Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden The Grammarians could make perfect fodder for your own family arguments over “correct” grammar at the dinner table…if you want to go down that road.

It’s meta in its wordplay and pokes fun at its own stereotypes. When the twins fight over who will inherit their family’s prized second edition of the Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, the drama and comedy heighten, resulting in a unique story that’s perfect for word nerds. As adults, their devotion to language remains strong, but they drastically diverge from each other: Daphne is committed to the rigidity of Standard English, while Laurel is impassioned by the ever-changing nature of the written and spoken word. Laurel and Daphne Wolfe are identical twins who are obsessed with words, even making their own “twin language” as babies. It’s perfect for those days when you feel dark and moody around your family, whether they’re as dysfunctional as the Tuchmans or not. Set in New Orleans, All This Could Be Yours builds a nuanced, house-of-cards story about family dynamics and dysfunction with enough humor and light in the darkness to achieve a sense of truth and beauty. Attenberg is so skilled at delving into the psychology of her characters that the result is absorbing, even when sympathy is low. How do you reckon with toxic masculinity when it more or less characterizes a man you love, especially when he’s dying? That’s one of the many questions that members of the Tuchman family - daughter Alex, wife Barbra, brother Gary, and daughter-in-law Twyla - are asking themselves as their patriarch, Victor, lies on his deathbed.

All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg

Book mostly dead things