Fiction Recommendations

This whip-smart book skips through time, style, and tone with ease, as a dazzling array of complex characters struggle with who they’ve become, and with the violently changed world they find themselves in. Egan’s writing is subtle but has some pointed things to say about life, change, and humanity in general. Funny, melancholy, and captivating, this is a fresh, vibrant story that thrums with the energy of a finely tuned bass. I loved it.

This book has it all: love, intrigue, espionage, and a bit of history holding it all together. Taking us back to a time when a scraped knee could lead to death, Life photojournalist Claire Shipley is assigned to report on the development of penicillin, a drug that could save the war. If you like historical fiction with a strong female lead, I highly recommend this one.

When you hear the premise of Room, you may cringe. It’s a dark one. The book centers around a 5-year-old and his mother, who have been imprisoned in a man’s backyard for years. But the voice of Jack, the playful, smart protagonist, lifts the story out of darkness and puts it on par with novels like The Lovely Bones. It’s a staggeringly good read, the sort of book you can fall into for hours and hours.

In this page-turner, Bender paints a picture of a contemporary suburban family with an odd twist. At a very young age, the daughter discovers a hidden talent that is both a blessing and a curse: She can taste the emotion of the cook in any food she eats. Although fantastical, this tale of family and coming of age poses very real struggles with love and accepting who you are.

Gordon Richards has four wives, 28 children, three houses, a failing business, and a potential mistress, which is a lot for any guy to handle. His world is chaotic, but in the hands of Brady Udall, you can’t help but want to linger there for awhile, to take in the sweeping landscape, the strange fundamentalists, and the secret broken hearts. It’s hilarious and strange, and at times devastatingly familiar. Don’t skip this gem of a novel!

Our poet of the hyper-distracted age, David Foster Wallace, died way too young, but he left the world with the brilliant beginnings of a final novel, The Pale King. First excerpted in the New Yorker, this is a story about a man with perhaps the least interesting job known to humanity—an IRS tax-return agent—who struggles to live in bliss and contentment within the dark void of excruciating boredom.

Sapphire’s writing has long held a place in my heart. Sharp, taut, brave, and honest, I was overjoyed that she gained an even wider readership when her novel, Push, was made into the movie Precious. Now, 10 years in the making, Sapphire is coming out with Push’s sequel. In The Kid, we are handed the story of Abdul, Precious’ son, and his own journey about how to make it through hardship and come out whole.

Makkai has written a debut novel good enough to put you in a stupor of awe and appreciation. Lucy Hull, a young children’s librarian, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, 10-year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. Ian is addicted to reading, but needs Lucy’s help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library with an escape plan and needing her help to carry it out. What follows is a page-turning adventure with heart and depth, questioning how far we should go to rescue someone from their own story, and when we should step back and hope they can survive it and learn for themselves. This book is beautiful, engaging, funny, and heartbreaking (but in a way that works).

With total candor, award-winning writer Francisco Goldman describes his life with his wife, Aura Estrada, who died tragically in 2007. This is only a novel in that he changed names to protect some specific identities; otherwise the story is true. He and Aura had a short married life, but one can tell they were happy. Say Her Name is an authentic work of the heart and soul, and the feeling—the memorial incarnation that this book creates—is monumental. This book about tragic death is a gift for the living. —Library Journal

This astounding debut is an intimate but expansive novel about love and loss that is magnificent in scope and detail, ranging from a modern-day war zone to tales of an escaped tiger and a man who seems invulnerable to death. I was knocked off my feet by the sheer beauty of Obreht’s sentences. Fiction like this doesn’t come around very often; I predict that we will be reading Téa Obreht’s novels for a very long time.