The Best New Books Publishing in 2016

2016

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A Bear Called Paddington
by Michael Bond
HarperCollins Publishers, 01/05/2016
 
Paddington Bear had traveled all the way from Peru when the Browns first met him in Paddington Station. Since then, their lives have never been quite ...more
Literary Fiction
City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp
by Ben Rawlence
Picador, 01/05/2016
 
Situated hundreds of miles from any other settlement, deep within the inhospitable desert of northern Kenya where only thorn bushes grow, Dadaab is a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Inside the O'Briens: A Novel
by Lisa Genova
Gallery Books, 01/05/2016
 
Joe O'Brien is a forty-three-year-old police officer from the Irish Catholic neighborhood of Charlestown, Massachusetts. A devoted husband, proud ...more
Literary Fiction
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
by Ed Tarkington
Algonquin Books, 01/05/2016
 
Welcome to Spencerville, Virginia, 1977. Eight-year-old Rocky worships his older brother, Paul. Sixteen and full of rebel cool, Paul spends his days ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author
by Herman Wouk
Simon & Schuster, 01/05/2016
 
Many years ago, the great British philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin urged Herman Wouk to write his autobiography. Wouk responded, "Why me? I'm nobody." ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Shame and Wonder: Essays
by David Searcy
Kids@Random, 01/05/2016
 
Expansive in scope but deeply personal in perspective, the pieces in Shame and Wonder are born of a vast, abiding curiosity, one that has led Searcy ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Essays
 Debut Author
The Children's Home
by Charles Lambert
Scribner, 01/05/2016
 
In a sprawling estate, willfully secluded, lives Morgan Fletcher, the disfigured heir to a fortune of mysterious origins. Morgan spends his days in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Core of the Sun
by Johanna Sinisalo
Black Cat, 01/05/2016
 
Set in an alternative historical present, in a "eusistocracy" - an extreme welfare state that holds public health and social stability above all else,...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Family Tree: A Lynching in Georgia, a Legacy of Secrets, and My Search for the Truth
by Karen Branan
Atria Books, 01/05/2016
 
Harris County, Georgia, 1912. A white man, the beloved nephew of the county sheriff, is shot dead on the porch of a black woman. Days later, the ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Past
by Tessa Hadley
Harper, 01/05/2016
 
With five novels and two collections of stories, Tessa Hadley has earned a reputation as a fiction writer of remarkable gifts. She brings all of her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Travelers Rest
by Keith Lee Morris
Little Brown & Company, 01/05/2016
 
The Addisons - Julia and Tonio, ten-year-old Dewey, and derelict Uncle Robbie - are driving home, cross-country, after collecting Robbie from yet ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Vagabond: A Thriller
by Gerald Seymour
Thomas Dunne Books, 01/05/2016
 
MI5 officer Winnie Monks has never forgotten - or forgiven - the death of a young agent on her team at the hands of a former Russian Army Major turned...more
When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain: History's Unknown Chapters
by Giles Milton
Picador, 01/05/2016
 
The first installment in Giles Milton's outrageously entertaining series, History's Unknown Chapters: colorful and accessible, intelligent and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Winter
by Christopher Nicholson
Europa Editions, 01/05/2016
 
A celebrated author, in the winter of his life, awaits a visit from a beautiful young actress - the leading lady in a staging of his most famous ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination
by Richard Mabey
W.W. Norton & Company, 01/11/2016
 
The Cabaret of Plants is a rich, sweeping work of botanical history by the illustrious naturalist Richard Mabey. Plants have been central to human ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
A Taste for Nightshade
by Martine Bailey
Thomas Dunne Books, 01/12/2016
 
Manchester 1787. When budding young criminal Mary Jebb swindles Michael Croxon's brother with a blank pound note, he chases her into the night and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
And Again
by Jessica Chiarella
Touchstone, 01/12/2016
 
Would you live your life differently if you were given a second chance? Hannah, David, Connie, and Linda - four terminally ill patients - have been ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Dictator: Cicero Trilogy #3
by Robert Harris
Knopf, 01/12/2016
 
