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NPR Books

NPR’s Book Concierge

Our Guide To 2014’s Great Reads

by Nicole Cohen, David Eads, Rose Friedman, Becky Lettenberger, Petra Mayer, Beth Novey and Christina Rees – Published December 3, 2014

Use the filters below to explore some 250 titles NPR staff and critics loved this year. (You can also combine filters!) Want even more recommendations? Check out our favorite books from 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008

support for NPR Books comes from Amazon

“Who would have expected that the most profound meditation yet written on the trials of caring for aging parents would arrive in the ...”
Read Maureen Corrigan's full recommendation »
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir
“We public radio people are generally spoiled by free books. After years of living off the "giveaway pile" at the office, it takes a lot for me to buy a book. But I ...”
Read Ari Shapiro's full recommendation »
The Bone Clocks: A Novel
“Wonder Woman has always been as divisive as she is popular. Even as millions of girls followed her adventures, Wonder Woman's progressive politics panicked ...”
Read Genevieve Valentine's full recommendation »
The Secret History Of Wonder Woman
“Fresh-faced robbers, lighthearted humor and celebrations of reading aren't usually found in R-rated comics — as to what is usually found in R-rated comics, that will ...”
Read Etelka Lehoczky's full recommendation »
Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick
“I spent a good couple months reading The Paying Guests in 2014 — not because the book is long, but because I couldn't let go of the pleasure of reading it. The bare ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
The Paying Guests
“It would be nearly impossible to write a bad biography of Josephine Baker, civil rights activist and superstar. Glamorous dancer, spy ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
Josephine: The Dazzling Life Of Josephine Baker
“Apples of Uncommon Character is a who's who of apples — 123 "portraits" of different varieties, described and photographed in loving detail. Rowan ...”
Read Beth Novey's full recommendation »
Apples Of Uncommon Character: Heirlooms, Modern Classics, And Little-Known Wonders
“There's been a lot of traffic in dystopias recently, but when a great literary novelist takes on the genre, it's worth paying close attention. Chang-rae Lee's On Such A ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
On Such A Full Sea: A Novel
“The Empathy Exams is a trove of treats for those who enjoy a genre I'll call "travelisophical": traveling to a strange world and trying to make philosophical sense of ...”
Read Lulu Miller's full recommendation »
The Empathy Exams: Essays
“The 78 rpm record is "not a medium that invites dabbling," Amanda Petrusich writes. No kidding. It's hard to even find a turntable that will play the antique ...”
Read Jacob Ganz's full recommendation »
Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt For The World's Rarest 78rpm Records
“N.K. Jemisin's epic fantasy series has just been reissued in a handy omnibus edition — so there's no better time to visit the fractured, fractious Hundred Thousand ...”
Read Petra Mayer's full recommendation »
The Inheritance Trilogy
“You do not have to know anything about poker or even care about it to immerse yourself in Colson Whitehead's memoir, The Noble Hustle. In 2011, Grantland gave ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, And Death
“Gary Shteyngart is a memoirist not out for revenge but for truth, and his quest takes him to various interesting places in this lively and forthcoming book. An ...”
Read Meg Wolitzer's full recommendation »
Little Failure: A Memoir
“The great chef Yotam Ottolenghi, who had such a phenomenal success with the vegetarian cookbook Plenty (as well as the nonvegetarian Jerusalem) ...”
Read Meg Wolitzer's full recommendation »
Plenty More: Vibrant Vegetable Cooking From London's Ottolenghi
“Anyone who's had to care for an aging parent knows the difficulty of deciding when it's time to consider a nursing home or hospice. In Being Mortal,the ever thoughtful ...”
Read Carline Watson's full recommendation »
Being Mortal: Medicine And What Matters In The End
“Armed with his sticky ninja (dishwashing) gloves, unbreakable ninja (jump) rope and bouncy ninja (pingpong) paddle, Ninja Maxwell is ready ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
Ninja!
“Ike embarks on an ill-fated journey from New York, where he barely makes a living driving a taxi, to his village in Nigeria. There he tries to steal the clan's ...”
Read Ellah Allfrey's full recommendation »
Foreign Gods, Inc.
“Halfway through How To Build A Girl I put the book down, sighed, and wondered if I should just barrel through and finish it in one night, or savor it for another day ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
How To Build A Girl: A Novel
“In 2009, the Sri Lankan government finally declared an end to the island nation's brutal, decades-long civil war. The Seasons of Trouble is a gripping and ...”
Read Charles Mahtesian's full recommendation »
The Seasons Of Trouble: Life Amid The Ruins Of Sri Lanka's Civil War
“There are two published editions of this odd, bifurcated novel. Depending on which copy you end up with, you'll either start with the story of the artist Francesco del ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
How To Be Both: A Novel
“Chinese heroine Catherine Blade and English hero Leighton Atwood, two star-crossed lovers who originally met in disguise and were torn apart by differing political ...”
Read Bobbi Dumas' full recommendation »
My Beautiful Enemy
“Emily Carroll's collection of original fairy tales and dark fiction is as beautiful as it is terrifying. Masterfully ...”
Read Amal El-Mohtar's full recommendation »
Through The Woods
“I've never considered myself to be anywhere near to becoming one with the universe, but Yumi Sakugawa has me convinced that there's hope. Her ...”
Read Kat Chow's full recommendation »
Your Illustrated Guide To Becoming One With The Universe
“A precocious kid leaves his alcoholic father to find fame in the big city. He succeeds. But as his star rises his body falls, leaving him weak, deaf and suicidal. And ...”
Read Tom Huizenga's full recommendation »
Beethoven: Anguish And Triumph
“Fairy tales get reworked and re-imagined all the time, but the treatment Snow White gets in Helen Oyeyemi's novel Boy, Snow, Bird is more like a deconstruction of the ...”
Read Arun Rath's full recommendation »
Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel
“This book has amazingly surreal vignettes from one of the many former East bloc countries that were trying to live an enforced lie. From the starlet who was Nazi ...”
Read Philipp Goedicke's full recommendation »
Gottland: Mostly True Stories From Half Of Czechoslovakia
“Ever felt lost and disoriented in a huge imported furniture emporium of Scandinavian design? It's a little sinister, right? So ...”
Read Neda Ulaby's full recommendation »
Horrorstör: A Novel
“Ben Lerner (Leaving the Atocha Station) is known for writing fiction that defies categories; he continues to defy — and fascinate — in this latest novel, 10:04 ...”
Read Maureen Corrigan's full recommendation »
10:04: A Novel
“Phil Klay, a former Marine who served in Iraq, delivers perhaps the finest literary account of this generation's wars. In one story, soldiers shoot dogs — not for fun ...”
Read Nishant Dahiya's full recommendation »
Redeployment
“If I only had a dollar for every cookbook that's come out from a Brooklyn bakery in the past five years! Here we have what at first looks ...”
