The COVID-19 pandemic has started to make its way into both fiction and nonfiction.

Here & Now‘s Scott Tong speaks with “The Stacks” host and creator Traci Thomas about a few of the standouts.

Book picks from Traci Thomas

Fiction

• “Joan is Okay” by Weike Wang
• “How We Go High in the Dark” by Sequoia Nagamatsu
• “Leave the World Behind” by Rumaan Alam
• “The Sentence” by Louise Erdrich
• “Wish You Were Here” by Jodi Piccoult
• “COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology” edited by Kendra Boileau and Rich Johnson
• “Lucy by the Sea” by Elizabeth Strout
• “Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel
• “Panpocalypse” by Carley Moore
• “Delphi” by Clare Pollard

Nonfiction

• “Intimations: Six Essays” by Zadie Smith
• “Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus” by David Quammen
• “The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide” by Stephen Thrasher
• “Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19” edited by Jennifer Haupt
• “Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness” by Kristen Radtke
• “The Premonition: A Pandemic Story” by Michael Lewis
• “Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood” by Jessica Grose
• “Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life” by Alice Wong
• “What Doesn’t Kill You: A Life with Chronic Illness – Lessons from a Body in Revolt” by Tessa Miller
• “The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness” by Meghan O’Rourke
• “The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER” by Thomas Fisher
• “Code Gray: Death, Life, and Uncertainty in the ER” by Farzon Nahvi
• “Every Minute Is a Day: A Doctor, an Emergency Room, and a City Under Siege” by Robert Meyer and Dan Koeppel

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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