literary books of 2022

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The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2022

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T he best fiction released this year reminded us to value our relationships with one another, no matter what form they take. These books emphasized how we are shaped by the people who surround us, as well as those who are no longer physically present but whose memories we continue to carry. They are stories about friendship and love, growing up and growing older, loss and living, all centered on characters reckoning with how their people do and do not show up for them. There’s a bruising portrait of grief told through an adult daughter remembering her mother, a gritty account of a young woman who forms a community at the depths of her loneliness, a celebration of friendship between two creative geniuses, and more. Here, the top 10 fiction books of 2022.

10. Signal Fires , Dani Shapiro

Signal Fires , Dani Shapiro ’s first novel in 15 years, begins with a horrible ending. It’s 1985 and three intoxicated teenagers go for a car ride that proves fatal. The details of the accident are kept secret—and will haunt one family forever. Decades later, the doctor who ran to the scene of the accident befriends his 11-year-old neighbor, right near the spot where it happened. As Shapiro draws connections between seemingly disparate threads, she creates a moving portrait of guilt, grief, and fate. And she shows, in aching terms, how life is made up of random moments—missed opportunities and curious circumstances—and that it only takes a second for everything to change.

Buy Now : Signal Fires on Bookshop | Amazon

9. Trust , Hernan Diaz

In 1920s New York, everyone who’s anyone knows Benjamin and Helen Rask, the wealthy couple sitting pretty at the top of the financial world. But how exactly did they accumulate so much power and wealth? That question is the driving force of the immensely popular 1937 novel Bonds —one of four distinct texts within Hernan Diaz’s Trust . The story of the Rasks (or the Bevels, depending which book-within-the-book you’re reading) contains mysterious multitudes. Their relationship and their privilege are undermined, examined, and rewritten as Diaz spins a dazzling story about subjectivity and greed.

Buy Now : Trust on Bookshop | Amazon

8. Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century , Kim Fu

The 12 stories that make up Kim Fu’s bold collection feature characters dealing with scenarios that border between reality and fantasy. In the spaces where lines blur, Fu reveals quietly profound commentary on the intersections of technology, love, and loss. In one narrative, a girl mysteriously sprouts wings, a development that forces her friend group to consider their ever-changing adolescent bodies. In another, an insomniac grows dependent on sporadic visits from a strange man made of sand who might be the secret to her finally falling asleep. And in a wildly twisted tale, a couple kills each other, over and over again, to keep their relationship alive. These stories, surreal and clever, all point to crises that sit below the surface. Fu brings magical realism to exciting heights, positioning her characters’ relatable emotional battles within wonderfully constructed worlds.

Buy Now : Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century on Bookshop | Amazon

7. Young Mungo , Douglas Stuart

Douglas Stuart’s follow-up to his 2020 Booker Prize-winning debut Shuggie Bain is every bit as crushing as his first novel. Young Mungo is another visceral depiction of 20th-century working class Glasgow, this time centered on the impossible first love between two teenage boys. Homophobia and violence surround them, and the sensitivity that the young men possess is not welcome in their world of hostile masculinity. Through rich dialogue and rhythmic prose, Stuart brings to life a captivating portrayal of 1990s Scotland and the struggles faced by queer men who are learning how to live in the face of it all.

Buy Now : Young Mungo on Bookshop | Amazon

6. If I Survive You , Jonathan Escoffery

The first entry in Jonathan Escoffery’s lyrical and kaleidoscopic debut If I Survive You introduces the character at the short story collection’s center: Trelawny, the sole American-born member of a Jamaican family. In the seven linked narratives that follow, Escoffery follows Trelawny as he grapples with his identity as the son of Black immigrants living in Miami, where he never feels Black enough. Escoffery writes with urgency and heart as he illustrates his protagonist’s struggles to fit in, especially as his family falls apart in the wake of a devastating hurricane and recession. If I Survive You , longlisted for a 2022 National Book Award, is a timeless story of a young person wrestling with big questions about race and class, captured in intricately drawn scenes of everyday life.

Buy Now : If I Survive You on Bookshop | Amazon

5. Vladimir , Julia May Jonas

The protagonist of Julia May Jonas’ electric debut novel , an unnamed English professor, is grappling with the public fallout of her husband’s past affairs with students at the college where they both teach. The narrator is more annoyed than anything else—she and her husband had an open marriage—and she is quite preoccupied with an extramarital activity of her own: crushing hard on her department’s latest recruit. As the professor grows closer to her young new colleague, her desire festers into gnawing obsession. Jonas’s explosive novel asks timely questions about power and campus politics.

Buy Now : Vladimir on Bookshop | Amazon

4. All This Could Be Different , Sarah Thankam Mathews

In Sarah Thankam Mathews’ tender debut novel All This Could Be Different , a finalist for a 2022 National Book Award, recent college graduate Sneha has just moved to Milwaukee and started an awful job as a corporate consultant. Though the work is soul-crushing, there’s a recession swirling and the money keeps Sneha afloat. Plus, she can send some of it to her parents in India. But Mathews’ contemplative protagonist is desperately lonely in this new life, despite a burgeoning romance with an older ballet dancer named Marina. As Sneha questions why she finds it so difficult to open up to others, she is forced to confront the inescapable trauma that she’s buried deep inside. Mathews explores this tension, and the community that Sneha builds for herself in the Midwest, in an incisive and surprising coming-of-age narrative.

Buy Now : All This Could Be Different on Bookshop | Amazon

3. The Book of Goose , Yiyun Li

Agnès has just heard the news that her childhood best friend, Fabienne, is dead. Now an adult living in America, Agnès reflects on growing up in France with Fabienne by her side and a decision Fabienne made that changed both their lives: when they were kids in the war-ravaged countryside, Fabienne wrote a fictional account of their experiences, and published it under Agnès’ name. The move catapulted Agnès to literary fame—and to a London finishing school where she suffered tremendously without Fabienne nearby—and now, she’s finally ready to tell her version of the events that defined her adolescence. Yiyun Li dissects the girls’ achingly intimate and, at times, unsettling friendship, and asks if Agnès ever really knew the person she was so devoted to. In detailing the answer, she unveils a cutting portrait of girlhood.

Buy Now : The Book of Goose on Bookshop | Amazon

2. The Hero of This Book , Elizabeth McCracken

An unnamed writer arrives in London for a trip. She feels her recently deceased mother’s absence—and presence—everywhere she goes. As she walks around the city, she’s reminded of her mother’s complicated life, the memories they shared, and the curious, ever-evolving relationship between child and parent. But, the unnamed writer repeats, even though she’s constructing a deeply felt tribute to her mother, this is, in no way, a memoir. Her mother hated those. And so goes Elizabeth McCracken’s latest work of fiction, poking holes in the very idea of fiction itself as the story unfolds. The prolific author, whose own mother shared many similarities with the one described in the book, delivers a potent meditation on processing loss. Along the way, she makes startling revelations about what it really means to write, and how fiction can help us understand the most challenging parts of life.

Buy Now : The Hero of This Book on Bookshop | Amazon

1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow , Gabrielle Zevin

In his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur runs into Sadie Green on a subway platform. They’ve known each other since childhood, when they first bonded over a shared love of video games, but a rift set them apart. In Gabrielle Zevin’s inventive and sweeping novel, the estranged friends reconnect and rebuild their relationship, becoming creative partners on a video game that shoots them to fame before they turn 25. As Sam and Sadie wrestle with their growing ambitions over the years, they cultivate a friendship much more meaningful than any romance. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a celebration of the narratives, in video games and in life, that reinforce just how important connection really is. In following Sam and Sadie’s journey from Massachusetts to California and into the imagined worlds of their games, Zevin writes the most precious kind of love story.

Buy Now : Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow on Bookshop | Amazon

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All of the 2022 National Book Award finalists, read and reviewed

A look at this year’s best in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature.

by Vox Staff

Every year, the National Book Foundation nominates 25 books to be eligible to win a National Book Award. The nominations highlight fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young adult books. For the past 9 years , the Vox staff has read them all, and we’ve shared our thoughts on what’s worthy.

The winners were announced on Wednesday, November 16. Our musings on the 2022 nominees and winners are below.

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty — WINNER

Tess Gunty’s debut novel features the misfit residents of an affordable housing complex in Vacca Vale, Indiana, a dying post-industrial city in the Midwest. At its center is Blandine Watkins, an ethereal child of the foster care system with a terrifying brilliance and an affinity for Christian mystics. Or maybe its true central character is Vacca Vale, with its crumbling infrastructure and its unspoiled park, under threat from a proposed economic revitalization effort. Over the course of a week, the residents intersect in ways that reveal the extent of their alienation.

While the story has elements familiar to a certain microgenre of literary fiction (the quirky child genius, the multi-character viewpoint, the build-up to a cataclysm, etc.), Gunty wields these elements with such freshness and sophistication that the book feels thrilling and new. As a daughter of the Rust Belt who’s read enough literary fiction about elite New Yorkers to last a lifetime, I couldn’t get enough of the world she built. Gunty’s writing is impressionistic and original — a technicolor kaleidoscope of the earthly and otherworldly. — Marin Cogan, senior correspondent

The Birdcatcher by Gayl Jones

Sometimes the sun warms, sometimes the sun stings, and sometimes the sun just flat-out burns. In this novel, Gayl Jones sweeps readers away to the isle of Ibiza and pours upon them all three of these sensations in the most artistic of ways. 

Amanda, an older expat on the island of Ibiza and a “self-proclaimed” divorcee, is an erotic novelist turned travel guide writer. Jones colors the life of this peregrine traveler in a way that maintains her anonymity while providing slices of herself to the reader throughout the text. Gathered like little treats for later, Jones sweetly provides payoff for each inciting action in glorious and unconventional ways. 

This novel takes a generous and sometimes scathing look at the various manifestations of an artist’s life, dreams, and liminal station. Kaleidoscoping from dreams into reality, to giving readers a choice in deciding the protagonist’s fate, you never know what’s coming next — but isn’t that just the thing to keep somebody going?  —Tonika Reed, editorial coordinator

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories by Jamil Jan Kochai

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak  is a book of shape-shifting. Kochai constantly experiments with form and voice, deftly stepping between photorealism and fantasy to create a vivid, surreal short-story collection that is both a modern parable of American imperialism and a testament to Kochai’s skill as a writer. Afghanistan — particularly the province of Logar, where Kochai’s family is from and his  debut novel  is also set — and the legacy of the War on Terror ripples through the background of this collection. Many of Kochai’s characters are Afghans or Afghan Americans who experience transformations of their own, whether they are Californian college students enduring months-long hunger strikes in solidarity with Palestine or an Afghan teen on the eve of her wedding.

Violence and upheaval are constantly apparent in the book, but so is a sort of fragile tenderness that seems to hold everything together. About halfway through the collection, I found myself catching my breath as I finally realized what Kochai had assembled. As Afghanistan fades into the background of American discourse, Kochai’s voice is essential. We may not wish to see what we have wrought; Kochai, it seems, will ensure we do not forget. —Neel Dhanesha, science & climate reporter

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

Sarah Thankam Mathews has written a character-driven novel that explores the power of friendship, navigating one’s sexuality, and being a young immigrant. It follows Sneha, a queer, first-generation Indian American who graduates from college during the Great Recession. Sneha miraculously lands an entry-level corporate job that takes her to Milwaukee, where she navigates new friendships, dating women for the first time and living in the shadow of her family.

I wanted to be totally immersed in the world that Mathews created, but for me, the door would not open so wide. The novel was somewhat of a slow burn, but radiant all the same. The plot trudged along very slowly. At times, I wanted to put it down completely, but knew I shouldn’t. And I really couldn’t. Mathews’ writing is daring, sharp, and authoritative. She’s a master in building rich characters that are imperfect and complicated, charismatic and lovable. At times, the prose felt luxurious and welcoming in the way that the scent of your favorite candle might slowly fill up an ever-expanding room.  —Shira Tarlo, senior social media manager

The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela

The Town of Babylon is a magnificent debut from Alejandro Varela. The novel tells the story of Andrés, a queer Latino American man who grew up in a small suburban town on Long Island. Andrés left his hometown for college and cut off contact with all his neighbors and friends, never looking back until 20 years later, when he visits to take care of his ailing father and ends up going to his 20th high school reunion. As Andrés reconnects with old friends, enemies, and first loves, Varela deftly chronicles several elements of the modern American experience that we rarely see represented in popular culture: the experience of being a child of immigrants who strives to move up in society, being a person of color in predominantly white spaces, being a queer person in predominantly straight spaces. It’s a beautiful story about community, friendship, and figuring out one’s place in the world. —Nisha Chittal, managing editor

South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry — WINNER

In the opening of Imani Perry’s lyrically gutting travelogue, she asks us to remember the choreography of the French quadrille — a dance where two couples face each other in a square, a progenitor of American line dancing. Refrain, figure, refrain, figure. That rhythm haunts the history of the American South, she posits. S outh to America chronicles Perry’s journey across several notable places in the South, dissecting the politics, pop culture, and pressing yet occasionally unspoken rules that dictate life for Black Americans living below the Mason-Dixon Line. The underlying thread, beyond the thump-thump-thump of history, is the charge to bear witness. When no one is thinking beyond their God of Masters, who is thinking of those who time and time again are pushed to the margins? Perry weaves the narration of her own history beautifully alongside escaped slaves, prideful rappers, and architects of universities. From Appalachia to the Caribbean, Perry’s dutiful analysis brings a more honest perspective to the South. —Izzie Ramirez, Future Perfect deputy editor

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O’Rourke

The Invisible Kingdom is a remarkably frustrating book to read, which I say as a compliment. This book is about the failures of the medical system in coping with chronic illness, about the number of patients who go to their doctor with symptoms and are roundly dismissed, ignored, and told that they’re lying or that their symptoms are all in their head. Reading about these issues should be frustrating.

Journalist and poet Meghan O’Rourke spent about a decade nearly incapacitated by a mysterious autoimmune disorder that wouldn’t be diagnosed for years. The first doctors she saw brushed aside her complaints when diagnostic tests failed to turn up any explanation. Perhaps the reason she had electric pains shooting up and down her limbs every morning, one suggested, was dry skin. As a defensive measure of sorts, O’Rourke began to research chronic illnesses and all the ways in which our siloed medical system is poorly equipped to deal with them — a major problem, she points out, as about 7.5 percent of American adults are facing down long Covid . The resulting knowledge O’Rourke has compiled into this lucid, at times lyrical, and always outrage-inspiring book. —Constance Grady, senior correspondent and book critic

Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus by David Quammen

Breathless is an apt name for David Quammen’s latest book. In what can only be described as a rapt, whirlwind tour of the scientific landscape behind the experts and professionals working to stop Covid-19, Quammen masterfully untangles the often mired narratives surrounding the virus. Quammen — best known for his 2012 book Spillover, which explains how viruses jump from animals to humans — homes in on the basic questions that haunt scientists today: Exactly where did SARS-CoV-2 come from?

When it feels as though the pandemic has been litigated, analyzed, and turned on its head in literature, Quammen brings a refreshing perspective that’s rooted in the technical. There’s little about lockdowns, politics, or social factors. Rather, Quammen breaks down the nitty-gritty in a way anyone can understand. Admittedly, in terms of prose and narrative, the book pales in comparison to his previous work (which benefited greatly from in-person reporting). But if you’re not afraid of getting elbow-deep in bat guano or genetic material, Breathless is an illuminating read. —Izzie Ramirez, Future Perfect deputy editor

The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ grandfather was a curandero — a spiritual healer who could cure ailments and converse with the dead. In Colombia, where the author was born, these powers, known colloquially as “the secrets,” were meant to be the purview of men. But after falling down a well and suffering amnesia as a child, Rojas Contreras’ mother uncovered that she was as supernaturally gifted as any man, capable of appearing in two places at once and able to see ghosts walking among the living.

Years later, after the family has fled political violence in their home country, Rojas Contreras crashes into a car door on her bicycle and temporarily loses her memory. As she attempts to reconcile the fragments of her memory post-accident, she discovers that she is more a part of the family lineage than she’d previously realized. After several family members report that her grandfather has been visiting them in dreams, asking for his body to be exhumed, Rojas Contreras and her mother travel to Colombia to honor her Nono’s final wishes. With gorgeous, dream-like prose, Rojas Contreras excavates a story about family secrets, colonialism and violence, magic and memory. —Marin Cogan, senior correspondent

His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

Things that happened last year, last month, can feel like events long past. Something that happened at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic might as well have taken place in ancient Rome. And yet, being reminded of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020 brings up the same shock, horror, and rage as though it were happening today.

His Name Is George Floyd presents a history of an ordinary life. Floyd wasn’t famous; he wasn’t known outside his small community. He was, in this account, just a Black man getting by, struggling to stay off drugs, trying to keep his life from falling apart. He certainly wasn’t a hero. But circumstances made his name, his life, and his death into something extraordinary.

Told with incredible attention to detail, the story covers Floyd’s life as well as the history of his family from slavery to the Jim Crow South to Minneapolis. We see Floyd attempting to get a rap music career off the ground; we watch him being hassled by police for minor drug offenses and for merely existing. The story dives sideways to talk about Derek Chauvin, the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck. It continues into the aftermath of Floyd’s death, Chauvin’s trial, and the mingled outpourings of grief and activism that accompanied them. In all, the book takes the mundane and meticulous details of one man’s life and seems to make the argument that his experience is a microcosm of the Black experience in America. Whether it is or not, it’s a well-told story that brings nuance to the n ews. —Elizabeth Crane, senior copy and standards editor

Punks: New & Selected Poems by John Keene — WINNER

This collection from MacArthur genius John Keene is wide-ranging in all the ways — bringing together decades of work, rendered in a variety of poetic forms, examining the many facets of queer Black life in America. Keene’s description of the volume as a mixtape is apt, and the poems layer on top of one another to compose a picture of the poet in full.

Keene is never vague or coy, whether he’s expounding on the urgent (as in “Pulse,” dedicated to the victims of the 2016 Orlando nightclub massacre) or the meta (one poem is literally titled “A report on the ‘What’s American about American poetry?’ conference at the New School”). His work is so clear in its intentions and its language, though Keene never trades precision for lyricism.

Take this passage, which just about knocked me out: “You have smallish hands for a brother, he says,” starts a poem of the same name, “but beautiful. Manly; compact; soft as chamois, velvety but copper-woven, almost golden-red, the Indian blood glows in them; the veins so large they snake beneath the skin like fresh creeks; full nails, white-tipped, not nicotined, not streaked with melanin and fungus like his own, and pale half-moons in each thumb appear to be setting.” —Julia Rubin, editorial director, features & culture

Look at This Blue by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

For a person who can’t stand not knowing exactly what’s being discussed, this chronicle of the bygone or nearly bygone wonders of Native California might be best read with Google close at hand. Every page of Look at This Blue, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s lament for the state she loves, surfaces a tragedy or tragedies that our culture has largely written off, from catalogs of ravaged wildlife to the Camp Fire deaths to her own mother’s schizophrenia. 

Take, for example, a list of 32 massacres. They’re all simply named, right in a row, starting with the Sacramento River Massacre and ending with the Kingsley Cave Massacre. The former, which happened in 1846, resulted in somewhere between 125 and 900 Wintu deaths; the latter, in 1871, saw a man named Kingsley murdering 30 of the remaining 45 Yahi tribesmen in a cave. Early in the poem, Hedge Coke invokes a man called Ishi (which is approximately Yahi for “man”), who was supposedly the “last wild Indian” and last of that tribe. Forty years after that massacre, Ishi spent the final few years of his life living in a San Francisco museum, only to have his brain pickled and put on display for white people to ogle. In 1999, it was returned to his closest possible relatives, the Yana people, as the Yahi were thought long gone. 

Throughout, the poem is densely packed with allusions to the flora, fauna, and humanity decimated or near-decimated by colonization, corporatization, selfishness, and fear. One beautifully broken line at a time, Hedge Coke opens up a disappeared and disappearing world, a kind of Rosetta Stone for understanding what we’re losing and what we’ve lost. —Meredith Haggerty, senior editor, culture

Balladz by Sharon Olds

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sharon Olds has assembled a collection of poems that ruminate in ways that will be familiar to any reader who spent quarantine lost in their own head. The works reflect thought patterns in the style of the early pandemic days, where there was much time to think about the painfully ancestral and familial, as in “What Came Next After Our Father’s Death (“my sister, with the power to ensure / that I would not know, during his life, / the worst of our father, that I’d never know him / until he was safely dead, so that for his / whole life I had been safe from the knowledge / of him, and he had been safe from the knowledge of him.”), the lucid morbid truths of reality, as in “Ballad Torn Apart” (“Now that I understand / that the world / as we know it / is going to end”) or inescapable awareness of the physical self, as in “Spotted Aria” (“just outside — I see myself, / spotted as a salamander, an / albino newt speckled with golden oval spots.”) 