Read T. Susan Chang's full recommendation »
Ovenly: Sweet And Salty Recipes From New York's Most Creative Bakery
“Did you know that the 15-year-old Duke Ellington worked at a soda fountain? That in soda slang, canned milk was an "armored cow," and ...”
Read T. Susan Chang's full recommendation »
The Soda Fountain: Floats, Sundaes, Egg Creams & More — Stories And Flavors Of An American Original
“An Unnecessary Woman is a story about Beirut, but not the Beirut you see in headlines. Told in the voice of a reclusive older woman, it unfolds within the ...”
Read Becky Hersher's full recommendation »
An Unnecessary Woman
“This book isn't exactly a feel-good romp, but for a post-apocalyptic novel, Station Eleven comes remarkably close. It follows a theater group traveling through ...”
Read Matt Thompson's full recommendation »
Station Eleven: A Novel
“Another Man's War is riveting. It's an extraordinary story, well-researched and beautifully told — but not about the World War II you might know. Barnaby Phillips ...”
Read Ofeibea Quist-Arcton's full recommendation »
Another Man's War: The Story Of A Burma Boy In Britain's Forgotten Army
“Every year there is one nonfiction book that makes me shake up my steady diet of fiction. In 2014, it was this detailed and moving portrait of a most complicated young ...”
Read Shannon Rhoades' full recommendation »
The Short And Tragic Life Of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark For The Ivy League
“Though Claudia Rankine's poetry, by turns lyrical and narrative, is always stunning in its ability to speak to the present American moment, Citizen feels especially ...”
Read Saeed Jones' full recommendation »
Citizen: An American Lyric
“In All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu explores the nature of loneliness and love, violence and identity. The story is told by two narrators: Isaac is a young man who ...”
Read Lynn Neary's full recommendation »
All Our Names
“Anne Leckie's debut, Ancillary Justice, provided vast distances, sentient spaceships and a galactic empire in crisis. Against this grand backdrop there was a thoughtful ...”
Read Ellah Allfrey's full recommendation »
Ancillary Sword
“Earlier this year, when I spent a day with Jacqueline Woodson for a story, I saw that the realness she brings to her writing is also present in person, allowing her to ...”
Read Kat Chow's full recommendation »
Brown Girl Dreaming
“This might be the weirdest picture book published this year. Its premise is that in the future (2031 to be exact) birds will be ...”
Read Becky Hersher's full recommendation »
Aviary Wonders Inc. Spring Catalog And Instruction Manual
“James Ellroy is back in 1940s Los Angeles with Perfidia, the first book in a new series. It covers just a few weeks around the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when all ...”
Read Jason Sheehan's full recommendation »
Perfidia: A Novel
“Roxane Gay's first novel grabs you: "Once upon a time … I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men. … They held me captive for 13 days. They wanted ...”
Read Jane Ciabattari's full recommendation »
An Untamed State
“One of the founders of OKCupid pored over tons of data collected on the dating site and came up with this book. I loved sharing his observations about how ...”
Read Philipp Goedicke's full recommendation »
Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking)
“This is easily the novel I talked about the most this year and most adamantly pressed into other people's hands. British author Tom Rob Smith is a thriller writer, but ...”
Read Shannon Rhoades' full recommendation »
The Farm
“You had to expect that Parliament-Funkadelic producer-visionary George Clinton would give his memoir a title just as jovial, provocative and kaleidoscope-colorful as ...”
Read Jason King's full recommendation »
Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard On You? A Memoir
“When I gave my mother a copy of the first Homesick Texan cookbook, she turned up her homesick Texan nose. See, author Lisa Fain is from the ...”
Read Neda Ulaby's full recommendation »
The Homesick Texan's Family Table: Lone Star Cooking From My Kitchen To Yours
“Eleanor Davis doesn't really tell readers how to be happy. Instead, she draws comics full of hilarious surrealism, gut-tugging tropes and ...”
Read Etelka Lehoczky's full recommendation »
How To Be Happy
“When journalist Walter Kirn discovers that his friend of 15 years, a man he knew as Clark Rockefeller (wealthy, powerfully connected and, yes, one of the Rockefellers) ...”
Read Jeff Rogers' full recommendation »
Blood Will Out: The True Story Of A Murder, A Mystery, And A Masquerade
“If, like me, you thought of Pussy Riot as a lousy novelty punk group with a somewhat inchoate message and singularly bad luck, you'll put down this book feeling ...”
Read Neda Ulaby's full recommendation »
Words Will Break Cement: The Passion Of Pussy Riot
“I buy one wall calendar every year, and every year it's the same kind: reproductions of old maps from the Age of Exploration. I love them for their beauty, for the ...”
Read Ina Jaffe's full recommendation »
The Map Thief: The Gripping Story Of An Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps
“Richard Powers hits lots of high notes in this exuberantly intellectual road novel about a 70-year-old avant-garde composer obsessed with creating transcendent music ...”
Read Heller McAlpin's full recommendation »
Orfeo: A Novel
“In his taut, haunting novel, John Darnielle goes deep into the consciousness of a damaged kid turned isolated adult who builds a game that changes lives, by design and ...”
Read Ann Powers' full recommendation »
Wolf In White Van: A Novel
“Even before tackling a biography of Fox News founder Roger Ailes,New York magazine's Gabriel Sherman broke several scoops about the most secretive organization in cable ...”
Read Eric Deggans' full recommendation »
The Loudest Voice In The Room: How The Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News --- And Divided A Country
“When this book was first published, a cacophonous kerfuffle erupted over its criticism of President Obama. Lines were pulled out to suggest that Robert M. Gates — the ...”
Read Julia Keller's full recommendation »
Duty: Memoirs Of A Secretary At War
“In Fordlandia, historian Greg Grandin chronicled Henry Ford's attempt to establish a utopian version of small-town America in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest ...”
Read Maureen Corrigan's full recommendation »
The Empire Of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, And Deception In The New World
“Definitely Maybe, originally published in the 1970's as A Billion Years Before the End of the World, is a gem of the dystopian order. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky — ...”
Read Juan Vidal's full recommendation »
Definitely Maybe
“Thank You, Octopus is a wonderfully wacky tale about a mischievous octopus helping his charge get ready for bed ...”
Read Anya Kamenetz's full recommendation »
Thank You, Octopus
“Marilyn Nelson describes her book, How I Discovered Poetry, as a "personal memoir, a portrait of the artist as a young American Negro Girl." I say it's a gorgeous ...”
Read Justine Kenin's full recommendation »
How I Discovered Poetry
“Elizabeth Kolbert writes, "If extinction is a morbid topic, mass extinction is, well, massively so." Especially when we're to blame for the latest mass extinction ...”
Read Alison MacAdam's full recommendation »
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
“These stories reminded me of another era in short fiction, a time when Bernard Malamud and Isaac Bashevis Singer and Grace Paley were writing. The settings include Tel ...”
Read Meg Wolitzer's full recommendation »
The UnAmericans: Stories
“No aliens, no invasion fleets, no superheroes or space marines. The Martian focuses on just one man — astronaut Mark Watney — who becomes one of the first men to walk ...”