At the age of forty-eight, Cicero - the greatest orator of his time - is in exile, separated from his wife and children, tormented by his sense of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Even the Dead: A Quirke Novel
by Benjamin Black
Henry Holt and Company, 01/12/2016
 
Perhaps Quirke has been down among the dead too long. Lately the Irish pathologist has suffered hallucinations and blackouts, and he fears the cause ...more
Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World
by Katherine Zoepf
Penguin Books, 01/12/2016
 
For more than a decade, Katherine Zoepf has lived in or traveled throughout the Arab world, reporting on the lives of women, whose role in the region ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Good People
by Robert Lopez
Bellevue Literary Press, 01/12/2016
 
In these twenty stories, a motley cast of obsessive, self-deluded outsiders narrate their darker moments, which include kidnapping, voyeurism, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Hunters in the Dark
by Lawrence Osborne
Hogarth Books, 01/12/2016
 
Adrift in Cambodia and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher, 28-year-old Englishman Robert Grieve decides to go ...more
I Am Your Judge: A Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein Novel
by Nele Neuhaus
Minotaur Books, 01/12/2016
 
Police Detective Pia Kirchhoff is about to leave on her long-delayed honeymoon when she receives a phone call. An elderly woman has been shot and ...more
Thrillers
Oblivion
by Sergei Lebedev (Author), Antonina W. Bouis (Translator)
New Vessel Press, 01/12/2016
 
In one of the first 21st century Russian novels to probe the legacy of the Soviet prison camp system, a young man travels to the vast wastelands of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Poor Your Soul
by Mira Ptacin
Soho Press, 01/12/2016
 
At twenty-eight, Mira Ptacin discovered she was pregnant. Though it was unplanned, she embraced the idea of starting a family and became engaged to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Supernotes: A Thriller
by Agent Kasper
Nan A. Talese, 01/12/2016
 
Agent Kasper is a man with a staggering résumé: a former police officer, a former airline pilot, a firearms expert, a highly accomplished ...more
The Covenant: A Jackie Lyons Mystery
by Jeff Crook
Minotaur Books, 01/12/2016
 
When photographer and former Memphis police detective Jackie Lyons finds Sam Loftin's lifeless body in the same location where his daughter died five ...more
The Expatriates: A Novel
by Janice Y. K. Lee
Viking, 01/12/2016
 
Janice Y. K. Lee's blockbuster hit debut, The Piano Teacher, was called "immensely satisfying" by People, "intensely readable" by O, The ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Invitation-Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea's Abduction Project
by Robert S. Boynton
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 01/12/2016
 
Throughout the late 1970s and early '80s, dozens of Japanese citizens were abducted from coastal Japanese towns by North Korean commandos. In what ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Shut Eye
by Belinda Bauer
Grove Press, 01/12/2016
 
The Shut Eye is a spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat thriller about a woman who gets involved with a psychic who may be able to find her missing son. ...more
This Census-Taker
by China Miéville
Bantam Doubleday Dell, 01/12/2016
 
In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a profoundly traumatic event. He tries—and fails—to flee. Left alone with his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
When Breath Becomes Air
by Paul Kalanithi
Random House, 01/12/2016
 
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Herding Hemingway's Cats: Understanding How Our Genes Work
by Kat Arney
Bloomsbury USA, 01/14/2016
 
Paperback Original.

The language of genes has become common parlance. We know they make our eyes blue, our hair curly, and they control our risks of...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
What It Takes
by Jude Sierra
Interlude Press, 01/14/2016
 
Moments after Milo Graham's family relocate to Cape Cod, he meets Andrew Witherell - launching a lifelong friendship built on a foundation of deep ...more
Literary Fiction
A Song for the Brokenhearted
by William Shaw
Mulholland, 01/19/2016
 
After being wounded in the line of duty, Detective Sergeant Breen recuperates on the family farm of his former partner, Helen Tozer. To fill the long ...more
Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World
by Kevin Bales
Spiegel & Grau, 01/19/2016
 
