Dan Rather
[isbn]
After a long career as one of our best-known and loved journalists, Dan Rather has made himself one of the most essential voices to read in our current political climate. What Unites Us is a hopeful, thoughtful, and rational book about how we can come together as citizens even — and especially — in profoundly troubling and divisive times.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Betsy Bonner
[isbn]
While attending a bookseller conference inn January (a lifetime ago), I started The Book of Atlantis Black on the plane, and absolutely could not rest until I finished it a couple of days later. The more I talked to other booksellers, the more I heard the same story — once begun, no one could resist its pull. The Book of Atlantis Black is the fascinating, tragic, and utterly compelling narrative of Betsy Bonner's search for what... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
[isbn]
Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi call Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You a remix of Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped From the Beginning. (In a presentation to booksellers this winter, the authors called Stamped "Junior" and Stamped From the Beginning "Senior." During that discussion, Reynolds also acknowledged that he initially didn't know if he was the right person to translate Kendi's work for a... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Max Porter
[isbn]
Lanny is a marvel — an extraordinary mythological examination of childhood and a gorgeous prose extravaganza of voices and narratives. Max Porter somehow captures the deep magic and blunt prosaic rhythms of life in the same sentences. Completely unique and absolutely worthwhile.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Valeria Luiselli
[isbn]
One way I've been describing Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive is that it reads like a classic — as though even now, you can tell that this is a novel that will be pored over and taught, and will carry its gravity, grace, and intelligence into the future. But it's also immensely compelling, and the second half is so page-turning I raced through on first read, desperate to find out what happened. The story of this family is both... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Joshua D Mezrich
[isbn]
When Death Becomes Life is a beautifully written tribute to science, medicine, and humanity, viewed through the capable lens of a transplant surgeon. Joshua Mezrich synthesizes over 100 years of medical history, shares extraordinary stories about his patients, and writes emotionally and joyously about his own life's work. A remarkable and inspiring memoir.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Pam Houston
[isbn]
Deep Creek, Pam Houston's new memoir, details her life over decades on her 120-acre ranch in Colorado, including rich, vivid details about rural life, and honest, sometimes searing stories about Houston's own history. For any fans of her earlier work, or anyone who loves strong female voices or nature memoirs, Deep Creek hits the spot.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Samantha Hunt, Maggie Nelson
[isbn]
Samantha Hunt's amazing first novel, The Seas, has been out of print for several years; I am so happy that Tin House has republished it in this gorgeous new edition, so that a whole new group of readers can enjoy Hunt's graceful, brilliant prose. The Seas is a beautiful and feverish tale of grief, love, and magic narrated by a possible mermaid. Hunt's unique voice and vision are intoxicating.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Adam Rex and Claire Keane
[isbn]
Adam Rex — author of the utterly amazing Nothing Rhymes With Orange, among many others — brings us the hilarious, thoughtful, surprisingly poignant story of a curious little girl and a villain who wants to take over the world. (Why? To cover it in yarn, mostly.) Why? is the perfect book for anyone with a "why" child (or who is a "why?" adult), or wants, in the funniest way possible, to get beyond the binary of good guys and bad... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Mary Ruefle
[isbn]
I came late to Mary Ruefle's poetry, influenced by her many passionate admirers among the Powell's staff. Her language is at times unadorned, somewhat like W. S. Merwin's, filled with grace, revelatory juxtapositions, and the beauty of the natural world. If you haven't yet read her, let the extraordinary Dunce, her 19th collection, be your starting point as well.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Sean Carroll
[isbn]
Sean Carroll, author of From Eternity to Here, takes on some of the most challenging and mind-bending questions in modern physics in his new book, Something Deeply Hidden. In lucid prose, using accessible and hard-to-refute arguments, Carroll lays out his case that there are more than one of us — of everyone — in the universe. A persuasive, fascinating, and landmark work of physics.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Edward O Wilson
[isbn]