Read Jason Sheehan's full recommendation »
The Martian: A Novel
“When your big brother sets the rules, no matter how arbitrary they may sound, you'd better ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
Rules Of Summer
“Lorrie Moore wields her trademark sardonic wordplay and offbeat apercus to capture the bitter disappointments of romantic relationships in her first story collection in ...”
Read Heller McAlpin's full recommendation »
Bark: Stories
“Show me a family and I'll show you a mess. Families are made up of people, and people are volatile, selfish and stubborn. They're also creative and resilient and ...”
Read Julia Keller's full recommendation »
The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait
“Are you crazy busy? Stressed out? Then you'll love Brigid Schulte's deep dive into how our days have been shredded into "time confetti." (Full disclosure: I know ...”
Read Jennifer Ludden's full recommendation »
Overwhelmed: Work, Love, And Play When No One Has The Time
“If you're a fan of intelligent, complex and gorgeously written fiction (the sort that Iris Murdoch wrote), you won't want to miss this tale of artist Harriet Burden ...”
Read Nancy Pearl's full recommendation »
The Blazing World: A Novel
“This young adult novel tells the story of a group of teenagers at a special school for kids who have endured traumatic experiences. Their English teacher assigns them ...”
Read Sarah Handel's full recommendation »
Belzhar
“If you've ever cooked from a collection of recipes from different sources, you know how frustratingly inconsistent they can be. But do not ...”
Read T. Susan Chang's full recommendation »
Mastering My Mistakes In The Kitchen: Learning To Cook With 65 Great Chefs And Over 100 Delicious Recipes
“Teju Cole is the master of the meandering nonfiction novel. The story is set in Lagos and narrated by a young man whose name we are never told. It is both a ...”
Read Ellah Allfrey's full recommendation »
Every Day Is For The Thief: Fiction
“Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) was in a select category of composers — including Robert Schumann and Hector Berlioz — who wrote as well with words as with notes. Thomson's ...”
Read Mark Mobley's full recommendation »
Virgil Thomson: Music Chronicles 1940-1954
“The Ballad of a Small Player centers on "Lord Doyle," an English lawyer who's on the run with some ill-begotten money and gambling it all away in the casinos of ...”
Read Nishant Dahiya's full recommendation »
The Ballad Of A Small Player: A Novel
“We are becoming three nations — one for the wealthy, one for the poor, one for those caught in between — and Matt Taibbi provides a compelling, depressing road map ...”
Read Eric Deggans' full recommendation »
The Divide: American Injustice In The Age Of The Wealth Gap
“The Memory Garden is a quiet, meditative book about friendship, parenthood, aging and the grace and magic to be found in gardens. Nan is an old woman unexpectedly ...”
Read Amal El-Mohtar's full recommendation »
The Memory Garden
“Lydia Davis' stories are like those clown cars you see in the circus stuffed impossibly full of people. Actually, it's hardly fair to call them short stories ...”
Read Rose Friedman's full recommendation »
Can't And Won't: Stories
“Three things happened to me when I read this enchanting picture book about a mixed-up French bulldog raised by a family of prim ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
Gaston
“This novel was inspired by a photograph of a lesbian couple taken at a Paris nightclub just before World War II. One of the women pictured is Violette Morris, a ...”
Read Lynn Neary's full recommendation »
Lovers At The Chameleon Club, Paris 1932: A Novel
“They say that all technology is truly driven by its black market applications, and this is never more true than in Afterparty, where any kid with a chemjet ...”
Read Jason Sheehan's full recommendation »
Afterparty
“Empress Cixi — a low-ranking consort who became regent for her son and ruled for four decades — is often perceived as a viciously insular ruler who brought down the ...”
Read Genevieve Valentine's full recommendation »
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China
“Deftly translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Najwan Darwish's Nothing More to Lose is a passionate collection of short poems written between 2000 and 2014, uniting a ...”
Read Amal El-Mohtar's full recommendation »
Nothing More To Lose
“This is the first-ever all-Latin American issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, featuring 13 stories by some of today's most exciting voices. In the ...”
Read Juan Vidal's full recommendation »
McSweeney's Issue 46: Thirteen Crime Stories From Latin America
“Confession: When I started reading this book about a post-Sept. 11 hate crime for NPR's Tell Me More, I thought, "Sure, it'll be important, but it probably won't keep ...”
Read Amita Parashar's full recommendation »
The True American: Murder And Mercy In Texas
“A riveting dystopia set inside a beehive, The Bees tells the story of worker bee Flora 717, from her lowly hatching to her hive-saving heroism to her inadvertent ...”
Read Amal El-Mohtar's full recommendation »
The Bees: A Novel
“In With My Dog-Eyes, we witness Hilda Hilst at the peak of her brilliance. The late poet turned novelist — in just under 100 pages — tells the ...”
Read Juan Vidal's full recommendation »
With My Dog-Eyes: A Novel
“The stories of blind, French teenager Marie-Laure LeBlanc and German orphan Werner Pfennig move across the convulsing landscape of the last half of World War II ...”
Read Karen Grigsby Bates' full recommendation »
All The Light We Cannot See: A Novel
“An amazing, affecting, beautiful book, The Man With The Compound Eyes feels so alien and yet so vibratingly… alive. It's a story about a boy from a mystical (and ...”
Read Jason Sheehan's full recommendation »
The Man With The Compound Eyes: A Novel
“Genevieve Valentine sets the fairy tale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses in jazz-era New York City, bringing its fashions, music and speakeasies to life in glorious ...”
Read Amal El-Mohtar's full recommendation »
The Girls At The Kingfisher Club: A Novel
“At last, an espionage thriller set in China that works. With Night Heron, former BBC China correspondent Adam Brookes has produced a masterful debut novel. It has all ...”
Read Madhulika Sikka's full recommendation »
Night Heron
“Lily King's fourth novel (after the award-winning Father of the Rain) was inspired by a moment in 1933 when the lives of three young anthropologists — Margaret Mead and ...”
Read Jane Ciabattari's full recommendation »
Euphoria
“Often I find that "simple Thai" cookbooks are either not so simple or not so Thai. But blogger Leela Punyaratabandhu (shesimmers.com ...”
Read T. Susan Chang's full recommendation »
Simple Thai Food: Classic Recipes From The Thai Home Kitchen
“Fire up your flivvers and tea carts, birds — Walt Before Skeezix is here ...”
Read Etelka Lehoczky's full recommendation »
Walt Before Skeezix
“When I'm looking for a way to get food on the All Things Considered menu, I'm looking for great stories — about meals whipped ...”
Read Theo Balcomb's full recommendation »
Caribbean Potluck: Modern Recipes From Our Family Kitchen
“Something's not quite right from the very beginning of this book. That's where we meet Tooly Zylberberg, a bookshop owner trying to piece together her very complicated ...”
