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The 100 Must-Read Books of 2021

The fiction, nonfiction and poetry that shifted our perspectives, uncovered essential truths and encouraged us forward Annabel Gutterman, Cady Lang, Arianna Rebolini and Lucas Wittmann

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

Acts of desperation, afterparties, aftershocks, all that she carried, all the frequent troubles of our days, america on fire, beautiful world, where are you, the book of form and emptiness, call us what we carry, the chosen and the beautiful, chronicles from the land of the happiest people on earth, cloud cuckoo land, the code breaker, the committed, the copenhagen trilogy, covered with night, crying in h mart, dear senthuran, detransition, baby, empire of pain, everyone knows your mother is a witch, the family roe, the final girl support group, finding the mother tree, four thousand weeks, the free world, great circle, harlem shuffle, hell of a book, how the word is passed, invisible child, the kissing bug, klara and the sun, the life of the mind, the lincoln highway, a little devil in america, the loneliest americans, the love songs of w.e.b. du bois, malibu rising, the man who lived underground, mike nichols: a life, milk blood heat, my darling from the lions, my monticello, my year abroad, no one is talking about this, oh william, on juneteenth, one friday in april, one last stop, orwell's roses, the other black girl, our country friends, a passage north, pilgrim bell, poet warrior, the promise, the prophets, razorblade tears, real estate, the removed, remote control, the rib king, second place, seeing ghosts, somebody's daughter, something new under the sun, the sum of us, the sunflower cast a spell to save us from the void, the sweetness of water, a swim in a pond in the rain, tastes like war, there’s no such thing as an easy job, under a white sky, until proven safe, while we were dating, white magic, who is maud dixon, who they was, who will pay reparations on my soul, you got anything stronger, you're history.

by Ai Weiwei

by Megan Nolan

by Anthony Veasna So

by Nadia Owusu

by Tiya Miles

by Rebecca Donner

by Elizabeth Hinton

by Sally Rooney

by Ruth Ozeki

by Amanda Gorman

by Sunjeev Sahota

by Wole Soyinka

by Anthony Doerr

by Walter Isaacson

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

by Tove Ditlevsen

by Nicole Eustace

by Jonathan Franzen

by Michelle Zauner

by Akwaeke Emezi

by Torrey Peters

by Patrick Radden Keefe

by Rivka Galchen

by Joshua Prager

by Grady Hendrix

by Suzanne Simard

by Oliver Burkeman

by Louis Menand

by Melissa Febos

by Maggie Shipstead

by Colson Whitehead

by Mieko Kawakami

by Jason Mott

by Clint Smith

by Katie Kitamura

by Andrea Elliott

by Daisy Hernández

by Kazuo Ishiguro

by Kaitlyn Greenidge

by Christine Smallwood

by Amor Towles

by Hanif Abdurraqib

by Jay Caspian Kang

by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

by Richard Wright

by Lauren Groff

by Mark Harris

by Dantiel W. Moniz

by Melissa Broder

by Rachel Long

by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

by Chang-rae Lee

by Patricia Lockwood

by Elizabeth Strout

by Annette Gordon-Reed

by Donald Antrim

by Casey McQuiston

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

by Rebecca Solnit

by Zakiya Dalila Harris

by Gary Shteyngart

by Anuk Arudpragasam

by Kaveh Akbar

by Joy Harjo

by Larissa Pham

by Damon Galgut

by Robert Jones, Jr.

by S.A. Cosby

by Deborah Levy

by Brandon Hobson

by Nnedi Okorafor

by Ladee Hubbard

by Chibundu Onuzo

by Rachel Cusk

by Kat Chow

by Kristen Radtke

by John le Carré

by Sarah Ruhl

by Ashley C. Ford

by Alexandra Kleeman

by Rivers Solomon

by Heather McGhee

by Jackie Wang

by Nathan Harris

by George Saunders

by Grace M. Cho

by Percival Everett

by Kikuko Tsumura

by Tarana Burke

by Elizabeth Kolbert

by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley

by Jasmine Guillory

by Elissa Washuta

by Alexandra Andrews

by Gabriel Krauze

by Jesse McCarthy

by Gabrielle Union

by Lesley Chow

This project is led by Lucy Feldman and Annabel Gutterman, with writing, reporting and additional editing by Eliza Berman, Kelly Conniff, Mariah Espada, Lori Fradkin, Laurin-Whitney Gottbrath, Cady Lang, Nik Popli, Arianna Rebolini, Lucas Wittmann and Julia Zorthian; art and photography editing by Whitney Matewe and Jennifer Prandato; and production by Paulina Cachero and Nadia Suleman.

What’s the Best Book of the Past 125 Years? We Asked Readers to Decide.

By The New York Times Dec. 28, 2021

In October, as we marked the Book Review’s 125th anniversary, we invited readers to nominate the best book published during that time. This was a nod to our history: In its first few decades, the Book Review often asked readers to anoint the best books, the best short stories, the best poems. We wanted this project, like those early ones, to reflect readers’ tastes and preferences.

Responses began pouring in from all 50 states and 67 countries. In November, we presented a list of the 25 most-nominated books (one per author) for a vote. After tallying more than 200,000 ballots, the winner, by a narrow margin, is …

To Kill a Mockingbird

By Harper Lee

“I am 52. I grew up in public housing, on welfare, parented by angry, erratic alcoholics, with little guidance and even less continuity. Atticus, Jem, Scout, Calpurnia and Dill taught me everything I needed to know about life, love, friendship and honor. These lessons reverberated throughout my life and I truly believe that my path would have been very different without them.”

Corina Jensen, Stanhope, N.J.

“Each time I read it with my students, I find in the author’s words something brilliant and entirely new to discuss with my classes. ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’”

Ronnie Madanick, Dade County, Fla.

“I grew up in a small, insular, white, Protestant town in the West, and this book first exposed me to the cruelty of racism. I do believe it changed my life and made me a person who cares about social justice. Plus, it is beautifully written with characters I have loved my whole life. I always wanted to be Scout.”

Nancy Foxley, Fort Collins, Colo.

Our critic reconsiders “To Kill a Mockingbird”

When you revisit in adulthood a book that you last read in childhood, you will likely experience two broad categories of observation: “Oh yeah, I remember this part,” and “Whoa, I never noticed that part.” That’s what I expected when I picked up “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which was voted the best book of the past 125 years by readers in a recent New York Times poll. Two decades had passed since I’d absorbed Harper Lee’s 1960 novel. And yes, there was a huge amount I’d missed on my first time through, ranging from major themes (the prevalence of child abuse) to minor details (unfamiliar words, like “flivver”).

Inexcusable lapses in reading comprehension also surfaced, such as the fact that I hadn’t realized Mrs. Dubose — the cranky neighborhood villain — was a morphine addict. (“Mrs. Dubose is a morphine addict,” Atticus states in the book. In my defense … well, I have no defense.) As an adult, I can perceive why the novel might hold enduring appeal for many and enduring repulsion to perhaps just as many. I cannot fathom the complexities of teaching it to elementary school students in 2021, especially after reading online accounts from teachers on both the “pro” and “against” sides.

These apprehensions were present as I worked through the pages a second time, but they were overridden by the instant resurrection of exactly what I’d liked about the book the first time, which is Lee’s depiction of life in a small town. You wouldn’t think the Great Depression-era fictional Southern town of Maycomb, Ala., would have much in common with the nonfictional Northern California small town where I grew up and read “Mockingbird” in the 1990s — and yet!

Take the grim joke about a pair of Atticus’s clients, the Haverfords, who ignored their lawyer’s advice to take a plea deal and wound up hanging. No explanation is needed for their recklessness other than, as Scout puts it, that they were “Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass.” That’s on Page 5, and it’s precisely where I remember my attention perking up as a teenager. Only in a place of minimal citizenry can surnames carry such determinative weight. In my town, which had a population of approximately 1,000, the nominative shorthand took a more neutrally descriptive form: There was Barefoot Dave, who preferred to go shoeless on his rambles, and Treehouse Todd, who lived in a treehouse, and Tepee Dan — you can guess where he lived.

Much else in “Mockingbird” was recognizable from small-town living: the temptation to invent boogeymen; the excessive reliance on euphemism; the kneejerk ostracizing of those perceived as outsiders, with vandalism a common mode of reinforcement. There was the importance placed on mundane local landmarks: a certain tree, a specific fence, the house on the corner. There was the fiercely held conviction that one must mind one’s own business coupled with the exasperating practice of everyone minding everyone else’s business 100 percent of the time. (When I first moved to New York and lived in an apartment, I wondered if this last paradox would replicate itself within the diorama of my building. It did not. My urban neighbors took great pains to avoid even a molecule of anyone else’s business.)

Lee writes about the unremitting surveillance of Maycomb — of the reality that no act ultimately goes unobserved. At the age I originally read “Mockingbird,” I stole a candy bar from my town’s sole market, bragged about it to one individual and within hours was escorted by my mother back to the store and forced to apologize to the owner (and pay for the candy). There was no point in asking my mother how she knew. All knowledge was public knowledge.