A leading expert on modern-day slavery, Kevin Bales has traveled to some of the world's most dangerous places documenting and battling human ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body
by Jo Marchant
Crown, 01/19/2016
 
Have you ever felt a surge of adrenaline after narrowly avoiding an accident? Salivated at the sight (or thought) of a sour lemon? Felt turned on just...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
In a Different Key: The Story of Autism
by John Donvan, Caren Zucker
Crown, 01/19/2016
 
Nearly seventy-five years ago, Donald Triplett of Forest, Mississippi became the first child diagnosed with autism. Beginning with...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Midnight in St. Petersburg
by Vanora Bennett
Thomas Dunne Books, 01/19/2016
 
St. Petersburg, 1911: Inna Feldman has fled the pogroms of the south to take refuge with distant relatives in Russia's capital. Welcomed by the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Orphan X: An Evan Smoak Novel
by Gregg Hurwitz
Minotaur Books, 01/19/2016
 
The Nowhere Man is a legendary figure spoken about only in whispers. It's said that when he's reached by the truly desperate and deserving, the ...more
Queen of Spies: Daphne Park, Britain's Cold War Spy Master
by Paddy Hayes
Atheneum Books, 01/19/2016
 
From living in a tin-roofed shack north of Dar-es-Salaam to becoming Baroness Park of Monmouth, Daphne Park led a most unusual life - one that ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Real Tigers: A Slough House Novel
by Mick Herron
Soho Press, 01/19/2016
 
London: Slough House is the MI5 branch where disgraced operatives are reassigned after they've messed up too badly to be trusted with real ...more
River Road
by Carol Goodman
Touchstone, 01/19/2016
 
Nan Lewis - a creative writing professor at a state university in upstate New York - is driving home from a faculty holiday party after finding out ...more
The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
by Bill Bryson
Doubleday, 01/19/2016
 
In 1995 Bill Bryson got into his car and took a weeks-long farewell motoring trip about England before moving his family back to the United States. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
The Stargazer's Sister
by Carrie Brown
Pantheon Books, 01/19/2016
 
This exquisitely imagined novel opens as William rescues Caroline from a life of drudgery in Germany and brings her to England and a world of music ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War
by Ian Buruma
Penguin Books, 01/19/2016
 
During the almost six years England was at war with Nazi Germany, Winifred and Bernard Schlesinger, Ian Buruma's grandparents, and the film director ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
What Belongs to You
by Garth Greenwell
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 01/19/2016
 
On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia's National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Illegal
by Lawrence Hill
W.W. Norton & Company, 01/25/2016
 
Lawrence Hill spellbound readers with Someone Knows My Name (made into the television mini-series, The Book of Negroes), hailed as "transporting" (...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Unfinished World: And Other Stories
by Amber Sparks
Liveright / WW Norton, 01/25/2016
 
In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks's dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
W.W. Norton & Company, 01/25/2016
 
She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-...more
Literary Fiction
A Prisoner in Malta
by Phillip DePoy
Minotaur Books, 01/26/2016
 
In 1583, the nineteen-year-old Christopher Marlowe - with a reputation as a brawler, a womanizer, a genius, and a social upstart at Cambridge ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
All the Birds in the Sky
by Charlie Jane Anders
Tor Books, 01/26/2016
 
An ancient society of witches and a hipster technological startup go to war in order to prevent the world from tearing itself apart. To further ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Can't Look Away
by Donna Cooner
Scholastic, 01/26/2016
 
Torrey Grey is famous. At least, on the internet. Thousands of people watch her popular videos on fashion and beauty. But when Torrey's sister is ...more
Literary Fiction
Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine
by Diane Williams
McSweeney's Books, 01/26/2016
 
The very short stories of Diane Williams have been aptly called "folk tales that hammer like a nail gun," and these 40 new ones are sharper than ever....more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Front Lines
by Michael Grant
Katherine Tegan Books, 01/26/2016
 
World War II, 1942. A court decision makes women subject to the draft and eligible for service. The unproven American army is going up against the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Girl Through Glass
by Sari Wilson
Harper, 01/26/2016
 