Read Amita Parashar's full recommendation »
The Rise & Fall Of Great Powers: A Novel
“Celeste Ng's compelling debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, is set in 1977, a time when races in America tended to be categorized as "black," "white" and "other. ...”
Read Arun Rath's full recommendation »
Everything I Never Told You: A Novel
“Paul O'Rourke is a dentist with a healthy (well, actually pretty unhealthy) sense of pessimism and despair. When he discovers that he's being impersonated online, he ...”
Read Michael Schaub's full recommendation »
To Rise Again At A Decent Hour: A Novel
“If there were a category for books to make a plane ride fly by, this would surely be a front-runner. The Fever is the third in what I think of as author Megan Abbott's ...”
Read Shannon Rhoades' full recommendation »
The Fever: A Novel
“At around 5 years old, Saroo Brierley found himself in Kolkata, India, alone, lost and more than 1,000 miles from his family. He lived on the streets until he was taken ...”
Read Anya Kamenetz's full recommendation »
A Long Way Home: A Memoir
“Mary Robinette Kowal's wonderful Glamourist series gets even better in this fourth volume: Jane and Vincent, the married "glamuralists" (muralists who use magic ...”
Read Bobbi Dumas' full recommendation »
Valour And Vanity
“Galbraith's style is straightforward, well-executed and deeply satisfying crime writing. This is the second novel featuring Cormoran Strike, the troubled ...”
Read Ellah Allfrey's full recommendation »
The Silkworm
“This e-book collection contains only two short stories but offers a much appreciated look at Octavia Butler as a young writer, still developing her rich style and genre ...”
Read K. Tempest Bradford's full recommendation »
Unexpected Stories
“I read Edan Lepucki's suspenseful debut novel in two days, but that wasn't without trepidation. "You've covered a lot of natural disasters lately," I said to myself ...”
Read Kirk Siegler's full recommendation »
California: A Novel
“If this enchanting first novel — which takes place over the course of one eventful day, the eve of Christmas Eve — were displayed as a Venn diagram, the place where the ...”
Read Nancy Pearl's full recommendation »
2 A.M. At The Cat's Pajamas
“This isn't a love story; it's the story of a marriage that's no longer easy. Five years ago, Gus (short for Augusta) had an affair. Her husband, Owen, knows ...”
Read Natalie Friedman Winston's full recommendation »
Life Drawing: A Novel
“With warm, funny storytelling and fantastic art, Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew team up to give a character from the Golden Age of comics a worthy origin story. Hank ...”
Read Amal El-Mohtar's full recommendation »
The Shadow Hero
“Put this book into the hands of the right reader and you may never get it back. Lizi Boyd takes a simple idea — ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
Flashlight
“Akhtiorskaya's debut novel is set in Brooklyn, but you won't find any kombucha-clutching hipsters here. Her novel follows the members of the Nasmertov family, recently ...”
Read Michael Schaub's full recommendation »
Panic In A Suitcase: A Novel
“The best post-colonial novel of the year, and also one of the slyest critiques on our comic book and video game culture. Tigerman is the funny, beautiful and ...”
Read Jason Sheehan's full recommendation »
Tigerman: A Novel
“Yanique spins a series of seductive tales covering six decades and three generations living in the Virgin Islands in her first novel, which draws upon her own family ...”
Read Jane Ciabattari's full recommendation »
Land Of Love And Drowning: A Novel
“It's no surprise that Roxane Gay — author, essayist and sharp observer of everything in pop culture we're supposed to be too cool to like — has written such a winning ...”
Read Genevieve Valentine's full recommendation »
Bad Feminist: Essays
“The third, and best, in a series of books about the modern American conservative movement, The Invisible Bridge is something like a national biography, a deep ...”
Read Michael Schaub's full recommendation »
The Invisible Bridge: The Fall Of Nixon And The Rise Of Reagan
“Everyone on the Internet knows this simple truth: It's much easier to see what makes someone else abnormal than it is to figure out ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
You Are (Not) Small
“Michelle Fischer, Desma Brooks and Debbie Helton all joined the Indiana National Guard prior to Sept. 11. Although they signed up for different reasons, came from very ...”
Read Nancy Pearl's full recommendation »
Soldier Girls: The Battles Of Three Women At Home And At War
“In a follow-up to Alan's War, his celebrated book about an ordinary man's experiences in World War II, Emmanuel Guibert illustrates a second installment ...”
Read Etelka Lehoczky's full recommendation »
How The World Was: A California Childhood
“Among my favorite novels are David Lodge's Small World, Richard Russo's Straight Man and James Hynes' The Lecturer's Tale: all academic satires. I also greatly enjoy ...”
Read Nancy Pearl's full recommendation »
Dear Committee Members: A Novel
“It took Richard Flanagan 12 years to write The Narrow Road to the Deep North — and it shows. The book has some of the most beautiful writing and plotting I've ever ...”
Read Nishant Dahiya's full recommendation »
The Narrow Road To The Deep North: A Novel
“The story of a Kentucky woman coming to terms with her haunted childhood and the disappearance of her little brother, David Connerley Nahm's debut is ...”
Read Michael Schaub's full recommendation »
Ancient Oceans Of Central Kentucky
“Recently widowed Kate and her 8-year-old daughter escape the machinations of her politician mother-in-law by fleeing to her Great Aunt Eby's declining resort, Lost ...”
Read Bobbi Dumas' full recommendation »
Lost Lake
“Long after their father heeds a hypnotist's advice to make his most secret dreams reality and in the process abruptly deserts his ...”
Read Nancy Pearl's full recommendation »
F: A Novel
“Eleven-year-old Jarrett deals with a constant flow of foster babies shuffling in and out of his home. His mom is a foster parent and the book begins with a toddler and ...”
Read Priska Neely's full recommendation »
Kinda Like Brothers
“Geek Sublime is a primer for those of us unacquainted with HTML, Github and logic gates, elegantly assembled by a masterful novelist with a surprising obsession. "My ...”
Read Jane Ciabattari's full recommendation »
Geek Sublime: The Beauty Of Code, The Code Of Beauty
“Fiercely smart, caustically creative, defiantly feminist, Lauren Beukes has pioneered a new genre: the technothriller set amid crumbling cities. Broken Monsters is a ...”
Read Julia Keller's full recommendation »
Broken Monsters
“Xiaolu Guo's novels are bold expressions of individual will in the face of state control. In each, she explores, through idiosyncratic, quirky characters, the ...”
Read Ellah Allfrey's full recommendation »
I Am China: A Novel
“No writer puts you inside the experience of music the way Greil Marcus does. His descriptions of songs, especially, unfold like thrillers or romantic ...”
Read Ann Powers' full recommendation »
The History Of Rock 'N' Roll In Ten Songs
“This is a glittering collection of poems that move across the page with the fierce grace of a corseted dancer. Saeed Jones' sharp rhythms and powerful images are ...”
