Dave Connis

Dave Connis draws on his experience as a librarian to write fiction for teenagers about how books move through communities. Suggested Reading follows Clara Evans, a senior at a private school in Chattanooga, after she learns that administrators removed contested works from the library. Clara builds a hidden lending collection in her locker, turning resistance to censorship into a test of her own certainty about stories and their effects. Katherine Tegen Books, a HarperCollins imprint, released the novel in 2019. Connis had previously published The Temptation of Adam, while his library work gives this second novel an apt professional foundation. Suggested Reading also examines class, friendship, responsibility, and the consequences of choices made with good intentions. Its conflict grows beyond a debate about restriction as Clara confronts how defending access to literature can affect people whose experiences differ from hers. Clara must also decide how to answer classmates whose responses to the hidden books complicate her effort, giving the novel a wider view of reading, empathy, and institutional power itself.