In the roiling summer of 1977, eleven-year-old Mira is an aspiring ballerina in the romantic, highly competitive world of New York City ballet. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Good on Paper
by Rachel Cantor
Melville House, 01/26/2016
 
Is a new life possible? Because Shira Greene's life hasn't quite turned out at planned. Shira is a permanent temp with a few short stories published ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Lay Down Your Weary Tune
by W.B. Belcher
Other Press, 01/26/2016
 
Despite his fame, Eli Page is a riddle wrapped in a myth, inside decades of mask-making. His past is so shrouded in gossip and half-truths that no one...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Blue Line
by Ingrid Betancourt
Penguin Press, 01/26/2016
 
Set against the backdrop of Argentina's Dirty War and infused with magical realism, The Blue Line is a breathtaking story of love and betrayal by one ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Last Thousand: One School's Promise in a Nation at War
by Jeffrey E. Stern
St. Martin's Press, 01/26/2016
 
Under the protection of foreign forces, a special place has flourished in Afghanistan. The Marefat School is an award-winning institution in the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Paris Winter
by Imogen Robertson
St. Martin's Griffin, 01/26/2016
 
Maud Heighton came to Lafond's famous Academie to paint, and to flee the constraints of her small English town. It took all her courage to escape, but...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Poison Artist
by Jonathan Moore
Houghton Mifflin Books For Younger Readers, 01/26/2016
 
Dr. Caleb Maddox is a San Francisco toxicologist studying the chemical effects of pain. After a bruising breakup with his girlfriend, he is drinking ...more
The Swans of Fifth Avenue
by Melanie Benjamin
Ballantine Books, 01/26/2016
 
Of all the glamorous stars of New York high society, none blazes brighter than Babe Paley. Her flawless face regularly graces the pages of Vogue, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Where It Hurts: A Gus Murphy Novel
by Reed Farrel Coleman
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 01/26/2016
 
Gus Murphy thought he had the world all figured out. A retired Suffolk County cop, Gus had everything a man could want: a great marriage, two kids, a ...more
Where My Heart Used to Beat
by Sebastian Faulks
Henry Holt and Company, 01/26/2016
 
London, 1980. Robert Hendricks, an established psychiatrist and author, has so bottled up memories of his own wartime past that he is nearly sunk into...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Sleep Garden
by Jim Krusoe
Tin House Books, 01/27/2016
 
In an underground apartment building called "the Burrow" -essentially purgatory - "twilight souls" inhabit the space between life and death. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
A Decent Ride
by Irvine Welsh
Doubleday, 02/02/2016
 
A Decent Ride sees Irvine Welsh back in Edinburgh, this time with one of his most compelling and popular characters front and center: the rampaging ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
A Friend of Mr. Lincoln
by Stephen Harrigan
Knopf, 02/02/2016
 
It is Illinois in the 1830s and 1840s. Abraham Lincoln is a circuit-riding lawyer, a member of the state legislature, a man of almost ungovernable ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Arcadia: Advent Trilogy, Book 3
by James Treadwell
Emily Bestler Books (Atria), 02/02/2016
 
On a tiny archipelago out of sight of the rest of the world lives Rory, a ten-year-old boy. He and his mother and a handful of survivors live an ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Black Deutschland
by Darryl Pinckney
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 02/02/2016
 
Jed - young, gay, black, out of rehab and out of prospects in his hometown of Chicago - flees to the city of his fantasies, a museum of modernism and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Every Anxious Wave
by Mo Daviau
St. Martin's Press, 02/02/2016
 
Good guy Karl Bender is a thirty-something bar owner whose life lacks love and meaning. When he stumbles upon a time-travelling worm hole in his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Jane and the Waterloo Map: Being a Jane Austen Mystery
by Stephanie Barron
Soho Press, 02/02/2016
 