Read Amal El-Mohtar's full recommendation »
Prelude To Bruise
“There's nothing easy about Eimear McBride's raw, brutally intense first novel, from its fractured sentences to its shattering story of the young unnamed narrator's ...”
Read Heller McAlpin's full recommendation »
A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing
“Ballerina Misty Copeland is having a moment that extends far beyond the stage: Her memoir came out ...”
Read Nina Gregory's full recommendation »
Firebird
“David Dow, a death row attorney, writes forcefully about three bitter losses that converged into a perfect storm of distress for him: his athletic father-in-law to ...”
Read Heller McAlpin's full recommendation »
Things I've Learned From Dying: A Book About Life
“Forgotten history is the bedrock of The Moor's Account, which imagines the life of the first African explorer of the Americas, a Moroccan slave who survived the ...”
Read Genevieve Valentine's full recommendation »
The Moor's Account: A Novel
“Monica McFawn's first collection of short stories, winner of this year's Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, displays her idiosyncratic voice, her flair for ...”
Read Jane Ciabattari's full recommendation »
Bright Shards Of Someplace Else
“Valentine Millimaki is a reticent, insomniac sheriff's deputy in Montana; John Gload is the jailed remorseless murderer Millimaki has been assigned to keep an eye on ...”
Read Michael Schaub's full recommendation »
The Ploughmen: A Novel
“In his best novel since Saturday, Ian McEwan gives us another compact, propulsive morality tale about a professional in crisis mode. Fifty-nine-year-old Fiona ...”
Read Heller McAlpin's full recommendation »
The Children Act
“This isn't one of those collections that go to great lengths to show you their writer's range. We already know that Margaret Atwood can do many, many things very ...”
Read Meg Wolitzer's full recommendation »
Stone Mattress: Nine Tales
“The Secret Place, Tana French's fifth Dublin Murder Squad novel, pries open the world of teenagers at a girls' prep school, and the homicidal stew of hormones that ...”
Read Maureen Corrigan's full recommendation »
The Secret Place: A Novel
“Drawing on interviews and archival research, Thirteen Days in September presents an almost minute-by-minute account of one of the last century's greatest ...”
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Thirteen Days In September: Carter, Begin, And Sadat At Camp David
“Brian Morton's superb novel Florence Gordon features a 75-year-old woman — an icon of the second wave women's movement — as its heroine. She's a self-described ...”
Read Maureen Corrigan's full recommendation »
Florence Gordon
“Ah, the quandary of spices! Bought on an impulse, doomed to a dark, dusty corner of a cabinet for decades. (Honestly, when's ...”
Read T. Susan Chang's full recommendation »
World Spice At Home: New Flavors For 75 Favorite Dishes
“I usually stay away from Holocaust fiction — the topic is too easy to manipulate for emotional impact. But Amis' new novel — set in a satellite camp of the ...”
Read Mark Katkov's full recommendation »
The Zone Of Interest: A Novel
“If you, too, have been worried that the great Philippa Gregory was going to run out of angles to tell the story of Henry VIII and the fortunes and reversals of ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
The King's Curse
“Some Luck is the first book in a trilogy that will follow an Iowa farm family over 100 years. The story begins in 1920 when Walter and Rosanna Langdon are ...”
Read Lynn Neary's full recommendation »
Some Luck: A Novel
“This is a marvelous, brilliant, un-put-down-able book that swings between dark whimsy and harrowing bleakness with dexterity and skill. At the very end of the grimy ...”
Read Amal El-Mohtar's full recommendation »
Heap House: The Iremonger Trilogy: Book One
“I've been cherry-picking appealingly fresh recipes from this book, organized by season, since it came out in the spring. Winners ...”
Read Heller McAlpin's full recommendation »
The New Greenmarket Cookbook: Recipes And Tips From Today's Finest Chefs — And The Stories Behind The Farms That Inspire Them
“Marilynne Robinson first introduced readers to Lila as a minor character in the novel Gilead. In this book, Robinson fills out the details of Lila's life. She is the ...”
Read Lynn Neary's full recommendation »
Lila: A Novel
“Dana Alison Levy accomplishes something special with this funny, warm book: She tells an enchantingly timeless story about a family that could only exist ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
The Misadventures Of The Family Fletcher
“Sure, you're just looking for a book to read while you're waiting for dinner to cook — but here's a brief reminder courtesy of Iranian-American author Azar Nafisi ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
The Republic Of Imagination: America In Three Books
“I rate cookbooks on their IQ — Irresistibility Quotient — and Dorie Greenspan's latest scores on the Mensa level. Greenspan says the French ...”
Read Heller McAlpin's full recommendation »
Baking Chez Moi: Recipes From My Paris Home To Your Home Anywhere
“David Dawson, Lucian Freud's devoted assistant, friend and frequent model for the last 20 years and an artist in ...”
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A Painter's Progress: A Portrait Of Lucian Freud
“Maira Kalman's whimsical, sublimely silly alphabet book celebrates the newly renovated Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum by featuring ...”
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Ah-Ha To Zig-Zag: 31 Objects From Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
“What's a perfect pet? For the little boy in Bob Staake's charming, rhyming picture book brightly illustrated in his rounded, cartoonish ...”
Read Heller McAlpin's full recommendation »
My Pet Book
“Colm Tóibín's quietly moving quasi-autobiographical novel, set at the beginning of the 1970s in his hometown of Enniscorthy, Ireland, charts his titular ...”
Read Heller McAlpin's full recommendation »
Nora Webster: A Novel
“Adopted as a toddler by an American couple, Lily Firestone is the only Asian student in her Kansas City high school. It's 1951 and, with the Korean War raging, she has ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
Girl In Reverse
“There's a reason you'll recognize many of the international foods in this book — they're the ones that made it to this country ...”
Read T. Susan Chang's full recommendation »
Cooking Light Global Kitchen: The World's Most Delicious Food Made Easy
“What happens when you're a freshly adopted dog, desperate for a permanent home full of belly rubs and nose kisses but afflicted with ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
Shoe Dog
“Little Nemo in Slumberland creator Winsor McCay might blush to see the awe-inspiring tribute his successors have assembled. On massive ...”
Read Etelka Lehoczky's full recommendation »
Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream
“It's a bracing premise: Indirect messages centered on stereotypes about minorities have persuaded middle-class and poor white people to support a government controlled ...”
Read Eric Deggans' full recommendation »
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism And Wrecked The Middle Class
“This is the very long awaited conclusion to Patrick Leigh Fermor's unforgettable, three-part travelogue, which describes his adventures during a walk from the ...”
Read Peter Kenyon's full recommendation »
The Broken Road: From The Iron Gates To Mount Athos
“Charles D'Ambrosio's essay collection Orphans became a cult classic not long after its 2004 release by a small Portland, Ore., press. Tin House has reissued the ...”