While the ballad poems she includes don’t feel particularly gripping to me, and her unpacking of race made me wince with exasperation (“I lay a curse on every person of no / color who had kneeled on the throat of a person / of color.”), Balladz is a worthy read that runs a silk thread through the lonely and joyous realizations that come with solitude. —Melinda Fakuade, staff editor, culture and features

Best Barbarian by Roger Reeves

Roger Reeves once said of his poetry that he was “interested in troubling my reader–nothing easy, nothing without a little blood and bleeding.” His new collection, Best Barbarian , often drops devastating, cold clarity on the reader about the stakes: “Empathy will not end / Genocide. It won’t / Even delay it.” He opens with an image of Beowulf’s Grendel seeking out human companionship, “Bringing humans the best vision of themselves, / Which, of course, must be slaughtered.” 

But Best Barbarian also seeks out the best of humanity, tripping across a pantheon of Black cultural inspiration from Baldwin to Beyoncé. He enacts a familiar poetics within an epic tradition, with fixations on nature and small serendipitous moments drawn in a sharply imagist style. But in this performance, his attempt to deliver a Whitman-y, arms-outstretched view of America instead constantly constricts, doubling over from grief and PTSD. The death of Reeves’s father, acts of police brutality, slavery, generational trauma, and the climate crisis all become intrusive poetic thoughts. Sometimes this trauma verges on funny (“It turns out however that I was deeply / Mistaken about the end of the world”) but it often simply resides, acknowledged and lived with and directly observed. 

But, still, a wry form of hope — for “what is not dead in your death” — persists in drowning out the despair. “Life, it is at every window,” he writes. “It’s what rots the Senators’ teeth.” —Aja Romano, culture writer

The Rupture Tense by Jenny Xie

Jenny Xie’s second collection, The Rupture Tense , prods at the silence of the Asian diaspora, attempting to glean meaning and memory from things that are seen but unseen, heard but not spoken, told but not shown. 

With lyrical and devastating language, Xie begins The Rupture Tense with clear reflections on the photography of Li Zhensheng, a Chinese photojournalist who documented the Chinese Cultural Revolution. These sequences are more than just captions to frames missing from these pages, they are a guided tour; Xie beckons us from the foreground to the background of these important images, taking readers into time and place and depositing us into the yawning silences that have been left in the wake of our ancestor’s forging ever forward. 

As readers leave the photographs, Xie examines her and her family’s history with the diaspora. What does it mean to be from a place? What does it mean to leave and to come back? All of this intertwines with the long gaze back to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the inheritance of generational trauma, and the poet’s familial history. Finally, The Rupture Tense concludes with an elegy for Xie’s grandmother, moving readers seamlessly from foreground to background to foreground once more, like a camera’s lens unfocusing and refocusing on a single point. —Jayne Quan, social media manager, video

Translated Literature

Seven empty houses by samanta schweblin; translated by megan mcdowell — winner.

Samanta Schweblin, a Berlin-based Argentinian writer who broke out in the US with 2017’s Fever Dreams , flourishes in the liminal space between the everyday and the uncanny. In the seven short stories that make up her new book Seven Empty Houses , no one does anything supernatural or unearthly, but they frequently behave in ways that feel confusing, unsettling, and just a little bit off.

That creeping, unsettling sense comes across most clearly in “Breath From the Depths,” the longest and richest story in the collection. There, an old woman engaged in a frenzied form of Swedish death cleaning spends her days boxing up all of her possessions so no one else will have to do it for her when she dies. She suspects, spitefully, that her husband is making friends behind her back, and she’s haunted by her own rasping breath, which seems to fill her house like a monster. With longtime translator Megan McDowell, Schweblin renders the old woman’s cramped and vengeful life into prose so precise it will haunt you when you close the book. — Constance Grady, senior correspondent and book critic

A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse; translated by Damion Searls

Jon Fosse is one of those writers who is a giant in their own language and little read in English. In Norway, Fosse is considered one of the country’s greatest writers. He taught Karl Ove Knausgaard, who considers him a major influence , and he’s a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize . But in the Anglophone world, Fosse hasn’t had a breakout until now, with the final volume of his Septology .

In English, the Septology is also a trilogy, translated by Damion Searls into three parts. Each volume begins and ends the same way: The elderly artist Asle is trying to figure out how to complete a painting of one purple line and one brown line intersecting into an X to form a St. Andrew’s cross. After much reflection and memory, Asle falls into prayer, and each volume finishes in the middle of his Latin incantations. There are no periods, so the whole 800-page Septology is a single sentence.

In A New Name , some of Asle’s questions resolve themselves. He decides he will never finish his St. Andrews’s cross, and that in fact he is done with painting altogether. Art has brought him what it needed to bring him, which is the ability to get closer to God. Now, it gradually becomes clear, Asle is ready to die. 

Fosse’s single sentence unspools in rhythmic, melodic waves, ebbing and flowing with Asle’s memories until it finally explodes into a virtuosic burst of images in the final pages. The sentence is a whole life, and it ends where a life ends. —Constance Grady, senior correspondent and book critic

Kibogo by Scholastique Mukasonga; translated by Mark Polizzotti

Kibogo is a fable of colonization and of what colonization does to fables. It concerns Kibogo, a Rwandan prince said to have volunteered to be struck by lightning in order to bring down a rain that would end a famine. Over the course of this spare, sly novella, we watch Kibogo’s story rewritten, revised, repressed, and resurgent.

In the 1940s Rwandan village where Kibogo takes place, Christian evangelizers don’t care for the story of Kibogo. They decry it as pagan nonsense, and since the village chief has converted to Christianity after being well paid for it, the villagers agree to forget Kibogo. Some of them express some skepticism as to the utility of Christianity, however, when the village is hammered by the twin blows of a vicious drought and a Belgian regime that forces farmers to redirect their crops and manpower to European wars. Kibogo, some villagers note, at least knew how to bring down the rain.

Meanwhile, some of the Europeans around them are trying to preserve the story of Kibogo. They’re writing it down so that, they explain, they can tell it back to the Rwandans later, when the villagers have become “civilized” enough to understand Kibogo’s story as a metaphor. But which version of the story are they getting? It seems to keep changing.

In an interview with Le Monde , Mukasonga referred to her books as “paper tombs” for a Rwandan way of life that has been crushed by colonization and genocide. In Kibogo , that lost world comes to vivid, sardonic life. —Constance Grady, senior correspondent and book critic

Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda; translated by Sarah Booker

If you’ve ever pondered the overlap between Catholic schools and weird queer horror, Mónica Ojeda’s Jawbone was made for you. Ojeda’s swirling, nonlinear narrative, superbly translated by Sarah Booker, manages the paradox of feeling both sprawling and claustrophobic. On one level, it’s a classic dark academia tale of private school girls pushing one another to the psychosexual brink, this time set in present-day Ecuador; it’s also a sharp meta-study, replete with pop horror references, of the forces that create queer villainy.

Ojeda slowly composes a heated, cacophonous death dance between intimately entwined opposites: fear and desire, pleasure and pain, mothers and daughters. (“Fear was much like always being outside of a mother’s room.”) The enigmatic student Fernanda, her horror-obsessed frenemy Annelise, and their repressed teacher Miss Clara make a fantastic set of antagonists — an erotically charged trio of deranged queer gals in the grand tradition of mad lesbians. Uniting them all: a yearning for maternal acceptance, queer kinship, and — of course — a little blood-letting. —Aja Romano, culture writer

Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada; translated by Margaret Mitsutani

Pretty much the last things I want to read about right now are large-scale disasters and their aftermaths, and yet Yoko Tawada’s 2018 novel (translated and published in the US in 2022) is so wide-ranging in its interests and so light in its tone that I forgot that was precisely what I was doing. 

The novel, the first in a trilogy, follows a handful of characters as they traverse the world in search of, among other things, language. Their driving force is a woman named Hiruko, who comes from a country never named as Japan, only ever referred to as “the land of sushi,” which we come to realize has been permanently lost or destroyed, likely in some sort of climate catastrophe (it’s clear that this is a world that has been rocked by recent major events). As such, Hiruko’s native language has been cast asunder, and so while living in Norway she’s cobbled together an entirely new dialect she refers to as Panksa (which comprises “pan” and “Scandinavia”). She meets a number of other finely drawn characters, including Knut, a boy who loves her and hates being tailed across greater Europe by his overbearing mother; Akash, a trans student from India who loves Knut; and Tenzo, whose name is not really Tenzo. 

They form a ragtag band in search of someone who will be able to speak Hiruko’s native language, and in the process raise questions about what language is and is not for, what limitations and possibilities it can contain, and what constitutes “native” speaking in the first place. The book is told from almost every named character’s point of view, switching off from chapter to chapter, and while that could become exhausting or hard to follow in a different context, in a novel so concerned with speech and words and expression, it feels paramount to be able to see just how each character deploys their own. Now all I can hope for is that the next book in the trilogy doesn’t have to wait four years for a US release.  —Alanna Okun, senior editor, culture & features

Young People’s Literature

All my rage by sabaa tahir — winner.

Having shot to the top of the bestseller list with her fantasy series An Ember in the Ashes , Sabaa Tahir’s latest is her first contemporary YA novel. The book is inspired by her own experience growing up in a motel “in the barren wasteland of the Mojave”; last year, she wrote an essay for Vox about her difficult childhood in the desert.

All My Rage finds its protagonists Salahudin (whose parents also run a motel in the Mojave) and Noor nearing the end of high school, uncertain about their individual futures, as well as their collective one. Are they in love? Are they just friends? What happens if they want different things? But the will-they-won’t-they — that most delicious of teen romance tropes — is overshadowed by the almost unimaginably bleak family histories and current circumstances of the pair.

Tahir weaves their stories in alternating chapters, also inserting some from the point of view of Salahudin’s mother Misbah, who immigrated to California from Pakistan with her husband following one of the book’s many tragedies. All My Rage is a difficult read with much-substantiated content warnings, but Tahir’s tenderness for her characters shines through. — Julia Rubin, editorial director, culture & features

The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill

“Listen,” as the long-unidentified narrator of The Ogress and the Orphans might say. This is not a tale — fairy in both nature and spirit — that breaks terrifically new ground. That’s the point, though. Instead, it says a lot of things very worth saying again and again, in a lovely way. 

From Newberry medal winner Kelly Barnhill, this fable about a little town called Stone-in-the-Glen and its community that isn’t a community anymore has some not entirely subtle parallels with modern life. We have a flashy, inexplicably beloved leader who says “I, alone, can fix it,” an untrusting citizenry locked away and apart in their homes, and a host of winning orphans reminding themselves and one another that “Facts matter.” It’s not simply a parallel to America circa 2020, but, as the book makes clear, it’s a terribly old story, one we tell again and again, in different ways and with different villains and heroes, but always the same vital lessons: that fellowship with our neighbors is invaluable, that libraries rule, that doing good is more important than any fuzzy idea of “being” good, and that you should not throw rocks at birds. — Meredith Haggerty, senior editor, culture

The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes

This was a good year for the NBA and Latina lesbians in private schools (see also: Jawbone ). Yamilet, still reeling from being outed by her ex-girlfriend, views her new school — rich, white, and very Catholic — as a new start. With her Papi deported, her brother Cesar constantly getting into fights, and her mom trying to hold the family together, Yamilet’s goals are simple: “1. Find a new best friend. 2. Don’t be gay about it.” But that’s before she meets bouncy, adorable Jenna and badass Bo Taylor.

What Reyes’ sparkling, wry voice captures so well is the burbling feeling of a teenager who’s in love with love, newly awakened to the possibility of romance around every corner. Yamilet’s excited crush spills over and threatens to ruin all her efforts to stay closeted despite her best efforts. Watching her struggle to suppress her bold, exuberant love while trying to protect her family is a painful, relatable reminder that coming out is the ultimate trust fall. —Aja Romano, culture writer

Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist for Justice by Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes, and Dawud Anyabwile

At the 1968 Olympics, the gold and silver medalists in the 200-meter event held up black-gloved fists as the US national anthem played to protest racial inequality. It’s a famous event given new life in Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist For Justice, a graphic memoir by the gold medalist, Tommie Smith; writer Derrick Barnes; and artist Dawud Anyabwile.

Tales from Smith’s childhood and early running career form the core of the book; they’re interspersed purposefully throughout a taut retelling of the gold medal-winning race. Challenges Smith faces in his dash summon memories that conclude with a lesson that helps spur him on to victory.

Those memories serve as poignant vignettes into Black life in the early 20th century; reminiscent of the Langston Hughes classic Not Without Laughter , they show how faith, family, and early experiences with racism shaped Smith into one of the greatest athletes — and activists — of his time.

It’s a compact, tightly written volume. The simplicity of its prose makes you feel as though you’re sitting with your eyes closed, imagining the past as you listen to Smith reflect. It’s an effect magnified by Anyabwile’s sharp and sinewy linework, and his deeply expressive faces, all rendered in crisp black and white.

Those looking for a deep dive into Smith’s life might be better served by his autobiography or other books about him. However, those seeking the highlights or a strong introduction to Smith’s work to give to young readers will be well served by this volume that is a brief look into a significant battle in the ongoing fight against white supremacy. —Sean Collins, news editor

Maizy Chen’s Last Chance by Lisa Yee

Maizy Chen’s Last Chance is a book I wish I had while I was growing up. Part mystery novel, part historical fiction, the book follows Chen, the 12-year-old protagonist, as she navigates a temporary move from Los Angeles, California, to Last Chance, Minnesota, where her grandparents own a restaurant called The Golden Palace. Geared toward younger readers, the novel offers an illuminating primer on Chinese American history, US immigration policy, and the rise of present-day anti-Asian hate crimes, providing an education that’s often missing from traditional textbooks.

The novel is far from a stuffy history lesson, however. It’s filled with vibrant characters including Maizy, an endlessly curious writer who’s eager to trace the origins of her family’s journey in the US, and Lucky, Maizy’s great-great-grandfather, who pursued his goals of working in and then owning a restaurant amid rampant discrimination in both California and Minnesota in the 1800s. By telling their stories in parallel, author Lisa Yee introduces readers to policies like the Chinese Exclusion Act while commenting on the enduring nature of anti-Asian sentiment, which Maizy experiences in the form of micro-aggressions from classmates in her grandparents’ predominately white Minnesota town.

Despite its weighty subject matter, the novel manages to strike a creative — and entertaining — balance that’s a nail-biter to the finish. When a hate crime takes place against her family’s restaurant, Maizy sets out to figure out who the perpetrator is, with unexpected and startling results. — Li Zhou, politics reporter

Updated November 17, 2022 , to reflect the winners of the 2022 National Book Awards.

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The Best Fiction Books » Best Fiction of 2022

Award-winning novels of 2022, recommended by cal flyn.

by the author

Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn

Any end-of-year list is necessarily partial; no one person could hope to read every novel published in the English language in any given year. That's why prize lists are so useful for guiding the casual reader's literary diet. Here, our deputy editor Cal Flyn offers a brief round-up of the books that ruled victorious during the 2022 awards season.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

The Book of Form and Emptiness: A Novel by Ruth Ozeki

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Deep Wheel Orcadia: A Novel by Harry Josephine Giles

1 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

2 the book of form and emptiness: a novel by ruth ozeki, 3 the netanyahus by joshua cohen, 4 the love songs of w.e.b. du bois by honorée fanonne jeffers, 5 deep wheel orcadia: a novel by harry josephine giles.

J udging panels will often read more than a hundred submissions before they settle upon the novels that make up their longlists, shortlists, and winners. Although literary preferences are subjective, and partly directed by the nature of the prize in question, we at Five Books feel these prize lists are very helpful for the casual reader looking for some guidance on what books are worth their limited reading time. We’ve compiled a brief overview of the fiction that won literary prizes in 2022 in case that might be of use to you.

British and Irish Literary Awards

Its sister prize, the International Booker Prize, seeks to award the best fiction translated into English over the previous year. It’s always, always worth paying attention to, because the shortlists highlight so many wonderful books from around the world that we might otherwise not come into contact with. I almost always discover my favourite books of the year via these shortlists. The winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize was Tomb of Sand,   a novel by Geetanjali Shree, as translated by Daisy Rockwell. The chair of the judges Frank Wynne, a noted translator in his own right (see below), told me in June that this book was “an extraordinary piece of fiction, [and] also an extraordinary piece of metafiction” of Indian partition.

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Other prizes of note include the Women’s Prize for Fiction, which was won in 2022 by Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness , a novel that gives voices to inanimate objects; the Goldsmiths Prize (for “fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form”), which went to the collaborative novel Diego Garcia by Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams—a clever portrait of literary friendship and an experiment in political fiction; and the James Tait Black Prize, the UK’s oldest literary prize, which went to Keith Ridgway’s  A Shock , in which each chapter forms a series of interlocking stories about characters living in South London.

The International Dublin Literary Award, worth €100,000 is one of the world’s richest literary prizes, and is awarded to a novel published in the English language, or translated into English, that year. It was won this year by the French author Alice Zeniter for  The Art of Losing , as translated by Frank Wynne. The novel follows three generations of an Algerian family from the 1950s to the present day.

North American Literary Awards

Joshua Cohen’s  The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family   won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It’s a genre-bending campus comedy about the Jewish-American experience which has attracted rave reviews. Writing in  The Guardian , Leo Robson described it as “a comic historical fantasia” that reads “like an attempt, as delightful as it sounds, to cross-breed Roth’s  The Ghost Writer  and Nabokov’s  Pale Fire .”

The National Book Critics Circle Awards are organised by some of America’s most respected arbiters of taste. In 2022, the NBCC fiction prize was won by the noted poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers for her first novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois , a book that has won near-universal acclaim since its release in May. As Joshunda Sanders explained in  The Boston Globe, it’s “a sweeping matriarchal epic that leads readers through a majestic tour of race, family, and love in America… the Great American Novel at its finest.”

In Canada, Sheila Heti won the Governor General’s Literary Award for her wildly imaginative Pure Colour , in which she contrasts the wonder and joy of creation with our daily experience of frustration and disappointment. She’s one of my favourite writers—erudite, funny, intelligent, unpretentious. This latest work is unmissable.

Australian and New Zealand Literary Awards

Jennifer Down won Australia’s prestigious Miles Franklin Award for Bodies of Light,   which was praised for its “ethical precision” in its portrait of a young girl in care who is forced to reinvent herself again and again. Nicolas Rothwell has also just been announced the winner of the Australian Prime Minister’s award for his novel Red Heaven ,  set in 1960s eastern Europe. At the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, Whiti Hereaka won the 2022 fiction prize for  Kurangaituku , a subversion of the traditional Māori story of Hatupatu—as seen through the eyes of the monster.

Science Fiction & Fantasy Awards

The 2022 Arthur C Clarke Award was won by Harry Josephine Giles for their remarkable, boundary-pushing novel-in-verse Deep Wheel Orcadia , set on a space station and told in the Orcadian dialect (alongside a creative English translation). I spoke to the chair of the judges, Andrew M. Butler earlier this year, who noted that “it’s the sort of book the prize exists to draw attention to for die-hard sci fi readers, and to make non-sci fi readers question their assumptions about the genre.” Arkady Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace (which was also shortlisted for the Clarke Award) won the Hugo Award for best novel this year; its the second novel in her Teixcalaan sequence—you might want to start with  A Memory Called Empire ,  which started the series and was also highly acclaimed.

P Djèlí Clark’s  A Master of Djinn won the 2022 Nebula Award for best novel, along with a bunch of other awards including the Locus Award for best first novel—it’s a fun, magical whodunnit set in an alternate, steampunk Cairo, and it has found a passionate fanbase. At the World Fantasy Awards, the best novel winner was The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri, an epic high fantasy described by Shelley Parker-Chan as a “feminist masterpiece.”

Mystery, Horror and Crime Awards

Stephen Graham Jones won the Bram Stoker Award for My Heart is a Chainsaw (described by the publishers as “ Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th “, which sounds fun); the Mystery Writers of America awarded the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Award to Five Decembers   by James Kestrel, a 1940s noir with a brilliantly pulpy cover; and the International Thriller Writers garlanded S.A. Cosby for the second year running for Razorblade Tears , described to me by Tosca Lee earlier this year as “a moody Southern thriller with fast-paced action, the story of two men—one black, one white, both ex-cons—who team together to solve the murder of their sons, who were married to one another. It’s a gritty tale that looks into questions of race, poverty, and other bias through the lens of both violence and compassion.” In the UK, Ray Celestin won the 2022 Golden Dagger for his novel Sunset Swing .

Historical Fiction Prizes

Scottish author James Robertson won the 2022 Walter Scott Prize for his latest novel,  News of the Dead . I spoke to judge Elizabeth Laird earlier this year, who said: “Behind the beguiling, interlinked narrative of three characters from different periods of history—an Iron Age hermit, a nineteenth-century literary conman, and a child thrown out into the world from war-torn Europe—is a profound appreciation of a landscape, the rocks, the rain, the streams, trees and mosses of the remote Scottish glen where these three lives are lived.” And in Australia and New Zealand, the $50,000 ARA Historical Novel Prize went to Thomas Keneally’s Corporal Hitler’s Pistol , described by  The Guardian   as “a compelling blend of historical crime thriller and intricate portrait of an Australian rural community.”

Romance Prizes

The UK’s Romantic Novelists Association highlights the best books in nearly a dozen romance sub-categories; we’ve heard great things about A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske, which topped the fantasy romance category. The Romance Writers of America did not run their Vivian Awards this year.

Part of our  best books of 2022  series.

