Monster in the Middle (Penguin Random House), the second novel by USVI-born Tiphanie Yanique, traces family histories across decades to “map the emotional inheritance” of a young couple in love in New York City. Ranging from the Caribbean to West Africa to the US, charting “family lore and love stories” across generations, the novel “posits that in order to answer the question ‘who are we meant to be with?’ we must first understand who we are and how we came to be.”