I hadn’t known until reading Lee’s novel that what seemed like punishments and glories unique to my home turf were characteristic ones: the freedom to run amok, the inevitability of getting caught, the fiber-optic speed of rumor mongering, the magnification of every feud into a catastrophe.

So what struck me, rereading it, was not the totality of the book but one of its humbler accomplishments, which is how keenly Lee recreates the comforts, miseries and banalities of people gathered intimately in one little space.

— Molly Young

The Runners-Up

2. the fellowship of the ring by j.r.r. tolkien.

“The depth of lore for an imagined world and the story of friendship that it accompanies lay the foundation for the rest of the fantasy genre that would follow. Yet few stories live up to the standards set by Tolkien.” Owen Clarke, Provo, Utah

3. 1984 By George Orwell

“It still resonates with us up to this day, around 70 years after it was written. Its warning against the excesses of human pride and hunger for power and its challenge to use our love of freedom to guard against these problems are timeless and universal.” Kathlynn Rebonquin, Mandaluyong City, Philippines

4. One Hundred Years of Solitude By Gabriel García Márquez

“As a piece of literature, it was an earthquake moment, shattering the expectations of a typical realist novel and spawning influences in authors and works from Japan to India and beyond. Out of all the works to have emerged in the last 125 years, none has created a ripple effect, or changed the landscape of literature, as much as this has.” Rizowana Hussaini, Guwahati, India

5. Beloved By Toni Morrison

“It’s not a bump in the night, subtle haunting. It’s loud and sick. There are images and emotions from ‘Beloved’ that are stuck in my mind now permanently. This ghost story has taught me more about the legacy of slavery than history books ever did.” Brontë Mansfield, Chicago, Ill.

The Nominations

The story of the nominations we received is not consensus, but diversity — not just in the sheer number of books that readers nominated, but in the ways that they interpreted what “best book” meant. Of the more than 1,300 books nominated, 65 percent were nominated by only one person. And only 31 percent nominated a book that made it to our list of 25 finalists. Here are some titles that speak to the breadth of readers’ choices.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

“A bone-chillingly beautiful and heartbreaking tale of exactly what could happen if we don’t take steps now as a society to address social inequalities and the climate crisis.”

Courtney Daron, Anaheim, Calif.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

“A beautifully written, sweeping history of the past century in America. Never heavy-handed, Wilkerson’s storytelling places real people in real places, making it possible for any reader to grasp the various impacts of inequality and inequities that still plague America.”

Patricia Methe, Cincinnati, Ohio

Dracula by Bram Stoker

“Grabbing the dark corners of one’s imagination for 125 years.”

Eleanor Najjar, San Francisco, Calif.

The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer

“It may be thin on plot or character, but it opened new worlds to me and my family.”

Cody Clark, Houston, Tex.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

“Yeah, yeah, I get it — James Joyce, Toni Morrison, Yasunari Kawabata, Clarice Lispector, Gabriel García Márquez —they're all great, they changed fiction forever. You’re not wrong. But answer me this: How many of them wrote a book entirely about rabbits that could make you laugh, cry, get angry and question the deeper meaning of life?”

Brian Dowd, Edgartown, Mass.

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

“His opening sentence, ‘Life is difficult’ affirmed my real-life experience. His wise insights into discipline, grace, love, and sin offered hope when I needed it. I ultimately attended seminary and became a pastor who often gifts this book.”

Marcia Bilyk, Knowlton Township, N.J.

Why readers nominated

Some readers prized lyrical writing above all..

“Silko wonderfully mixes narrative forms, incorporating poetry, rituals and Native American creation stories in a web-like structure that mirrors Pueblo Indian identity and perspective. … Her spectacularly descriptive language, the depth with which she portrays the human condition and the melancholy tone inspire readers.”

Dana Raja Wahab, Miami, Fla. on “Ceremony,” by Leslie Marmon Silko

For others, an author’s imagination was everything.

“It propels the Modernist advances of books like ‘Ulysses’ into the postmodern world, kicking and screaming. It’s a book of superlatives: It’s the smartest, stupidest, most sacred, most profane, most profound, phantasmagoric, lyrical, direct, demanding, rewarding book I’ve ever read.

C. Bleakley, Milan, Italy on “Gravity’s Rainbow,” by Thomas Pynchon

Many nominated novels expanded the kinds of stories told in literature.

“I first read this book in high school in a rural town in New Hampshire. I was one of about 10 people of color in the whole town. This book was the first time I felt seen in an English classroom in white America. The narrator’s impotent rage, and this unshakeable feeling of being a blank slate for others to place their own expectations and guilt ("No don’t worry, you’re one of the good ones."), all resonated with me. This is one of those books that awaken something in you, and it did in me.”

Ruth Ramjit, New York City on “Invisible Man,” by Ralph Ellison

Other readers considered a book’s influence and legacy.

“It exploded the idea of what literature can be.”

Susannah Breslin, Burbank, Calif. on “Ulysses,” by James Joyce

Many people nominated children’s books — especially the ones that fostered a lifelong love of reading.

“From cadence and rhythm to the art and story itself, “Where the Wild Things Are” is the most perfect book. This is a hill I will die on.”

Sara Beth West, Chattanooga, Tenn. on “Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak

Most popular authors

Three writers — John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner — received nominations for seven of their books.

Other popular authors included James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood and Virginia Woolf, who each had five books nominated.

And readers nominated four of Joan Didion’s books: “The Year of Magical Thinking,” “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” “The White Album” and “Play It as It Lays.”

A love for literature

Finally, so many nominations we received spoke to deeply personal relationships with books..

“The Nobel Prize winner’s novel evokes the best of modern literature, whilst keeping the classics’ heart and soul at the center of it. The central love story involves not only the two main characters, but the city of Istanbul as well (if not above), thus making it simultaneously intimate … and part of something grander.”

Dalila Sadinlija, Bosnia and Herzegovina on “The Museum of Innocence,” by Orhan Pamuk

“It’s a book … no, THE book about books, celebrating a seemingly idealized (but true!) relationship between a reader and a bookseller. There’s no better epistolary, literary memoir, bathed in the glow of wartime and mid-century New York City, looking eastward to romanticize a ration-booked London that knows its classic authors.”

Darren Sextro, Kansas City, Mo. on “84, Charing Cross Road,” by Helene Hanff

“​​This book captures what it means to be human. The writing is exquisite — you feel the pain and joy of the characters. The world building is subtle but profound. It is simply stunning.”

Chelsea Brislin, Lexington, Ky. on “Never Let Me Go,” by Kazuo Ishiguro

“Because it rails against darkness. Because it’s a testament to the enduring power of love to carry us and transcend death itself. Because it taught me to keep the fire burning, always.”

Max Widmer, New York City on “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy

“I’ve never been more engrossed in the minutiae of nature. Reading this book nudges and reminds me to slow down and absorb the utter beauty surrounding me each day.”

Brandon O’Connor, Chicago, Ill. on “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” by Annie Dillard

Illustrations by Timo Lenzen.

Designed by Deanna Donegan, Rebecca Lieberman and Hang Do Thi Duc. Edited by Tina Jordan, Rebecca Halleck, Joumana Khatib and John Williams, with contributions from Scott Blumenthal, John Cruickshank, Asmaa Elkeurti, MJ Franklin, Jennifer Harlan, Marie Tessier and Urvashi Uberoy. Additional production by Aliza Aufrichtig.

To Kill a Mockingbird: Cover image via Raptis Rare Books. The Fellowship of the Ring: Cover image via Heritage Auctions, HA.com. 1984: Cover image via Bauman Rare Books. One Hundred Years of Solitude: Cover image via Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Beloved: Cover image via Heritage Auctions, HA.com.

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Here are the Books We Love: 380+ great 2023 reads recommended by NPR

November 20, 2023 • Books We Love returns with 380+ new titles handpicked by NPR staff and trusted critics. Find 11 years of recommendations all in one place – that's more than 3,600 great reads.

In Apple TV+'s Slow Horses , Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, the slovenly, brilliant spy who's in charge of a group of failed British spies. The series is based on Mick Herron's Slough House novels. Herron says Lamb might not have "a heart of gold" but he does have "a moral code." Apple TV+ hide caption

Gary Oldman had 'free rein' in spy thriller 'Slow Horses' — now back for Season 3

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2023 books we love: staff picks.

November 29, 2023 • NPR's Books We Love is a roundup of favorite books of the year, sorted and tagged to help you find exactly what you're looking for. Recommendations come in from critics and contributors and today, we're highlighting picks from NPR staff.

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Travel is supposed to expand your horizons... but it's complicated.

