Photo: Marshall Troy

6 of 6
The Leavers
352 pages; Algonquin Books
Ko's searing first novel—the 2016 winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize—chronicles undocumented Chinese immigrant Polly's sudden disappearance, which leaves her 11-year-old son to grapple with a mystery that scars him into adulthood.
— Hamilton Cain, Natalie Beach, Erin Vanderhoof