December 13, 2022

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©Nancy Macdonald

Cal Flyn is a writer, journalist, and the deputy editor of Five Books . Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape , her nonfiction book about how nature rebounds in abandoned places, was shortlisted for numerous awards including the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Ondaatje Prize, and the British Academy Book Prize. She writes regular round-ups of the most notable new fiction, which can be found here . Her Five Books interviews with other authors are here .

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Literary critics give their takes on the best of books of 2022

Jeffrey Brown Jeffrey Brown

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12 books to read from 2022

As the year comes to an end, we're taking a look at some of the best writing of 2022. Jeffrey Brown sat down with literary critics Gilbert Cruz of The New York Times and Maureen Corrigan of NPR to discuss their favorite books. It's for our arts and culture series, "CANVAS."

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Judy Woodruff:

The year in books.

We take a look now at some of the best writing of 2022.

Jeffrey Brown leads the way for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown:

It's always one of our favorite discussions of the year, even if we can only get to a handful of top books. We will do our best.

Joined this year by Gilbert Cruz, books editor of The New York Times, and Maureen Corrigan, book critic of NPR.

Nice to talk to both of you.

Gilbert, let's start with fiction. How about two or three picks?

Gilbert Cruz, Books Editor, The New York Times:

I will mention two books that we recently put on our top 10 books of the year list. The first is "Trust" by Hernan Diaz. This is a novel that tells the rise of a financier in New York City in the early 20th century. But it tells it from four different perspectives. It is historical fiction, but it's also literary fiction.

It's something that I honestly did not know anything about going into it. I picked it up off the shelf this summer. And I think, in the first five or six pages, I was just totally taken by it. It was one of my favorite books of the year.

OK, how about a second pick?

Gilbert Cruz:

Another of my favorite books of the year is "The Candy House" by Jennifer Egan. So, Jennifer Egan wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "A Visit From the Goon Squad." This came out in 2010. And "The Candy House" is a sequel, a follow-up. I think she calls it a sibling novel.

You find some of the same characters, but it sort of takes them in a completely different direction. It presupposes that there's a technology that has been invented called Own Your Unconscious. So it's sort of a social novel, in that it is grappling with what it means to be hooked into technology and social media. It's fun. It's relevant. It's endlessly inventive. It's fantastic.

I'm glad you picked that one. And I hope our viewers will remember my talk with Jennifer Egan earlier this year for that book.

So, Maureen Corrigan, two fiction.

Maureen Corrigan, NPR Book Critic:

OK, Claire Keegan's "Foster."

This is a novella. It was originally published in 2010 in "The New Yorker." It's been out in Great Britain for years. It's the first time it's been published in this country.

She's an Irish writer.

Maureen Corrigan:

She's telling the story of a young girl who's shipped off to relatives she doesn't know to live her summer on a farm. Keegan raises the question of whether this is a kindness or not to introduce a child who has been deprived to a different way of living and different relationships, when she's going to be shipped back to her parents at the end of the summer. So that's one.

The other book that knocked me out was a debut by Jonathan Escoffery called "If I Survive You." It's about a Jamaican American family. The parents come to Florida to escape political violence and to try to give their two young sons another kind of life. They keep getting knocked down, the 2008 recession, Hurricane Andrew, racism.

Escoffery is a terrific writer. He's funny. He's witty. He's sharp. His characters are more than just sort of ideas. They're fully realized human beings. And the "you" his characters are trying to survive is America.

All right, let's turn to nonfiction.

Gilbert, you want to pick — give us a couple?

The first is a book called "Stay True" by a gentleman called Hua Hsu. Hua is a writer for "The New Yorker" magazine. And stay true is a memoir. It's a memoir of growing up as the child of Taiwanese immigrants in California, but it's also the memoir of going to Berkeley in the mid-1990s.

He becomes friends with the son of Japanese American immigrants, a boy named Kenton, who he first thinks is sort of this very simple frat boy, but then grows to learn it's much more complicated than he first suspected. It's a book about grief. It's a book about youth and nostalgia.

There's so much that it's packed into such a small — such a small amount of pages. It's quite wonderful.

The second is called "An Immense World." Ed Yong is a writer for "The Atlantic" magazine. Some might know him for his wonderful stories over the past three years on coronavirus. But this is a book about animals.

And it's specifically about the ways that animals perceive the world and how those perceptions are different from the way that humans see the world. And whether you like animals or not, it was just endlessly fascinating.

OK, Maureen, nonfiction.

Ada Calhoun, also a poet.

Ada Calhoun.

Ada Calhoun is writing about her father, Peter Schjeldahl, who was an art critic for The New York Times.

Yes, very prominent art critic.

Very prominent, but kind of an elusive — emotionally elusive father.

Ada goes down into the basement of the East Village apartment house where her parents lived for decades. She comes upon these cassette tapes that her father made when he was trying to write a biography of the New York poet Frank O'Hara.

And she decides she's going to use these tapes to try to complete what he never completed. He never wrote this biography. "Also a Poet" is literary criticism. It's biography of both her father and Frank O'Hara. And it's also a daughter's memoir and a love letter to New York City. So it's fabulous.

The other book I — that has stayed with me is by the medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris. And it's called "The Facemaker." It's about the pioneering plastic surgery work of Harold Gillies, a doctor during World War I…

… who's faced with this catastrophe of all of these men who've had their faces shattered by the new technology of warfare during World War I.

There are no textbooks. There are no guides. He's trying to put these men's faces back together again and to give them their lives.

Gilbert, I know, in your position, you get lots and lots of books sent your way.

I'm wondering, do you see any themes jumping out at you or subject matter that speaks to our moment, whether it's the pandemic, the politics of our time? Anything hitting you?

One book that came out this year that was particularly well received, a book called "Lucy by the Sea" by the author Elizabeth Strout.

And this was a novel starring a character that she's written about several times before, Lucy Barton. And in this novel, Lucy experiences the pandemic. She is an older woman who has to leave New York to go up to Maine to join her husband in a cabin, so they can sort of get away from what they imagine is a very dangerous place to be at the moment.

It's a little too close for some people at the moment. I found it extremely readable. And I imagine we're going to continue to see books like that over the course of the next many years.

Maureen, you get a lot of books coming your way. What do you see?

The pandemic novel and nonfiction. I see the pandemic entering in ways that I don't expect, something like Alexandra Horowitz's "The Year of the Puppy." Alexandra Horowitz is the head of the canine Cognition Lab at Barnard.

And she's written a lot of nonfiction about the way dogs think, kind of connecting with what Gilbert said about Ed Yong's nonfiction book. She and her family adopted a puppy during the pandemic. And so it's partly that personal story. So many people adopted dogs and cats during the pandemic, but also this attempt, yes, to get into the mind of a creature who we love, but who is not us.

So I think we're going to keep seeing those pandemic stories.

All right, just some of the best books of 2022.

Maureen Corrigan, Gilbert Cruz, thank you both very much.

Listen to this Segment

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In his more than 30-year career with the NewsHour, Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe. As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world's leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists. Among his signature works at the NewsHour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the NewsHour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with The New York Times.

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Awards: Best Literary Fiction of 2022

Every year thousands of our readers vote for their favorite books of the year in the She Reads Awards . Find out more about the books that were nominated and see which book was voted the Best Literary Fiction of 2022.

The winner of the Best Literary Fiction of 2022 is . . .

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz

Cara Romero assumed she’d be working at the factory of little lamps for the remainder of her life. But when she loses her job in the Great Recession when she’s in her mid-50s, she’s back on the hunt. Cara narrates her story to a job counselor, going over her stormy love affairs, financial problems, gentrification, loss, and the truth behind her estranged relationship with her son. Shedding light on her darkest secrets and regrets, Cara is a woman that life has not been kind to, but she’s determined to be a fighter.

The nominees for Best Literary Fiction of 2022 are:

Demon copperhead by barbara kingsolver.

Inspired by Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield , Demon Copperhead addresses issues of institutional poverty and its impact on children in the American South. A boy is born in a trailer to a single teenage mother in the mountains of southern Appalachia. As he grows, he faces the tribulations of foster care, child labor, poor education, addiction, tragic romances, and devastating losses. Armed with a fiery wit and a talent for survival, Demon Copperhead is a symbol for lost children who remain resilient against all odds.

Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet

In this poignant novel by renowned author Lydia Millet, a man named Gil walks from New York to Arizona in attempt to heal his broken heart. Soon after he arrives, new neighbors move into the glass-walled house next door, and Gil finds his life blending with theirs. A tender, funny, and heartwarming story of one man’s commitment to do good, Dinosaurs is an exploration of hope, community, and the experiences that tie us together.

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

In the midst of a pandemic, Lucy Barton’s ex-husband uproots her life from Manhattan to a small town in Maine. For several months, Lucy and William isolate together in a little house by the sea, struggling with fear, uncertainty, and their complex past. Their story explores pain and suffering, loss, friendship, and the comfort of a long-lasting love. Fraught with emotion and hope, Lucy by the Sea encapsulates the beauty of human connection in the darkest of times.

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer

This journey through one woman’s life explores her adolescence, the experiences that made her who she is, and her struggle against a malevolent illness. After an unexpected diagnosis upends her world, Lia and her family must learn to navigate their new realities. Partially narrated by the disease that is changing the landscape of Lia’s body, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is tender, heartwarming, and life-affirming.

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

In an East Oakland apartment, siblings Kiara and Marcus are barely getting by. After multiple family tragedies, both of them dropped out of high school. Kiara looks for work, hoping to pay rent and keep the abandoned nine-year-old boy next door fed, while Marcus pursues a career in the music industry. But one night, a drunken encounter with a stranger leaves Kiara with a job opportunity she never expected or wanted. A job nightcrawling. Not long after taking on her new role does Kiara find herself involved in a shocking scandal within the Oakland Police Department. When Kiara is exposed as the key witness, everything changes.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner is lives with his father and knows that he shouldn’t stand out too much. The government enforces laws meant to preserve “American culture” and authorities are permitted to relocate children of dissidents, particularly those of Asian descent. Bird’s mother left the family when he was nine years old. A Chinese American woman, Margaret was a poet whose work is being removed from libraries alongside other books seen as unpatriotic. Bird knows nothing about Margaret’s work or where she went, but when he receives a cryptic drawing in the mail, he is drawn into a quest to find her.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

In this captivating novel, Jennifer Egan plays with the bounds of technology and brings to life a world where all of our unconscious memories are accessible and even exchangeable. Tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton’s newest creation “Own Your Unconscious” immediately intrigues many—but not without consequences. Creatively narrating through different characters and time periods, Egan reveals the personal and social outcomes of introducing daring technology into personal psychology. In a world perhaps not so far out-of-reach to our own, there are Counters, those who take advantage of Bix’s latest work, and Eluders, who recognize it’s potential cost. The Candy House creatively speaks to relevant issues and moral trade-offs regarding privacy and technology, while simultaneously highlighting the ultimate importance of authentic human connection.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

In Florence during the 1550s, Lucrezia is the third daughter of the grand duke, perfectly content with her role in the palazzo. But when her older sister dies the night before her wedding to the Duke of Ferrara, Lucrezia is thrown into a new position as she takes her sister’s place and becomes a duchess. Barely a woman, this new world is unfamiliar and mystifying. Her new husband, Alfonso, is a puzzle as well and eventually, Lucrezia realizes her responsibility is to produce an heir—but until then her future is uncertain.

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

Frida Liu is having a very bad day, and because of one moment of poor judgement, she must prove that she can be a good mother or she will lose her daughter. She doesn’t have the support she needs: a career that is not worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices, and a husband that refuses to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Her daughter, Harriet, is the only thing that Frida has done right, and now she must risk it all to be redeemed. A searing page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Sadie Green and Sam Masur are catapulted into stardom when they create a blockbuster called Ichigo . At twenty-four, Sam and Sadie are rich and successful, known for their brilliant work in the film industry. But things take a turn for the worse when betrayals and creative ambitions stand in the way of the life they just started to build. Their story takes place over thirty years, from Massachusetts to California, and explores notions of identity, disability, failure, redemption, and connection.

Trust by Hernan Diaz

In 1920s New York, everyone has heard of the powerfully wealthy Benjamin and Helen Rask, but no one quite understands how they acquired such immense fortune. The 1937 novel Bonds explores this mystery, but there are many versions of this intriguing tale. Trust is a compilation and study of these narratives, investigated by a woman determined to uncover the truth. Full of thrilling revelations, Trust flawlessly captures deceptive relationships, reality-warping wealth, and the manipulation of facts by those in power.

Recommend These Reads:

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•   The best literary fiction books to read right now

The best literary fiction books to read right now

Here we share the most exciting new literary fiction and the best literary fiction of all time. .

2023 was a remarkable year for literature and 2024 looks equally unlikely to disappoint. Here, we round up some of the most exciting new literary fiction of 2024, reflect on the best literary books of 2023, and recommend some of the best literary fiction of all time. 

For even more inspiration, don't miss our edit of the best fiction books.  

The best new literary fiction of 2024

Long island, by colm tóibín.

One of the most anticipated titles of the year, Long Island is the sequel to Colm Tóibín’s beloved novel, Brooklyn . The now-married Eilis Fiorello, Tony and their two children live a safe, albeit staid, life on Long Island until a man arrives at their doorstep and everything Eilis knows is brought crashing down around her. Forced to confront the reality of her life and marriage, Eilis is drawn back to her native Ireland and the people she left behind decades ago. A powerful meditation on the nature of home, family and memory, Long Island is a masterpiece whether you have already read Brooklyn, or not. 

by Percival Everett

After escaping his slave owner’s plantation on The Mississippi River in 1861, James holes up on nearby Jackson Island, trying to formulate a plan to ensure his and his family’s freedom. Meeting Huck, a man running from his own troubled past, the pair start a treacherous journey up the river in the hope of salvation. A masterful retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that brings Jim’s story into the spotlight for the first time , Percival Everett’s James is one of 2024’s must-read novels. 

Don't Miss

More books from the literary great, Percival Everett

The burial plot, by elizabeth macneal.

When Bonnie, a young woman trying to make her way in Victorian London meets Crawford, a wily trickster with a mysterious past, she instantly falls under his spell. As they swindle the city’s well-healed to make ends meet, Bonnie finds herself in hot water and Crawford promises to make it all go away. Sent to work for a peculiar family in a house full of the ghosts of their past, Bonnie realises that maybe she’s the one who’s been tricked all along. A chilling gothic thriller, The Burial Plot is the newest novel from the bestselling author of The Doll Factory, Elizabeth Macneal.  

The Amendments

By niamh mulvey.

For Nell and Adrienne, the prospect of becoming parents is bittersweet. Adrienne is excited about the start of their new life, whereas, for Nell, their impending parenthood takes her back to a past she has long tried to bury, to finally confront her fractured relationship with her mother. A story of love, freedom, belonging and rebellion told through the stories of three generations of women from the same Irish family, The Amendments is a novel you won’t want to put down. 

My Beloved Life

By amitava kumar.

With his mother bitten by a cobra as she prepared to give birth to him in India, Jadunath Kunwar’s life was remarkable and full of challenges before he was even born. In My Beloved Life Amitava Kumar tells the story of Jadunath’s life, from his birth in 1935 to his death during the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Poetically told through Kunwar and his daughter Jugnu’s experiences, My Beloved Life is a poetically written meditation of the life of one ordinary man living in a country in the midst of unprecedented change. 

‘ This profound book is full of lives whose beauty lies in the wholeness of their telling. ’ Salman Rushdie on My Beloved Life

by Elizabeth O'Connor

Growing up on an idyllic, albeit dull island off the coast of Wales in the 1930s, Manod dreams of a future full of colour and life but with war looming, her hopes of following her dreams seem too far off to fathom. That is, until the arrival of two anthropologists from the mainland arrive to study the island's secluded community, and Manod sees an opportunity to get off the island and discover the world for herself. As she entangles herself in their complicated relationship, will she get the future she's so desperate for? 

by Nathan Hill

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the 90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, but fast-forward twenty years to married life, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons. Moving from the gritty 90s Chicago art scene to a suburbia of detox diets and home renovation hysteria,  Wellness  is a powerfully affecting novel about how we change, grow and age. It is a story of a marriage, middle age, our tech-obsessed health culture, and the bonds that keep people together. 

‘ American storytelling at its era-spanning best . . . An immersive, multi-layered portrait of a marriage, Nathan Hill’s follow-up to The Nix is a work of quiet genius. ’ The Observer

How I Won A Nobel Prize

By julius taranto.

Helen, a graduate student on a quest to save the planet, is one of the best minds of her generation. But when her irreplaceable advisor’s student sex scandal is exposed, she must choose whether to give up on her work or accompany him to RIP, a research institute which grants safe harbour to the disgraced. As Helen settles into life at the institute alongside her partner Hew, she develops a crush on an older novelist, while he is drawn to an increasingly violent protest movement. Julius Taranto’s wickedly satirical and refreshingly irreverent debut , examines the price we are willing to pay for progress and what it means to be a good person.

Where There Was Fire

By john manuel arias.

Set in Costa Rica, 1968, John Manuel Arias’s debut novel  explores the aftermath of a devastating plantation fire that veils a huge scandal and alters Teresa Cepeda Valverde’s family forever. Twenty-seven years later, Teresa and her estranged daughter Lyra are still grappling with the past. Lyra is determined to uncover that night's events, while Teresa is haunted by her lost husband and a resentful spirit. This powerful tale unfolds a mother-daughter journey toward understanding and forgiveness, amid a family mystery rooted in love, betrayal, and greed.

by Kaveh Akbar

Cyrus Shams has been grappling with his mother's death ever since her plane was shot down when he was just a baby. Now, newly sober, he embarks on a journey to uncover her true identity and the mysteries attached to her life, triggered by an encounter with a dying artist. As Cyrus pieces together clippings from his mother's life, he is faced with a shocking revelation that shatters his beliefs. Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound,  Martyr!  heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

The World and All That It Holds

By aleksandar hemon.

Rafael Pinto spends his days crushing herbs and tablets at the pharmacy he inherited from his father. While it's a far cry from his poetry-filled student days in Vienna, life feels peaceful. That is until a June day in 1914 when the world explodes and soon, finding himself in the trenches of Galicia, Pinto's fantasies fall flat. As war devours, all he has left is the attention of Osman, a fellow soldier who complements Pinto's introspective, poetic soul. Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches and find themselves entangled with spies and Bolsheviks. In this story of love and war, it is Pinto's love for Osman that will truly survive. 

‘ Alexsandar Hemon's new novel is immense. ... It contains almost as much as its title promises. By turns lyrical and sardonic, it is as emotionally compelling as it is clever. I'll be surprised if I enjoy a novel more this year. ’ Guardian

What You Need From The Night

By laurent petitmangin.

How can a father and son find common ground when everything seems set to break them apart? A father, forced by tragedy to raise his sons alone, releases they are taking two different paths. One plans for university in Paris. The other joins a far-right group. Initially seeking camaraderie, their activities lead him to a violent confrontation. Tense, sharp and ultimately heartbreaking, Laurent Petitmangin's first novel, What You Need From The Night , asks what acts can truly be forgiven.

Now I Am Here

By chidi ebere.

About to make his last stand, a soldier facing certain death at the hands of the enemy writes home to explain how he ended up there, a gentle man gradually transformed into a war criminal, committing acts he wouldn’t have thought himself capable. A profound reflection on how good people can do terrible things, this is a brave, unflinching and thought-provoking debut. 

by James Hynes

This vivid story set at the end of the Roman Empire, follows Sparrow – a boy of no known origin living in a brothel. He spends his days listening to stories told by his beloved ‘mother’ Euterpe, running errands for her lover the cook, and dodging the blows of their brutal overseer. But a hard fate awaits him – one that involves suffering, murder and mayhem. To cope he will create his own identity – Sparrow – who sings without reason and can fly from trouble. This is a book with one of the most powerfully affecting and memorable characters of recent fiction, brought to life through James Hynes' meticulous research and bold imagination. 

‘ Utterly engrossing, vivid, and honest, this coming of age story reaches across millennia to grab us by the throat. ’ Emma Donoghue on Sparrow

by Sarah May

Vanity Fair meets Succession as Becky Sharp works her way up the journalistic greasy pole in nineties tabloid-era London. Scoop after scoop, Becky's downfall looms as she becomes more and more involved in every scandal her newspaper publishes and cares less and less about the lives she ruins in the process. A sharply intelligent and funny interrogation of how far society has really come since Thackeray's nineteenth-century Becky Sharp, just like the stories broken by The Mercury , everyone will be talking about Becky .

by Sarah K Jackson

Five years ago, a toxic microplastics storm killed most of the population. Now Katie, a young mother, must forage and hunt for meat as she attempts to feed her little boy, Harry. At a time when stepping outside could kill you, Harry is kept indoors at all costs. Then, after years without human contact, Katie and Harry are terrified by the unwelcome arrival of another survivor. Katie realises she must undertake a previously unthinkable journey in search of a new life for her son. Perfect for fans of Room, Station Eleven and dystopian fiction in general, this gripping novel explores just how far a mother will go to save her child. 

An Honourable Exit

By eric vuillard.

