Best of the Year in Fiction..So Far (in no particular order)
Discover the best fiction books of the year so far! Explore our curated list of top-rated novels across genres—must-read titles for every book lover.
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The History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But it wasn't always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book. . . . Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of "extraordinary depth and beauty" (Newsday).
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No Country for Old Men
by Cormac McCarthy
When he stumbles upon a bloody massacre, a cache of heroin, and more than two million in cash during a hunting trip, Llewelyn Moss removes the money, a decision that draws him and his young wife into the middle of a violent confrontation.
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The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova
An "innovative" (The New Yorker) retelling of the story of Dracula. Told with the flourish and poise of a talented storyteller, Kostova turns the age-old tale into a compelling "late night page-turner" (San Francisco Chronicle) When a young woman discovers a cache of ancient letters, she is thrown into the turbulent history of her parents' dark pasts. Uncovering a labyrinthine trail of clues, she begins to reconstruct a staggering history of deceit and violence. Debut novelist Elizabeth Kostova creates an adventure of monumental proportions, a relentless tale that blends fact and fantasy, history and the present, with an assurance that is almost unbearably suspenseful and utterly unforgettable.
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Misfortune
by Wesley Stace
A rich, outrageous, Dickensian novel in the comic tradition of The Crimson Petal and the White about a boy raised as a girl in the richest home in 19th century England.
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Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination. Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.
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Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
A reunion with two childhood friends draws Kathy and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the English countryside, and a confrontation with the truth about their childhoods.
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The R. Crumb Handbook
by R. Crumb
The R.Crumb Handbook tells the story of how a loser-schmuck became a culturalcon, and is more than just another celebrity tell-all sexploitation. Thisrand new hardback collection of original cartoons with never beforeublished work, takes the reader on a unique journey through the life andimes of one of the 20th century's most notorious and influential counterulture artists.;"Crumbs material comes out of a deep sense of the absurdityf human life." - Robert Hughes, Art Critic;The only underground cartoonisto be accepted by the fine art world, the R.Crumb Handbook is divided intohe four enemies of man: FEAR; CLARITY; POWER; OLD AGE;Working with his oldrinking buddy and co-author Pete Poplasky, the four chapters are easilyigested. With over 400 pages of cartoons and photographs, Crumb's oftenontroversially-regarded views toward Disneyland, growing up in America,ippie love, art galleries, and turning 60 are revealed.;By tracing hisevelopment as a cartoonist from his tormented childhood in the 1940s througho his coming of age as an artist in the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s,
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The First Hundred Days
by Brian K. Vaughan
After growing tired of risking his life, America's first superhero Mitchell Hundred retires from masked crime fighting and runs for mayor of New York City, but he discovers that he has more to worry about than just budget problems.
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Two Trains Running
by Andrew H. Vachss
In a thrilling departure, Vachss, the creator of the Burke novels, takes readers back to 1959 in this masterful crime novel that is also an epic story of postwar America.
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Six Bad Things
by Charlie Huston
Hank Thompson is living off the map in Mexico with a bagful of cash that the Russian mafia wants back and many, many secrets. So when a Russian backpacker shows up in town asking questions, Hank tries to play it cool. But he knows the jig is up when the backpacker mentions the money . . . and the family Hank left behind. Suddenly Hank’s in a desperate race to get to his parents in California before anyone can harm them. Along the way he’ll face Federales and Border Patrol, mafiosi and vigilantes, extortionists and drug dealers, and a couple of psychotic surf bums with an ax to grind. From the golden beaches of the Yucatán to the seedy strip clubs of Vegas, Charlie Huston opens a door to the squalid underworld of crime and corruption–and invites the reader to live it in the extreme.