Read Michael Schaub's full recommendation »
Loitering: New And Collected Essays
“It's been a banner year for children's graphic novel memoirs — and the best of the bunch is Cece Bell's El Deafo. Profoundly deaf after a bout with meningitis, Cece ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
El Deafo
“This book is many things at once, all of them engrossing. It's a book where teenagers think in almost indulgently poetic language while still sounding genuinely ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
I'll Give You The Sun
“You don't have to be a fan of the world's most popular sport to enjoy David Peace's "fictional biography" of soccer coach — uh, "football manager" — Bill Shankly, whose ...”
Read Michael Schaub's full recommendation »
Red Or Dead: A Novel
“Shigeru Mizuki endures much in Showa 1944-1953: A History of Japan, the third volume in his autobiographical graphic novel. Stationed in New ...”
Read Etelka Lehoczky's full recommendation »
Showa 1944-1953: A History Of Japan
“Kerry Howley isn't your typical mixed martial arts fan. The writer became hooked on the sport while working on a graduate degree in Iowa. In her highly original ...”
Read Michael Schaub's full recommendation »
Thrown
“Molly Wizenberg's second book is the story of opening a restaurant with her husband, and she pulls no punches about the difficulties of entrepreneurship and making ...”
Read Sarah Handel's full recommendation »
Delancey: A Man, A Woman, A Restaurant, A Marriage
“I work in nonfiction, so I'm always looking for a fun tale to escape with, especially on that long flight home after a tough assignment. Jonas Jonasson had me from the ...”
Read Kirk Siegler's full recommendation »
The Girl Who Saved The King Of Sweden: A Novel
“When I was a little kid in the late 1970s, my parents moved our family to rural western Montana, which happens to be the same time and setting for Smith Henderson's ...”
Read Kirk Siegler's full recommendation »
Fourth Of July Creek: A Novel
“At the center of this beautiful book is three minutes of film footage showing 1938 Nasielsk, a tiny Polish town, from a home movie that Glenn Kurtz found in his ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
Three Minutes In Poland: Discovering A Lost World In A 1938 Family Film
“Whether the new biography of poet Philip Larkin is for you will depend on two things: whether you adore the poetry (you do? Let's be friends!), and if you're interested ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
Philip Larkin: Life, Art And Love
“This is spy craft, ladies and gentlemen; not a James Bond action movie or a John le Carré psychological thriller. This is spy craft practiced by a gentleman you've ...”
Read Smokey Baer's full recommendation »
The Good Spy: The Life And Death Of Robert Ames
“All her life, beautiful and privileged Cadence Sinclair Eastman has spent idyllic summers on her family's private island. But during her 15th summer, a mysterious ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
We Were Liars
“Actually, the best tag for this book is "Funny Stuff From The Dark Side For Art Lovers." This is a Chicago noir: smart, edgy and profane (very profane) yet with the ...”
Read Smokey Baer's full recommendation »
Some Dead Genius
“In August, out of nostalgia for a 2013 visit to Italy, I picked up My Brilliant Friend, the first of Italian novelist Elena Ferrante's "Neapolitan Novels" about a ...”
Read Hannah Bloch's full recommendation »
Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay
“There's magic and then there's magic. Revelation "Reve" Dyer walks a fine line between the two as part of a Las Vegas couple that performs to packed houses on ...”
Read Stacey Abbott's full recommendation »
The Hawley Book Of The Dead: A Novel
“This dazzling first novel by British-Bangladeshi author Zia Haider Rahman follows two old friends, one a child of Pakistani privilege, the other born into poverty in ...”
Read Mark Katkov's full recommendation »
In The Light Of What We Know: A Novel
“Americans may not recognize the portrait of Israel in Assaf Gavron's most recent novel, but Israelis sure will. It's set in an illegal Jewish settlement on the West ...”
Read Mark Katkov's full recommendation »
The Hilltop: A Novel
“Accidentally ejected from a circus train, a cheerful child clown is taken in by a solemn ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
The Farmer And The Clown
“Marie Brennan expertly weaves together fantasy and science, history and memoir, and adventure and politics with this second book in the very entertaining Lady ...”
Read K. Tempest Bradford's full recommendation »
The Tropic Of Serpents: A Memoir By Lady Trent
“Life onstage is tough enough for indie rockers without being out of sight for seven years. Anna Brundage is up against tough odds on a European comeback tour at 44. Why ...”
Read Jane Ciabattari's full recommendation »
Wonderland: A Novel
“The citation for Alice Munro's 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature calls her "the master of the contemporary short story." Generations to come will relish the ...”
Read Jane Ciabattari's full recommendation »
Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995-2014
“"In a company town, everything wore The Company insignia. ‘Live better electrically!' the slogan said. Everyone believed it." Elizabeth Rosner's poetic and nuanced ...”
Read Jane Ciabattari's full recommendation »
Electric City: A Novel
“In a first novel etched with grief and conviction, Kathryn Ma, winner of the 2009 Iowa Short Fiction award, delves into the experiences of an adopted girl — one of the ...”
Read Jane Ciabattari's full recommendation »
The Year She Left Us: A Novel
“While teaching in Stanford's writing program and rooming together, Michael McGriff and J.M. Tyree cooked up the idea of binge-watching the entire Criterion ...”
Read Jane Ciabattari's full recommendation »
Our Secret Life In The Movies
“Raina is convinced that being a big sister will be awesome ... until she actually becomes one. During a road trip to Colorado, flashbacks reveal a contentious ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
Sisters
“This smartly written, often funny and scarily realistic technothriller, which takes place in a future that's well within sight of where we are today, features three ...”
Read Nancy Pearl's full recommendation »
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
“John Grisham's latest novel is set in a small, poverty-pummeled Appalachian town shadowed by not only the mountains but also the sweeping power of the big coal ...”
Read Julia Keller's full recommendation »
Gray Mountain: A Novel
“It was a miracle watched around the world on live TV. On Oct. 13, 2010, 33 Chilean miners trapped for 69 days inside the San Jose mine were raised to the surface of the ...”
Read Maureen Corrigan's full recommendation »
Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories Of 33 Men Buried In A Chilean Mine, And The Miracle That Set Them Free
“Ever want to quit your job, move to the country and start a farm stand? Susie Middleton, former editor of Fine Cooking ...”
Read T. Susan Chang's full recommendation »
Fresh From The Farm: A Year Of Recipes And Stories
“Michel Faber writes books you lug around — in your bag, in your head, in your conscience. The author of the giant Victorian novel The Crimson Petal And the White ...”
Read Barrie Hardymon's full recommendation »
The Book Of Strange New Things: A Novel
“When a Bollywood director learns his brother is still legally bound to the child bride he was forced to marry at age 4, he tracks her down in America, determined ...”
Read Bobbi Dumas' full recommendation »
A Bollywood Affair
“There was a time when Gibson's visions of the future were the coolest on the market. And while he might've traded in the chrome and mirror shades for drones, video ...”