From the International Booker Prize shortlisted author comes a searing account of a conflict that dealt a fatal blow to French colonialism. 19 October 1950. The war is not going to plan. In Paris, politicians gather to discuss what to do about Indochina. In this gripping and shocking novel, Éric Vuillard exposes the tangled web of politicians, bankers and titans of industry who all had a vested interest in France’s prolonged presence in lands far from Paris. At just 192 pages, what this book lacks in length, it certainly doesn't lack in drama - short, sharp and brutal, An Honourable Exit is a journey behind closed doors to witness how history is really made.

The best literary fiction of 2023

By hernan diaz.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize 2023

This literary puzzle about money, power, and intimacy challenges the myths shrouding wealth, and the fictions that often pass for history. Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth — all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune?

Everything's Fine

By cecilia rabess.

When Jess first meets Josh at their Ivy League college she dislikes him immediately: an entitled guy in chinos, ready to take over the world, unable to accept that life might be easier for him because he's white, while Jess is almost always the only Black woman in their class. But as a tempestuous friendship turns into an electrifying romance that shocks them both, Jess begins to question who she is and what she’s really willing to compromise. Can people really ever just agree to disagree? And more to the point, should they? This hugely funny and deeply moving love story offers no easy answers.

Western Lane

By chetna maroo.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

Exploring themes of grief and sisterhood, this debut coming-of-age story packs a lot of emotion into just 176 pages. Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash for as long as she can remember. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a brutal training regimen. Soon, the game has become her entire world, causing a rift between Gopi and her sisters. But on the court, governed by the rhythms of the sport, she feels alive. This novel beautifully captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty as we follow a young athlete's struggle to transcend herself. 

Young Mungo

By douglas stuart.

Mungo is a Protestant and James is a Catholic, both inhabiting the hyper-masculine world of two Glasgow housing estates, split violently along sectarian lines. The two should be enemies but, finding sanctuary in the doocot James has created for his racing pigeons, they grow closer and closer. Dreaming of escape and under constant threat of discovery, Mungo and James attempt to navigate a dangerous and uncertain future together.

The story behind the Young Mungo cover

Five tuesdays in winter, by lily king.

With Writers & Lovers , Lily King became one of our most acclaimed writers of contemporary fiction. And now, with Five Tuesdays in Winter , she gathers ten of her best short stories. These intimate literary stories tell of a bookseller who is filled with unspoken love for his employee, an abandoned teenage boy nurtured by a pair of housesitting students and a girl whose loss of innocence brings confident power. Romantic, hopeful, raw and occasionally surreal, these stories riff beautifully on the topic of love and romance.

Roman Stories

By jhumpa lahiri.

Inspired by the city she’s lived in for the past two decades, Jhumpa Lahiri's new work of fiction turns her gaze towards those who call Rome home. Weaving each character’s story around a set of steps they encounter daily, and examining how the city is constantly evolving and changing, Lahiri masterfully  illuminates the joys and tragedies of daily life. From a man mourning the person he once was to a couple coming to terms with loss and a family trying to make a new city home, the rich characters she has created will stay with you long after you finish reading. 

by Ashleigh Nugent

Aeon is a mixed-up and mixed-race teenager from a leafy Liverpool suburb, trying to understand the Black identity foisted upon him by his friends and his community. To his growing shame, the only Black people in his life are his dad and his cousin, who he's decided don't count. Desperate to find his Black roots he travels to Jamaica. Mugged, stabbed and arrested, he's beaten unconscious in a detention centre for being the 'White Boy'. And then things really start to go wrong. 

Stone Blind

By natalie haynes.

As the sole mortal in a family of gods, Medusa begins to realize that she is the only one who experiences change, the only one who can be hurt, and the only one who lives with an urgency that her family will never know. Then, when the sea god Poseidon commits an unforgivable act in the temple of Athene, the goddess takes her revenge where she can – and Medusa is changed forever. Writhing snakes replace her hair, and her gaze now turns any living creature to stone. Unable to control her new power, she is condemned to a life of shadows and darkness. Until Perseus embarks upon a quest. At last, Medusa's story is told.

Open Throat

By henry hoke.

A queer mountain lion lives in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign. The lion spends their days protecting a nearby homeless encampment, observing hikers complain about their trauma and grappling with the complexities of their own identity. When a man-made fire engulfs the encampment, the lion is forced from the hills down into the city. As they confront a carousel of temptations and threats, the lion takes us on a tour that spans the cruel inequalities of Los Angeles. Feral and vulnerable, profound and playful,  Open Throat  is a marvel of storytelling that brings the mythic to life.

A Time Outside This Time

A writer called Satya visits a high-profile artists' retreat, and soon finds that the pressures of modern life are hard to shed: the US president pours out vitriol, a virus threatens the world, and the relentless news cycle only makes things worse. Satya realises these pressures can inspire him to write, and he begins to channel presidential tweets, memories from an Indian childhood, and his own experiences as an immigrant into his new novel. A fascinating exploration of memory in a post-truth world, Amitava Kumar's A Time Outside This Time is a beautiful and necessary novel.

Maps of our Spectacular Bodies

By maddie mortimer.

Something is moving in Lia's body, learning her life with gleeful malevolence and spreading through the rungs of her larynx, the bones of her trachea. When a shock diagnosis forever changes Lia's world, boundaries in her life begin to break down as buried secrets emerge. A voice prowling inside of her takes hold of her story, merging the landscape within her body with the one outside. A coming-of-age at the end of life, Maddie Mortimer's compelling debut novel is both heart-breaking and darkly funny, combining wild lyricism with celebrations of the desire, forgiveness and darkness in our bodies. 

‘ Compelling and uplifting . . . undeniably impressive: Mortimer is clearly a talent to watch ’ The Telegraph on Maps of our Spectacular Bodies

Other Women

By emma flint.

Based on a real case from the 1920s, Other Women tells the story of Beatrice, one of the thousands of nameless and invisible unmarried women trying to make lives for themselves after the First World War, and Kate, the wife of the man Beatrice has fallen in love with. When fantasy and obsession turns to murder, two women who should never have met are connected forever.

To Paradise

By hanya yanagihara.

This amazing new novel from the author of A Little Life begins in the nineteenth century, and spans stories of love, family, loss and promised utopia over the following three centuries. In 1893, New York is part of the Free States, and a gentle young member of a privileged family falls for a charismatic and impoverished music teacher. In 1993 Manhattan is being swept by the AIDS epidemic, and a young Hawaiian man with a wealthy older partner must hide his difficult family background. And in 2093 in a world where plague and totalitarian rule is rife, a young woman tries to solve the mystery of her husband's disappearances. 

by Julia May Jonas

The narrator of this provocative and utterly readable novel is a much loved English professor, who finds that her charismatic professor husband is facing a flood of accusations from former students. The couple have long had an understanding about taking lovers, but suddenly life has acquired an uncomfortable edge. And things get even more twisted when the narrator finds herself in the grip of an obsession with Vladimir, a young and feted married novelist who is new to the campus. This explosive, edgy debut traces the tangled contradictions of power and lust.

by Gina Chung

Stuck in a rut, Ro faces the challenges of her thirties: a strained relationship with her mother and a boyfriend who left for a Mars mission. Her days are mundane at the aquarium, and her nights involve consuming sharktinis. With her best friend drifting away and Dolores, a giant Pacific octopus, as her sole connection to her vanished marine biologist father, Ro's world unravels when Dolores is sold to a wealthy investor. On the verge of self-destruction, Ro must confront her past, rediscover her purpose, and embrace the evolving world to heal her childhood scars and rebuild her life.

by André Dao

Anam takes us on a poignant journey from 1930s Hanoi to Saigon, Paris, Melbourne, and Cambridge, exploring memory, inheritance, colonialism, and belonging. The narrator, born into a Vietnamese family in Melbourne, grapples with his grandfather's haunting tale of imprisonment in Chi Hoa prison under the Communist government. Straddling his Australian upbringing and Vietnamese heritage, he faces the impact of his grandfather's death and the birth of his daughter on his own life's trajectory. André Dao artfully weaves fiction and essay, theory and personal experience, revealing forgotten aspects of history and family archives. 

Learned by Heart

By emma donoghue.

In 1805, at a boarding school in York, two fourteen-year-old girls cross paths. Eliza Raine, an orphan with an Indian heritage, feels isolated due to her differences. Anne Lister, a rebellious spirit, defies societal norms for women. Their love story blossoms, creating a profound bond that transcends time and shapes their lives forever. Learned By Heart is the heartbreaking story of the love of two women – Anne Lister, the real-life inspiration behind Gentleman Jack, and her first love, Eliza Raine – from the bestselling author of  Room  and  The Wonder.

The complete guide to Emma Donoghue's books

Briefly, a delicious life, by nell stevens.

It's 1838, and Frédéric Chopin, George Sand and her children are en route to a Mallorcan monastery. They are in recovery from life in Paris, seeking a more simple existence. The unexpected witness of their new life is Blanca, a ghost who has been at the monastery for more than three hundred years, her young life having been cut short. And when George Sand arrives, a lovely woman in a man's clothes, Blanca is in love. Meanwhile, the village is looking suspiciously at the new arrivals, as a difficult winter closes in . . . 

by Hannah Kent

It's 1836 in Prussia, and teenage Hanne is finding the domestic world of womanhood increasingly oppressive. She longs to be out in nature, and finds little companionship with the local girls. Until, that is, she meets kindred spirit Thea. Hanne is from a family of Old Lutherans, whose worship is suppressed and secret. Safe passage to Australia offers liberty from these restrictions. But a long and harsh journey lies ahead, one which will put the girls' close bond to a terrible test.

The House of Fortune

By jessie burton.

A glorious, sweeping story of fate and ambition, The House of Fortune is the sequel to Jessie Burton’s bestseller  The Miniaturist . Amsterdam, 1705. Thea Brandt is about to turn eighteen and she can't wait to become an adult. Walter, her true love, awaits Thea at the city's theatre. But at home on the Herengracht things are tense. Her father Otto and Aunt Nella bicker incessantly and are selling furniture so the family can eat. And, on her birthday, the day her mother Marin died, secrets from Thea's past threaten to eclipse the present. Nella is feeling a prickling sensation in her neck, which recalls the miniaturist who toyed with her life eighteen years ago.

Very Cold People

By sarah manguso.

Growing up on the edge of a wealthy but culturally threadbare New England town, Ruth goes under the radar. Nobody pays her attention, but she watches everything – recording with precision the painful unfurling of her youth and enduring difficult and damaging parenting from the mocking, undermining adults in her life. But as the adults of the book fail to grow up, Ruth gracefully arcs towards maturity in a story that grapples with many of life's ugly truths. 

Concerning My Daughter

By kim hye-jin.

A mother lets her thirty-something daughter – Green – move into her apartment, with dreams that she will find a good job and a good husband to start a family with. But Green arrives with her girlfriend Lane, and her mother finds it hard to be civil. She is similarly unaccepting of her daughter's entanglement in a case of unfair dismissal from her university employers, involving gay colleagues. Yet Green's mother finds that she has her own moral battle to fight, defending the right to care of a dementia patient who has chosen an unconventional life and has no family. Translated from Korean by Jamie Chang, this is a universal tale about ageing, prejudice and love.

‘ An admirably nuanced portrait of prejudice . . . one that boldly takes on the daunting task of humanizing someone whose prejudice has made her cruel. ’ The New York Times on Concerning My Daughter

The Passenger

By cormac mccarthy.

A sunken jet. Nine passengers. A missing body. The Passenger  is the story of a salvage diver, haunted by loss, afraid of the watery deep, pursued for a conspiracy beyond his understanding, and longing for a death he cannot reconcile with God. The first of two novels published in 2022 by literary great Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger is followed by Stella Maris  –  both are too good to be missed. 

The Women Could Fly

By megan giddings.

The Women Could Fly  is a speculative feminist novel for our times, set in a time where magic is reality, and single women are monitored in case they turn out to be witches. Josephine Thomas has heard a plethora of theories about her mother's death: that she was abducted, murdered and that she was a witch. This is a concerning accusation, because women who act strangely – especially Black women – can soon find themselves being tried for witchcraft. Facing the prospect of a State-mandated marriage, Jo decides to honour one last request written in her mother's will.

The Exhibitionist

By charlotte mendelson.

Meet the Hanrahan family, gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art – the first in many decades – and one he is sure will burnish his reputation for good. His three children will be there: beautiful Leah, sensitive Patrick, and insecure Jess, the youngest, who has a momentous decision to make..And what of Lucia, Ray’s steadfast and selfless wife? She is an artist, too, but has always had to put her roles as wife and mother first. But Lucia is hiding secrets of her own, and as the weekend unfolds and the exhibition approaches, she must finally make a choice. 

‘ It takes the most ferocious intelligence, skill and a deep reservoir of sadness to write a novel as funny as this. I adored it. ’ Meg Mason on The Exhibitionist

The Dance Tree

By kiran millwood hargrave.

It's 1518 in Strasbourg, and in the intense summer heat a solitary woman starts to dance in the main square. She dances for days without rest, and is joined by hundreds of other women. The city authorities declare a state of emergency, and bring in musicians to play the devil out of the dancing women. Meanwhile pregnant Lisbet, who lives at the edge of the city, is tending to the family's bees. The dancing plague intensifies, as Lisbet is drawn into a net of secret passions and deceptions. Inspired by true events, this is a compelling story of superstition, transformative change and women pushed to their limits.

Disorientation

By elaine hsieh chou.

This raucous and heartwarming satire asks – who gets to tell our stories? And can we change the narrative if we get to write it ourselves?  PhD student Ingrid Yang can't wait to finish her dissertation on major poet Xiao-Wen Chou so she never has to read about ‘Chinese-y’ things again. Then she finds an enigmatic note in the Chou archive, which leads to an explosive discovery and a roller coaster of misadventures. Ingrid's gentle fiancé doesn't look quite the same in the aftermath, as she confronts her troubled relationship with white men and their institutions and, more importantly, herself . . .

Sea of Tranquillity

By emily st. john mandel.

It's 1912, and eighteen-year-old Edwin St. Andrew is on a journey across the Atlantic, having been exiled from society in England. Arriving in British Columbia, he enters a forest, mesmerised by the Canadian wilderness. All is silent, before the notes of a violin reverberate through the air. Two centuries later, and acclaimed author Olive Llewelyn is travelling over the earth, on a break from her home in the second moon colony. At the heart of her bestselling novel, a man plays a violin for spare change in the corridor of an airship terminal, as a forest rises around him. This compelling novel immerses the reader in parallel worlds, and multiple possibilities.

All of Emily St. John Mandel's books in order

Our wives under the sea, by julia armfield.

Leah is back from a perilous and troubling deep sea mission, and Miri is delighted to have her wife home. But Leah has carried the undersea trauma into the couple's domestic life, and it is causing a rupture in their relationship. The debut novel from the author of acclaimed short story collection salt slow , Our Wives Under The Sea is a rich meditation on love, loss and the mysteries of the ocean.

The best literary fiction of all time

White noise, by don delillo.

Possibly DeLillo’s funniest book,  White Noise  introduced his work to a wider audience than ever before and established his reputation as a master of postmodern fiction. Jack Gladney is the creator and chairman of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. The novel is a story about his absurd life; a life that is going well enough, until a chemical spill from a rail car releases an 'Airborne Toxic Event' and Jack is forced to confront his biggest fear – his own mortality. DeLillo's bestselling story effortlessly combines social satire and metaphysical dilemma, exposing our rampant consumerism, media saturation and novelty intellectualism.

Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart’s blistering, Booker Prize-winning debut is a heartbreaking story that lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty and the limits of love. Set in a poverty-stricken Glasgow in the early 1980s, Agnes Bain has always dreamed of greater things. But when her husband abandons her she finds herself trapped in a decimated mining town and descends deeper and deeper into drink. Her son Shuggie tries to help her long after her other children have fled, but he too must abandon her to save himself. Shuggie is different and he is picked on by the local children and condemned by adults as 'no’ right’. But he believes that if he tries his hardest he can be like other boys and escape this hopeless place.

Blood Meridian

Written in 1985, Blood Meridian is set in the anarchic world opened up by America’s westward expansion. Through the hostile landscape of the Texas–Mexico border wanders the Kid, a fourteen year-old Tennessean who is quickly swept up in the relentless tide of blood. But the apparent chaos is not without its order: while Americans hunt Indians – collecting scalps as their bloody trophies – they too are stalked as prey. Powerful, mesmerizing and savagely beautiful, Blood Meridian is considered one of the most important works in American fiction of the last century.

The Line of Beauty

By alan hollinghurst.

The Line of Beauty  is Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning masterpiece. In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP, his wife Rachel and their children Toby and Catherine. Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens’ world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty. This is a novel that defines a decade, exploring with peerless style a young man's collision with his own desires, and with a world he can never truly belong to. 

Middle Passage

By charles johnson.

Rutherford Calhoun, a puckish rogue and newly freed slave, spends his days around the docks of New Orleans, dodging debt collectors, gangsters, and a woman who seeks to marry him. When the heat from his pursuers overwhelms him, he cons his way onto the next ship leaving the dock: the Republic. Upon boarding, he discovers that he is on an illegal slave ship, looking to capture members of the legendary Allmuseri tribe. The Captain also has a secondary objective: securing a mysterious cargo that possesses an otherworldly power. A blend of allegory, black comedy, naval adventure and supernatural horror,   Middle Passage  is a true modern classic.

The Lamplighters

By emma stonex.

Cornwall, 1972. Three keepers vanish from a remote lighthouse, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The Principal Keeper’s weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week. Twenty years later, the women they left behind are still struggling to move on, when they are given the chance to tell their side of the story. Inspired by true events, this enthralling and suspenseful mystery is a beautifully written exploration of love and grief, perception and reality. 

A House for Mr Biswas

By v.s. naipaul.

Written in 1961 and set in post-colonial Trinidad, this is the story of Mr Biswas, a man born into misfortune, and his quest to find a worthy home of his own. A House for Mr Biswas is a multi-faceted read that is all-at-once satisfying, lyrical and humorous.

by Raven Leilani

Raven Leilani is a funny and original new voice in literary fiction. Her razor-sharp yet surprisingly tender debut is an essential novel about what it means to be young now. Edie is messing up her life, and no one seems to care. Then she meets Eric, who is white, middle-aged and comes with a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. And as if life wasn’t hard enough, Edie finds herself falling head-first into Eric’s family. 

‘ In this cutting, hot-blooded book, the entanglements that unfold are as complicated as they are heartbreaking. ’ New Statesman on Luster

by Jamaica Kincaid

Much loved only child Annie has always had a tranquil life. She and her beautiful mother are intertwined and inseparable. But when Annie turns twelve, her life shifts. She questions authority, makes rebel friends and wonders about the culture assumptions of her island world. And the unconditional love between Annie and her mother takes an adversarial turn. A coming of age classic, narrated with wonderfully candid complexity.

A Little Life

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and celebrated as ‘the great gay novel’ , Hanya Yanagihara’s immensely powerful story of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance has had a visceral impact on many a reader. Willem, Jude, Malcolm and JB meet at college in Massachusetts and form a firm friendship, moving to New York upon graduation. Over the years their friendships deepen and darken as they celebrate successes and face failures, but their greatest challenge is Jude himself – an increasingly broken man scarred by an unspeakable childhood. This is a book that will stay with you long after the last page.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

By toshikazu kawaguchi.

First released in Japan in 2015, this bestseller has since been translated for English audiences. The story takes place in a small basement café in Japan, home to a very special urban legend: visitors can travel back in time. There are strict rules, however; you can only travel back to speak to people who have visited the café itself, you cannot leave your seat while in the past, nothing you do will change the present, and you must return before your coffee gets cold. Each character comes to the café with a new reason to time travel. As many of the patrons discover, you can’t change the present, but you can change yourself.

Breasts and Eggs

By mieko kawakami.

This literary debut, which Haruki Murakami called ‘breathtaking’, is a must-read for fans of contemporary literary fiction. Mieko Kawakami paints a radical picture of contemporary working-class womanhood in Japan as she recounts the heartbreaking stories of three women who must survive in a society where the odds are stacked against them.

‘ I can never forget the sense of pure astonishment I felt when I first read Mieko Kawakami’s novella Breasts and Eggs . . . breathtaking . . . Mieko Kawakami is always ceaselessly growing and evolving. ’ Haruki Murakami on Breasts and Eggs

Burial Rites

In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnúsdóttir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of her lover. Agnes is sent to wait out her final months on the farm of district officer Jón Jónsson, his wife and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderer in their midst, the family avoid contact with Agnes. Only Tóti, the young assistant priest appointed Agnes’s spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her. As the year progresses and the hardships of rural life force the household to work side by side, Agnes’s story begins to emerge and with it the family’s terrible realization that all is not as they had assumed.

In this episode of Book Break Emma shares her recommendations for the best literary fiction of 2023:

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22 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Summer

Books that will transport you from a beach to a road trip with messy friends or a round table with knights..

In a season ripe for luxuriating in small indulgences — a headfirst dip in the cold pool, the first lick of ice cream, an evening stroll in the long shadows of a late sunset — there are few more rewarding than an afternoon with a new book. This summer, we’re reading books about mothers (loving them, missing them, resenting them, being them), bad art friends (the type who commit fraud and otherwise), and even the Knights of the Round Table (yeah, there’s a new Arthurian retelling). We’re going on road trips with messy friends in a debut novel and on a trip to the 1970s with an established writer’s new memoir. Go ahead, find your place in the sun, and crack open a new book — you deserve a little treat.