Edward O. Wilson's latest book is a beautifully written and persuasive argument for resisting the separation of the arts and sciences, and understanding how — combined — they hold the keys to the most essential human traits. The Origins of Creativity is a graceful, intelligent, and crucial work.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Benjamin Moser
[isbn]
Benjamin Moser's extraordinary biography of Susan Sontag is a great gift to her many fans, and a wonderful introduction to those who might not know her work. Sontag: Her Life and Work is a remarkably thorough and utterly compelling portrait of one of the most important literary icons of the 20th century, and a necessary and intelligent companion to her work.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Meaghan O'Connell
[isbn]
As the mom of a three-year-old, I've read a ton of books on motherhood in the last few years, as there have been an abundance of them! And Now We Have Everything is one of the absolute best. Meaghan O'Connell is darkly hilarious, intelligent, poignant, and absolutely honest — and she's a fantastic writer as well. This one is not to be missed.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Amanda Goldblatt
[isbn]
Hard Mouth is one of the most unique novels about grieving I've ever read, with an utterly original narrative voice. Denny lives a solitary life working in a laboratory in Washington, DC, hanging out with her family, her longtime best friend, and her imaginary friend Gene. When her dad's cancer comes back and he decides to forego treatment, her existence is upended in almost every way imaginable. Thoughtful, dark, and page-turning,... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Charles D'Ambrosio
[isbn]
Charles D'Ambrosio's essays are excitingly good. They are relevant in the way that makes you read them out loud, to anyone who happens to be around. Their subjects include Hell House, a Christian haunted house in Texas designed for conversion; Mary Kay Letourneau (at the time of her trial); whaling rights for the Makah Tribe in Alaska; his brother's suicide; and the title piece, about life in a Russian orphanage. D'Ambrosio's essays do what good... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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David Quammen
[isbn]
David Quammen, one of the most beautifully lyrical — though also accessible — science and nature writers of our current age, has written an extraordinary chronicle of horizontal gene transfer (genes transferring across species lines — including eight percent of human DNA). In The Tangled Tree, Quammen illuminates this fascinating discovery with colorful narrative and thorough explanations of its wide-reaching implications.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Lara Prior Palmer
[isbn]
Rough Magic is the extraordinary story of a 19-year-old woman who, with no formal training, ended up winning the Mongol Derby, the longest and one of the most difficult horse races in the world. Lara Prior-Palmer's memoir of her experience in the race is funny and raw; her voice is uniquely captivating, and the pace (as might be expected) is page-turning. An inspiring and enthralling tale.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Mary Norris
[isbn]
Mary Norris's Greek to Me is as warm, beautiful, and inviting as Greece itself. Norris is as witty and charming as ever, and her paean to Greek language and culture is irresistible.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Luis Alberto Urrea
[isbn]
Luis Alberto Urrea is a gorgeous, empathetic, and playful writer. In this expansive portrait of a Mexican American family celebrating the lives and deaths of two of their oldest and most beloved members, Urrea's generosity, vision, and humor are fully revealed.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Edward O. Wilson
[isbn]
Though briefer than some of his earlier tomes, Genesis displays the same razor-sharp intelligence and fascinating theories that Edward O. Wilson is known for. In his new work, Wilson looks at animal societies that exhibit altruism or cooperation to learn more about those qualities in human society. Engrossing and surprising.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Juli Berwald
[isbn]
I have long been fascinated with jellyfish, and this new book absolutely lived up to that obsession. Juli Berwald's Spineless is to jellyfish what The Soul of an Octopus was for those animals; incredibly compelling and beautifully written, Berwald's combination of memoir and science writing is one of the best nonfiction books I've read this year.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Shelley Jackson
[isbn]
As a longtime fan of Shelley Jackson, I was incredibly excited to read her new book — and it exceeded even my sizable expectations. Riddance is a wild dream written in extraordinarily precise and stunning prose. A ghost story, an alternative scientific universe, and the story of some thrillingly compelling characters, Riddance is the most original and innovative novel I've read in years.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Claudia Rankine
[isbn]
Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric is a momentous achievement in modern poetry, but also in American culture. To create this portrait of racism and microaggressions in 21st-century life, Rankine employs a prism of subjects, lenses, and perspectives in gorgeous language and innovative poetic style (the book includes visual imagery, prose pieces, and quotes from the media). Citizen is necessary, absorbing, and startling,... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Siri Hustvedt
[isbn]
Siri Hustvedt spans two worlds in her writing, with her gorgeous, lyrical, often dreamlike fiction, and her nonfiction writing on science, art, and culture. The Blazing World is a novel, but an unusual one — a tour de force about a larger-than-life female artist ("Harry") whose three great works used "masks" — male artists who claimed the works as their own. Through journal excerpts, interviews, and critical essays from the art world,... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Richard Powers
[isbn]
Richard Powers is a national treasure. All of his books are astounding; he writes, in dazzling, poetic language, about subjects ranging from virtual reality to classical music, corporate capitalism to the genetic code. His novels explore sweeping, global concerns, but their essential questions often come down to what it means to be human, to live in concert with each other in our larger world. The Echo Maker has a fascinating setup (a... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Laura Van Den Berg
[isbn]
Laura van den Berg's new novel, The Third Hotel, is an exquisite exploration of grief, travel, and intimacy. It's also got an extremely compelling story: Clare, an elevator sales rep, goes alone to a horror movie festival in Havana after her husband, a film scholar, dies in a car accident. A few days later, to her shock, she sees him standing in front of a museum. Thus begins a surreal, intuitive, unsettling journey through Clare's past... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Margaret Atwood
[isbn]
Atwood's classic dystopian novel of a terrifying (and terrifyingly plausible) future America has rewarded rereading like no other book; I've probably read it 30 times by now. The world of the narrator, Offred (from "Of Fred" — women no longer have their own names), is chilling, but she is a magnificent survivor and chronicler, and the details of everything from mundane daily life to ritualized sex and violence to her reminiscences of the time... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Marilynne Robinson
[isbn]
Set in 1956, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is a letter from the elderly Reverend John Ames to his very young son. Ames has lived all of his life in Gilead, Iowa, and the novel delves into the history of the area through the characters of Ames's father and grandfather — also ministers, but deeply divided on ideas such as pacifism, duty, and the abolitionist movement. And eventually, when John Ames Boughton, Ames's namesake and godson,... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Haruki Murakami
[isbn]
In Men Without Women, Murakami's first collection of short stories in several years, the master storyteller continues his exploration of love, loneliness, slightly alternate realities, and (of course) cats. Dryly funny, surreal, and bewitching, these seven tales are classic Murakami.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Leslie Jamison
[isbn]
Leslie Jamison, author of the extraordinary essay collection (and surprise bestseller), The Empathy Exams, returns with a very different but equally captivating book. The Recovering intertwines Jamison's story of her journey to sobriety with her thoughts about other addicted writers, their work, and their struggles with dependency; it's an incredibly self-aware, unusual, and engrossing memoir. At the beginning of the book,... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Chris Hayes
[isbn]
Chris Hayes, the Emmy Award-winning news anchor, has written a searing and necessary work examining the historical relationship between race relations, policing, and incarceration in this country. A powerful and persuasive book that examines American history through a new and relevant perspective.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Christopher J. Yates
[isbn]
Consistently surprising, though always in a completely earned way, Grist Mill Road is a remarkable and unusual thriller that transcends its genre to become a darkly literary exploration of character and what it means to reckon with our pasts.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Brigette Barrager
[isbn]
Uni is different from other unicorns — she believes that little girls are real. Amy Krouse Rosenthal's delightful and adorable board book is a perfect tale to read aloud to wide-eyed toddlers.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Philip Pullman
[isbn]
Philip Pullman's Golden Compass trilogy was one of my favorite series of the last decade, so his new book, the first volume in this prequel (or "equel," as he calls it), was by far one of my most highly anticipated books of the year. I'm happy to say it does not disappoint. Pullman is at the height of his powers, including a page-turning plot, unforgettable characters, and a thoughtful and relevant philosophy behind the mesmerizing world he has... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Peter Wohlleben, Jane Billinghurst
