Recommendations
STEARS' RECOMMENDATIONS BY GENRE
Non-fiction Biography/Autobiography/Memoir
From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (Half Broke Horses was not as good, IMO)
ANY of David Sedaris' books (quirky satirical essays from his life)
Educated by Tara Westover
A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout
What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen by Kate Fagan
I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai
Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson
Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales to Dream Big by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo
Night by Elie Wiesel
Fiction
How to Pronounce Knife (collection of short stories) by Souvankham Thammavongsa
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova (Still Alice, others - all 'inspired by neuroscience and the human spirit')
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Historical Fiction
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (and Dragonfly in Amber - #2 in series of 11)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
Young Adult
Dear Martin by Nic Stone
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
John Green novels (Fault, Turtles, Alaska, Katherines)
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
We Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Nielsen
Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt
I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
Mystery
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Science-Fiction/Dystopian
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Poetry
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur (and The Sun and Her Flowers)
The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
Mindplatter and The Nectar of Pain by Najwa Zebian
Classic Fiction
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, etc.
Politics
The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior by Sarah Kendzior