My teammate Allie recommended this one, and it turned out to be one of the best books I’ve read this year. It starts out as the story of Cyrus Shams—an Iranian American struggling to stay sober and write a book on martyrs—before folding in overlapping stories of the various people in Cyrus’ orbit, including fictional characters who appear in his dreams (including Lisa Simpson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), and the artist Orkideh, who is living her final days in the Brooklyn Museum as part of an exhibition called Death-Speak. Funny, lyrical, thrilling.