November, 1815. The Battle of Waterloo has come and gone, leaving the British economy in shreds; Henry Austen, high-flying banker, is about to declare...more
Light: A Radiant History from Creation to the Quantum Age
by Bruce Watson
Bloomsbury USA, 02/02/2016
 
Light begins at Stonehenge, where crowds cheer a solstice sunrise. After sampling myths explaining First Light, the story moves on to early ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-four Books That Can Change Lives.
by David Denby
Henry Holt and Company, 02/02/2016
 
It's no secret that millions of American teenagers, caught up in social media, television, movies, and games, don't read seriously - they associate ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Marriage Material
by Santham Sanghera
Europa Editions, 02/02/2016
 
In a fresh narrative voice that wryly observes, questions, and reflects, Sanghera confronts the complexities of tradition, culture, love, and family. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Not all Bastards are from Vienna
by Andrea Molesini
Grove Press, 02/02/2016
 
In the autumn of 1917, Refrontolo, a small community north of Venice, is invaded by Austrian soldiers as the Italian army is pushed to the Piave river...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Opening Belle
by Maureen Sherry
Simon & Schuster, 02/02/2016
 
In 2008, Isabelle - a self-made, thirty-something Wall Street star - appears to have it all: an Upper West Side apartment, three healthy children, a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Salt to the Sea
by Ruta Sepetys
Philomel, 02/02/2016
 
World War II is drawing to a close in East Prussia, and thousands of refugees are on a desperate trek toward freedom, almost all of them with ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Saving Jason: A Jason Stafford Novel
by Michael Sears
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 02/02/2016
 
Jason Stafford used to be a hot Wall Street trader, went too far, and paid for it in prison. Now a financial investigator, he's been asked to look ...more
Sweetgirl
by Travis Mulhauser
Ecco, 02/02/2016
 
With the heart, daring, and evocative atmosphere of Winter's Bone and True Grit, and driven by the raw, whip-smart voice of Percy James, a blistering ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Symptoms of Being Human
by Jeff Garvin
Balzer + Bray, 02/02/2016
 
Riley Cavanaugh is many things: Punk rock. Snarky. Rebellious. And gender fluid. Some days Riley identifies as a boy, and others as a girl. But Riley ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Big Rewind
by Libby Cudmore
William Morrow, 02/02/2016
 
To listen to someone else's mix tapes is a huge breach of trust.

But KitKat was dead…and curiosity got the better of me.

When a mix tape ...more
The Book of Memory
by Petina Gappah
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 02/02/2016
 
Memory, the narrator of Petina Gappah's The Book of Memory, is an albino woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Doll's House: A Detective Helen Grace Thriller
by M. J. Arlidge
NAL, 02/02/2016
 
Ruby wakes up in a strange room. Her captor calmly explains that no one is looking for her. No one wants her. Except him.

When the body of a woman is...more
Thrillers
The Fire Sermon: The Fire Sermon Trilogy Book 1
by Francesca Haig
Gallery Books, 02/02/2016
 
Four hundred years in the future, the Earth has turned primitive following a nuclear fire that has laid waste to civilization and nature. Though the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Flood Girls
by Richard Fifield
Gallery Books, 02/02/2016
 
Welcome to Quinn, Montana, population: 956. A town where nearly all of the volunteer firemen are named Jim, where The Dirty Shame - the only bar in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Good Liar
by Nicholas Searle
Harper, 02/02/2016
 
Veteran con artist Roy spots an obvious easy mark when he meets Betty, a wealthy widow, online. In no time at all, he's moved into Betty's lovely ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The High Mountains of Portugal
by Yann Martel
Spiegel & Grau, 02/02/2016
 
In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the existence of an extraordinary artifact that - if he can find...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Iceberg: A Memoir
by Marion Coutts
Black Cat, 02/02/2016
 
In 2008, Tom Lubbock, the chief art critic for The Independent was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The Iceberg is his wife, Marion Coutts', fierce, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Language of Secrets
by Ausma Zehanat Khan
St. Martin's Press, 02/02/2016
 
Detective Esa Khattak heads up Canada's Community Policing Section, which handles minority-sensitive cases across all levels of law enforcement. ...more
The Queen of the Night
by Alexander Chee
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 02/02/2016
 
