor Joseph, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Junior Polatkin and others live through these stories and go on to stories in other books. Sherman Alixie has a pattern of ordinariness that frequently delivers a hard punch to the gut.

"Often the stories contain people who never existed before our collective imaginations created them."

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancy

First Wave: “Lights Out” During the first wave, the Others release an EMP wave that takes out all electronic technology and kills half a million people by shorting out all moving vehicles, including planes in mid-flight. 

Second wave: “Surf's Up” The Others, realizing that roughly 40 percent of Earth's population lives within 60 miles of the coastline, drop enormous rods "twice as tall as the Empire State Building and three times as heavy" onto the Earth's fault lines, causing massive tsunamis that wipe out three billion people. 

Third wave: “Pestilence” The Others launch a scheme to infect as many remaining survivors as possible with a deadly virus. Using the Earth's birds as carriers (via falling excrement), the plague claims 97 per cent of remaining survivors. The virus, which resembles an advanced form of Ebola, causes victims to slowly bleed to death until eventually "you've become a viral bomb. And when you explode, you blast everyone around you with the virus". 

Fourth wave: “Silencers” After the 3rd wave, the remaining human population tries desperately to survive off whatever resources remain by looting, all the while clinging to the hope that "the people in charge", wherever they may be, are working toward a solution. Eventually, this belief seems legitimate when an impressive battalion of soldiers (with functioning vehicles) arrives at the makeshift camp where Cassie, Sam, and her father are staying. The soldiers and commander, however, only appear interested in the children and promptly load them onto waiting buses before ordering all the adults into the camp barracks.  Once the humans are surrounded, Commander Vosch orders a massacre and kills everyone at the camp.  Cassie, however, narrowly escapes and witnesses her father's death by Vosch's hand. At this moment, the 4th wave becomes clear: not all "humans" are actually humans.

Cassie goes on a mission to rescue her little brother.  She finds herself trapped and wounded by a sniper.  But eventually, he walks away.  A couple of days later, she discovers another survivor, delirious, she faints and wakes up in his farmhouse.  Her little brother and her fellow survivor are trained in weapons and then sent on a raid to root out the Others.  Only it turns out that their Sergeant is really an Other and the exercise is a trap to remove the best defenders of humanity left alive.