Books Your May 2026 Reads Stories You May Like Popular Course Offers Life Lessons from Faculty Dream Team Personality Quiz: Which Classic Cornell Chimes Song Are You? Remembering the Cornellian Who Broke Racial Barriers in Math This month’s featured titles include a ‘poetic memoir,’ a study of the Gospel of John, and the final mystery from a genre luminary For more titles by Big Red authors, peruse our previous round-ups. Have you published a book you'd like to submit? Scroll down for details! And did you know that Cornell has an online book club? Check it out! The Tree of Light and Flowers Thomas Perry ’69 Perry was a prolific mystery author and screenwriter whose work included the now-classic thrillers The Butcher’s Boy and Metzger’s Dog, as well as the TV series “The Old Man.” He passed away in September 2025, months before the publication of this last entry in his long-running series about his heroine Jane Whitefield, a woman of Native American ancestry who specializes in helping people escape dangerous situations and then safely vanish into new lives. Here, Jane and her husband are settling into new parenthood when some of the enemies she has accrued over a decade of essentially acting as a one-woman witness relocation program conspire to put her family—and former clients—in danger. “Perry, always a master at ratcheting up tension and delivering high-octane action scenes, showcases all his talents here,” says a review in the New York Times. “Intentionally or not, the novel has a whiff of melancholy. This final Jane Whitefield novel is the farewell his readers needed.” The Coffee Can Investor Neeraj Khemlani ’92 “What would happen if you bought a handful of stocks and then left them alone for some time, like stashing valuables in a coffee can?” posits the publisher, Columbia University Press. “If you picked the right ones, you might wake up one day with life-changing wealth.” The CALS alum is the former president of CBS News, as well as a past editor-in-chief of the Daily Sun. In this nonfiction book, he explores the tactics of an investor who studied the commonalities among so-called “100-baggers”—stocks that have multiplied 100 times in value over the course of decades. The investor then built a portfolio of them for his children, with the aim that its worth could eventually grow to $500 million. In addition to describing this unusual approach to building wealth, Khemlani shares his efforts to create a “coffee can” legacy for his own kids. “The Coffee Can Investor is a gem of a book that combines good journalism with strong storytelling,” famed news anchor Dan Rather says in a blurb. “It’s an incredible story of two fathers’ love for their children and their desire to leave them a future as big and bright as the Texas sky.” Mother Minotaur Sarah Ferguson-Wagstaffe Ahrens, PhD ’06 In what’s described as “poetic memoir,” the doctoral alum in English contemplates both motherhood and disability through the lens of the minotaur—the half-human creature hunted by Theseus in Greek mythology. The work opens with a female minotaur lost in a labyrinth, then traces its narrative back to the origin of the author’s own hearing loss and her struggle to understand how her young children’s brains are wired differently from those of neurotypical kids. “What makes her book especially moving,” Cornell professor Roger Gilber says in a blurb, “is its candid interweaving of the most intimate experiences—medical crises, disability, the challenge of parenting neurodivergent children—with the tale of the minotaur, whom Ahrens boldly recasts as a mother helping to guide her young through and from the maze of her own being.” In addition to writing poetry, creative nonfiction, and academic essays, Ahrens teaches in Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education. Stories You May Like Popular Course Offers Life Lessons from Faculty Dream Team Personality Quiz: Which Classic Cornell Chimes Song Are You? As she writes in one of the book’s poems: “What’s the difference / between a maze and a labyrinth? / I can’t remember, / so I keep looking it up. / A maze has many possible paths, / not all leading to the center. / They say that some / are dead ends. / A labyrinth has only one path / that leads to the center. / They say you can’t / get lost in a labyrinth.” Wait for Me Amy Jo Burns ’03 Burns’ third novel centers on two female folk singers. One is a young star who vanishes without a trace in 1973, after a bravura performance at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry; the other, introduced two decades later, is an 18-year-old in Appalachia whose father may have been the last person to see the star alive. “Weaving together themes of artistic sacrifice, heartbreak, and the power of familial legacy,” says Booklist, “Burns captures rural Appalachia and Nashville’s country music scene in vivid detail.” In addition to her fiction, the ILR alum penned the literary memoir Cinderland. In March 2026, Wait for Me was a featured pick for the “Today” show’s “Read with Jenna” book club. “The novel is insightful in its depiction of complex relationships between women,” says Kirkus, “and of the grueling and sometimes dark sides of the music business.” The Gospel of John Kim Haines-Eitzen A scholar of religion, Haines-Eitzen is the Hendrix Memorial Professor of Near Eastern studies in Arts & Sciences. In this volume from Princeton University Press, she offers a “biography” of the well-known Gospel—demonstrating how it stands out from the others, how it was received by early Christians, why it’s so revered by American evangelicals, and more. “The primary argument I make is that the history of the Gospel of John, from its origin in the late first century to the modern day, is a contentious one,” Haines-Eitzen told the Cornell Chronicle. “Even though it’s been beloved and influential, the Gospel of John has been used to justify violence against Jews and others throughout history.” As the professor explains, John has been cited to legitimize the burning of synagogues, and is still quoted by white supremacists in support of antisemitic violence. While some Christians focus on its appeals to love one another, others promote its exclusionary elements. “How does a first-century text come to have such a complex and multivalent history?” Haines-Eitzen asks. “That’s the question I wanted to answer in the book.” Consequences Alexander Michailoff ’24 “If you are reading this, chances are you live in a democracy, and that is exactly who this book is for—people in places where open dialogue matters most,” the co-authors write in their first chapter. “In autocracies, books like this one often do not see the light of day.” Subtitled The Rise of a Fractured World Order, the volume analyses the challenges facing liberal democracies in an era when autocracy is increasing around the globe. It addresses such topics as the rise of populism, the impacts of social media, immigration, artificial intelligence, and the decay of individual democratic systems—with the power of economic forces as a key element throughout. Says the publisher, Wiley: “The book explains why the creation and distribution of wealth matters in creating nations where democracy can flourish, and the populace at large can win.” A Dyson alum, Michailoff is an associate with the professional services firm KPMG. To submit your book for consideration, email cornellians@cornell.edu. Please note that to be included, books must be recently published by a conventional publisher—not self published, pay-to-publish, publish on demand, partner-published, or similar—and be of interest to a general audience. Books not featured will be forwarded to Class Notes. Published May 18, 2026 Leave a Comment Cancel replyOnce your comment is approved, your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment * Name * Class Year Email * Save my name, email, and class year in this browser for the next time I comment. Δ Other stories You may like Alumni Author Alum Wins MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Quizzes & Puzzles May / June ’25 Trivia Roundup Cornelliana For 75+ Years, Students Have Made Watermargin a Home