Read Jason Sheehan's full recommendation »
The Peripheral: A Novel
“When Irish orphans Molly and her little brother, Kip, find employment at a rundown English manor house in the desolate countryside, something, or someone, is set on ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
The Night Gardener
“It's been eight years since The Lay of the Land was published — the novel Richard Ford said would be the last in his Frank Bascombe trilogy. Luckily, Ford had second ...”
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Let Me Be Frank With You: A Frank Bascombe Book
“When a collection like Malaria, Poems comes along, the world must take notice. In the spirit of social consciousness, Cameron Conaway does the work of calling our ...”
Read Juan Vidal's full recommendation »
Malaria, Poems
“Texas is a huge, complicated state, and it's sometimes a difficult one for authors to get right. Not so for René Steinke, whose Friendswood does a near-perfect job ...”
Read Michael Schaub's full recommendation »
Friendswood: A Novel
“If you're a young boy and a dead horse falls off a bridge, kills your mother, and leaves you with deep scars — and you're prone to epileptic seizures — you'd come to ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
100 Sideways Miles
“Rarely does a conceptual work seize the emotions like Here. Expanding on his influential 1989 comic, Richard McGuire depicts life in a single place at ...”
Read Etelka Lehoczky's full recommendation »
Here
“Always on the move because of her mother's wandering ways, 12-year-old Felicity lands in Midnight Gulch, where her mother was born. The Southern town was once full of ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
A Snicker Of Magic
“A little boy is looking for Lion. Lion is looking for lunch. There's only one outcome that seems likely when the two meet in Miriam Busch and Larry ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
Lion, Lion
“With its deep insight into the Mexican musician who usually lets his music speak for itself, this book is a Carlos Santana fan's dream. Here, finally, the guitarist ...”
Read Felix Contreras' full recommendation »
The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light
“Photographer Jim Marshall was a short man with a huge profile in the music industry (and, full disclosure, a friend). Before his death in 2010 ...”
Read Karen Grigsby Bates' full recommendation »
The Haight: Love, Rock, And Revolution
“There was enough intrigue in the real life of Russian musician and inventor Lev Sergeyvich Termen to make a fictionalization of his adventures seem superfluous. Hustled ...”
Read Jacob Ganz's full recommendation »
Us Conductors: A Novel
“Wow! Fantagraphics has assembled a box set of every issue of Zap Comix ever produced, from 1968 to 2004? Including all ...”
Read Etelka Lehoczky's full recommendation »
The Complete Zap Comix Boxed Set
“Not so long ago, designers dictated how women would look from season to season. Now, celebrities — and people who think they're celebrities — are setting the sartorial ...”
Read Karen Grigsby Bates' full recommendation »
Hijacking The Runway: How Celebrities Are Stealing The Spotlight From Fashion Designers
“Music producer J Dilla had a way of stretching a sample that wrought sorrow from joy, noise from melody and the other way around. In this entry to ...”
Read Lars Gotrich's full recommendation »
J Dilla's Donuts
“I tried reading Heartsick, the first of Chelsea Cain's thrillers featuring Archie Sheridan and Gretchen Lowell, but it was way too scary for me; I never tried ...”
Read Nancy Pearl's full recommendation »
One Kick: A Novel
“After spotting a few of 84-year-old British novelist Ruth Rendell's books on my desk, a co-worker recently asked, "You still read her?" as if we are supposed to give up ...”
Read Shannon Rhoades' full recommendation »
The Girl Next Door: A Novel
“In Betsy Woodman's first Jana Bibi book, the Indo-Scottish violin teacher hires the town bagpiper to scare off wild monkeys from the home she inherited in the imaginary ...”
Read Suraya Mohamed's full recommendation »
Emeralds Included: A Jana Bibi Adventure
“It's a hilariously specialized subgroup of nerds, those of us who dig the intersection of true crime and silent film. But we who enjoy debating the 1921 manslaughter ...”
Read Neda Ulaby's full recommendation »
Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, And Madness At The Dawn of Hollywood
“Twenty-four-hour cable; infinite news sources online; tweets and YouTube. It's hard to remember a time when the political cycle was slower and more ...”
Read Madhulika Sikka's full recommendation »
All The Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid
“Sixteenth-century Japan is never so entertaining as in Stan Sakai's tales of Miyamoto Usagi, the rabbit ronin. Scheming villains, enigmatic monks, stern masters and ...”
Read Etelka Lehoczky's full recommendation »
The Usagi Yojimbo Saga Volume 1
“The thing about chef books is that usually chefs have a lot of things you don't — for example, squads of prep cooks, access to ...”
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My Perfect Pantry: 150 Easy Recipes From 50 Essential Ingredients
“Granted, a 600-page history of the early video game industry isn't everyone's cup of tea, but Blake J. Harris does for Nintendo and Sega what Doris Kearns Goodwin did ...”
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Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, And The Battle That Defined A Generation
“If the guys who wrote Lost had brought H.P. Lovecraft into the room as a script doctor in the first season, the Southern Reach trilogy is what they ...”
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Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance
“To me, the best way to describe this novel is to say that while I was reading it I frequently had to remind myself to breathe. Society woman Charlotte Alton has a ...”
Read Nancy Pearl's full recommendation »
The Distance: A Thriller
“Editor Amy Scholder had two questions for her contributors when she started assembling these meditations on a spectrum of famous women. "Who do you think about ...”
Read Ann Powers' full recommendation »
Icon
“Rappers are the descendants of West African griots who held villages in awe with their artful storytelling. But what inspired them? What ...”
Read Cedric Shine's full recommendation »
Check The Technique: More Liner Notes For Hip-Hop Junkies
“When one of his scams goes seriously amiss, not-very-successful con artist Frankie Abandonato goes on the run from the Mafia. A chance encounter gives him the perfect ...”
Read Nancy Pearl's full recommendation »
Famous Writers I Have Known: A Novel
“Hooray for Hat! is practically the Platonic ideal of a picture book. It uses simple, repetitive language to tell a simple ...”
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Hooray For Hat!
“Debates about culture and technology are often couched in terms of either/or: Is streaming good or bad for musicians? Are social media good or bad for activism? Does ...”
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The People's Platform: Taking Back Power And Culture In The Digital Age
“Deceit, politics, bravery, courage, heroes and villains are all the makings of a great novel. However, this isn't a ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
Strike!: The Farm Workers' Fight For Their Rights
“Matthew Palmer's The American Mission is a can't-put-it-down thriller. The novel kicks off in an arid, bloodstained refugee camp in Sudan's southern Darfur region, but ...”
Read Didrik Schanche's full recommendation »
The American Mission
“Broke and desperate, ventriloquist puppeteer Annie Hewitt takes sanctuary on a remote Maine island. Though determined to ignore her rich neighbor (Theo Harp, a former ...”
Read Bobbi Dumas' full recommendation »
Heroes Are My Weakness: A Novel
“When the government coerces former Navy SEAL Ian Dunn into planning a complicated rescue of two kidnapped children to avoid an explosive international incident, it ...”