Emma Copley Eisenberg made a name for herself with The Third Rainbow Girl , a gripping work of narrative nonfiction that weaved together a decades-old double murder in West Virginia with Eisenberg’s own queer self-discovery. Her debut novel, Housemates , proves she’s just as skilled a fiction writer as she is a journalist. Here, Eisenberg deftly reimagines and queers the road-trip novel by focusing on the lives of two young artists coming to terms with how they relate to themselves and to art. The story follows housemates Bernie and Leah, who embark on a trip across rural Pennsylvania to pick up artwork bequeathed to Bernie by her disgraced former photography teacher. Bernie would rather refuse, but Leah convinces her to go and turn the trip into a project by documenting the journey in photos and writing. The relationship between Leah and Bernie is messy and honest. Together, the two must confront how they feel about art produced by people who do harm — and the limits of their compassion. — Isle McElroy

Set in the summer of 1961 in a house in the Dutch countryside, this tantalizingly slow-paced novel sucks in readers by setting up an opposition between its two protagonists: repressed, isolated Isabel, who lives alone in a family house that’s been bequeathed to one of her brothers in the event that he marries, and that brother’s flashy, charismatic girlfriend Ava, who comes to stay with Isabel against her will, rupturing her quiet life for good. The tormented Dutch relationship with the Holocaust comes into play here, not quite surprisingly — processing the legacy of the Holocaust is mandatory in many Dutch best sellers — but here, it has truly surprising consequences. Fans of Patricia Highsmith and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen will find much to admire here. Recommended for reading outdoors while eating a ripe pear. — Emily Gould

Gretchen Felker-Martin’s impressive new novel , Cuckoo , shifts away from the large-scale dystopia of her previous novel, Manhunt , to explore the claustrophobic dystopia of a “conversion camp from hell.” Sixteen years after seven teens are abandoned at an isolated desert conversion camp, the survivors of that terrible summer must come together to put an end to Camp Resolution. Felker-Martin sees clearly how queerness and survival often go hand in hand, but what makes her work so exciting is the power and resourcefulness of her characters. Queerness is not something to survive, but a state of being that enables one to thrive in the face of ongoing attacks. In Cuckoo , the attempt to right past wrongs, to overcome collective trauma at the hands of institutions, transforms into a cosmic endeavor. By saving themselves, these characters are fighting to save the world. — I.M.

Nineteen-year-old Margo gets pregnant by her community-college English teacher and decides to keep the baby. Once he’s born, Margo loses her waitressing job and half her roommates, then panics about how she’ll make ends meet. The solution? OnlyFans. Her former pro-wrestler dad Jinx helps her craft a persona on the site and even moves in to help with the baby. But trouble looms in the shape of Margo’s baby’s father, her newly morally upright mother, and Jinx’s druggy demons. Plus, Margo might be falling for one of her regulars. This deeply funny, thoughtful, riveting book has already been optioned for a TV series by A24, so if you actually read the book, you can safely claim to be an early adopter. — E.G.

By the mid-1970s, the revolution promised by the ’60s counterculture had failed, leaving its participants to confront a more cynical decade rife with paranoia and a general sense of futility. In her new memoir, 1974: A Personal History , novelist and critic Francine Prose traces that shift through the lens of her brief friendship and quasi-romance with Tony Russo, who a few years earlier had helped Daniel Ellsberg leak the Pentagon Papers, a tranche of confidential files exposing the federal government’s lies to the public about the war in Vietnam. In excavating her relationship with Russo, Prose attempts to better understand the aimlessness of her 20s and to parse what exactly drew her to a compellingly brave but unstable man who had once hoped he could change the course of history. Along the way, Prose deftly zigzags through the pop-culture touchstones of her youth, throwing everything from Vertigo to Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night into dialogue with a chaotic period of both her life and American history. — Chris Stanton

Talent agent, producer, and podcaster are but a few of the titles Priyanka Mattoo has held over the course of a prolific career in Hollywood, and while she surely has a rich cache of stories featuring entertainment A-listers that could fill several memoirs, she largely avoids this period of her life in her forthcoming Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones . Instead, in a series of essays that jump through time, Mattoo paints a vivid portrait of a global upbringing that results from her family’s ousting from their home state of Kashmir, a historically disputed territory in northern India. Memoirs documenting the experience of conflict-induced displacement is a large subgenre, a somber reflection of the global state of affairs. But Mattoo’s book is rare in its humor, its curiosity, and its openness to a world that was seemingly reluctant to give its writer a place to call home. — Anusha Praturu

Tiya Miles’s 2021 book, All That She Carried , was a creative history of the Antebellum South told through a sack — containing a dress, pecans, and a lock of hair — that an enslaved woman gave her daughter when the latter was sold. Like the scholar Saidiya Hartman, Miles engages in “critical fabulation,” a way of reading between the lines of the historical record to imagine what’s been left out of the archive. With her new book, Night Flyer , she takes that same approach to write about Harriet Tubman, attending to the ecological and religious aspects of the 19th-century abolitionist’s political thought. — Brandon Sanchez

With 2021’s Second Place — inspired by Mabel Dodge’s account of D.H. Lawrence’s visit to Taos, New Mexico — Cusk reminded her devotees that she can do more than write in a seemingly autobiographical mode. Now the author returns with Parade , which promises to subvert the conventions of the novel. We’ve seen bits of the book already: In the braided New Yorker short story “The Stuntman,” an artist begins painting his wife upside-down; then, on the streets of Paris, one woman physically attacks another, turning to admire the result before fleeing. “I believed that the relationship between visual art and human character was more violent and psychologically revelatory than that between authors and their words,” Cusk said of the story. Expect a masterful marriage of her fictional and essayistic modes that probes questions of genius, cruelty, relationships, and art. — Jasmine Vojdani

What’s a tourist town without a little class tension? In Julia Phillips’s second novel (after 2019’s Disappearing Earth ), the fraught relationship between the hordes of vacationers that descend on Washington State’s San Juan Island every summer and the people who serve them is at the center of the action — that and a bear. Sisters Elena and Sam are approaching their 30s, but they still live with their mother, who’s been sick for much longer than anyone expected. Elena, who works at a golf club, and Sam, a snack-bar cashier on the ferry that runs back and forth from the mainland, have private dreams of escape, but for now, they’re in a frustrating holding pattern. When a massive bear starts lurking in the woods around their house, Elena is illogically drawn to it, despite Sam’s insistence that she’s putting herself in danger. Bear captures the tedium of servicework and the mood shifts, from love to anger and back again, inherent to sibling relationships. — Emma Alpern

Everyone has an opinion about reality TV — wouldn’t you like yours to be educated?  New Yorker  writer (and  former Vulture TV critic ) Emily Nussbaum charts the rise of the genre, starting with a compelling argument for its genesis in the late-1940s radio-TV crossovers of  Candid Microphone / Camera  and  Queen for a Day . “In an era when women were expected to marry early and have kids, then stay tight-lipped about anything that went wrong, these agonizing public displays of suffering were at once degrading and glorifying, like sainthood” — sound familiar? She goes on to update the many-times-retold story of  An American Family  with fresh reporting, explores the squishy ethics of ‘90s staples like  The Real World  and  Cops , and closes on the one-two punch of Bravo and  The Apprentice . Just when things were getting interesting! —Julie Kosin

Santiago Jose Sanchez’s debut , Hombrecito , is a beautiful coming-of-age novel about the fractured bond between a young queer man and his mother. After moving her sons from Colombia to Miami, the protagonist’s mother grows distant, disappearing into her new environment while her son embraces his sexuality and his life in the city. As he grows older, they drift further apart, and, when he moves to New York, he finds himself searching for — and failing to find — meaning in the beds of lovers. A return to Colombia forces him to grapple with a homeland he hasn’t known for much of his life while he attempts to restore his relationship with his father. At the center of it all, though, is the tense and moving relationship between mother and son. Seeing her in her home country reveals the sacrifices she made and the secrets she attempted to keep. Hombrecito is a remarkably honest portrait of self-discovery that is full of tenderness and desire and grief — all the things that make us human. — I.M.

During the early days of the pandemic, the novelist, raised in New England to adoptive Irish parents, became suddenly obsessed with the idea of finding her Korean birth mom. (“To friends, I declared I was only late to the party — as usual — on my own rotten mommy issues.”) O’Neill’s delightfully willful memoir recounts the twists and turns in her detective’s hunt, from being ghosted by a private investigator to heading to Korea at the height of lockdown. O’Neill is a true stylist; her prose brims with intelligence, energy, and humor. This memoir exploring identity and family is unlike any other. — J.V.

An elegant lady moves to New York, a place she finds depressing and filthy and which she comes to fear is filthifying her. But what choice does she have? She’s Palestinian, and for all her family’s money, none of them had ever managed to leave — until now. In her debut novel, Zaher draws a Venn diagram of the glamorously neurotic and the politically oppressed, then sets her protagonist spinning in that maddening little overlap. —Madeline Leung Coleman

“Do you want to hear a story with a terrible ending?” That’s a bold question to ask at the beginning of a novel, especially when it’s arriving on a wave of high expectations following a debut best seller ( Fleishman Is in Trouble , in this case) that was made into an Emmy-nominated limited series. But Brodesser-Akner does not shy away from the bold in her writing, and that remains true in her forthcoming book, which opens with husband, father, and factory owner Carl Fletcher getting kidnapped right out of the driveway of his Long Island suburban home. This is not a story about a man who goes missing, though. It’s a family saga that explores how that singular event, which is resolved seemingly happily early in the novel, reverberates over the years through the lives of everyone in Carl’s wealthy Jewish family. As she did in Fleishman , Brodesser-Akner once again demonstrates a gift for capturing the dark, unforgiving things people do and say to the ones they are supposed to love the most. — Jen Chaney

In her first two novels, Jillian and The New Me , Halle Butler created captivating studies of obsession and discomfort. Her newest novel, Banal Nightmare , follows Moddie, a young woman who moves back home to the Midwest from New York after a breakup with her megalomaniac partner. There, she’s forced to endure the horror and humiliation of hanging out with her old childhood friends, facing off against all their buried resentments and revenge fantasies. The sudden arrival of a heralded artist — who is completing a residency at a nearby university — forces Moddie to confront the demons she tried to avoid in New York. Butler is a skilled and clever prose stylist who humanely spotlights the most ridiculous parts of being alive in this surprising and hilarious book. — I.M.

Grossman’s Magicians trilogy predated what would become a dominant trend in fantasy fiction in the last decade: taking familiar genres full of inhuman heroes, comforting magic, and brightly hued magical places, and recasting everything to be darker, more flawed, more strange, and unnerving. In The Magicians , Grossman’s world was a Narnia-esque land of escapism. In Bright Sword , it’s an Arthurian retelling from the point of view of a young knight who arrives at the Round Table just after everything has fallen apart. Like the best of Grossman’s work, it is funny and sweeping and occasionally uneasy, but the medieval-romance structure allows Bright Sword even more space to capitalize on Grossman’s talent for digression, dawdling, and finding unexpected trapdoors inside stories. — Kathryn VanArendonk

“In the beginning, I was only myself … Then I married a man, as women do.” The opening of Sarah Manguso’s second novel portends an epic tragedy: A writer falls in love with a struggling filmmaker who reveals himself to be intimidated by her success. As he cobbles together a career and instigates multiple moves across the country, an asymmetrical division of domestic labor cleaves between them, leaving the writer to raise “the child” and little time for much else. The narrator’s “all-consuming love” for the child grows in parallel to her anger at her husband’s slow betrayal. (“My husband frequently asked me why I was so much angrier than other women. It always made me smile. I was exactly as angry as every other woman I knew.”) In this painful and beautifully wrought story of a relationship that spans over a decade, short paragraphs make time pass fluidly, in bursts of propulsive specificity. Manguso is a poet-novelist who knows brevity can whittle the sharpest knife. — J.V.

Imagine your messiest college friend — the one who transfixed you early on, becoming a folk hero in your eyes through a mix of envy, possible lust, and car-crash looky-looism — commits a number of very chic crimes. And then you get to write the book about it, which immediately gets optioned by HBO. Orlando Whitfield is living the dream. All That Glitters, his accounting of Inigo Philbrick’s bad art friendship and even worse art fraud , is dishy and vulnerable and propulsive. The access Whitfield has as Philbrick’s friend (turned business partner, employee, and eventual professional rival) is astonishing, and even more astonishing that he’s spilling like this. It’s as if you’re in the room with him, going, “Wow, that’s crazy” as he processes the friendship in real time. — Bethy Squires

The author and essayist returns with a rigorous and compulsively readable memoir about her career as a sex worker and the possibilities of romantic love between men and women. Shane excavates her relationships with her father and the boys she grew up with, measuring the harm of inherited lessons about sex and the value of girls’ hotness against the power and freedom sex work later afforded her. “My sense that I wasn’t sexually appealing could have kept me from sex work,” she writes, “but instead, I think, it drove me to it.” This personal and professional investigation resonates and entices. —J.V.

Old resentments and generational differences between a father and a daughter are thrown under the spotlight, quite literally, in Jo Hamya’s new novel about a play about a book. Sophia is a young playwright, whose divorced boomer father is a famous author past his prime — his novels deal in certain sexual politics and gender dynamics that have aged poorly. He joins the audience of his daughter’s play without reading any reviews, which means he’s startled to see a staged version of a working vacation he and Sophia took a decade prior. While her father sits through the excruciating experience of watching an actor in his favorite shirt womanize and behave boorishly while dictating a book, Sophia anxiously awaits her father’s response to the show at lunch with her mother, who has her own baggage with Sophia’s father. Hamya’s tightly constructed story bounces through time, place, and perspective to maneuver the tricky nuances of personal experience and art. — Tolly Wright

In this epistolary novel, an unnamed narrator writes a fevered stream of text from Las Vegas, where she’s staying with her ill mother. In between searching the internet for symptoms, meeting with a bankruptcy lawyer, and trying to convince her “overzealous assimilated” mom to eat Vietnamese food, she fantasizes about sex and confesses every shameful aspect of her longing to her lover, who’s living with her husband in Italy. But it’s obvious that her attempts to maintain “the umbilical cord of desire and need” that connect them are bound to fall short. Vi Khi Nao’s work crosses mediums — poetry, film, and visual art, to name a few — and her intensely lyrical latest novel has a similar range, putting the erotic side by side with political and personal history. — E.A.

In this novel, based on the 1932 massacre of up to 30,000 mostly Indigenous people in El Salvador, a pair of sisters flee genocide: Garciela, who was raised in a community perched near a volcano but removed at age 9 and forced to serve as an oracle to dictator “El Gran Pendejo” (the Big Asshole), and her long-lost sister Consuelo. As the years pass and Garciela’s gruesome prophetic visions take shape, the sisters escape to Paris, California, and beyond, variously losing and recovering each other. “Stories all have masters who control the way they’re told and whom they’re told to,” the author writes. This tale is told by a chorus of lively ghosts, who “are dead but we sing, we cackle, we lose our shit, we tell you exactly what we think …” A bilingual, mythological, and original debut about resistance and survival. —J.V.

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Banned & Challenged Books

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The Most Anticipated Books of Summer, According to Goodreads

Always books. Never boring.

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Variety being the spice of literary life, the list spans just about every genre you can think of, though I have to note I’m surprised there isn’t a standalone romantasy section. Fear not if dragon smut is your thing, though. There are plenty books for you on the list, they’re just spread across the fantasy, romance, and young adult categories. Let’s get into some of the highlights.

Most Anticipated Contemporary & Historical Fiction of Summer 2024

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera

Most Anticipated Mysteries & Thrillers of Summer 2024

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

What You Leave Behind by Wanda M. Morris

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Most Anticipated Fantasy Novels of Summer 2024

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Dj è li Clark

The Night Ends With Fire by K.X. Song

Lady MacBeth by Ava Reid

The Most Anticipated Sci-Fi Novels of Summer 2024

The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei

All This and More by Peng Shepherd

Hum by Helen Phillips

The Most Anticipated Horror Novels of Summer 2024

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

The Most Anticipated Romance Novels of Summer 2024

Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava

Daydream by Hannah Grace

The Most Anticipated Young Adult Novels of Summer 2024

Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi

Reckless by Lauren Roberts

The Ravenous Fate by Hayley Dennings

Of Jade and Dragons by Amber Chen

The Most Anticipated Nonfiction of Summer 2024

I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol

Hip-Hop is History by Questlove

Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum

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Books We Love

20 new books hitting shelves this summer that our critics can't wait to read.

Meghan Collins Sullivan

June is around the corner, meaning summer is almost here! As we look forward to travel and staycations, plane rides and trips to the beach, we've asked our book critics for some advice: What upcoming fiction and nonfiction are they most looking forward to reading?

Their picks range from memoirs to sci-fi and fantasy to translations, love stories and everything in between. Here's a look:

Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope

I was hooked when I first saw the gorgeous cover for Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope. But the novel's premise put it at the top of my summer reading list. Penelope is known for unforgettable characters, world-building, beautiful writing and robust storytelling. Her latest work, inspired by actual events — the drowned Black towns of the American South — promises a magical, mythical and powerful tale of a young woman's quest to save her town. A historical fantasy must-read. (June 4) — Denny Bryce

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The Future Was Color by Patrick Nathan

The Future Was Color by Patrick Nathan has everything I look for in a book: a unique and startling voice, a queer protagonist and a deep understanding of a particular time and place. George — once György — is a gay Hungarian immigrant working as a screenwriter in McCarthy-era Hollywood, occasionally fantasizing about his officemate, Jack. When a once-famous actress named Madeline invites George to stay and write at her spacious Malibu house, she won't take no for an answer — and so George finds himself in a hedonistic milieu where pleasure, politics and strong personalities intermingle. (June 4) — Ilana Masad

Mirrored Heavens: Between Earth & Sky, Book 3 by Rebecca Roanhorse

Rebecca Roanhorse is one of my auto-read authors — and one major reason is because of her fire Between Earth and Sky series. That trilogy comes to a stunning, fevered conclusion with Mirrored Heavens . All of the characters you love, hate and love to hate will converge on the city of Tova. Get ready for an epic battle between ancient gods, their human avatars and the mortals caught in between. (June 4) — Alex Brown

Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Under Water by Amorina Kingdon

You may know about 52 Blue , whose vocalizations likely go unheard by some other whales; it captured worldwide sympathy and became a pop-culture metaphor. But did you know all whale song is critically disrupted by ships? If that gets you wondering, keep an eye out for Sing Like Fish , which promises to illuminate the fragile symphony of the deep. (June 4) — Genevieve Valentine

Consent: A Memoir by Jill Ciment

I look forward to reading Jill Ciment's Consent and to the discussions it's sure to provoke. In this follow-up memoir to Half a Life, Ciment reconsiders what she wrote 25 years ago about her teenage affair and marriage to her art teacher, 30 years her senior. Half a Life was written before the #MeToo movement, and before her husband died at the age of 93 after 45 years of marriage. Consent promises a fuller picture. (June 11) — Heller McAlpin

Do What Godmother Says by L.S. Stratton

As we continue to experience the frenzy of Harlem Renaissance celebrations, commemorations and historical resonance, Do What Godmother Says by L.S. Stratton is the perfect addition to the litany of works set in this artistic period this year. It examines the intense and frequently degenerating relationship between patrons and artists during this intellectual and cultural movement. In this dual-timeline gothic thriller, a modern writer discovers a family heirloom painting by a Harlem Renaissance artist, which connects her family to a mysterious past. This historical novel is one I'm eager to read because it deftly exposes the layers of creative ownership, especially when race and wealth are involved. (June 11) — Keishel Williams

Horror Movie: A Novel by Paul Tremblay

Paul Tremblay is one of the most entertaining and innovative voices in contemporary fiction regardless of genre. Horror Movie , a story about a cursed movie that never came out and is about to get a remake, is a love letter to horror novels and horror movies, as well as a tense narrative that will redefine the cursed film subgenre. Tremblay is one of the modern masters of horror, and this new novel promises to be packed with the author's distinctive voice, knack for ambiguity and intrigue, and superb atmosphere. (June 11) — Gabino Iglesias

Cue The Sun! The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum

Every so often there's a nonfiction title I covet like it's the next installment in my favorite mystery series. This summer it's Cue the Sun! Based on in-depth interviews with more than 300 sources from every aspect of the production process, this book is a cultural history of the genre that ate American entertainment, from New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum. It combines the appeal of a page-turning thriller and the heft of serious scholarship. Juicy and thoughtful, it's a must-read for anyone interested in television or popular culture. (June 25) — Carole V. Bell

The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen

In this return to the delightfully wacky world established in one of my personal top-five romance novels of all time, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy , Megan Bannen takes on the friends to lovers trope with a combination of madcap joie de vivre and the exhausted practicality of a mom who's had enough. Also, there are dragons! (July 2) — Caitlyn Paxson