[isbn]
As in his astonishing work, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben opens a portal into a world that is largely invisible to people, but is both fascinating and essential to the functioning of our larger world. The Inner Life of Animals is an eye-opening and surprising look at pigs, deer, magpies, horses, butterflies, and many other animals as they grieve, feel, think, and plan. You will not look at animals the same way after... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Stephen King and Owen King
[isbn]
Stephen and Owen King have combined their considerable powers to write a chilling, moving, and eerie novel for our times. What would happen if all the women in the world went to sleep — and never woke up? Sleeping Beauties answers that question with grace, humor, and terrifying yet fascinating consequences.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Jessica Bruder
[isbn]
I first encountered Jessica Bruder's work in Harper's; her absorbing article contained the seeds of this book. Nomadland is the fascinating, frequently tragic story of a hidden population in America: older people living in camper vans and RVs who crisscross the country in search of often grueling work. Amazon and others rely on this low-cost labor pool, and we owe it to ourselves to hear these untold stories.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Peskimo
[isbn]
Combining the excellent artwork and chunky, easy to hold design of the Block series (Alphablock, Cityblock, Dinoblock, and more) with construction equipment and building machines? Toddler gold. Buildablock will be a huge hit in your household with the five-and-under set.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Hilary Mantel
[isbn]
Hilary Mantel's Giving Up the Ghost is one of the most unusual memoirs I've ever read. In addition to being an extraordinary writer (she is the first woman to have been awarded the Booker Prize twice), she has had an extraordinary life, strewn with loss, pain, and the supernatural. Mantel moved to Botswana and Saudi Arabia with her husband, whom she divorced, then later remarried. She suffered much of her life with an extremely painful... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Andre Dubus III
[isbn]
Andre Dubus III is most famous for his third book, House of Sand and Fog, an Oprah's Book Club pick that was made into an Academy Award–nominated movie. Dubus might be almost as well known because of his father, Andre Dubus, who is widely considered to have been one of the best short story writers of the 20th century. Townie, Dubus III's memoir, recounts his days growing up with and without his father, becoming a fighter, and... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Sarah Manguso
[isbn]
This slim volume contains poetic multitudes about time, mortality, motherhood, and writing. (Though very different, it's an interesting intellectual companion to Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts.) Sarah Manguso kept a diary for 25 years, which had swollen to an almost monstrous 800,000 words, as an act against a kind of terror of forgetting. After she had a son, she "began to inhabit time differently," and the result is this jewel of a... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Sherri Duskey Rinker, Tom Lichtenheld
[isbn]
Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site and Mighty, Mighty Construction Site are perennial favorites in our household (and have spawned an enduring love of all things machine). This new addition to the series is adorable, and with its chunky pages and labelled machine parts, suitable for both an even younger audience and longtime Construction Site fans.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Adam Rex
[isbn]
Nothing Rhymes with Orange might be my favorite picture book of the year (and it's only July). Adam Rex's rhymes, asides, and illustrations are pitch-perfect, just bizarre enough, and outright hilarious for adults and kids alike. Do you want your three-year-old rhyming "lychee" with "Nietzsche" and reciting, "The berries joke with honeydew, like people who are funny do!"? Yes. Yes, you do.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Finn Murphy
[isbn]
Fascinating, funny, surprising, and insightful, The Long Haul is filled with great characters and first-rate storytelling. My husband, who used to drive trucks, also loved it, and says, "Murphy knows the game and avoids the trappings of the trucking myth, accepting the reality that during months of sometimes tedious driving, you can catch glimpses of unfiltered universal honesty and beauty."
Recommended by Jill O.
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Alexis M. Smith
[isbn]
Twenty years after a great earthquake has changed life dramatically in the Pacific Northwest, two Puget Sound childhood friends reconvene on Marrow Island, where colonists may have found a secret to rebuilding ecosystems. Marrow Island is a graceful, beautifully written, surprising, and suspenseful novel from Alexis Smith, author of Glaciers (and former Powell's employee!).
Recommended by Jill O.