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Do Or Die: A Reluctant Heroes Novel
“Well aware that memory and identity rarely follow a linear path, Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer the question, "What does it really mean to be a man? ...”
Read Saeed Jones' full recommendation »
Man Alive: A True Story Of Violence, Forgiveness And Becoming A Man
“Tatamkhulu Afrika's autobiographical novel based on his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. Set ...”
Read Saeed Jones' full recommendation »
Bitter Eden: A Novel
“Every so often, if we're lucky, we encounter books that challenge us to dream bigger and more vivid dreams. The Last Illusion, which draws from a medieval Persian epic ...”
Read Saeed Jones' full recommendation »
The Last Illusion: A Novel
“Martin Duberman deftly navigates the biographies of two gay artists — Michael Callen and Essex Hemphill — to illuminate what he describes as the "battlefield of ...”
Read Saeed Jones' full recommendation »
Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, And The Battlefield of AIDS
“Fairy tales are like literary Velcro strips, nabbing us early and holding us tight; no matter how old or sophisticated we get, we stay emotionally connected to those ...”
Read Julia Keller's full recommendation »
The Witch: And Other Tales Re-Told
“This year I discovered Peirene Press, a London publisher who sends me a work of translated European fiction every four months in exchange ...”
Read Ellah Allfrey's full recommendation »
The Dead Lake
“Will Walker is a young Englishman who has gone to war with the noblest of intentions. Ray Marfione is an Italian-American whose war will take him to the land of his ...”
Read Ellah Allfrey's full recommendation »
In The Wolf's Mouth: A Novel
“Much has been written about the late writer Roberto Bolaño; over the past decade, interest in his work has reached levels Bolaño himself may not have imagined. Or ...”
Read Juan Vidal's full recommendation »
Bolaño, A Biography In Conversations
“Beekle, an adorable marshmallow-like fellow sporting an orange paper crown, lives on a magical island. Here, he patiently waits his turn for ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
The Adventures Of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend
“In The Book of Unknown Americans, Cristina Henríquez captures the immigrant experience with style and grace. A love story at its core, it begins with teenage ...”
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The Book Of Unknown Americans: A Novel
“One of France's most revered crime writers, Didier Daeninckx delivers an arresting, fast-paced detective story with Nazis in the Metro. After the novelist André Sloga ...”
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Nazis In The Metro
“Science fiction is big in China, occupying a "rather unique place in the culture and literature," according to scholar Xia Jia. Despite this, we in the Western world ...”
Read K. Tempest Bradford's full recommendation »
The Three-Body Problem
“So you don't think you could ever make banh mi, your favorite Vietnamese sandwich? Andrea Nguyen ...”
Read T. Susan Chang's full recommendation »
The Banh Mi Handbook: Recipes For Crazy-Delicious Vietnamese Sandwiches
“This novella is as dark and rich as European drinking chocolate, both in the story it tells and in the way it's written. Malcolm Mays tries to escape the horror ...”
Read K. Tempest Bradford's full recommendation »
The End Of The Sentence
“You'll never look at a period piece the same way again. Ruth Goodman, a historian who lives her studies, takes the "Dawn to Dusk" approach seriously. Her re-creation of ...”
Read Genevieve Valentine's full recommendation »
How To Be A Victorian: A Dawn-To-Dusk Guide To Victorian Life
“Mexican chef and food activist Margarita Carrillo is an enthusiastic and comprehensive guide to her country's cuisine in Mexico: The Cookbook — which looks ...”
Read Maria Godoy's full recommendation »
Mexico: The Cookbook
“A raven-haired dame with a mysterious power over men flees from a cult in this virtuoso noir tale. Ed Brubaker's fiendishly addictive story unspools in three ...”
Read Etelka Lehoczky's full recommendation »
Fatale Deluxe Edition, Vol. 1
“Charles Phan's latest has a few of those recipes that are the gold standard for any adventurous cook — things like Roasted Mushroom And Yuba Salad ...”
Read Rose Friedman's full recommendation »
The Slanted Door: Modern Vietnamese Food
“Half a World Away by Cynthia Kadohata will hit you right in the heart and gut. We meet Jaden, who's 12, obsessed with electricity and adopted from Romania four years ...”
Read Justine Kenin's full recommendation »
Half A World Away
“By the far-reaching tentacles of N'Rygoth! Look up "rowdy" in the dictionary and you'll probably find portraits of Hannah, Dee, Violet and Betty, the butt-kicking ...”
Read Petra Mayer's full recommendation »
Rat Queens Vol. 1: Sass And Sorcery
“A young bear finds a lost stuffed bunny and thinks the toy is "the most special thing he has ever seen." But Bear ...”
Read Lisa Yee's full recommendation »
Found
“In Viva Frida, Yuyi Morales combines fewer than 20 words with tactile, beautiful illustrations to create ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
Viva Frida
“Dangerous children face off against demons in Farel Dalrymple's nesting doll of a story. In a post-apocalyptic world, the kids known as the Wrenchies rely ...”
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The Wrenchies
“If you enjoy podcasts like Marc Maron's WTF and J.R. Havlan's Writer's Bloc, or if you just enjoy being serious about comedy, then this book is for you. It's filled ...”
Read Philipp Goedicke's full recommendation »
Poking A Dead Frog: Conversations With Today's Top Comedy Writers
“This anthology-size special issue of Lightspeed magazine was edited and written entirely by women — and the original fiction, reprints, essays, articles and interviews ...”
Read K. Tempest Bradford's full recommendation »
Lightspeed: Women Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue
“The conceit of this beautiful, wordless picture book is simple — a little boy is drawing in his bedroom and imagines himself on safari ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
Draw!
“I'm a Walter Mosley fan — I have several signed copies of his books, mostly from his Easy Rawlins detective series — but Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore isn't crime ...”
Read Tanya Ballard Brown's full recommendation »
Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore: A Novel
“The Western genre is a veritable myth factory, and writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Emma Ríos are making the most of it. The first volume of their Pretty Deadly ...”
Read Genevieve Valentine's full recommendation »
Pretty Deadly Volume 1
“New York poet Roberto Montes is still a few years away from 30, but he has already written one of the best, most original poetry books of the year. Montes' language is ...”
Read Michael Schaub's full recommendation »
I Don't Know Do You
“This ongoing anthology series allows English-language readers the opportunity to explore speculative visions of the future, past and present from writers around the ...”
Read K. Tempest Bradford's full recommendation »
The Apex Book Of World SF 3
“This anthology is perfect for teens who are interested in science fiction and fantasy — but who don't want just stories about white, straight, able-bodied rich kids and ...”
Read K. Tempest Bradford's full recommendation »
Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction And Fantasy Stories
“This wonderful children's book is full of challenges to find the "odd one out" — the one penguin sheltering a fledgling, the scared tortoise ...”
Read Sarah Handel's full recommendation »
The Odd One Out
“I am almost loath to tell anyone about this magic book. If too many people notice it, Hollywood is ...”
Read Margaret Willison's full recommendation »
Quest

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