Fiction
1. So Much Blue by Percival Everett
(5 Rave, 3 Positive)
“By turns funny, shocking and heartbreaking … a generous, thrilling book by a man who might well be America’s most under-recognized literary master, and readers will be thinking about it long after the last page.”
–Michael Schaub (NPR)
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2. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
(5 Rave, 3 Positive)
“Anthony Horowitz’s sleek, fun, cunning new novel is a complex reckoning with Christie’s immense popularity, and what it says about us as readers … a flawless imitation of the Golden Age mysteries.”
–Charles Finch (The Washington Post)
*
3. The Changeling by Victor LaValle
(4 Rave, 1 Positive)
“This is the first book I’ve read in years that engages with age-old myth in a way that feels as vital as [Neil] Gaiman’s best work, but it’s even more alert to the ways race, class, and prejudice can infect every aspect of a person’s life. The Changeling is an instant classic.”
–Leah Schnelbach (Tor)
Read an excerpt from The Changeling here
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4. Beren and Lúthien by J.R.R. Tolkien, Ed. by Christopher Tolkien
(2 Rave, 3 Positive)
“With eloquence and diligence and care, the son reconstructs and retraces the father’s journey, pursuing the tale through draft after draft as Tolkien pursued his vision of Middle-Earth; as Beren, lost and hunted, followed the sound of Lùthien’s voice as she sang in the shadowed forest of Doriath.”
–Liza Graham (NPR)
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5. Lonesome Lies Before Us by Don Lee
(1 Rave, 4 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“If Lonesome Lies Before Usisn’t the best American novel of the year, it’s one of the most American American novels. It’s intensely concerned with the civic institutions that shape everyday lives, and with who’s affected when they disappear. That’s too much weight for the average country song to bear, but Lee’s novel carries it just fine.”
–Mark Athitakis (The Washington Post)
Read an excerpt from Lonesome Lies Before Us here
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Non Fiction
1. Hunger by Roxane Gay
(8 Rave, 5 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“…a bracingly vivid account of how intellect, emotion and physicality speak to each other and work in tireless tandem to not just survive unspeakable hurt, but to create a life worth living and celebrating.”
–Rebecca Carroll (The Los Angeles Times)
*
2. The Exile by Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy
(4 Rave)
“…a truly impressive feat of journalism, both the closest we’re ever likely to come to a day-by-day account of Bin Laden’s life in those years and also an intensely gripping reading experience.”
–Steve Donoghue (The Christian Science Monitor)
*
3. The Outer Beach by Robert Finch
(3 Rave, 1 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“…[a] lovely and fortifying book … Mr. Finch is a practiced hand at this kind of essay yet, as he admits, he is following the vanished footprints of a remarkable roster of Cape Cod nature writers. The Outer Beach doubles as a rich literary tour.”
–Sam Sacks (The Wall Street Journal)
*
4. The Prisoner in His Palace by Will Bardenwerper
(2 Rave, 3 Positive)
“In chapters that are short and jumpy, what ultimately emerges is how to comport oneself in the world … This is no reverse Stockholm syndrome at play, Bardenwerper convincingly suggests, but a bracing affirmation — a great Whitmanesque hug — of human dignity in the face of all that is harrowingly wrong.”
–Peter Lewis (Newsday)
*
5. You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie
(2 Rave, 2 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me is a marvel of emotional transparency, a story told with the fewest possible filters by a writer grieving the loss of a complicated mother.”
–Beth Kephart (The Chicago Tribune)
Read an excerpt from You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me here
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