November 29, 2023 • Traveling is supposed to open your mind and expand your horizons — but what if it doesn't? In her new book Airplane Mode, author Shahnaz Habib suggests that sometimes, traveling does more to enforce our ideas about the world than to upend them. Which means that people with "passport privilege" — AKA, the ability to travel freely from country to country — may end up feeling like the stars of some massive international adventure, while people whose travel is more restricted feel like perpetual interlopers.

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In the book 'Build the Life You Want,' Oprah has some advice for being happier

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Irish writer Paul Lynch wins Booker Prize for dystopian novel 'Prophet Song'

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How comic Leslie Jones went from funniest person on campus to 'SNL' star

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Defending the disney adult; plus, what it takes to stand up for black trans people.

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A memoir about life 'in the margins,' 'Class' picks up where 'Maid' left off

November 20, 2023 • "As a country, we don't like giving poor people money and that's what they need the most," says author Stephanie Land. Her 2019 memoir Maid inspired a 10-part Netflix series.

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Author A.S. Byatt, who wrote the best-seller 'Possession,' dies at 87

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'Day' is a sad story of middle-aged disillusionment

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12 Top Authors Pick the Best Books of the Year

David baldacci, louise penny and others offer their favorite reads from 2021 and of all time.

Christina Ianzito,

As we’ve noted in our  seasonal roundups , 2021 has been a fantastic year for books — so much so it can be hard to choose which one to read next. We asked top authors for one novel or work of nonfiction that stood out for them this year, as well as a less recent book that they particularly loved. Here’s what they said.

Dean Koontz

Best-selling author of suspense novels, most recently  Quicksilver

When Christmas Come s by Andrew Klavan (2021) : This is an exciting but tender, heartfelt crime novel about an English professor’s attempt to clear a former Army Ranger of murder. It’s fast-paced, haunting, with a central character you’ll love.

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Breakfast at Tiffany’ s by Truman Capote (1958): An enchanting country kid becomes a Manhattan party girl, Holly Golightly, who retains a heartbreaking innocence that makes her unforgettable. Exquisite prose and a sweetly semi-tragic ending make this novella a minor classic.

Jodi Picoult

Author of more than 25 novels, including the new  Wish You Were Here

The Soulmate Equation  by Christina Lauren (2021): A charming novel about the intersection of science and romance, and what happens when DNA can predict your perfect match. Is that a blessing or a curse? And does destiny matter more than individual choice? 

The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak (2005):  A story about the resilience of humans, and how one little life can make a difference in thousands of others. And it’s narrated by Death, which is a mic drop in and of itself.

David Baldacci

Blockbuster thriller author, most recently of  Mercy

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race  by Walter Isaacson (2021): The story of biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who helped to develop a gene editing technology, ushering in wondrous possibilities and unsolvable ethical dilemmas. It’s written in the unputdownable style of a novel as Isaacson does so well. 

The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald (1950): A body of a woman in a pool leads to everything that Macdonald (real name Kenneth Millar) did so well: exploring the darkest of family secrets, the chasm between rich and poor, the dirt that clings to every pore of humanity, and most brilliantly of all, Macdonald’s detective, Lew Archer, who tries to make sense of the insensible. Macdonald is the best of the crime noir writers, taking up the mantle from Hammett and Chandler and lifting it to a rarefied level. 

​Louise Penny

​Canadian author of the Chief Inspector Gamache series, including her latest,  The Madness of Crowds . Penny also cowrote the recent thriller  State of Terror  with Hillary Rodham Clinton

​When Harry Met Minnie: A True Story of Love and Friendship  by Martha Teichner (2021): About the bond between two rescue dogs and their owners, this is a warm, intelligent, funny and most of all a luminous celebration of love and friendship and how life-changing events can spring from the mundane.

A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth  by Samantha Weinberg (2000): In 1938, fishermen off the coast of South Africa brought up something extraordinary in their nets: a coelacanth, a huge fish with limb-like fins thought to be extinct for some 65 million years. This is the riveting story of what was described as the “greatest scientific find of the century.”

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Erik Larson

Bestselling nonfiction writer whose books include 2021’s  The Splendid and the Vile

Klara and the Sun  by Kazuo Ishiguro (2021): A moving exploration of loneliness and artificial intelligence, as told through the observations and experiences of an “Artificial Friend” named Klara, acquired to be the companion of a dying girl. It kept me thinking for weeks afterward.

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The World That We Knew  by Alice Hoffman (2019) : Set in Nazi Germany, this novel traces the wrenching journey of a Jewish girl named Lea and her mystical guardian, Ava, a golem Lea’s mother hopes will protect her — a thrilling story of the lasting power of love.

Author of 2013’s award-winning  A Tale for the Time Being  and 2021’s  The Book of Form and Emptiness , among other novels. She’s also a Zen Buddhist priest.

The End of Bias: A Beginning  by Jessica Nordell (2021): Implicit and unconscious bias exists in us all and underlies our most destructive human behavior. Nordell’s examination, based on 15 years of research and filled with fascinating case studies, is lively, informative, optimistic, compassionate and necessary. The takeaway is: We can change our biased behavior, so let’s start now.

One Hundred Years of Solitude  by Gabriel García Mǻrquez (1967): This sprawling masterpiece of a novel about a multigenerational Colombian family named Buendía was the first encounter I had with magical realism. It was the book that made me want to be a fiction writer. “Wait, I want to do that!” I remember thinking.

Lisa Jewell

British author of popular thrillers, most recently  The Night She Disappeared

The Plot  by Jean Hanff Korelitz (2021): This tale of a frustrated writer stumbling upon the perfect plot for a novel but having to negotiate a moral minefield to use it in his own work is so clever, so taut, so dazzling, I read it in about five hours flat. There is not one bum note or wasted word. 

The Push  by Ashley Audrain (2020): A mesmerizing exploration of the dark side of motherhood; what happens if your perfect baby girl turns out not to be made of sugar and spice and all things nice? Are you a bad mother? Or is your daughter a bad child? Spellbinding.

Chris Bohjalian

Author of best-selling novels, including 2021's  The Hour of the Witch

Woodrow on the Bench: Life Lessons from a Wise Old Dog  by Jenna Blum (2021): I feel I got to know Woodrow, novelist Jenna Blum’s black lab, in Blum’s wise, wrenching and devastatingly beautiful memoir of his last half-year. After reading it, you will never again look into your dog’s — or any dog’s — eyes and not feel the bond that can exist between a person and their pet.

The Friend  by Sigrid Nunez (2018): Wistful and elegiac, but also rich with gentle humor, this is the story of a woman, her literary mentor who kills himself, a tiny apartment and an aging Great Dane. I loved it, with its explorations of the bonds between humans and our closest animal companions.

Janet Evanovich

A fixture on best-seller lists since 1994; her most recent book is this year’s  Game On

Black Ice  by Brad Thor (2021): Scot Harvath is back and better than ever in this fun, fast-paced thriller set in the beautiful country of Norway and the Arctic. You don’t need to have read the others in the series, your pulse will be pounding either way.

Heroes’ Feast: The Official D&D Cookbook  by Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson and Michael Witwer (2020): This beautifully illustrated and charmingly written cookbook is not just for Dungeons & Dragons fans, but for anyone with an adventurous heart and a love for other-worldly travel.

Wanda M. Morris

Debut author of the buzzed-about new legal thriller  All Her Little Secrets ​

Revival Season by Monica West (2021): A 15-year-old girl must come to grips with who her father, a famous Baptist preacher in the South, really is and the newfound power she possesses in a community where women are thought to be invisible and powerless. I love this coming-of-age story that is both compassionate and suspenseful, as well as a complicated and moving story about family and faith.

​Defending Jacob by William Landay (2012): A quiet suburb is rocked when the local assistant district attorney's teenage son is charged with the murder of a classmate. This book enthralled me, not only because of the outstanding storytelling, but because it posed the scenario every parent, including me, grapples with — how far would you go to save your child?

Anthony Horowitz

British TV writer behind PBS's Foyle's War and author of best-selling mysteries, such as the recent  A Line to Kill

Checkmate in Berlin by Giles Milton (2021): This is a fantastic story of Berlin at the end of World War II. It starts with the disease and destitution that Berliners faced when the fighting stopped, moves through the increasing tension and menace of the Cold War and climaxes with the logistically impossible Berlin Airlift that managed to save thousands of lives. In Giles Milton’s expert hands, focusing on the larger-than-life characters who made this all happen, history is as enthralling as any fiction you’ll ever read. 

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009): I love the work of Sarah Waters, who brings the 19th and early 20th century to vivid life like no other writer. The Little Stranger is a superlative ghost story … if it is a ghost story. It’s hard to say. Certainly, Hundreds Hall, the grim, decaying mansion where it is set, contains a malign presence of some sort. But can we believe Dr. Faraday, the country GP called to the house, or is he the ultimate unreliable narrator? This book will linger in your mind long after you read it. It will haunt you.

Best-selling author of international thrillers, including  Black Ice .