The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş

I am eagerly awaiting Ayşegül Savaş' The Anthropologists . Born in Istanbul, Savaş has lived in England, Denmark and the U.S. also and now resides in France; in this novel she takes up themes of cultural migration through focus on a young couple seeking an apartment in a foreign city. I'm intrigued to discover how Savaş gifts her characters with an anthropological lens of exploration. (July 9) — Barbara J. King

Elevator in Saigon by Thuân, translated by Nguyen An Lý

Elevator in Saigon is a literal and structural exquisite corpse , capturing Vietnam's eventful period from 1954 to 2004. Mimicking an elevator's movement, the novel heightens our yearning for romance and mystery, while unflinchingly exposing such narrative shaft. Channeling Marguerite Duras and Patrick Modiano, the book also offers a dead-on tour of a society cunningly leaping from one ideological mode to the next. As if challenging Rick's parting words to Ilsa in Casablanca , Thuận's sophomore novel in English implies that geopolitical debacles might have been mitigated if personal relations were held in more elevated regard than "a hill of beans." (July 9) — Thúy Đinh

Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida, translated by Haydn Trowell

Atsuhiro Yoshida's Goodnight Tokyo begins with a film company procurer who's tasked with finding fresh kumquats for a production. From there, interlinked tales of Tokyo residents unspool in unpredictable directions. Characters range from a cabdriver to a star of a detective TV series who might be an actual detective. Readers will be reminded of Jim Jarmusch's 1991 movie Night on Earth , which also takes place in the wee hours of the morning and threads together the stories of strangers. (July 9) — Leland Cheuk

Navola: A novel by Paolo Bacigalupi

I love when a beloved author — especially one known mostly for a certain type of book — throws us a daring curveball. Navola is exactly such a pitch. Paolo Bacigalupi, who has won pretty much every major award in the science-fiction field with his climate-conscious dystopianism, is veering hard left with his new novel. It doesn't take place in the future, and it isn't a cautionary tale. Instead, it's a hefty tome of high fantasy set in a dreamed-up world akin to Renaissance Florence. Only with, you guessed it, dragons. But also high finance, political intrigue, and de' Medici-esque opulence. Bacigalupi is one of today's most gripping spinners of speculative fiction, and I can't wait to dive into this surprising magical foray. (July 9) — Jason Heller

The Lucky Ones: A Memoir by Zara Chowdhary

In 2002, two train carriages were set on fire in Gujarat, India. Within three weeks, more than 2,000 Muslims were murdered in response by Hindu mobs. By the end of the year, more than 50,000 Muslims became refugees in their own country. The Lucky Ones is a unique memoir in English of this largest-ever massacre in independent India . It is also about a communal crisis bringing a fractured family together. A must-read in our warring world today. (July 16) — Jenny Bhatt

Sharks Don't Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist by Jasmin Graham

Author Jasmin Graham is a marine biologist specializing in smalltooth sawfish and hammerhead sharks. Who are the real sharks in this story? Graham had to face the sharp-teethed truths of academia, while creating a world of curiosity and discovery around the complex lives of sharks. To combat the racism she encountered in academia, Graham created an "ocean of her own" to become an independent scientist and a champion of social justice, a journey she unspools in this new memoir. (July 16) — Martha Ann Toll

Liars by Sarah Manguso

I have long been a fan of Sarah Manguso's crystalline prose, from her fragmented illness memoir The Two Kinds of Decay to her tightly constrained 2022 novel Very Cold People . Her second novel , Liars , marries restraint with rage — in it, Manguso traces the full arc of a 15-year relationship between Jane, a successful writer, and John, a dilettante artist-cum-techie, in aphoristic vignettes. The result is a furious, propulsive meditation on wifehood, motherhood and artistic ambition. (July 23) — Kristen Martin

The Horse: A Novel by Willy Vlautin

Musician and Lean on Pete author Willy Vlautin captures the American West like few other writers. His prose is always excellent, his characters always beautifully drawn, and that promises to be the case with his next novel, about an isolated Nevada man in his 60s who is visited by a blind horse that refuses to leave. (July 30) — Michael Schaub

Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up With the Universe by Ken Krimstein

Art and science collide in Ken Krimstein's new graphic biography . In this book, the author of the brilliant and whimsical The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt similarly translates careful research into scenic, emotive comics — in this case tracking the potential effects of an adventitious meeting in Prague between two geniuses on the cusp of world-changing discoveries. (Aug. 20) — Tahneer Oksman

Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

I'd probably be interested in a new biography of Audre Lorde if it focused on the eating habits of the brilliant thinker, poet, feminist and activist. But biographer Alexis Pauline Gumbs promises to more than exceed that bar. An award-winning poet, writer, feminist and activist in her own right, Gumbs is among the first researchers to delve into Lorde's manuscript archives. The resulting book highlights the late author's commitment to interrogating what it means to survive on this planet — and how Lorde's radical understanding of ecology can guide us today. (Aug. 20) — Ericka Taylor

Et Cetera: An Illustrated Guide to Latin Phrases by Maia Lee-Chin, illustrated by Marta Bertello

To those claiming Latin is dead, I say res ipsa loquitur — the thing speaks for itself — in children's cartoons , Hollywood cartoons and enduring epics . As a fan of both Mr. Peabody and the Muses, the idea of combining Maia Lee-Chin's thoughtful scholarship and Marta Bertello's dynamic artistry is captivating. Their new book reimagines the world of Latin's invention and tops my summer reading list. (Aug. 27) — Marcela Davison Avilés

• summer books

Tshidiso Moletsane, winner of the 2022 Sunday Times Literary Awards fiction prize, has died

Tshidiso Moletsane, winner of the 2022 Sunday Times Literary Awards in partnership with the Exclusive Books fiction prize, has died. 

Moletsane was awarded the prize for his debut novel Junx , published by Penguin Random House in September 2021.

He was lauded by the judges as “a tour de force” and for his “bold, raw and surprisingly elegant Gonzo-style writing”. The chair of the 2022 judging panel, Ekow Duker, said the book “stood out in a quadrant all on its own”, and that it was “an exceptional novel written in a style that is in your face and brutally honest”.

On the genesis of his award-winning novel, Moletsane in October 2022 wrote, “By the time I was 19, I had received what felt like hundreds of rejections of my work. It turns out getting published is pretty hard.

“When I started writing Junx , I found my voice. I settled into a style and tone I considered quite exciting. But even then, it took me years to finish. A significant chunk had to be discarded, as I struggled with the content. I worried about the novel’s length, and I wasn’t sure about some of the decisions I made with the story (I’m still not sure, really).

“I wanted to write a good story, but even more than that, I wanted it to be fun to read. When I found out Junx had been shortlisted by the Sunday Times, I thought, ‘You know what, maybe I can actually do this.’”

Sewela Langeni, the owner of Book Circle Capital — an independent bookshop in Melville, Johannesburg, that focuses on African literature — also paid homage to Moletsane.

“I had the honour of meeting Tshidiso twice: once at Book Circle Capital to film an interview with him, and the second time at a pop-up bookshop at an event where he was hosted by the University of Johannesburg’s department of English and creative writing.

“Tshidiso came across as an intelligent, funny, respectful and humble young man who found all the fuss around him and Junx quite unexpected, especially after winning the Sunday Times Literary Awards fiction prize. He said it was a story he had been writing since he was in high school. It was a collection of fictionalised stories borrowed from his life and the lives of his friends. He wrote the story to show the anger young South Africans feel in the face of a range of societal issues that can negatively affect their mental health.

“He spoke about his relationship with his family, and especially his relationship with his mom, which I found very endearing.

“In an interview filmed at Book Circle Capital with Tshwanelo Serumola , he spoke candidly about the pressure that comes with having written a debut novel that wins a massive award. The South African literary space has really lost a fine talent. My deepest condolences to his mom, Lerato Moletsane, and the rest of his family.”

I am so devastated to hear about the death of Tshidiso Moletsane, the author of ‘Junx’ which won the Sunday Times Prize for fiction in 2022. I met him at The Franschhoek Literary Festival last year, and enjoyed his company. He was so young with so much more to offer ☹️ pic.twitter.com/eGap1CGP2j — Welcome 🇵🇸 (@WelcomeWrites) May 29, 2024

Tshidiso Moletsane, another brilliant writer gone too soon. I am sad and have no words. Rest in Power! pic.twitter.com/Mr5d6bCyHe — Palestina 🇵🇸 🌻 (@colorblindtools) May 29, 2024

The last time I saw Tshidiso Moletsane, about a month ago when he came to see me, we sat in the sunlight & talked about books... his eyes dancing with intelligent curiosity. Thank you for Junx, T 🙏🏿 rest easy on the other side. Absolutely shattered — Perfect Hlongwane (@_wordperfect) May 29, 2024

Sad to hear of the death of Tshidiso Moletsane a highly promising young author💔 https://t.co/JBh7UkXcFN — Vusumuzi (@VusumuziWaZweli) May 29, 2024

About  Junx :

Moletsane’s brave story begins at a party in Dobsonville. A guy shares a joint with Ari — an imaginary friend, angel and demon — and a rollercoaster of a night begins. The plot features stolen cars, brothels, sex, drugs and anxiety. It’s a trip of a book that is not only exciting, but also cheekily and bluntly pokes fun at the South Africa we live in.

The family declined to comment on his death.

EUSEBIUS MCKAISER | Out to brunch with a filthy new writer

Here are the winners of the 2022 sunday times literary awards, sunday times literary awards: notes from the judges, tshidiso moletsane on the genesis of 'junx'.

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Picture this: The sun is high in the sky and you’re on your way to the beach with your friends with the latest Chappell Roan song blasting on the radio. You’re all slathered in SPF and have your folding chairs and coolers at the ready. It’s summertime, finally, and the only thing that’s missing is the perfect book to read while you burn to a red hot crisp by the side of the ocean.

Not sure what to bring with you? Good news! There are a ton of books coming out between the months of June and August that are worth checking out. There’s a clever reimagining of the story of Lady Macbeth, celebrated children’s author M.T. Anderson’s adult debut, the follow up to 2022’s hottest romantic fantasy, and a truly surprising number of heist novels. Which is all to say that there are plenty of options for you to choose from.

Below you’ll find 25 of the most romantic, fantastical, and action packed books coming out this summer that we can’t wait to kick back and read.

Barely Even Friends by Mae Bennett

If you’re in the mood to read a steamy, contemporary retelling of Beauty and the Beast , look no further than Mae Bennett’s debut romance novel, Barely Even Friends .

A contractor by trade and expert in all things to do with home renovation, Bellamy Price is determined to get a leg up and prove herself in a typically male-dominated field. Luckily, the perfect opportunity presents itself when she’s offered a job working on the palatial and mysterious Killington Estate. Expecting the house to be empty upon her arrival, Bellamy is shocked to discover it’s occupied by none other than Oliver Killington, recluse and heir to the vast Killington empire, who happens to have a very convenient thing for suspenders. Though frustratingly obstinate at first, it quickly becomes clear that there’s more to Oliver than meets the eye, and a common enemy quickly brings him and Bellamy closer together than either are expecting.

• $19 at Bookshop.org

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

From the author of Elder Race and Children of Time comes a new, surprisingly funny and deeply philosophical sci-fi novel about a murderous robot valet by the name of Charles that’s perfect for fans of I, Robot and Jeeves .

When Charles, a robot valet meticulously designed to be at the right hand of any modern human, gets the idea to murder their master — and subsequently does — they’re forced to go on the run, something they never thought they’d be able to do. Charles quickly discovers that the world is much larger than the home they worked in, and that they’re not the only robot discovering their independence.

• $27 at Bookshop.org

The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei

It’s hard not to be incredibly excited about The Stardust Grail , a book that’s pitched as an anti-colonial space heist with a protagonist who returns stolen artifacts to the alien civilizations they belong to rather than keeping them for herself or putting them behind glass in a museum.

Set ten years after a job goes horribly wrong, Maya Hoshimoto — once considered to be the galaxy’s best art thief — is approached by an old friend with an offer she can’t refuse: track down an powerful alien artifact. The catch? The artifact in question might not actually exist, and if it does, its discovery could lead to the end of human civilization as we know it.

Moonbound by Robin Sloan

If you, like me, read Robin Sloan’s delightful novel, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore , and thought to yourself, “That was strange,” then you might want to hold onto your hat.

Set 13,000 years in the future, Moonbound tells the story of Ariel, a boy who lives in a town under the control of a wizard. When Ariel accidentally stumbles across an important piece of record-keeping technology from the past, he finds himself called to adventure and a mission to save the world.

The Art Of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson

What better time to read a romance novel about baseball than during the height of summer?

In Alicia Thompson’s novel, The Art of Catching Feelings , a professional baseball player and his number one heckler navigate a delightful enemies-to-lovers romance. When Daphne Brink takes her taunting a little too far, driving Chris Kepler to literal tears during the middle of a game, she reaches out over social media to apologize. When Chris messages her back, it quickly becomes clear that he doesn’t know who Daphne is, and their relationship begins to grow into more than a few sweet DMs. But as the season progresses and their feelings for one another become undeniable, Daphne realizes she might not be able to keep her true identity from Chris forever.

• $18 at Bookshop.org

Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi

It’s (almost) here! The final installment of Tomi Adeyemi’s Lady of Orïsha series finally hits shelves in late June.

As the blood moon grows ever closer, Zélie faces the king who has been hunting her heart. But there is little she can do to prepare herself while she is trapped on a foreign ship bound for distant lands, warriors with iron skulls, and unfamiliar allies.

• $23 at Bookshop.org

The Daughters’ War by Christopher Buehlman

I have been counting down the days until the release of The Daughters’ War since I first caught wind that Christopher Buehlman would be writing a prequel to his fantastic fantasy novel, The Blacktongue Thief . Rather than return to the lush world that he’s crafted with a sequel (we’ll see Kinch again eventually), Buehlman is taking readers back in time with a tale about Galva as she rides into battle against goblins on the back of her war-corvid.

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Set in the Adirondack Mountains during the late summer of 1975, The God of the Woods tells the story of 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar, who vanishes from her bunk overnight while at summer camp. Barbara isn’t just any camper though, and this isn’t the first time a Van Laar has gone missing. Sixteen years ago, Barbara’s older brother also vanished too, never to be seen again.

This is a gorgeously written and tragic tale with a non-linear plot that jumps through time from the 1950s to the 1970s as Moore transports her readers, weaving a rich and complicated tapestry.

• $28 at Bookshop.org

The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen

Hot off the heels of her first heartwarming romance novel, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy , Megan Bannen returns to the magical world of Tanria with its friends-to-lovers sequel, The Undermining of Twyla and Frank .

It’s fair to say the entire town of Eternity was shocked when Twyla Banneker, middle-aged and a widow, joined her best friend, Frank Ellis, to be a Tanrian marshal. But, eight years later, Twyla is still at it (and very good at her job, to boot). Her life takes a sudden and exciting turn when she and Frank discover the dead body of one of their fellow marshals covered in — of all things — glitter. As Twyla and Frank are drawn further into the mystery afoot, it becomes increasingly clear that the two are much more than just work partners.

Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías

Set in a not-to-distant future in which the world has been utterly devastated by a plague, Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías is a deeply distressing but compulsively readable work of climate fiction.

When a mysterious algae bloom poisons the air blowing inland from the ocean, a nameless corporation develops a vile pink food substance — think Pepto Bismol crossed with Soylent Green — for everyone to eat. As the end of the world grows ever closer and society continues to collapse, one woman in particular — the narrator of this story — refuses to leave the family and friends she loves behind, clinging to the life she once knew.

• $22 at Bookshop.org

Toward Eternity by Anton Hur

Already a force to be reckoned with in the world of literary translation, Anton Hur’s upcoming novel, Toward Eternity , is a brilliant and thought provoking examination of what it means to be human.

Told in the form of journal entries that connect characters across centuries, Toward Eternity is set in a world where cancerous cells can be replaced by nanites — robotic cells — effectively eradicating the disease. It’s nothing short of a miracle. At the same time, a literary researcher and the doctor who holds the patent to nano-technology join forces to place an AI program into a physical, robotic form, effectively giving it bodily autonomy and bringing mortality and humanity into question in the process.

• $25 at Bookshop.org

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi

Fans of Windup Girl , The Water Knife , and Shipbreaker , rejoice! An exciting new science fiction title from Paolo Bacigalupi is hitting shelves in July.

Set in an Italian Renaissance-inspired world, Navolo is a mashup of literary scifi/fantasy and historical fiction that tells the story of Davico di Regulai, a young lord set to take over his family’s vast empire. The di Regulai family are wealthy beyond belief and have influenced the rise and fall of politicians and great cities alike, but not everything in the city of Navola is as it seems. When Davico discovers the existence of a fossilized dragon eye — a symbol of raw power that is pictured on Navola’s excellent cover — he finds that there are few he can trust, including members of his own family.

The Sky On Fire by Jenn Lyons

Billed as Dragonriders of Pern but for modern readers, The Sky on Fire promises to be exactly what fans of Temeraire , Fourth Wing , and even Patricia C. Wrede’s beloved Dealing With Dragons are craving.

After being saved from a local warlord by a group of unlikely adventuring misfits — picture an average D&D party — Anahrod realizes that her new companions are determined to reach the cloud cities and the immense dragon’s hoard located there. The only problem with this plan is that the hoard belongs to Neveranimas, and Neveranimas wants nothing more than to see Anahrod dead.

Nicked by M.T. Anderson

If there’s one thing about M.T. Anderson, it’s that he’s going to write a book with a plot that’s as delightful and captivating as it is downright strange. His adult debut Nicked is no exception.

In the year 1801, the Italian port city of Bari is wracked by a plague, and a monk by the name of Brother Nicephorus is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams. His superiors don’t believe him, but Tyun, a treasure hunter, does and the two soon hit the road to collect Saint Nicholas’s bones and the mysterious liquid they rest in, which is rumored to heal the sick. What follows is a heist that is complex and action packed enough to make even the likes of Steven Soderbergh jealous.

• $26 at Bookshop.org

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

Sarah Rees Brennan’s adult debut, Long Live Evil , proves that sometimes it feels good to be a little bad.

Rae is dying, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. As her world comes crumbling down around her, she makes a last ditch magical bargain that transports her to the court of her favorite fictional character, the Once and Forever Emperor. The catch? Rae isn’t the hero of this story. Quite the opposite, in fact. As the emperor becomes increasingly violent, Rae assembles an unlikely team of villainous allies who deserve a much better ending than the one originally written for them.

The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey

James S.A. Corey, the dynamic duo behind the phenomenal series, The Expanse , is back once again for a brand new, utterly epic sci-fi adventure.

For generations, the Carryx — a combination of an empire and a hive — have waged wars and enslaved alien species across the galaxy. They are a force to be reckoned with to say the least, but when they finally meet their match, it becomes clear that the best and brightest humans living on the planet Anjiin are the only ones who can save them. The result is a gripping tale of survival, rebellion, and hope.

Loving, Ohio by Matthew Erman and illustrated by Sam Beck

It’s safe to say that Loving, Ohio — written by Matthew Erman and gorgeously illustrated by Sam Beck — is my favorite horror graphic novel that I’ve read since Emily Carroll’s In The Woods . It’s a perfectly balanced mix of punk rock, small town coming-of-age, and bone chilling, nightmare fueling dread.

After the shocking suicide of their friend, four teens are grief stricken, unmoored, and counting down the days until high school comes to an end. There’s not much for them in Loving anyways, besides the mysterious new age cult known as the Chorus that has taken root there. When tragedy strikes again, the group can’t help but wonder if the Chorus is somehow behind it, and one in particular, Sloane, is hell-bent on finding out the truth, no matter the coast.

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T Kingfisher

T. Kingfisher has outdone herself once again, proving to sci-fi and fantasy readers alike why she’s one of the best in the biz. A retelling inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairytale Goose Girl , A Sorceress Comes to Call is a bewitching and wildly entertaining adventure.

Cordelia has not had an easy life. Raised by a domineering, emotionally manipulative and downright abusive mother in a house without any doors, and with only a beautiful white horse for a friend, Cordelia craves a freedom she’s certain she’ll never have. When a death in town forces the two women to go on the run in the middle of the night, they find themselves seeking shelter with a wealthy man, his unwed sister, Hester, and a squire. When Hester recognizes the pain and torment that Cordelia has suffered, and that Cordelia’s mother isn’t the woman she pretends to be, she becomes determined to save everyone she cares for before it’s too late.

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Having dabbled in the literary side of Star Wars for some time, Beth Revis is no stranger to science fiction, outer space, impossible heists, or romantic tension. Her new novella, Full Speed to a Crash Landing (the first in a trilogy) has all that going for it and more.

When readers first meet Ada Lamarr, she’s running out of time. And oxygen. But help soon arrives in the form of a government sanctioned salvage crew. They’re less than thrilled to have her on board as they head to their destination, a secret mission helmed by the delightfully handsome Agent Rian White, but Ada promises to stay out of their hair and out of their business. This, of course, is a lie. But as Ada and Rian spend more time together and their attraction to one another continues to grow, it becomes increasingly unclear who is playing who.

• $21 at Bookshop.org

A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons

If you’re in the mood to read a dynamic and brutal horror novel that will have you on the edge of your seat from cover-to-cover, look no further than A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons.

