Class

For Karen Kipple, being a good person isn’t just something to aspire to. It’s something that she can-and will-succeed at. Karen works for a nonprofit that helps feed disadvantaged youth. For the sake of championing local businesses, she frequents the neighborhood’s overpriced coffee shop even though their slow drip tastes like it’s been filtered through a dirty sock. And she sends her daughter, Ruby, to an integrated urban public school, where white people like herself are the minority, because she values diversity.

But when a troubled boy starts bullying kids in Ruby’s class, and Ruby’s similarly privileged best friend leaves the school for safer grounds, Karen finds herself questioning her values. Will she stick to her ideals or become the type of person she loathes?

Just how far she will go with practically everything–her marriage, her daughter’s education, her sense of right and wrong–is at the core of Class. Because it turns out that life as we live it, and not as we like to imagine it, often unfolds in gray areas. Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as a “take-no-prisoners satire” that’s “grimly hilarious,” Class is a brilliant novel for our times.