Steel Fear  by Brandon Webb and John David Mann (2021): A serial killer is loose on an aircraft carrier. It’s an absolutely chilling thriller.

One Second After  by William Forstchen (2009): In the aftermath of a mysterious event that cripples all modern electronics, the residents of a small college town must band together to survive. One of the best books I have read in the last 10 years.

Christina Ianzito is the travel and books editor for aarp.org and  AARP The Magazine , and also edits and writes health, entertainment and other stories for aarp.org. She received a 2020 Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on December 8, 2021. It's been updated to reflect new information. 

Christina Ianzito is the travel and books editor for aarp.org and AARP The Magazine , and also edits and writes health, entertainment and other stories for aarp.org. She received a 2020 Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing.

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The 15 Top Authors, Based on Goodreads Stats

Emily Martin

Emily has a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi, MS, and she has an MFA in Creative Writing from GCSU in Milledgeville, GA, home of Flannery O’Connor. She spends her free time reading, watching horror movies and musicals, cuddling cats, Instagramming pictures of cats, and blogging/podcasting about books with the ladies over at #BookSquadGoals (www.booksquadgoals.com). She can be reached at [email protected].

View All posts by Emily Martin

What a time to be alive! To be fair, there’s a lot that could be better about the world right now, but there is one major thing we have going for us right now: We have lots of incredible books to read from some truly noteworthy authors. But who are the top authors and what books are contemporary readers loving the most? I want to break it down for you with this list of the 15 top authors.

So with all the myriad ways readers show their support for their most beloved authors online, how did I come to make this final list? Just to keep the research a little more focused, I stuck with Goodreads stats of various kinds. First of all, I looked at the list of authors who are the most followed on Goodreads. From there, I cross-referenced this list with the list of books that are most read and the most shelved on any given year, starting in 2021 and going back to 2016, just to keep the list current to what people have been reading the most over the past five years or so.

From there, what I got was this scientifically proven (disclaimer: none of this is scientifically proven) list of the top authors of our time (disclaimer again: our time being 2016–2021). Note that this is just one methodology for finding the top current authors. This methodology is less based on the quality of writing and more based on the popularity of the author and their books. But popularity has merit, I say! And it’s worth considering.

“Get on with the list,” you say? Okay, I hear you. Without any further messing around, here’s a list of the 15 top authors, based on Goodreads stats, ranked from 15th place to 1st place. Enjoy!

15 – Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas is a young adult author who is most well-known for her 2017 novel The Hate U Give . The novel debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller List and went on to win several awards, including The William C. Morris Award, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, and Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. In 2021, Thomas wrote a prequel to The Hate U Give, entitled Concrete Rose . This year, she also co-authored a novel called Blackout with Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon.

14 – Colleen Hoover

Colleen Hoover is a notable author on this list because she is the first author to ever write a self-published novel that made it to #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List. That novel was Hopeless , but the novel Hoover is probably best-known for now is Verity , which you’ve probably seen all over BookTok. Colleen Hoover is a popular author across social media, especially Goodreads, where she’s won multiple Goodreads Choice Awards, in 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2016. Every single one of her full-length novels since 2021 have been best sellers.

13 – Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is an author who writes across several genres, including short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, and films. Gaiman has won several awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards. He is also the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same book, The Graveyard Book . It’s hard to choose one book of Gaiman’s that is the most popular because all of his novels have their fans, but American Gods is one of Gaiman’s best-selling works and has won multiple awards.

12 – Dan Brown

Dan Brown writes thriller/mystery novels that explore conspiracy theories, cryptography, and art. Brown’s novels have sold over 200 million copies. He is best known for his Robert Langdon book series, which dives deep into religious themes and history. Three out of five of the Robert Langdon novels have been adapted into films: The Da Vinci Code , Angels and Demons , and Inferno . And in 2021, Brown’s novel The Lost Symbol was adapted into a television series. Dan Brown has also donated millions of dollars in support of scholarship.

11 – Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is an author who is the recipient of many awards, including a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2002. His 2016 novel The Underground Railroad won the National Book Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Underground Railroad was also recently adapted into a television series on Amazon, so that would explain the resurgence of interest in this book on Goodreads. Whitehead’s 2020 novel The Nickel Boys won him another Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. So yes, the hype is real.

10 – Ocean Vuong

The year 2019 was big for poet and author Ocean Vuong. It was the year his debut novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was released, and it was the year he received a MacArthur Genius Grant. But in 2021, Vuong is still going strong with readers on Goodreads, and it looks like he will be for years to come. Last year, it was announced that Vuong would be the seventh author to contribute to the Future Library Project , a collection of works by contemporary authors that will remain unread until 2114.

9 – Taylor Jenkins Reid

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a popular contemporary author for many readers not only on Goodreads, but also on BookTube and BookTok. She is best-known for her novels The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo , Daisy Jones and the Six , and Malibu Rising . Daisy Jones and the Six, which is loosely based on the classic rock band Fleetwood Mac, is currently being adapted into an Amazon miniseries produced by Reese Witherspoon, starring Riley Keough as Daisy Jones and Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne.

8 – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a Mexican Canadian author of speculative fiction. She received the Copper Cylinder Adult Award for her debut novel Signal to Noise and the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel for her 2020 novel Mexican Gothic . Garcia was also a finalist for the Nebula Award for both Gods of Jade and Shadow and Mexican Gothic, and a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Mexican Gothic. Mexican Gothic is also in development as a limited series for Hulu, produced by Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’s Milojo Productions.

7 – Brit Bennett

Brit Bennett went straight to The New York Times Best Seller list with her debut novel The Mothers , and she was also named in the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” list of promising debut novelists. With her second novel, The Vanishing Half , Bennett once again found herself on top of the NYT Best Sellers list, and The New York Times also chose this novel as one of its top ten best books of 2020. Now, both novels are being adapted; Kerry Washington is producing a film adaptation of The Mothers, and The Vanishing Half has been acquired by HBO for a limited series with Bennett serving as executive producer.

6 – Leigh Bardugo

Leigh Bardugo’s novels long been popular amongst Goodreads readers, but the recent Netflix adaptation of Shadow and Bone has introduced a whole new group of readers to the series and its spinoff Six of Crows (this story is also a part of the series adaptation). In 2019, Bardugo also published her first adult novel, Ninth House , a paranormal fantasy set at Yale University. Ninth House was listed in Tor’s Best Books of 2019 and Paste’s 19 Best Novels of 2019 . Both Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom were listed in Paste’s 50 Best Fantasy Books of the 21st Century (So Far) .

5 – Sarah J. Maas

Next up on the list is another author of a widely beloved fantasy series: Sarah J. Maas. In fact, Maas is known for not one but two fantasy series, Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses . Maas’s books have sold over 12 million copies and have been translated into 37 languages. In 2020, Maas released the first book in her new Crescent City Series, House of Earth and Blood . The next novel in the series, House of Sky and Breath , is coming in 2022. There are also more books in the Court of Thorns and Roses series in the works.

4 – Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro is a British novelist who is known for playing with genres like speculative fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction in his literary novels. In 2017, Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature. T he Swedish Academy described Ishiguro as an author “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” His 2021 novel Klara and the Sun is his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize. His latest novel has been widely acclaimed by readers and reviewers and compared to another of Ishiguro’s beloved novels, Never Let Me Go .

3 – Veronica Roth

Veronica Roth is an author who is best-known for her young adult series Divergent , which was released in 2011–2013 and later adapted into a film series starring Shailene Woodley and Theo James. Although the Divergent novels were the first books Roth wrote and remain some of her most popular books, the author continues to write inventive fantasy stories that keep readers interested. Most recently, Roth released her first adult novel, Chosen Ones , the first novel in a fantasy duology.

2 – Stephen King

If you don’t know who Stephen King is, then you’ve probably been living under a rock, but just in case you’ve somehow missed it, here’s the deal with this best-selling author. Stephen King writes across many genres: horror, science fiction, fantasy, suspense, and more. King has won several awards for his works, including multiple Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. And in 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Stephen King’s novels are all top-selling books, but if you were wondering which of King’s novels is the best-selling of all 63 of his books, it’s The Shining .

1 – John Green

Is John Green who you expected to see at the top of this list? John Green has had many of his young adult novels hit The New York Times Best Sellers list, including The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down . In 2014, Green was named one of the 1 00 Most Influential People in the World by Time . Part of the reason he is so popular and consistently read by so many people on Goodreads is his involvement in creating so much online content. He and his brother Hank Green are big YouTubers, and John Green also has a podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed , which was adapted into a book of essays.

And there you have it! Hopefully some of the people on these list ended up being surprises to you. I have to say I was a little surprised at how it all shook out, but you can’t argue with science (disclaimer: this still isn’t science)!

Love lists where we talk about the best of the best? Here are 20 of the best children’s authors . And if horror’s more your speed, here’s a totally scientific list of the best horror authors of all time !