Lilliet Berne is a sensation of the Paris Opera, a legendary soprano with every accolade except an original role, every singer's chance at immortality...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Vegetarian
by Han Kang
Hogarth Books, 02/02/2016
 
Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
This Was Not the Plan
by Cristina Alger
Touchstone, 02/02/2016
 
Charlie Goldwyn's life hasn't exactly gone according to plan. Widowerhood at thirty-three and twelve-hour workdays have left a gap in his relationship...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Walking the Nile
by Levison Wood
Atlantic Monthly Press, 02/02/2016
 
The Nile, one of the world's great rivers, has long been an object of fascination and obsession. From Alexander the Great and Nero, to Victorian ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
Piece of Mind
by Michelle Adelman
W.W. Norton & Company, 02/08/2016
 
At twenty-seven, Lucy knows everything about coffee, comic books, and Gus (the polar bear at the Central Park Zoo), and she possesses a rare gift for ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Arcadia: A Novel
by Iain Pears
Knopf, 02/09/2016
 
Three interlocking worlds. Four people looking for answers. But who controls the future—or the past?

In 1960s Oxford, Professor Henry Lytten is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Dog Run Moon: Stories
by Callan Wink
The Dial Press, 02/09/2016
 
A construction worker on the run from the shady local businessman whose dog he has stolen; a Custer's Last Stand reenactor engaged in a long-running ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe
by Dawn Tripp
Random House, 02/09/2016
 
This is not a love story. If it were, we would have the same story. But he has his, and I have mine.

In 1916, Georgia O'Keeffe is a young, unknown art...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
I'll See You in Paris
by Michelle Gable
Thomas Dunne Books, 02/09/2016
 
After losing her fiancé in the Vietnam War, nineteen-year-old Laurel Haley takes a job in England, hoping the distance will mend her shattered ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
In Other Words
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Knopf, 02/09/2016
 
In Other Words is a revelation. It is at heart a love story - of a long and sometimes difficult courtship, and a passion that verges on obsession: ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Into Oblivion: An Icelandic Thriller, Inspector Erlendur Series
by Arnaldur Indridason
Minotaur Books, 02/09/2016
 
A woman swims in a remote, milky-blue lagoon. Steam rises from the water and as it clears, a body is revealed in the ghostly light. Miles away, a vast...more
My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir
by Chris Offutt
Atria Books, 02/09/2016
 
"Clearing Dad's office felt like prospecting within his brain. As I sorted, like an archaeologist, backward through time, I saw a remarkable mind at ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Private Citizens
by Tony Tulathimutte
William Morrow, 02/09/2016
 
Capturing the anxious, self-aware mood of young college grads in the aughts, Private Citizens embraces the contradictions of our new century...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Arrangement
by Ashley Warlick
Viking, 02/09/2016
 
Los Angeles, 1934. Mary Frances is young, restlessly married, and returning from her first sojourn in France. She is hungry, and not just for food: ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Heart
by Maylis de Kerangal
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 02/09/2016
 
The Heart takes place over the twenty-four hours surrounding a fatal accident and a resulting heart transplant as life is taken from a young man and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Life of Elves
by Muriel Barbery
Europa Editions, 02/09/2016
 
Maria lives in a remote village in Burgundy, where she learns that she has a gift for communicating with nature. Hundreds of miles away in Italy, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Lost Time Accidents
by John Wray
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 02/09/2016
 
Haunted by a failed love affair and the darkest of family secrets, Waldemar 'Waldy' Tolliver wakes one morning to discover that he has been exiled ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Most Wanted Man in China: My Journey from Scientist to Enemy of the State
by Fang Lizhi
Henry Holt and Company, 02/09/2016
 
Fang Lizhi was one of the most prominent scientists of the People's Republic of China; he worked on the country's first nuclear program and later ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Ramblers
by Aidan Donnelley Rowley
William Morrow, 02/09/2016
 