After a bank heist goes horribly awry, Anne Heller is forced to hole up in her family’s old cabin with Jessup, her badly wounded partner-in-crime, and Dutch, the police officer they’ve taken hostage. Jessup, unfortunately, doesn’t make it. Anne and Dutch decide to bury his body, only for something that is-but-isn’t Jessup to rise from his grave and try to get back into the cabin.

Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

When it comes to complicated, multi-faceted female characters, Ava Reid reigns supreme, and her upcoming novel, Lady Macbeth , reimagines the story of one of Shakespeare’s most ruthless, unforgiving, power-hungry women.

The Lady knows what her fate holds in store for her. She knows that she is destined to marry a brutish Scot and to drive men to madness. The Lady also knows that sometimes it takes a little witchcraft to get by. What she doesn’t know is that her husband has secrets of his own, including his own ties to the occult.

Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson

Inspired by Caribbean culture, folklore, and history that deftly blurs the lines between reality and fiction, Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson is a gripping tale of a magical island and the man who will do whatever he can to protect it.

Veycosi, a scholar on the island of Cynchin, wants nothing more in the world than the chance to get his hands on the Alamat Book of Light, a tome that contains knowledge that would ensure his place on his island’s Colloquium. His plans go abruptly sideways when fifteen galleons from a neighboring land arrive, forcing the island and its inhabitants into a trade agreement that proves to be much more dangerous than anticipated.

Asunder by Kerstin Hall

If you play Dungeons & Dragons and love the Warlock class and their pacts with mysterious, often otherworldly beings, then Asunder by Kerstin Hall is the perfect book for you.

In a world where magic users are allowed to choose their gods, Karys Eska is bound to an eldritch creature with three faces and hundreds of wings who has gifted her the ability to communicate with the dead. Karys uses her powers to help investigate strange deaths in the city where she lives, knowing that, one day, she’ll be forced permanently to the real where her benefactor exists. Her life takes an unexpected turn, however, when she meets a dying man who she inadvertently binds to her shadow.

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

Now being published in North America for the first time, Voyage of the Damned by Frances White has a little bit of everything. Part And Then There Were None , part fantasy novel, queer as hell, and surprisingly, delightfully romantic, it’s sure to scratch the Pirates of the Caribbean and Our Flag Means Death itch for a lot of readers.

The land of Concordia has maintained peace throughout its many provinces for thousands of years. It’s an incredible feat, and to celebrate, the emperor is sending the twelve heirs of the provinces of Concordia, including Ganymedes Piscero (a notorious screw up and general disappointment to his family) on a twelve-day trip. When one of the other heirs turns up dead, Gamymedes knows his only choice is to find out who killed them before he ends up dead as well.

Confounding Oaths by Alexis Hall

Alexis Hall, author of Boyfriend Material , has done it again! Confounding Oaths is a heartwarming regency romance that will be the perfect book to read while sitting on a beach or by the pool in the late August sun.

The year is 1815 and John Caesar is determined to host an incredible coming-out for his younger sister, Mary. Despite his best efforts, John is thwarted in just about every way imaginable; ragtag soldiers, a military cult, and a fairy godmother with ill intention all stand in his way. When Mary is cursed by fairy folk, John is forced to enlist the dashing, handsome, and unfortunately working class Captain James to rescue her.

The 2024 summer entertainment preview

• The most anticipated TV shows of summer 2024
• WWE is rebooting – is it working?
• Tom Bombadil, cut from Lord of the Rings movies, to step out in Rings of Power
• The must-watch anime to look out for in summer 2024
• The 5 best Korean dramas to watch on Netflix this summer
• The most anticipated movies of summer 2024
• Cuckoo’s director hopes young people sneak into his movie and blow their minds
• Thelma is a geri-action movie that doesn’t miss a step
• Emma Roberts’ NASA rom-com is the Legally Blonde of astronaut movies
• Robot Dreams’ director founded an animation studio just to adapt a graphic novel he loved
• Kill is the brutal thriller that action die-hards can’t miss this summer
• Your first look at Critical Role’s Caduceus Clay in his new Dark Horse comic
• Let Keanu Reeves punch and shoot his way onto your summer reading list
• The Expanse’s James S.A. Corey returns with The Mercy of Gods — and you can read the first chapter
• This summer Batman: Year One, the best Batman comic, gets even better
• Can Lev Grossman do for King Arthur what he did for Harry Potter?
• The Nice House by the Sea is a dream vacation at the end of the world with the worst people you know

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Our 38 Favorite Books of 2022

The lit hub staff picks the best books of the year.

In the year that was 2022, NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope peered into deep space. Russia invaded Ukraine. Protests raged across Iran. Elon Musk bought and proceeded to destroy Twitter. We all watched the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial and felt gross afterward. Kim Kardashian did Marilyn Monroe cosplay. The Red Wave failed to crest. In a love story for the ages, Ben Affleck turned all those memes around and got himself married to Jennifer Lopez. The UK managed three different prime ministers. Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. We got monkeypox. Even book snobs learned about Colleen Hoover.

Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars. Harry Styles was on the cover of Better Homes & Gardens . Everyone, it seemed, had a Dimes Square feature in them. There were over 600 mass shootings in the US, including at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and yet again our government mostly looked the other way, too busy overturning Roe v. Wade. The World Cup kicked off, impossibly, stupidly, in Qatar. Adnan Syed was released after 23 years of wrongful imprisonment. Queen Elizabeth died. Everyone gave up on the pandemic, despite it being not at all actually over. Something something butter boards.

Also, we read a lot of books. Here are some of our favorites.

Maggie O’Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

Anyone who read Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel Hamnet knows that her ability to perfectly recreate a historical world is unparalleled. In The Marriage Portrait , the life of the young duchess Lucrezia de Medici is thrown into chaos when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding, forcing her to become the betrothed. Already the black sheep of her family—as an infant she’s “intractable” and “unbiddable,” sent away from the nursey and wet-nursed by the cook—when she is married off in her sister’s stead, Lucrezia is alone and scared. She is consumed with the pressure to produce an heir and unsure of her volatile and unknowable new husband (plus she’s convinced he’s planning to murder her). As the novel builds towards its inevitable, soon-predictable conclusion, the melodrama reaches a wild fever pitch. It’s overly dramatic, utterly fun and romantic, and a most enjoyable read.  –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers

I’m generally loath to recommend a book that has already been tapped by Barack Obama, because I figure he’s got it covered. In this case, though, I simply must. Jessamine Chan’s debut novel is a dystopian story of one woman’s year at a government-run re-education center for “bad mothers” (loosely defined, frequently tied to economic circumstances, naturally) following an act of desperation-and-exhaustion-born neglect toward her young daughter. At the titular school, Frida Liu must care for a robot daughter with an increasingly alarming level of sentience, while under constant surveillance. When I started reading the novel, my daughter was the exact age as Frida’s, and though at times I found it physically painful to keep turning the pages, it was impossible to tear myself away. The School for Good Mothers is equally effective as a social critique, a terrifying dystopia, and a heartbreaking portrait of motherhood in a (very familiar) society that is inhospitable to the point of horror.  –Jessie Gaynor, Senior Editor

Mark Haber, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss

I wrote about how much I loved Mark Haber’s witty, sharp-edged, and weirdly moving novel earlier this year, and it remains my favorite book of recent memory, obsessed as it is not only with the nature of art and friendship and aging but also the nature of obsession itself, which is always one of the most fruitful of literary topics. The book begins as our narrator is en route to visit his best friend/worst enemy/academic rival Schmidt, who is dying, and who has summoned him for—nine-page email notwithstanding—reasons unknown. It’s funny and wistful and weird, with a unique rhythm that continues to cycle through my brain. Especially recommended for all you writers out there.  – Emily Temple, Managing Editor

Jared Farmer, Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees

Jared Farmer’s Elderflora could have been a much simpler book—a series of vignettes about really, really old trees, and why we think they’re cool—and it still would have been wonderful. Luckily for readers, Farmer’s editor was obviously fine giving full rein to his writer’s roving erudition, which takes us from Edo Japan and its ginkgo folk remedies to the bright lights and big hucksterism of Gilded Age New York to the solitary pursuit of the world’s oldest living thing in the high barrens of the Great Basin. Farmer’s notional purpose is to catalog our human obsession with the oldest and tallest trees, but what he has given us in Elderflora is a cross-discipline meditation on the nature of biological time, a deeply grounded work of spiritual ecology that achieves that rare balance between epistemological rigor and quiet grace.  – Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief

Annie Ernaux, tr. Alison L. Strayer, Getting Lost

Nobel winner Annie Ernaux’s gorgeous, wrenching  Getting Lost —the diary she kept of her affair with a younger, married Russian diplomat in 1989—was published in English translation (by Alison L. Strayer for Seven Stories Press) for the first time this year, two decades after it came out in French. A diary of obsessive desire, it is also, as Ernaux writes, “a cry of passion and pain from start to finish.” The affair is documented as precisely, and as honestly, as only Ernaux can: the secret meetings, the shifting modes of power, the vulnerability, the doubt and pain that accompany such wanting. I couldn’t put down this electrifying, absorbing book.  – Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Lydia Millet, Dinosaurs

This book begins when, for personal reasons, a man named Gil decides to leave his life in New York City, to walk to Arizona, and to start again there. I too had a lot of questions from the get-go (What drove him out of New York? Wouldn’t a plane or even a series of Greyhound buses be faster?) but with Lydia Millet, you trust that it’ll be revealed in good time, and you’re just happy to be inside her world once more. In Arizona, Gil becomes fast friends with his neighbors: a family living in a curious glass house. His relationships with each of its members change him, and them, fundamentally. The way Lydia Millet captures the organic growth of these bonds is masterful. And then there’s the matter of the birds. Gil is a careful observer of his environment and is distraught to find a hawk laying dead on the lawn, full of bird shot. He makes it his mission to find out who’s killing the local wildlife. It wouldn’t be a Lydia Millet novel without some mention of the ripple effect we have on the natural world.

I once heard Lydia Millet say she doesn’t like the term “climate fiction” because the books that tend to fall into this category are not fictions: they are our shared reality. While this novel isn’t as explicitly about climate disaster as her last book, A Children’s Bible (also 10/10 recommend), the threat of our interference looms. More than anything, Dinosaurs is a beautiful reminder of our interconnectivity and a question about how we can be good to ourselves and to each other.  –Katie Yee, Associate Editor

R.F. Kuang,  Babel

R. F. Kuang’s historical fantasy novel Babel: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translator’s Rebellion  is nothing short of brilliant. Set in the 1830s and 40s,  Babel  follows Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton and taken to Britain to be raised by a strict taskmaster. His education is focused on learning to be fluent in as many languages as possible, so as to excel at this fantasy world’s greatest source of magic: manipulating the gaps in meaning between seemingly direct translations in order to manipulate the world surrounding. When Robin arrives at Oxford in order to continue his training, he makes fast friends with his cohort of fellow linguists and retreats from worldly concerns into the safety of the Ivory Tower, even as he and his friends face racist, sexist, and classist attacks from fellow students, but eventually the rapidly changing world around them will leave these scholars no choice but to confront the realities of exploitation enabled by the magic they create. The industrial revolution is booming, the Opium Wars are coming, inequality is growing, and the Oxford-based translators, with their silver bars engraved with conquered tongues in translation, are ready to revolt.  –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor

Jonathan Crary, Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World

I read Scorched Earth , Jonathan Crary’s post-digital, post-capitalist manifesto (my word, not his), before noted tunnel-borer and Reddit-user Elon Musk bought Twitter in a fit of wounded oligarchical pride—and boy does Crary’s thesis look even truer now. At great risk of oversimplification, Crary doesn’t think we can separate our digital lives from our participation in late-stage capitalism; whatever early utopian internet dreams existed for digital technology as a democratizing tool have long since yielded to the nightmarish realities of surveillance capitalism. And for Crary, it is naive to think we can dismantle dehumanizing digital systems from within: to escape the effects of late-stage capitalism, we have to escape the internet. (Yes, I know you’re reading this on a website… 🤷)  – JD

Samantha Allen, Patricia Wants to Cuddle

My most widely recommended book this year is Samantha Allen’s lesbian sasquatch novel, which might sound like a niche pick, but it’s just so enjoyable, and who doesn’t like to enjoy things? (Cynics and snobs aside.) Set on the fictional Otter Island in the Pacific Northwest, Patricia unfolds across varying viewpoints: from the four contestants on a Bachelor -style reality TV series, the ruthless producer who knows what it takes to put on a show, a woman searching for her sister who disappeared years earlier on Otter Island, and the locals who have appointed themselves Patricia’s keepers. It’s a story that loves outcasts, that recognizes the overlaps between horror movies and dating shows , and that doesn’t mind being a little “bonkers” —all from one of my favorite writers working today.  –Eliza Smith, Special Projects Editor

Jessa Crispin, My Three Dads

Jessa Crispin has made a name for herself as a formidable literary critic: she does not bend to the whims of the publicity machine, she has not and will not say a book meets her standards if it does not. I find her approach refreshing, to say the least, relieved to know somebody is out there saying the full truth of their opinion, no matter if the mass consensus is the polar opposite. Her reviews being the only window I had into Crispin’s person, I wasn’t sure what a book-length nonfiction project of hers would be like. Any subconscious trepidation I may have had, fears of unimpeded negativity, or simply the book not being good enough for a critic of Crispin’s stature, quickly went out the window.

What I was overjoyed to find in My Three Dads was, of course, a critique of American culture from every angle (patriarchy within the family, wrongs on both sides of the political spectrum, and the downfalls of religion, to name a few) but also one of the strongest treatises of care I’ve read in our current age. It serves as an apt reminder that the driving force behind a scathing indictment, or a blistering review, is not pessimism, but rather, love and faith. Love for the art, or the culture, or the place, or the people: love is what drives us to wish for better, because we have the faith that it can be better. Crispin offers empathy and an appraisal for just about everyone under the sun in My Three Dads , no one escapes, and no one should want to: her plea is for us all to buy in, to offer hands and understanding to one another, and to hold on to our ideals and our faith, to ask for better, and to believe that one day we may get it.   –Julia Hass, Contributing Editor

Emma Donoghue, Haven

Room  and  The Wonder author Emma Donoghue’s latest is the story of a trio of seventh century monks—Artt, an imperious scholar-priest whose dream sets the action in motion; Cormac, a weary late-in-life convert with a past marked by tragedy; and Trian, a jittery teenage novitiate with a painful secret—who maroon themselves on an uninhabited and inhospitable island off the west coast of Ireland in order to build a monastery. As winter sets in, and the island’s paltry resources diminish to nothing, Artt’s draconian piety and impossible demands begin to take their toll on his loyal disciples. Donoghue’s detailing of the island’s rugged geography and the methodical subsistence work of its dogged new stewards is masterful, almost hypnotic, but it’s the author’s quietly devastating depiction of the conflict between faith and survival, obedience and self-preservation, that powers this extraordinary novel.   –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor in Chief

Kim Kelly, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor

It feels like history—the teaching of it, the value of it—is on the back foot these days in an America that would rather ban a book than read it. Which is why I’m grateful for labor journalist Kim Kelly’s full-length history of American labor, Fight Like Hell . It has always been a little too easy to take for granted the sacrifices of previous generations, but when those sacrifices—which have given us such basic rights as a minimum wage, an eight-hour work day, and a five-day work week—are actively disappeared by an establishment that fears the power of collective action, steps must be taken! From epic clashes like the Battle of Blair Mountain to the lesser known but just as crucial struggles of farm laborers and garment workers, the stories in Fight Like Hell remind us again and again that change is possible… if only we stick together.  –JD

Emi Yagi, tr. David Boyd and Lucy North, Diary of a Void

The story of this debut novel is deceptively simple: a woman, sick of being treated like shit at her office job, pretends to be pregnant. Suddenly, her colleagues treat her well, provide accommodations, and her work life improves, even becomes enjoyable. She doesn’t have to clean up after her coworkers or work overtime, and instead spends her free time watching TV and going to an aerobics class for expectant mothers. Diary of a Void is more than a workplace novel; it’s a surreal and critical look at fertility, motherhood, and the roles women are forced to play for the convenience of men.  –EF

Hua Hsu, Stay True

Memoir is not my favorite genre, so I’m always pleasantly surprised when I read one that finds its way under my skin. Stay True  is the rare memoir that felt—to borrow a word from every blurb ever—urgent. It’s a quiet book, and intensely personal. Hsu doesn’t grasp toward the universal, but the universal is there nevertheless. The book tells the story of his college years, and his friendship with the easygoing, affable Ken, whose life is cut short by a random act of violence. Hsu writes about grief and nostalgia, youth and identity, family and friendship, with elegant, heartbreaking clarity. Hsu renders precisely the vast expanses of time that defined youth—car rides, browsing at record stores, collaging together an identity from loves and hates. Stay True is a book whose subtlety renders its emotional wallop all the more powerful.  –JG

Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

I’m always astounded by the breadth and depth of Egan’s imagination, not to mention her ability to surprise, delight, and entertain at every turn. The Candy House  is a “sibling novel” to her Pulitzer Prize-winning 2011 novel A Visit From the Goon Squad , and it is almost as good, which is saying quite a lot. Like its sister, it cycles through perspectives and styles to weave a baroque tapestry of human connection and speculative world-building, and like its predecessor, it somehow manages to be even more than the sum of its (already very good!) parts.  –ET

Zeina Hashem Beck, O

Zeina Hashem Beck’s  O  was my favorite new book of poetry published this year. Together, the poems read like a dialogue between a single person and the divine: awe-inspiring, infuriating, and filled with unanswerable questions. The word that comes to mind to describe this collection, more than any other, is abundance: from odes to ghazals, Arabic to English, Beck calls upon a multitude of traditions to meet the challenge of navigating a life in language, and the result is something very beautiful to witness.  – CS

Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go In the Dark

Sequoia Nagamatsu’s novel is without a doubt one of the darkest, most mind-blowingly inventive books I’ve read in a very long time. Consider yourself warned, though: it is not for the faint of heart. It starts in the year 2030, when a retired archeologist voyages to the Arctic Circle—to the site of his daughter’s last expedition before she died. Researchers are studying the preserved body of a girl who died of an ancient virus—a virus that is unleashed from the permafrost as it melts. And that’s just the first section! From there, we are dropped into different lives and different timelines, to see the varying effects of the Arctic plague. There’s an amusement park for dying children. There’s even a stint in a purgatory-like space.

I know I’ve made it all sound terribly depressing, but Sequoia Nagamatsu does an incredible job of infusing so many moments of levity in here, too. A lot of the joy in reading this novel comes from all the Easter eggs he leaves throughout: a side character in one section will reappear as the star of another. It’s so much fun to follow the web. For all the darkness he writes, there is also so much light. And, hey, if you take this recommendation and need someone to talk to after the pig section (you’ll know), I’m here for you, friend.  –KY

Édouard Louis, tr. Tash Aw, A Woman’s Battles and Transformations

At 30 years old, Édouard Louis has already written five best-selling novels in France; A Woman’s Battles and Transformations is his fourth. Known for his autobiographical writing on queerness, poverty, masculinity, and sexual violence, Louis writes here about his mother, Monique; her struggles to support Louis and his four siblings (one’s stomach sinks when learning she’s pregnant with twins); and her eventual escape from her abusive husband, Louis’s father. There’s a fairy tale quality to it all—we meet Monique as she’s leaving her marriage—but also a deeply vulnerable reckoning of a son’s evolving feelings toward his mother (solidarity, pity, shame, pride) and the loneliness of class transition as Louis leaves his working-class village behind for university and a writing career. A stunning addition to a remarkable oeuvre.  –ES

Ada Calhoun, Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me

One day, quite by accident, the late art critic Peter Schjeldahl’s daughter Ada Calhoun comes across recordings of her father interviewing Frank O’Hara’s colleagues—cassettes he made as he prepared to write an authorized biography of the poet in the late 1970s. But as support was withdrawn by O’Hara’s sister and literary executor, the project was never finished. Calhoun believes she can resurrect the work, but in this woven memoir-biography-familial history, she does much more than that. While Calhoun connects with her father through their mutual adoration of O’Hara, it’s after Schjeldahl’s lung cancer diagnosis that the book shifts to examine, and understand, the relationship between father and daughter most clearly: “Maybe what I’m figuring out is that the book I was meant to write was never a book about O’Hara—or even really about my father. It was about me.” The honesty of a memoir and the scholarship of a history, this is a beautiful book in what feels like a brand new genre. –EF

Mary Childs, The Bond King

Before I read Mary Childs’ gripping account of the rise of the bond market—and its erstwhile king, Bill Gross—I knew almost nothing about the shadowy world of finance, besides that it was quietly ruining the lives of anyone who isn’t already extremely rich. Childs did nothing to dispel the latter conviction, but she did help me understand much more about how the shadowy world functions, and about the people (okay, men) who keep it lumbering on. This is an essential and enraging book, and it’s also a page-turner, even if you have a literary website editor’s knowledge of the financial world. It’s also very funny, from the incredibly petty corrections from one of Childs’ subject’s attorneys (“‘Dr. El-Erian placed an order [for cake] consistent with the bakery’s operating hours,’ his lawyer says.”) to the tales of billionaire divorce hijinks (which, I’m sorry to say, include the use of joke store fart spray).