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Welcome to the Authors page on BookSeriesInOrder. This is a listing in alphabetical order of all of the authors that we currently list.

Please note it is listed by the authors First Name . So if looking for Stephen King you would search by “S”, not “K”.

We also have a search engine you can use to make it easier as there are so many authors out there it makes it a lot of work browsing through the list:

• A. American
• A. Bertram Chandler
• A. Meredith Walters
• A. Zavarelli
• A.A. Albright
• A.A. Attanasio
• A.B. Guthrie, Jr.
• A.B. Yehoshua
• A.C. Arthur
• A.C. Baantjer
• A.C. Crispin
• A.C. Gaughen
• A.C.F. Bookens
• A.D. Davies
• A.D. Garrett
• A.D. Justice
• A.E. Osworth
• A.E. van Vogt
• A.E. Warren
• A.F. Steadman
• A.G. Barnett
• A.G. Howard
• A.G. Marshall

We are adding more authors and their series in publication and chronological order every day.

268 Responses to “Authors”

This is a great resource. I look forward to using it.

My granddaughter likes the Warrior Cat series by Erin Hunter. I don’t see them here.

They are listed here: https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/the-warriors/

You dont seem to have Australian writer Peter Fitzsimmons some of his books “Mutiny on the Bounty, Batavia, and Cook are really great reads detailed with a mix of fiction, worth including in your list.

Peter is listed here: https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/peter-fitzsimons/ Cheers

Please add Michael Robotham. Especially his Joe O’Loughlin series. Good mystery writer. Thanks for putting this all together for all readers.

He is already listed here: https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/michael-robotham/

Hi, excellent site. Would there be any way the works of Brenda Trim be added to the site? Thank you.

Thanks Don. Brenda is on our list of authors to add so this will bump her up the priority list 🙂 Cheers

please add Christopher Reich, especially his Simon Riske series

Christopher is already listed here: https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/christopher-reich/

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The 10 best books of 2023

‘the bee sting,’ by paul murray.

Murray’s novel, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, reads like an instant classic. In it, the gleaming facade of one Irish family — a successful car dealer, his legendarily beautiful wife and their two children — begins to fracture under the weight of long-held secrets. Murray is a fantastically witty and empathetic writer, and he dazzles by somehow bringing the great sprawling randomness of life to glamorously choreographed climaxes. He is essentially interested in the moral conflicts of our lives, and he handles his characters and their failings with heartbreaking tenderness. ( Book World review .)

‘The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,’ by James McBride

The National Book Award-winning author of “The Good Lord Bird” sets this exuberant novel in a ramshackle Pennsylvania neighborhood before and during the Great Depression. There, Black and Jewish residents come together to hide an orphan from state officials who want to send the boy to a harrowing institution ruled by a violent fiend. Such circumstances might seem to promise a grim tale, but this is a book by James McBride. Vitality and humor thrum through his stories even in the shadows of despair. This vibrant, love-affirming novel bounds over any difference that claims to separate us. ( Book World review .)

‘Loot,’ by Tania James

A real-life object of fascination — an 18th-century automaton depicting a tiger biting into an Englishman’s neck — is the basis for this novel. The story begins in Mysore with a 17-year-old peasant who has a talent for carving mechanical toys, and spans decades as the curiosity he creates changes hands and crosses continents. James moves within the historical record while freely exploiting its considerable gaps and silences. Her prose is lush with the sights, sounds and smells of India, France and England, and always laced with Dickensian wit. ( Book World review .)

‘The MANIAC,’ by Benjamín Labatut

Like Labatut’s last book, “When We Cease to Understand the World” (2021), “The MANIAC” is captivating and unclassifiable, at once a historical novel and a philosophical foray. Its resident genius is the polymath and pioneering computer scientist John von Neumann, who displays “a sinister, machinelike intelligence.” The book’s many narrators offer a polyphonic portrait of the brilliant, frustrating von Neumann, and its extraordinary final segment brings us to the wonder and potential danger of artificial intelligence. Labatut is a writer of thrilling originality. “The MANIAC” is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty. ( Book World review .)

‘North Woods,’ by Daniel Mason

Mason plants his novel on an expanse of land in western Massachusetts where, over centuries, various absorbing tales unfold and interweave. There’s an illicit marriage between two Puritan runaways, a shocking, brutal murder and an enslaved woman fleeing north. The silent spaces between these stories articulate what the residents can’t, as their errant lives begin locking together in a winding chain of unlikely history. Elegantly designed with photos and illustrations, this is a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic. Mason has a light, mischievous touch, and it’s hard to imagine there is anything he can’t do. ( Book World review .)

‘The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths,’ by Brad Fox

In 1930, the naturalist William Beebe descended deep into the ocean in a 4½-foot steel sphere, describing what he saw outside the porthole through a telephone wire that rose to the surface. By turns philosophical and elegiac, Fox’s history of Beebe’s explorations is a hypnotic ode to the world beneath the waves. This is no straightforward narrative but a book built from scraps that belie its intricate engineering. It is also an exceptionally beautiful object, bursting with full-color illustrations and paintings of the creatures Beebe encountered. ( Book World review .)

‘How to Say Babylon,’ by Safiya Sinclair

Born in a seaside Jamaican village near Montego Bay, Sinclair grew up in a strict Rastafarian family on the fringe of a hedonistic tourist mecca. She wanted more than the Rasta wifedom that was mapped out for her, and in this lushly observed memoir, she chronicles how she threw off that yoke. Doing so risked the wrath of her father, a reggae musician who feared that corrupting Western influences would ruin his daughter. The book grabs the reader with the beauty of its words (Sinclair is also a published poet), but it sticks because of the thorniness and complexity of its ideas. ( Book World review .)

‘Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia,’ by Gary J. Bass

The post-World War II war crimes trial in Tokyo of leading Japanese military and civilian perpetrators lasted from May 1946 to November 1948 and resulted in 16 life sentences and seven hangings, including that of the wartime prime minister and minister of war, Hideki Tojo. This trial — far more complex, drawn-out and contentious than the Nuremberg proceedings — is the subject of Bass’s comprehensive, landmark and riveting book. Bass employs the complexities of the trial as a fulcrum to sketch a wide canvas, documenting not just atrocities and attempts at justice but the history of World War II in Asia. ( Book World review .)

‘King: A Life,’ by Jonathan Eig

Eig’s book is the most compelling account of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life in a generation. To write it, he conducted more than 200 interviews, including with scores of people old enough to have known or observed King, and pieced together numerous accounts gathered by other journalists and scholars, some of them never published before. The result might be described as a deeply reported psychobiography — one infused with the narrative energy of a thriller, as Eig vividly reconstructs some of the story’s most dramatic turning points. ( Book World review .)

‘The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative,’ by Gregg Hecimovich

In 2001, the professor and literary scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. purchased an unheralded novel of unknown authorship at an auction. He verified that it was authentic and had probably been written by a Black person before 1860. It was published to wide acclaim and robust sales as “The Bondwoman’s Narrative.” Hecimovich’s book tells the incredible story of Hannah Crafts, the woman who wrote it, and of Hecimovich’s tireless efforts to discover her identity and reconstruct her trajectory. The result is an inspired amalgam of genres — part thriller, part mystery and part biography. ( Book World review .)

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20 Amazing Authors and Their Books To Read in 2020

2020 means a new year, a new decade, and new chances to read amazing books by some of our favorite authors. Several of the talented writers we plan on reading this year have published numerous books in genres across the board, including horror, historical fiction, and magical realism, and even YA. Perhaps one of your 2020 reading goals is to try a new author or genre. We hope you can use our list to add books to your own TBR—or maybe even discover your new favorite author!

Armando Lucas Correa: Correa, an award-winning journalist, editor, and author, has written two books about families who face incredible circumstances during World War II. With the international bestseller The German Girl on his roster, Correa delivers again with the poignant and heart-wrenching The Daughter’s Tale . Correa’s journalism background lends itself to his novels beautifully; they are well researched, thoroughly investigated, and told with reverence and respect for the subject matter. If you’re a lover of authentic historical fiction, you should definitely pick up Correa’s books.

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Martha McPhee: New York Times bestselling author Martha McPhee’s poetic prose and incredibly aware domestic fiction always delivers. McPhee’s work is expertly crafted and incredibly enticing. Her most notable novel, Gorgeous Lies , is a colorful, quirky story of a dying therapist who tries to make sense of his life and his relationships with his family as his conditions worsen. McPhee’s ability to write about relationships also comes across in her upcoming novel, An Elegant Woman , which follows four generations of women as they fight for their freedom and work toward a better future.

Megan Miranda: The bestselling author of All the Missing Girls , Megan Miranda writes thrillers that keep you wondering what will happen next—all the way up to the last-minute plot twist. Her latest book, The Last House Guest , is a chilling tale of two friends, Avery Greer and Sadie Loman, who might as well come from different worlds. The things that connect them are Littleport, Maine, and its wealthy summer residents and a dangerous secret that somehow involves the Loman family. The Last House Guest is thrilling and unpredictable, and perfect for fans of domestic thrillers looking for a contemporary angle. Miranda also writes YA fiction, so you’ll have plenty of material to read if you like crossover appeal or if you’re a diehard Megan Miranda fan.

