New York Times Notable Books For 2006: Fiction Top 40
Explore the New York Times Notable Books of 2006: Fiction Top 40—a curated list of the year's most acclaimed novels. Discover must-read literary gems and bestselling fiction from celebrated authors.
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Against the Day
by Thomas Pynchon
A tale spanning the years between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the end of World War I features characters who are caught up …
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Alentejo Blue
by Monica Ali
A Portuguese village awaits the return of a prodigal son, which causes various desires and disappointments to collide.
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All Aunt Hagar's Children
by Edward P. Jones
In fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, five of which have been published in The New Yorker, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known …
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Arthur & George
by Julian Barnes
Tells the alliance of George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur a shabby genteel Edinburgh, their adventures, triumphs, and set-backs.
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Beasts of No Nation
by Uzodinma Iweala
In this stunning debut novel, Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil …
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Black Swan Green
by David Stephen Mitchell
A meditative novel of a young boy on the cusp of adulthood follows a single year in the life of thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor as he …
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Brookland
by Emily Barton
Set in eighteenth-century Brooklyn, this is the story of a determined and intelligent woman who is consumed by a vision of a bridge she devises …
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Digging to America
by Anne Tyler
This luminous novel brims with tender observations about what it is to be an American, and about Iranian-born Maryam Yazdam, who after 35 years in …
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Everyman
by Philip Roth
Philip Roth's new novel is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The best-selling author of The Plot Against America now …
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Golden Country
by Jennifer Gilmore
Gilmore reinvents the classic Jewish American novel in her ambitious and extraordinary debut that follows the intertwining lives of three immigrant families from the 1920s …
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Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Re-creates the 1960s struggle of Biafra to establish an independent republic in Nigeria, following the intertwined lives of the characters through a military coup, the …
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The Inhabited World
by David Long
Stuck in a state of purgatory in the Washington State house in which he lived and died, Evan Molloy, who had shot himself to death …
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Intuition
by Allegra Goodman
A trio of researchers becomes caught up in the desperate quest for a financial grant from the Philpott, a prestigious research laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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The Keep
by Jennifer Egan
"Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank whose devastating consequences changed both their lives, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in …
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Last Evenings on Earth
by Roberto Bolaño
Stories of the "failed generation" set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe.
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The Lay of the Land
by Richard Ford
Frank contemplates his life while the 2000 presidential election plays out and Thanksgiving looms on the horizon.
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Lisey's Story
by Stephen King
Two years after losing her husband of twenty-five years, Lisey looks back at the sometimes frightening intimacy that marked their marriage, her husband's successes as …
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Old Filth
by Jane Gardam
Book One in Jane Gardam's Old Filth Trilogy Sir Edward Feathers has had a brilliant career, from his early days as a lawyer in Southeast …
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One Good Turn
by Kate Atkinson
"Atkinson's bright voice rings on every page, and her sly and wry observations move the plot as swiftly as suspense turns the pages of a …
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Only Revolutions
by Mark Z. Danielewski
Moving back and forth in American history, a kaleidoscopic novel follows Hailey and Sam, two wayward teenagers, as they crash New Orleans parties, barrel up …
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The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival …
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Special Topics in Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl
Having moved from one academic outpost to another throughout her childhood at the side of her aphorism-prone father, Blue van Meer attends the elite St. …
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Strong is Your Hold
by Galway Kinnell
Pulitzer Prize winner Galway Kinnell's first new collection of poetry in more than a decade, with a bound-in CD of poems read by the author …
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Suite Française
by Irn̈e Nm̌irovsky
In 1940, several families and individuals are thrown together as they flee Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion and struggle to stay alive …
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Terrorist
by John Updike
From one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century—and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series: “A chilling tale that is perhaps …
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The Translator
by Leila Aboulela
When Sammar, a Sudanese widow living alone in Aberdeen and working as an Arabic translator at a Scottish university, takes a job with Rae, a …
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Twilight of the Superheroes
by Deborah Eisenberg
A collection of short works by the author of The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg includes the tales of a group of friends whose …
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The Uses of Enchantment
by Heidi Julavits
One autumn day in 1985, sixteen-year-old Mary Veal vanishes from her Massachusetts prep school. A few weeks later she reappers unharmed and with memory of …
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A Woman in Jerusalem
by Abraham B. Yehoshua
A victim of a suicide bombing lies nameless in a hospital morgue, and a Jerusalem newspaper accuses her employer of "gross negligence and inhumanity." Overwhelmed …