The Bond King reminded me of the time in 2008 when we all decided it would be a good idea to be aware of what those money guys were doing, and then largely forgot. Unfortunately, they’re still doing the bad stuff! Luckily, this book makes it easier to pay attention. –JG

Olivier Guez, tr. Georgia de Chamberet,  The Disappearance of Josef Mengele

As Olivier Guez’s brilliant historical novel begins, the despicable doctor Mengele is living in Argentina, where he’s been welcomed by Peròn, who keeps a contingent of Nazis close by and has allowed in many of the worst war criminals of history into his nation. Mengele finds success in his new home and respect from his equally horrible peers, and spends the first 15 years or so sleeping with escorts, selling his father’s farm equipment, and giving the daughters of the elite illegal abortions on the side. After the capture of Eichman, Mengele becomes obsessed with the specter of Israeli pursuit, yet Guez does a wonderful job at capturing the mindset of a hunted Nazi who’s still utterly convinced that he’s done nothing wrong, despite the occasional nightmare in his sleep that says otherwise.

Most have made Mengele into a complete monster, but Guez does something much more interesting: he takes the monster and shows him as pathetic, disgusting, declining, and weak—exactly as Nazis and their ilk should be portrayed. When you depict someone as classically monstrous, you risk inspiring others to follow in their footsteps for the notoriety alone, but when you find the most squabbling, pathetic, petty parts of a villain to highlight, you can perhaps help to ensure that no one will seek to emulate them.  –MO

Annie Proulx, Fen, Bog, and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis

The cascading ecological tragedies we’ve wrought upon the planet through human-created climate change can seem too numerous to contemplate. Taken as a whole, it is truly overwhelming. Though no less tragic, what Annie Proulx has done with Fen, Bog, and Swamp is to make it local, fixing her brilliant eye for nature on a very specific kind of ecosystem, one whose decline has been hastened by climate change, but is simultaneously contributing to it: the unglamorous wetland. From the mysterious fenlands of eastern England to Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, Proulx has written both a lamentation for what was and a moral call to action to preserve what might yet be.  –JD

Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch

Tess Gunty’s brilliant, startling debut The Rabbit Hutch was the well-deserved winner of the National Book Award. Magnetic and compelling from the first line: On a hot night in apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body , Gunty delivers on the high bar she sets. She paints the scene, then traces back in time everything that leads up to that “hot night”, and the hard, horrible thing that happens there. We can feel the darkness seeping through the book, though we’re not sure exactly where to look, for whom to feel fear. But we come to know, and love, Blandine Watkins, an 18-year-old girl who lived through the foster care system and now lives with three other boys from the same situation. We can feel her vast intellect, her longing for life to be deep and meaningful, and the strength she possesses to have made it through the hardships of her life.

But the world continues to do Blandine wrong: we watch as she falls for her drama teacher in high school, how he reciprocates, leads her on, sleeps with her, abandons her. Gunty manages to make this old phenomenon new again in her perfect, spot-on prose, and gracefully makes clear how this affair sets many other events in motion: Blandine drops out of school, changes her name, becomes obsessed with the mystic Hildegard, wishes to leave this plane of existence, and all of this, inevitably, leads up to: on a hot night in apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body.   –JH

Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

I have no idea how to classify this eerie and wonderful novel. Is it a tender love story? Certainly. Is it a creeping gothic body horror? Yes. Is it a low-key speculative conspiracy tale? In part. Is it an aquatic allegory for the pain of realizing your long-term partner is slipping away from you? Maybe? Armfield’s debut novel follows Miri and Leah, a young couple cocooning at home after Leah’s return from a routine submarine expedition that went horribly wrong. Lost in her thoughts, Leah runs the taps, lingers for hours in the bath, doesn’t eat, drinks glasses of salt water… Between these chapters—where Miri tries desperately to understand what’s happening to her love—are increasingly suspenseful dispatches from Leah’s stint at the bottom of the ocean. It’s a strange, sad, funny, ethereal book. Its final act is achingly beautiful and utterly terrifying. I still don’t quite know what to make of  Our Wives Under the Sea , but I can’t stop thinking about it.  –DS

Julia May Jonas, Vladimir

The protagonist of Julia May Jonas’s debut novel is smart, acerbic, and absolutely fed up. A professor at a small college in upstate New York, she’s having a rough time: her husband John, chair of the English department, is awaiting disciplinary action for having had dalliances with students over the course of his career. While our narrator was well aware of her husband’s affairs (they had an agreement), the sidelong glances from her students and other faculty members, as well as her own daughter, are getting to her. In walks a new junior professor of literature: the young, hot novelist Vladimir Vladinski—a perfect distraction, soon-to-be obsession. The narrating voice is wonderfully crass, honest about sexuality and desire and aging and the stresses of female identity, parenthood, and being a wife. The throttle to the climax (ahem) leads to a more than shocking conclusion, but it’s all held together by the voice, which is utterly compelling.  –EF

Emily St. John Mandel,  Sea of Tranquility

Weirder and cooler (in the tonal sense) than Station Eleven , looser in concept than The Glass Hotel , but containing many tendrils of connection to both, Sea of Tranquility is a gorgeous, elegiac novel about time travel, art, plague, and (yes) the moon. Mandel is a painterly writer, and certain scenes of this novel have been plastered into my brain forever—a not entirely unwelcome feeling, though considering the subjects, sometimes an unsettling one.  –ET

Hiroko Oyamada, tr. David Boyd, Weasels in the Attic

Hiroko Oyamada’s latest novel—coming on the heels of The Factory  and  The Hole —is a wonder of narrative economy and quiet suspense. At under 100 pages, it’s easy to tear through in a single sitting, but its taut, unsettling scenes will stay with you long after you put it aside. The novel follows its narrator and his friend across three dinners, several years apart, each of which plays out in the spaces between real and surreal, quotidian and terrifying. Oyamada explores marriage, fertility, and the tensions of domesticity with tension, unexpected humor, and just enough revulsion. This is a tiny, cocked fist of a book that will make you think twice before tapping the glass of a fish tank.   –JG

Scholastique Mukasonga, tr. Mark Polizzotti, Kibogo

Scholastique Mukasonga’s stunning Kibogo —translated by Mark Polizzotti and a finalist for the National Book Award this year—has at its center a story told among a Rwandan community and long hidden from their colonial Belgian occupiers: that of Kibogo, who sacrificed his life so that rain would return to his community, and Mukamwezi, his isolated, still-living widow. In the midst of famine, this central story becomes a lens, a guide, and a spiritual center, powered by the strength of community memory and imagination. Mukasonga’s writing is lyrical, powerful, and so rewarding; this story is unforgettable.  – CS

Julie Otsuka, The Swimmers

The Swimmers opens onto a community pool. We get to know its regulars, their routines, their tenuous relationships to one another. We are let in on their rules, both written and unspoken. We come to understand that this is a place of utopia for them. (The first section is told in the collective “we,” a hallmark of Julie Otsuka’s writing, an invitation in.) One day, a mysterious crack appears at the bottom of the pool like a bad omen. Our swimmers speculate wildly about what it is, what it means. When the pool is shut down, we zero in on Alice, an elderly woman who is losing her memory. Without the sanctuary and dependable schedule that the pool provided, dementia settles in and childhood memories of her time in the Japanese incarceration camps resurface. When her daughter comes to intervene, Alice is taken to a care facility, and the narration shifts to embody the creepy, all-knowing, “well-intentioned” voice of corporate homes for the elderly. In the last section, it switches again—to address the “you” that is the daughter, struggling with her mother’s demise. As always with Julie Otsuka’s writing, it’s such exquisite pleasure to let the cadence of her sentences wash over you.

Her previous novels ( The Buddha in the Attic  and  When the Emperor Was Divine ) tackle similar subject matter: the tragedy of Japanese internment and the way we talk about it (or don’t talk about it), the way the trauma takes shape in future generations. Not only is  The Swimmers  important in its own right, but it’s also the perfect addition to her oeuvre. It’s Julie Otsuka’s first novel in over a decade, and it was well worth the wait. And now what? We’ll read and return to her other works. We’ll press them into the hands of our friends. We’ll happily sit for another ten years in eager anticipation of the next one.   –KY

Fernanda Melchor, tr. Sophie Hughes,  Paradais

Fernanda Melchor’s  Paradais  is brutal poetry, distilled. It’s also a visceral examination of classism, fatphobia, and most of all misogyny. In a luxury apartment complex, two boys on the cusp of manhood while away a long summer drinking together. Franco Andrade, a resident of the complex who lives with his grandparents but is ostracized by the rest of the community, is overweight, undersocialized, and sexually obsessed with his neighbor; he steals liquor from his family and shares it with Polo, the teenage gardener of the complex, who yearns to join the cartels and make something of himself instead of wasting his youth trimming grass for rich people. Franco has a fantasy that becomes more and more like a plan: he’s going to break into his neighbor’s home and force himself on the object of his desires. Polo’s pissed off, drunk, and just angry enough to help Franco out. Like other works out this summer, including Liska Jacobs’ brilliant  The Pink Hotel, Paradais  warns against considering any luxurious abode as “safe” when the mere existence of such enclaves intensifies the inequalities that will eventually lead to their own demise.  – MO

Dwyer Murphy, An Honest Living

A rain-spattered love letter to a bygone New York, a wry homage to a classic of the genre, and a delightfully meta work of neo-noir, Dwyer Murphy’s brilliantly assured debut is the story of an unwitting attorney-turned-private investigator who gets tangled up in a crime of obsession between a reclusive author and her antiquarian bookseller husband. The mystery is beautifully constructed, the writing crackles on every page, and Murphy’s portrait of early 2000s New York City is nothing short of exquisite. If you’re looking to lose yourself inside a smart, atmospheric literary crime novel this winter,  An Honest Living will not disappoint. [Murphy is an editor at CrimeReads, a sister site of Lit Hub’s] –DS

Elif Batuman, Either/Or

In the sequel to The Idiot , we’re reunited with Selin as she embarks on her sophomore year at Harvard, and she is the same as ever, though changed, minutely, hugely, in the year she’s experienced. I could eat Selin’s voice with a spoon: she is hilarious, and self-effacing, and so so smart, and interested in how to be, totally preoccupied with reading and talking about life, and yet not sure at all how to put it into practice. It’s an awe-inspiring ability Batuman has, writing convincingly as a 19-year-old girl experiencing many things for the first time. Notably, Selin’s sexual self comes alive in this book, or at least her curiosity does, as she convinces herself that to live “a full life”, sex is something she needs to experience. She sets out on this project, and we witness her approach this side of life just as she approaches anything: with interest, humor, gameness, and an attempt to merge reality with how she thought it would be. Clocking in around 800 pages, Batuman creates an epic of a young girl’s journey to becoming, and an epic it is. It’s momentous, impossibly perceptive, with an addictive, contagious outlook on the world; it could be double its length and still I’d want more.  –JH

William Brewer, The Red Arrow

The Red Arrow could offer a masterclass in its depiction of the movement of time, how it reaches into the past and the future, then flickers back to the present with such ease, somehow linear in its nonlinearity. There’s something welcomingly Ben Lerner-esque in its smooth, conversational tone, as the narrator tells of all that has happened to him, whether far-fetched or commonplace. It’s a story of lowest lows, worst fears coming true, as well as nearly unbelievable peace and happiness. I say nearly unbelievable, because The Red Arrow toes the line of surreality with the grace of a tightrope walker, using a few choice words, such as “The Mist” and “The Treatment” that point to the vaguely supernatural, though when depicted, we find them to be recognizably human experiences: “The Mist” is the narrator’s crippling depression, and “The Treatment” is a psychedelic therapy that manages to fundamentally alter his brain’s tendency towards severe misery and suicidal ideation. This is the most important arc of the novel, and yet so much else happens: book deals, defaulting on a contract with a publisher, a marriage, the death of a friend, a journey to Italy, plot-heavy in the way that life can be plot-heavy, so much happens, but what matters most is this: for part of his life, the narrator wished to die. After his treatment, he no longer wishes to. How can anything be as important as that?

The Red Arrow feels close to home for William Brewer, it feels purposeful and a directive in the most graceful sense of that word: a reminder that suffering is not the key to art and creation, but a narrowing, a blocking off of the best parts of being alive. To receive such a message from such a compulsively readable, deliciously heady novel is even more striking; The Red Arrow manages to flawlessly merge earnestness and self-awareness, and avoids any pitfalls of a recovery novel. This is not “a book about depression” but a totally life-affirming, exhilarating rush through time and place and conversations and thoughts that will leave you winded and thrilled for Brewer for writing it, and for yourself for getting to experience it.  –JH

Zain Khalid, Brother Alive

Brother Alive is a rich kaleidoscope of a novel. On the one hand, it is a family epic about three adopted brothers living above a mosque in New York: Dayo, Iseul, and Youssef (our guide). Their guardian, Imam Salim, wants so badly for them to be successful in life, but the secrets of his past force him to keep them at a distance. Still, there is so much warmth in these pages: the banter between the brothers, their love and their annoyance, their faithful obligation to one another are expertly rendered. There is one other very important figure worth mentioning: the eponymous Brother, sort of an imaginary friend that accompanies our narrator throughout his life. (Of Brother, he says, “When we acquire language, we are each other’s first word.”)  What  is  Brother? A sign of madness? A family inheritance? A kind of ghost? He takes the shape of various creatures, and he feeds off memories and literature. In this sense,  Brother Alive  is also a love letter to language, but the book shapeshifts as much as this mysterious Brother character.

Brother Alive  is also a queer love story. Turn the lens again, and it is a rewarding adventure through the streets of Staten Island and Saudi Arabia. Or: it’s an indictment against institutions that exert their control. It’s all woven together under the steady assurance of Zain Khalid’s thoughtful, gorgeous sentences. And the truth about Brother is more sinister than you can imagine. You’ll find yourself turning pages to get to the bottom of this intrigue, but you’ll happily get lost in this rewarding maze. –KY

Olga Togarczuk, tr. Jennifer Croft, The Books of Jacob

This might be the most important book about Jewish stories written by a gentile since Nathan the Wise —it’s refreshing to think that Polish readers are so interested in exploring the complexities of their history (although there was considerable backlash against this book in Polish nationalist circles when it was first published in 2015). The Books of Jacob concerns itself with the life and legend of self-proclaimed messiah Jacob Frank, who started a splinter religion and sex cult in the 18th century with destabilizing ripple effects across the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.

The novel is an appropriate length for the staggering level of understanding Togarczuk brings to the strangeness of the past; here there are no modernist ideals thrown dizzy-tizzy into character perspectives to make them more relatable, but instead an authentic attempt to get into the multifaceted mindsets of a tumultuous century. If you care about honoring the past (or if you just want to read about a truly bizarre sex cult), I promise the 900+ pages of this novel will, like the messianic cult contained within its pages, be gone faster than you’d think. Also if you finish reading this and think hey, I want another 1000 page historical novel about Jews from a goy, check out Captivity by György Spiró!  –MO

Yiyun Li, The Book of Goose  

Reader, I wish you the experience of losing yourself in Yiyun Li’s latest novel over a weekend, like I did. The Book of Goose tells the story of Fabienne and Agnès, two girls with dim futures growing up in postwar rural France (yes, there are notes of the Neapolitan Novels throughout, though I hesitate to draw the comparison because this book deserves to stand on its own). When Fabienne proposes that they write a book together—or rather, that Fabienne dictate a book to Agnès, who will in turn give the book her name—their life trajectories are decisively fractured, with Agnès rising to literary fame and being sent away to finishing school, longing only to be reunited with Fabienne, whose correspondence grows increasingly enigmatic. Li brilliantly captures the cruelties and loyalties of friendship, the brutalities of class, the anxieties of authorship, and the absurdities of celebrity in this dream of a book.  –ES

Sophia Stid, But For I Am a Woman

But For I Am a Woman is a poetry chapbook that revolves around Julian of Norwich (b. 1342), an anchorite and mystic who is the first woman known to have written a book in the English language. An anchorite (in case you heathens don’t know) was someone who voluntarily lived in seclusion for religious purposes; Julian of Norwich was sealed within her home as she watched the bricks being laid, and was declared effectively dead. Taking a room of one’s own to another level, Julian of Norwich thought, communed with God, and wrote, never to leave the four walls she vowed to remain in for the rest of her days.

Sophia Stid has written a remarkable exploration of Julian’s life as a woman and writer in those days, interspersing the voice of a contemporary speaker with the stories of Julian: Julian is she and the speaker is I. The book is filled with too many exquisite lines to count that stopped me in my tracks, but the true success is the work as a whole, the excavation of grief, womanhood, isolation, and freedom across time and difference. The speaker learns from Julian, takes what she can use, and then chooses her own path to freedom:

dying was what made a saint. And I knew I was supposed to want that, to lie still and wait to be made. But I didn’t want to die. I read the book to learn how I could live—

Emily Temple

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The Best Books of the Year (So Far)

The nonfiction and novels we can’t stop thinking about.

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By The New York Times Books Staff

• May 24, 2024

Fiction | Nonfiction

We’re almost halfway through 2024 and we at The Book Review have already written about hundreds of books. Some of those titles are good. Some are very good. And then there are the following.

We suspect that some (though certainly not all) will be top of mind when we publish our end-of-year, best-of lists. For more thoughts on what to read next, head to our book recommendation page .

James , by Percival Everett

In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own, with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.

Local bookstores | Barnes and Noble | Amazon

Good Material , by Dolly Alderton

Alderton’s novel, about a 35-year-old struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, funny meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind clichéd gender roles and the traditional marriage plot.

Martyr! , by Kaveh Akbar

A young Iranian American aspiring poet and recovering addict grieves his parents’ deaths while fantasizing about his own in Akbar’s remarkable first novel, which, haunted by death, also teems with life — in the inventive beauty of its sentences, the vividness of its characters and the surprising twists of its plot.

The Hunter , by Tana French

For Tana French fans, every one of the thriller writer’s twisty, ingenious books is an event. This one, a sequel to “The Searcher,” once again sees the retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper, a perennial outsider in the Irish west-country hamlet of Ardnakelty, caught up in the crimes — seen and unseen — that eat at the seemingly picturesque village.

Wandering Stars , by Tommy Orange

This follow-up to Orange’s debut, “There There,” is part prequel and part sequel; it trails the young survivor of a 19th-century massacre of Native Americans, chronicling not just his harsh fate but those of his descendants. In its second half, the novel enters 21st-century Oakland, following the family in the aftermath of a shooting.

Headshot , by Rita Bullwinkel

Set at a women’s boxing tournament in Reno, Nev., this novel centers on eight contestants, and the fights — physical and emotional — they bring to the ring. As our critic wrote: This story’s impact “lasts a long time, like a sharp fist to your shoulder.”

Beautyland , by Marie-Helene Bertino

In 1970s Philadelphia, an alien girl sent to Earth before she’s born communicates with her fellow life-forms via fax as she helps gather intel about whether our planet is habitable. This funny-sad novel follows the girl and her single mother as they find the means to persevere.

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder , by Salman Rushdie

In his candid, plain-spoken and gripping new memoir, Rushdie recalls the attempted assassination he survived in 2022 during a presentation about keeping the world’s writers safe from harm. His attacker had piranhic energy. He also had a knife. Rushdie lost an eye, but he has slowly recovered thanks to the attentive care of doctors and the wife he celebrates here.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis , by Jonathan Blitzer

This urgent and propulsive account of Latin American politics and immigration makes a persuasive case for a direct line from U.S. foreign policy in Central America to the current migrant crisis.

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook , by Hampton Sides

By the time he made his third Pacific voyage, the British explorer James Cook had maybe begun to lose it a little. The scientific aims of his first two trips had shifted into something darker. According to our reviewer, the historian Hampton Sides “isn’t just interested in retelling an adventure tale. He also wants to present it from a 21st-century point of view. ‘The Wide Wide Sea’ fits neatly into a growing genre that includes David Grann’s ‘ The Wager ’ and Candice Millard’s ‘ River of the Gods ,’ in which famous expeditions, once told as swashbuckling stories of adventure, are recast within the tragic history of colonialism .”

The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon , by Adam Shatz

This absorbing biography of the Black psychiatrist, writer and revolutionary Frantz Fanon highlights a side of him that’s often eclipsed by his image as a zealous partisan — that of the caring doctor, who ran a secret clinic for Algerian rebels.

Fi: A Memoir , by Alexandra Fuller

In her fifth memoir, Fuller describes the sudden death of her 21-year-old son. Devastating as this elegant and honest account may be — it’s certainly not for the faint of heart — it also leaves the reader with a sense of having known a lovely and lively young man.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

John S. Jacobs was a fugitive, an abolitionist — and the brother of the canonical author Harriet Jacobs. Now, his own fierce autobiography has re-emerged .

Don DeLillo’s fascination with terrorism, cults and mass culture’s weirder turns has given his work a prophetic air. Here are his essential books .

Jenny Erpenbeck’s “ Kairos ,” a novel about a torrid love affair in the final years of East Germany, won the International Booker Prize , the renowned award for fiction translated into English.

Kevin Kwan, the author of “Crazy Rich Asians,” left Singapore’s opulent, status-obsessed, upper crust when he was 11. He’s still writing about it .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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