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Helen Phillips: Dynamic author Helen Phillips is incredibly skilled at weaving together wild fantasy with the mundanity of everyday life. Longlisted for the National Book Award, The Beautiful Bureaucrat tells the story of a woman named Josephine, whose job it is to enter numbers into a mysterious system called The Database. But when her husband disappears, and reappears with no explanation, things quickly turn become bizarre and terrifying. Phillips expertly balances the fear and terror of Josephine’s experience and the exhilarating twists and turns of a political thriller.

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Kristin Harmel: Another author with an impressive catalog, Kristin Harmel has written a dozen novels, each with stunning backdrops of war and turmoil. Harmel is an expert in writing about the personal stories of historic events, with a special lens on the relationships between female friends and families. Though of course, Harmel writes beautifully about romantic love, particularly in The Winemaker’s Wife , where two women risk their lives and their loved ones as they try to navigate danger and decide between being a resistor or a collaborator; both decisions could endanger their lives. The Winemaker’s Wife is a high-stakes historical fiction that doesn’t make light of its setting and is a great place to start if you’re looking to dive into Harmel’s remarkable novels.

The author of the “engrossing” ( People ) international bestseller The Room on Rue Amélie returns with a moving story set amid the champagne vineyards of France during the darkest days of World War II, perfect for fans of Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz .

Champagne, 1940 : Inès has just married Michel, the owner of storied champagne house Maison Chauveau, when the Germans invade. As the danger mounts, Michel turns his back on his marriage to begin hiding munitions for the Résistance . Inès fears they’ll be exposed, but for Céline, the French-Jewish wife of Chauveau’s chef de cave, the risk is even greater—rumors abound of Jews being shipped east to an unspeakable fate.

When Céline recklessly follows her heart in one desperate bid for happiness, and Inès makes a dangerous mistake with a Nazi collaborator, they risk the lives of those they love—and the vineyard that ties them together.

New York, 2019 : Recently divorced, Liv Kent is at rock bottom when her feisty, eccentric French grandmother shows up unannounced, insisting on a trip to France. But the older woman has an ulterior motive—and a tragic, decades-old story to share. When past and present finally collide, Liv finds herself on a road to salvation that leads right to the caves of the Maison Chauveau.

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Karen Kingsbury: Karen Kingsbury is the legendary author of the Baxter family books, and her last twelve novels have topped bestseller lists and have found homes with many dedicated fans. In addition to the Baxter family novels, Kingsbury has written numerous other books within other series, as well as true crime and children’s books. If you’re looking for compelling page-turners about love and people who feel as real as your own family, Kingsbury’s Love Story just might be the right pick for you. Plus, it’s very unlikely that you will run out of Kingsbury books to read anytime soon!

The instant New York Times bestseller featuring everyone’s favorite family—the Baxters—in a deeply emotional novel “faithful fans will no doubt relish” ( Publishers Weekly ).

When John Baxter is asked to relive his long-ago love story with his wife Elizabeth for his grandson Cole’s heritage school project, he’s not sure he can do it. The sadness might simply be too great—after a storybook romance that lasted almost thirty years, beginning when the two were in college, Elizabeth tragically died of cancer. But John can’t say no to his grandson and in the process of telling his love story, he finally allows his heart and soul to go places they haven’t gone in decades. Back to the breathless first moments, but also to the secret heartbreak that brought John and Elizabeth together…

Cole’s report on his grandparents touches the hearts of the entire family—and causes Cole to better understand his own beginning.

Whether you’re meeting the Baxter family for the first time or finding them all over again, Love Story will stir your heart and remind you of the generational impact of love and the eternal bond of family.

Rebecca Serle: Rebecca Serle is an author and TV writer whose characters move her novels forward seemingly without any help. With perfect pacing and riveting characters, Serle’s adult and YA novels alike deliver poignant heartbreak and exciting triumph. All of her books deliver some truth about the human experience, but in particular, The Dinner List manages to hit all spots on the emotional spectrum. The story follows a woman named Sabrina, who turns up to her 30 th birthday to a huge surprise. Prior to the dinner, she made a hypothetical list of the five people, living or dead, that she’d want to have dinner with — and magically, that list comes to life. She’s surrounded by her best friend, three significant people from her past, plus Audrey Hepburn. This tender, thoughtful book shows the way people shape our lives, for better or worse, and what we can learn even when they’re no longer with us.

Sally Rooney: Irish author Sally Rooney is an incredibly talented author with unique perspective, well-established characters and thorough understanding of cultural elements that influence who we are. Rooney’s latest novel, Normal People , discusses the relationship between Connell, a handsome and popular boy, and Marianne, an intelligent yet intimidating girl whose family employs Connell’s mother. Rooney follows the pair through their lives and lets us in on the most intimate part of them as they navigate trauma and experience, never quite able to hold on to each other.  You can also find Rooney’s short stories, essays, and poems in places like the Dublin Review and the New Yorker .

Lisa Jewell: The queen of domestic thrillers, Lisa Jewell is known for her bestselling novels that are the definition of page-turners. Jewell’s ten novels are all equally captivating, but her blockbuster hit , Then She Was Gone , or her latest, The Family Upstairs , are great introductions to the riveting world that is reading Lisa Jewell.  The Family Upstairs is as much a contemporary drama as it is a thriller, as we follow Libby Jones on her journey of discovering her birth parents that involves secrets, terror, and disappearing children. If you’re a fan of Ruth Ware and haven’t yet read Lisa Jewell, we highly recommend that you start now.

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Haruki Murakami: Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is a prolific bestselling author whose books have been translated into fifty languages and have sold millions of copies outside of Japan. Murakami is noted for his somewhat absurdist humor in his writing, as well as many traditional elements of Japanese literature. Among his many notable novels, Kafka on the Shore follows two distinct plots. In one, a fifteen-year-old boy named Kafka goes on a journey to escape an oedipal curse and find his family. In the other, a cat-finder named Nakata realizes that his path is changing. Murakami’s writing blends so many elements of literature—like humor, magical realism, suspense, and more—and he is truly one of the most groundbreaking writers of our time.

Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, and the reasons for that convergence become clear, Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder.

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Kiley Reid: Short story writer and Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate Kiley Reid’s debit novel, Such a Fun Age , is a page-turning drama about race and privilege that centers around a black babysitter named Emira, who one day is accused of kidnapping the white child that she babysits. The child’s mother, Alix, is appalled and wants to help—but Emira, who is young, lost, and wary of the world, is hesitant. Reid expertly explores the social and racial dynamics, and the complicated reality that people face living in a world where we cannot escape the effects of race, privilege, and how they intersect. Reid’s commentary is smart and empathetic and shows her considerable literary talents.

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Author Picks: 9 Compulsive Reads with Morally Ambiguous Mothers

By Sarah Vaughan | September 10, 2020

Imbolo Mbue: Imbolo Mbue won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her 2016 novel, Behold the Dreamers . The book follows two families in New York City during the financial crisis; an immigrant family from Cameroon, the Jonga family, and their wealthy employers, the Edwards family. Mbue is a smart writer with a background in business, and her understanding of the system is clear as she explores how American bureaucracy works to protect the wealthy and keep away “outsiders.” Mbue is an incredible writer, which is evident in her short stories and essays as well, all of which are moving and feature her signature prose and social commentary.

There have been dozens of novels recently published about the financial crisis of 2008, but few have focused on those most profoundly affected: the working families left to pick up the pieces. Jende Jonga is a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem with his wife, Neni, and child when he lands a job as a chauffeur for a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. As the story alternates between Jende and Neni and speeds perilously close to economic disaster, they learn about privilege, pride, and impossible choices.

Hope and Heartbreak: 10 Books About Immigration and the Refugee Experience

By Carrie Cabral | March 19, 2020

Calling All Dreamers—And Readers

By Taylor Noel | October 16, 2017

8 Books We (Rightfully) Judged by Their Covers

By Off the Shelf Staff | August 15, 2017

14 Books by Diverse Authors You Need to Read Right Now

By Taylor Noel | May 8, 2017

Coming to America: 13 Immigrant Stories That Represent Our History

By Julianna Haubner | March 2, 2017

Famed and bestselling author Terry McMillan has written numerous books with female protagonists, many of which feature single women finding their place in the world and seeking happiness. Noted for her 1992 novel, Waiting to Exhale and, of course, the ever necessary read How Stella Got Her Groove Back , McMillan is still writing about the female protagonists we’re all dying to read about. While How Stella Got Her Groove back will always be a fan favorite and is a great first book if you haven’t read McMillan’s books, her latest novel , I Almost Forgot About You , is another fantastic story of finding love and finding yourself that is a can’t-miss for new and old fans alike.

