Mallory Smart recommends:

Dust Bunny City by Bud Smith and Rae Buleri

Dust Bunny City is a collection of drawings, poetry and prose that explore the offbeat underbelly of New York City. Split into two parts, Tic Tac Toe and Orange Peel, it follows a couple wandering the city and dealing with incremental separation.  From the whimsical observations to the everyday longing, this book hits hard. It’s feels like a strange mix of deja vu and insomnia and is just so good. You should def read this book like now.

Nikki Barnhart recommends:

Chuck Palaniuk’s invisible monsters

if you’re like me and somehow let this one slip you by in high school, make a conscious choice to fully embrace the angst, the edge, and the quotability of chuck palaniuk’s invisible monsters. a touchstone of contemporary transgressive fiction, this book is iconic.  so much of it has seeped into pop culture, and it still reads as fresh and vivid as ever. if you haven’t already read it, you’d be remiss never to know daisy st. patience and brandy alexander.

Benjamin Lee recommends:

number9dream by David Mitchell

number9dream is a coming of age story about 19-year-old Eiji who goes on a whirlwind search for his father in the dark depths of Tokyo. The narrative dazzles with passages that teeter between dreams and reality. If you’re like me, you’ll be confused, inspired, and downright mesmerized after finishing it.

Claire Hopple:

Hotels of North America by Rick Moody

If you ever wanted to read wordsmith-y literary fiction that will somehow make you literally LOL, and if you also wanted that book to be in the form of fake hotel reviews, then this (and probably only this) is the book for you.

Laura Knicklebine recommends:

Act of God by Jill Ciment

During an earth tilting mix of heat and rain in New York City, elderly twins Edith and Kat are drawn to their closet by a phosphorescent glow. They find a mushroom sprouting from the wall. It grows at a disturbingly quick rate, as does the organized disaster that keeps interrupting their lives. Are these strange events consequences of some kind? Or acts of God?

Kyle Flak recommends:

Spring and All by William Carlos Williams 

The message:  imagination is where it’s at, y’all. And the third section of this book is labeled with an upside down Chapter XIII. Read it while it’s still spring.  The newest edition with a sky blue cover and an introduction by C. D. Wright is really, honestly, breathtakingly beautiful.

Greg Zorko recommends:

Happy Moscow by Andrei Platonov

I have been reading a lot of Andrei Platonov lately and can’t recommend his work enough. I think this might be his best book. Happy Moscow is a short novel, written in the 1930s but not published in Russian until 1991. The novel’s characters are all looking for ways to transcend the body, the limits of romantic love and even death itself. Happy Moscow is the story of a desperate search for happiness and transformation with often tragic consequences.