From cozy mysteries to moving memoirs, we have great titles to add to your “To Be Read” stack this month!

1. A WHOLE NEW WAY BY GEORGE CARRANO & JONATHAN FISHER

In A Whole New Way is a photographic self-portrait by New Yorkers who are serving a term of probation, released in consort with a PBS documentary by the same name. In a Whole New Way shows how hundreds of determined city residents on probation, along with neighborhood allies, undertook to change the image of how probation has become a staging area for incarceration. Equipped with cameras and new artistic sensibilities provided by the editors’ nonprofit Seeing for Ourselves, they set off in a whole new way to reform the sanction, returning it to the rehabilitative and positive program it was originally intended to be. In the process, they found themselves transformed.

Read more about authors George Carrano & Jonathan Fisher. Order A Whole New Way via Amazon.

2. PUZZLED PIECES BY KATIE GRAYKOWSKI

When Mustang Ridges finds her son’s school bus driver, Imogene Puzzle, dead, Mustang knows she must find the killer. Mustang, and besties Haley, and Monica have zero suspects. The only possible lead is Ms. P.’s true crime group, The Puzzlers. Currently, the group is investigating the Hill Country Strangler, a twenty-year-old cold case. When two other bus drivers from surrounding school districts also end up with their throats cut, Mustang begins to think that the Hill Country Strangler might have decided that throat-cutting was a better way to kill. How many more people will die before Mustang, Haley, and Monica find the killer?

Read more about author Katie Graykowski. Order Puzzled Pieces via Amazon.

3. ROUGH WATERS BY HEATHER C. MARKHAM

At age 34, Heather C. Markham received a life-changing diagnosis: she had a progressive muscular dystrophy and would eventually need a wheelchair. Despite her body’s betrayal, she fearlessly leaned into adventures including becoming an avid Para Surfer and winning Ms. Wheelchair Kentucky. With humor and heartbreaking candor, this memoir chronicles Heather’s slow decline in mobility and her determination to live an extraordinary life—a journey that is somehow relatable to all of us.

Read more about author Heather C. Markham. Order Rough Waters via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. 

4. THOSE WHO WOULD BE KING BY BRENT LUDWIG

This powerful novel—full of tantalizing twists and turns, powerful heroes and heinous villains—is set in the fictional, impoverished African country of Maleziland and explores the corruption of power, the legacy of colonialism, and the putative integration of democracy in sub-Saharan Africa. King Mabanda controls his country with a violent, omnipotent fist. The king’s son, Mandebala, is a tyrant-in-training who has grown up with the opulence and privilege of an uber-wealthy prince. But when the king meets Shigeku, the only captive survivor of a border war with a neighboring nation, the prisoner tells of switching his own brother at birth with the king’s actual son.

Read more about author Brent J. Ludwig. Order Those Who Would be King: The People’s Prince via Amazon.

5. THE COMPOUND CODE BY SCOTT KYLE & PATRICK FISCHER

In The Compound Code: An Expert Guide to Trading Stocks & Options, Scott and Patrick reveal insider secrets, effective tools and strategies that readers need to manage investments in good times and bad. This book is a straightforward and accessible guide that examines the art and science of smart investing, while showing readers how to profit from the power of compounding using stocks, dividends and options in one’s investment portfolio. 

Read more about Scott Kyle & Patrick Fischer. Order The Compound Code via Amazon.

Looking for more book recommendations? Check out:

• 5 Books to Add to Your TBR Stack in April
• 5 Books to Add to Your TBR Stack in May
• 5 Books to Add to Your TBR Stack in June​