Psst, Moms! 6 Enticing Books for When You Need a Break

By Holly Claytor | May 8, 2020

Mary Kubica: Mary Kubica took the world by storm with the publication of her first novel, The Good Girl , which tells the story of Mia, the daughter of a prominent judge. Mia is kidnapped in an elaborate plot, and the kidnapper suddenly changes the plan and decides to keep her in a secluded cabin. Kubica’s writing is tight and she doesn’t waste a word, which makes the fast-paced thriller an emotional and intense read that you won’t want to put down. Kubica has four other books on her roster, and her newest novel, The Other Mrs ., is coming out in early 2020. If you’re ready to dive into page-turning thrillers, make sure you try this spellbinding author.

An addictively suspenseful and tautly written thriller, THE GOOD GIRL is a propulsive novel that reveals how even in the perfect family, nothing is as it seems.

Girl Crazy: 15 Literary Ladies You’ll Want to Know

By Aimee Boyer | March 29, 2016

Colleen Oakley: Author and essayist Colleen Oakley of Before I Go and Close Enough to Touch is definitely an author you should have on your list, if you’re not already looking forward to the release of her next book, You Were There Too , in early January. Oakley writes about love, loss, and following one’s heart in her latest novel, themes that we can see in her earlier works. If you’re looking for something that is heartwarming but also, somehow, makes you question everything you think you know, then Colleen Oakley is the author you should get to know this year.

March eBook Deals: 14 Books That’ll Keep You Busy Until Spring

By Off the Shelf Staff | March 2, 2023

June eBook Deals: 12 New Reads for an Eclectic Digital Library

By Off the Shelf Staff | June 2, 2022

Stephen Graham Jones: SA horror and speculative fiction writer, Stephen Graham Jones is known for the complexity of his stories and characters. In Mongrels , Jones tells the story of a young boy who lives on the outskirts of society in a world that shuns and fears him. This coming of age book makes us question what it means to be ordinary and puts Jones’ talents as a horror writer on display- the book is sometimes grisly, but it is often poignant and emotional, and makes the supernatural seem very human. Luckily, you have lots to read if you become a fan of Stephen Graham Jones; to date, he has published 22 books and counting—his next novel, Only Good Indians, is highly anticipated and publishes this May. 

If you love literary novels about ordinary people facing extraordinary events, Cummins is one of the best authors you can read. Cummins has an astounding ability to see things from multiple perspectives, and an impressive way of writing about all sides with equal empathy and clarity. The Outside Boy follows an Irish gypsy boy, Christopher Hurley, who has only ever known a life of wandering, haunted by the knowledge that his mother died giving birth to him. When his father decides to settle down in a town, Christy struggles to fit in. Then, he discovers a secret about his mother’s past, and everything changes. Moving and mystifying, The Outside Boy is a must-read from one of our favorite must-read authors — and her new book,  American Dirt, publishes January 2020. 

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Authors Index

A list of all of the authors featured at American Literature, organized alphabetically by last name (by row, left to right) so that you can find your favorite authors' stories, novels, poems and essays easily. Or use the "search" box above; mobile users should open the menu to access the search function.

Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell

Abdullah, Achmed

Adams, Andy

Ade, George

Akhmatova, Anna

Alcott, Louisa May

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey

Alger, Horatio

Alighieri, Dante

Altsheler, Joseph A.

Andersen, Hans Christian

Anderson, Sherwood

Andreyev, Leonid

Angelou, Maya

Appleton, Victor

Arthur, T.S.

Asbjornsen, Peter

Asimov, Isaac

Assis, Joaquim Maria Machado de

Atherton, Gertrude

Atwood, Margaret

Auden, W.H.

Aumonier, Stacy

Austen, Jane

Baldwin, James

Ballou, Sullivan

Balzac, Honore de

Barbour, Ralph Henry

Barr, Robert

Barrie, James M.

Barton, Clara

Basho, Matsuo

Bastiat, Frédéric

Bates, Katharine

Baum, L. Frank

Beach, Rex Ellingwood

Bell, Nancy

Bellamy, Edward

Bellamy, Francis

Bennett, Arnold

Benson, Edward

Benson, Robert Hugh

beresford, John

Berlin, Irving

Bierce, Ambrose

Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne

Blackmore, R. D.

Blackwood, Algernon

Blaisdell, Albert

Blake, William

Boccaccio, Givoanni

Boswell, James

Bradbury, Ray

Brady, Loretta

Brittain, Vera

Bronte, Emily

Bronte, Charlotte

Brown, Fredric

Browning, Robert

Browning, Elizabeth

Bryant, William

Buck, Pearl

Bunin, Ivan

Bunner, Henry

Bunyan, John

Burnett, Frances Hodgson

Burns, Robert

Burr, Amelia

Burroughs, Edgar Rice

Butler, Ellis

Byron, Lord

Capote, Truman

Carroll, Lewis

Carryl, Guy

Carver, Raymond

Cather, Willa

Cavendish, Margaret

Cervantes, Miguel de

Chambers, George F.

Chambers, Robert

Chaucer, Geoffrey

Chekhov, Anton

Chesnutt, Charles W.

Chesterton, G.K.

Chittenden, Gerald

Chopin, Kate

Christie, Agatha

Clarke, Marcus

Cohan, George

Coleridge, Samuel

Coleridge, Sara

Collins, William Wilkie

Collodi, Carlo

Comer, Cornelia

Connell, Richard

Conrad, Joseph

Cooke, Grace MacGowan

Cooper, James Fenimore

Cope, Wendy

Crane, Stephen

Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John de

Crompton, Richmal

Dahl, Roald

Davis, Richard Harding

Defoe, Daniel

Dell, Ethel M.

De Quincey, Thomas

De Vere, Aubrey

Dick, Philip

Dickens, Charles

Dickinson, Emily

Donahey, William

Donne, John

Dos Passos, John

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

Douglass, Frederick

Dowson, Ernest

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

Dreiser, Theodore

Du Bois, W.E.B.

Dumas, Alexandre

Dumas fils, Alexandre

Dunbar, Paul Laurence

Dunbar-Nelson, Alice

Dyer, Walter

Eaton, Edit Maude

Edwards, Jonathan

Edwards, Amelia Ann Blanford

Eliot, T. S.

Eliot, George

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Emmett, Daniel

Equiano, Olaudah

Everett-Green, Evelyn

Faulkner, William

Ferber, Edna

Fillmore, Parker

Fisher, Dorothy

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

FitzGerald, Edward

Flaubert, Gustave

Foote, Mary Hallock

Forster, Edward

Fox, George

Franklin, Benjamin

Franklin, Miles

Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins

Freeman, Richard

Frost, Robert

Fuller, Margaret

Galsworthy, John

Gannett, Ruth

Garshin, Vsevolod

Gaskell, Elizabeth

Ghosal, Swarnakumari

Gibran, Kahlil

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins

Gilmore, Patrick

Gissing, George

Glaspell, Susan

Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich

Goose, Mother

Gordon, Elizabeth

Gorky, Maxim

Goudiss, C. Houston

Grahame, Kenneth

Grant, Ulysses

Graves, Robert

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm

Guthrie, Woody

Hale, Edward Everett

Haley, William

Hamilton, Alexander

Hardy, Thomas

Harper, Francis

Harte, Bret

Harvey, William Fryer

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Hearn, Lafcadio

Hemingway, Ernest

Herford, Oliver

Herrick, Robert

Herrick, Robert Welch

Hesse, Hermann

Higgins, Violet Moore

Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Amadeus

Holmes, Mary Jane

Holmes, Oliver

Hopkins, Livingston

Housman, A. E.

Howe, Julia

Howells, William Dean

Hughes, Louis

Hughes, Langston

Hugo, Victor

Hunter, Evan

Hurston, Zora

Huxley, Aldous

Ibsen, Henrik

Irving, Washington

Jackson, Shirley

Jacobs, Joseph

Jacobs, W. W.

James, Montague Rhodes

James, Henry

James, Grace

Janvier, Francis

Jefferson, Thomas

Jerome, Jerome K.

Jewett, Sarah Orne

Joyce, James

Kafka, Franz

Keats, John

Kellogg, E.E.

Kerouac, Jack

Key, Francis

Kielland, Alexander

Kilmer, Joyce

King, Martin Luther

Kingsley, Charles

Kipling, Rudyard

Kronheim, Joseph Martin

Kuprin, Aleksandr

Lampton, William

Landon, Perceval

Lardner, Ring

Laughead, W.B.

Lawrence, D. H.

Lawson, Henry

Lazarus, Emma

Leacock, Stephen

Lear, Edward

Lee, Harper

Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan

Leopardi, Giacomo

Leroux, Gaston

Lewis, Clive Staples

Lewis, Sinclair

Lincoln, Natalie Sumner

Locke, John

Lofting, Hugh

London, Jack

Long, Julius

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Loon, Henrik

Lovecraft, H. P.