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Joe Hill
[isbn]
The Fireman is utterly fantastic (in both senses of the word). Joe Hill conveys an organic, inventive, comprehensive, and incredibly compelling vision of the possibilities of the near future. Full of beautiful and surprising imagery and incisive explorations of human nature, it is by far Hill's best book to date.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Samantha Hunt
[isbn]
Mr. Splitfoot is one of those rare books in which both the language and the story take center stage. I was hooked by the remarkable prose and then compelled by the inventive plot and the (somewhat literally) fantastic characters. It is a beautiful, funny, bizarre, and wholly original tale that manages to incorporate love, death, motherhood, séances, and ghost activism.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Jonathan Lethem
[isbn]
A Gambler's Anatomy is quintessential Lethem — Alexander Bruno, a good-looking, charming backgammon gambler who believes he's telepathic, is felled in Berlin by a blot in his vision that turns out to be an almost inoperable tumor. A bleak, funny, fascinating novel in Lethem's intelligent, generous voice.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Ann Patchett
[isbn]
Commonwealth feels both contemporary and instantly classic; it's a beautiful, empathetic novel that manages to be surprising but somehow comfortable. With each new book, Ann Patchett just keeps upping her game.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Rohinton Mistry
[isbn]
A Fine Balance floored me; it was more emotionally affecting than almost any other book I've read. Mistry's sweeping, epic story, fantastic cast of characters, and gorgeous sensory imagery paints a full-to-bursting portrait of India and its people. Dickensian in scope and devastating in impact, A Fine Balance is one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Halldor Laxness
[isbn]
Independent People is a novel of contrasts, especially in its nuanced exploration of character: isolation and family, socialist ideals and the guilt of betrayal, symbol and dream against the brutal truth of nature. Though Laxness's prose is lucid and smooth, his development and depth of image can be as complex as Joyce's or Woolf's. Unusually for epics, especially one in which man's undoing waits in every change of weather,... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Julio Cortazar
[isbn]
Pablo Neruda has famously said, "People who do not read Cortázar are doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease." Cortázar is an elixir; Hopscotch is precise and brilliant and disturbing as hell. Reading Hopscotch is a visceral, architectural experience. Although at times Cortázar delves into irony, the questions of truth and of relevance in fiction — of how to look at the absurdity of our own lives and find both... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Italo Calvino
[isbn]
Invisible Cities is an exquisite book, fantastical and glittering and strange. Marco Polo and Kublai Khan sit together in a garden in the evening, and Marco Polo regales Khan with tales of cities he has encountered — cities of trade, of water, of sand, and also cities of the dead, of the mad, of dreams. Calvino's brilliant, quicksilver mind is on full display here, mapping the desires and fears of our human condition onto an... (read more)
Recommended by Jill O.
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Tom Bissell
[isbn]
Tom Bissell has written about subjects as varied as video games, the Aral Sea, and Werner Herzog. In Apostle, he turns his ever-curious mind to early Christianity. Always intelligent, fascinating, and frequently quite funny, Apostle is Bissell's exploration of Christian history and faith. For lovers of essays or narrative nonfiction, Bissell should be on your list.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Jo Nesbo
[isbn]
A fable-like stand-alone tale, Nesbø's Blood on Snow is much briefer than the entries in the author's Harry Hole series, but his talent for flawed, engaging protagonists and clear, controlled prose is on display. A small but gorgeous gem of a mystery novel.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Kate Atkinson
[isbn]
Atkinson's companion to Life after Life lives up to that fantastic novel (a tall order indeed). A God in Ruins tells the story of Teddy, the beloved brother of Ursula and a pilot in WWII. His family, loves, struggles, and dreams are detailed with Atkinson's penetrating prose and inventive vision.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Diane Les Becquets
[isbn]
Les Becquets's debut is both elegantly written and plotted, but at its core, the novel is an intelligent and unusual character study of two very strong, very different women. Amy Raye and Pru will stay with you long after you finish this evocative, lyrical work.
Recommended by Jill O.
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Elvis Costello
[isbn]
Clocking in at a whopping 688 pages and covering his entire life and career, Elvis Costello's memoir is not light on detail. Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink is the funny, moving, unique story of one of the best pop musicians working today (and, somewhat unfairly, he can tell stories and craft prose almost as well as he can write music).
Recommended by Jill O.
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Stephen King
[isbn]
King's short stories have always been some of his strongest work, even if they've often been overlooked. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams features new and classic King stories, with intriguing commentary about how and why they came into being. If you haven't experienced the uniquely unsettling nature of King's short fiction, this is the perfect place to begin.
Recommended by Jill O.
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