Lowell, James

Lucretius, Titus

Machen, Arthur

Machiavelli, Niccolo

Madison, James

Mansfield, Katherine

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

Martin, George

Maugham, William Somerset

Maupassant, Guy de

McCrae, John

McRoberts, Walter

Melville, Herman

Mencken, H.L.

Merimee, Prosper

Miles, George

Mill, John Stuart

Milne, A.A.

Milton, John

Moliere, Jean-Baptiste

Montgomery, Lucy Maud

Moore, Thomas

Morrow, W.C.

Munro (SAKI), H.H.

Nabokov, Vladimir

Nesbit, Edith

Nietzsche, Friedrich

Nightingale, Florence

Nights, Arabian

Norris, Frank

Norris, Kathleen

Northup, Solomon

Norton, Caroline

O'Brien, Fitz-James

O'Connor, Flannery

O'Flaherty, Liam

O'Keefe, James

O'Neill, Eugene

Orwell, George

Ovid, Publius

Owen, Wilfred

Page, Thomas Nelson

Paine, Thomas

Parker, Dorothy

Paterson, Banjo

Peattie, Elia W.

Pepys, Samuel

Perrault, Charles

Phelps, Elizabeth

Pierson, Clara

Poe, Edgar Allan

Polidori, John

Pope, Alexander

Porter, Katherine

Post, Melville Davisson

Potter, Beatrix

Pound, Ezra

Prevost, Marcel

Pushkin, Alexsander

Pyle, Howard

Quiller-Couch, Arthur

Richards, Laura E.

Rickford, Katherine

Riley, James

Rinehart, Mary Roberts

Roe, Edward Payson

Root, George

Rosenberg, Isaac

Rowling, J.K.

Russell, Bertrand

Saha, Arnaba

Salinger, J.D.

Sandburg, Carl

Sayers, Dorothy

Scott, Walter

Semyonov, S.T.

Sewell, Anna

Shakespeare, William

Shaw, Bernard

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Shelley, Mary

Sherman, Harold

Shiel, Matthew Phipps

Shorter, Dora

Sinclair, Upton

Smith, Adam

Smith, Clark

Smith, Samuel

Sousa, John

Sowell, Thomas

Spofford, Harriet

Spyri, Johanna

Steele, Wilbur Daniel

Stein, Gertrude

Steinbeck, John

Stephenson, Carl

Stevenson, Robert Louis

Stine, Robert

Stockton, Frank

Stoker, Bram

Stowe, Harriet Beecher

Strachey, Lytton

Stratemeyer, Edward

Stuart, Jesse

Stuart, Ruth

St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Sweetser, Kate Dickinson

Swift, Jonathan

Syrett, Netta

Tagore, Rabindranath

Tarbell, Ida

Tarkington, Newton Booth

Teasdale, Sara

Tennyson, Alfred

Thackeray, William Makepeace

Thayer, Ernest Lawrence

Thomas, Dylan

Thoreau, Henry David

Tocqueville, Alexis

Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel

Tolstoy, Leo

Tolstoy, Alexei

Travers, Pamela

Trollope, Anthony

Tupper, Tristram

Turgenev, Ivan S.

Turner, Ethel

Twain, Mark

van Dyke, Henry

Verne, Jules

Voltaire, None

Vonnegut, Kurt

Wallace, Edgar

Walpole, Horace

Washington, Booker T.

Weaver, Louise Bennett

Wells, H.G.

Wharton, Edith

Wharton, Anne Hollingsworth

Wheatley, Phillis

White, Stewart Edward

White, E.B.

Whitman, Walt

Whittier, John

Widdemer, Margaret

Wiggin, Kate Douglas

Wilcox, Ella

Wilde, Oscar

Williams, Margery

Williams, William Carlos

Wodehouse, P. G.

Wolff, Tobias

Wollstonecraft, Mary

Woolf, Virginia

Wordsworth, William

Wynne, Madeline

Wyss, Johann David

Yeats, William Butler

Yezierska, Anzia

Yonge, Charlotte M.

Zola, Emile

Apple unveils the top books of 2023 and a new Year in Review experience

Discover Year in Review

Find Reader Types

Explore the Best and Top Books and Audiobooks of 2023

• Spare by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex
• The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
• The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
• Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia and Bill Gifford
• Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
• Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
• Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
• Happy Place by Emily Henry
• Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
• The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
• The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
• Only the Dead by Jack Carr
• Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
• Year in Review is available for free for Apple Books users in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S.
• For users with at least three books marked as finished, Year in Review is available on iPhone with iOS 17.1 and iPadOS 17.1 at books.apple.com/year-in-review .
• Users can share purchased titles with up to five family members using Family Sharing.

Text of this article

November 28, 2023

Apple unveils the top books :br(l)::br(xl):of 2023 and a new Year in Review experience

Users can browse the top books and audiobooks of 2023 and explore personalized insights about the books they enjoyed this year

Apple Books is the single destination for all the books and audiobooks readers love, featuring the ability to set Reading Goals, organize books into collections, share purchases using Family Sharing, and browse personalized recommendations for new titles.

Today, Apple Books unveiled the top books and audiobooks of 2023 and launched Year in Review, a new in-app experience that helps readers to celebrate the titles, authors, and genres that defined their year. With Year in Review, users can view personalized reading highlights about the books and audiobooks they enjoyed in 2023, including their total time spent reading, the longest book or audiobook they read, the series they completed, their most-read author and genre, and their highest-rated book — all presented in a simple and engaging experience with visuals that are easy to share.

Here’s how to access Year in Review on Apple Books:

Year in Review is available on iPhone and iPad within the Read Now tab under Top Picks to users with at least three titles marked as finished.

To add books or audiobooks, readers can tap and hold on any book in the app and choose Mark as Finished. To change the finished date shown, users can hold down on the book and select Edit Finished Date. For titles read elsewhere, such as in hardcover or paperback, users can search for them in Apple Books and select Mark as Finished to add them to their Year in Review.

Year in Review uses anonymized reader insights to determine a personal reading type. There are six reader types to discover, including The Contemporary for readers of trendy titles; The Completist for readers of multiple books in a series; The Seeker for nonfiction readers; The Wanderer for multigenre readers; The Deep Diver for single-genre readers; or The Free Spirit for readers with wide-ranging interests across the book world.

At the end of a user’s Year in Review, they can see an overview of their year in Books, featuring the total books read and total minutes spent reading, with an accompanying grid of book covers they’ve finished.

To close the chapter on a remarkable year, Apple Books published the Best of 2023, an editorially curated collection of standout books and audiobooks across a variety of genres, and the most popular titles of the year. Topping the charts in many countries were two prominent celebrity memoirs that bookended 2023: Prince Harry’s Spare in January and Britney Spears’s The Woman in Me , narrated by actor Michelle Williams, in October. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros was also a must-read for fans of romance and fantasy during the spring and summer. Check out the most popular books and audiobooks of 2023 and browse the top charts for all titles on Apple Books.

Top Nonfiction Books of 2023

Top Fiction Books of 2023

Top Nonfiction Audiobooks of 2023

Top Fiction Audiobooks of 2023

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Irish author's novel among New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2023

Posted: November 29, 2023 | Last updated: November 29, 2023

A novel by an Irish author is among the 10 Best Books of 2023 as ranked by the New York Times. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray is among the top 10 fiction and nonfiction titles chosen by this year's judges.

The tragicomic family saga depicts the dysfunctional, hapless lives of the Barnes family from Ireland. Portions of the book dedicated to the lives of each of the four family members.

The judges said: "Murray makes his triumphant return with The Bee Sting, a tragicomic tale about an Irish family grappling with crises.

Read more: Three novels from Irish author Sally Rooney among the most popular books of the decade

"The Barneses — Dickie, Imelda, Cass and PJ — are a wealthy Irish clan whose fortunes begin to plummet after the 2008 financial crash. But in addition to this shared hardship, all four are dealing with demons of their own: the re-emergence of a long-kept secret, blackmail, the death of a past love, a vexing frenemy, a worrisome internet pen pal and more.

"The novel threads together the stories of the increasingly isolated Barneses, but the overall tapestry Murray weaves is not one of desolation but of hope. This is a book that showcases one family’s incredible love and resilience even as their world crumbles around them."

Paul Murray, from Dublin , featured on the Man Booker Prize shortlist this year for The Bee Sting. Paul Lynch, from Co Limerick, won the Booker Prize for Prophet Song .

10 Best Books of 2023

The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray

• Chain-Gang All-Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Eastbound, by Maylis de Kerangal

The Fraud, by Zadie Smith

North Woods, by Daniel Mason

The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, by Kerry Howley

Fire Weather, by John Vaillant

Master Slave Husband Wife, by Ilyon Woo

Some People Need Killing, by Patricia Evangelista

For the latest local news and features on Irish America, visit our homepage here .

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