Set in the most magical parts of Manhattan - the Upper West Side, Central Park, Greenwich Village - The Ramblers explores the lives of three lost ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Vatican Princess: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia
by C. W. Gortner
Ballantine Books, 02/09/2016
 
Glamorous and predatory, the Borgias fascinated and terrorized fifteenth-century Renaissance Italy, and Lucrezia Borgia, beloved daughter of the pope,...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Ways to Disappear
by Idra Novey
Little Brown & Company, 02/09/2016
 
In snowy Pittsburgh, her American translator Emma hears the news and, against the wishes of her boyfriend and Beatriz's two grown children, flies ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
What the Waves Know
by Tamara Valentine
William Morrow Paperbacks, 02/09/2016
 
The tiny state of Rhode Island is home to even tinier Tillings Island - which witnessed the biggest event of Izabella Rae Haywood's life. For it was ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Wreck and Order
by Hannah Tennant-Moore
Hogarth Books, 02/09/2016
 
Decisively aimless, self-destructive, and impulsively in and out of love, Elsie is a young woman who feels stuck. She has a tumultuous relationship ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
You Should Pity Us Instead
by Amy Gustine
Sarabande Books, 02/09/2016
 
You Should Pity Us Instead explores some of our toughest dilemmas: the cost of Middle East strife at its most intimate level, the likelihood of God ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
And After Many Days
by Jowhor Ile
Tim Duggan Books, 02/16/2016
 
During the rainy season of 1995, in the bustling town of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, one family's life is disrupted by the sudden disappearance of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Forty Rooms
by Olga Grushin
Marian Wood Books, 02/16/2016
 
Totally original in conception and magnificently executed, Forty Rooms is mysterious, withholding, and ultimately emotionally devastating. Olga ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Free Men
by Katy Simpson Smith
Harper, 02/16/2016
 
In 1788, three men converge in the southern woods of what is now Alabama. Cat, an emotionally scarred white man from South Carolina, is on the run ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Interior Darkness: Selected Stories
by Peter Straub
Doubleday, 02/16/2016
 
Peter Straub has spent forty years at the forefront of modern literary horror. The stories assembled here represent his astonishing range and his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Man on Fire
by Stephen Kelman
Bloomsbury USA, 02/16/2016
 
A destiny dressed in a white karate suit and sporting an impressive moustache.

John has come to offer his help to a man who has learned to conquer ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Midnight Sun: A Blood on Snow Novel
by Jo Nesbo
Knopf, 02/16/2016
 
He calls himself Ulf - as good a name as any, he thinks - and the only thing he's looking for is a place where he won't be found by Oslo's most ...more
No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery
by Charles Todd
William Morrow, 02/16/2016
 
On the north coast of Cornwall, an apparent act of mercy is repaid by an arrest for murder. Four young women have been accused of the crime. A shocked...more
The Blue Hour
by Douglas Kennedy
Atria Books, 02/16/2016
 
Robin knew Paul wasn't perfect. But he said they were so lucky to have found each other, and she believed it was true.

She is a meticulous ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Girl in the Red Coat
by Kate Hamer
Melville House, 02/16/2016
 
Newly single mom Beth has one constant, gnawing worry: that her dreamy eight-year-old daughter, Carmel, who has a tendency to wander off, will one day...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
by Frank Ryan
Prometheus Books, 02/16/2016
 
The human genome is indeed a mysterious world, but, as this fascinating book shows, its vital secrets are now being uncovered. The latest studies ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Quality of Silence
by Rosamund Lupton
Crown, 02/16/2016
 
Thrillingly suspenseful and atmospheric, The Quality of Silence is the story of Yasmin, a beautiful astrophysicist, and her precocious deaf daughter, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Silence of the Sea: A Thora Gudmundsdottir Thriller
by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Minotaur Books, 02/16/2016
 
Winner of the Petrona Award 2015

From the queen of Icelandic crime fiction comes a truly chilling story that will leave readers breathless right up...more
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
by Peter Frankopan
Knopf, 02/16/2016
 
It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Widow
by Fiona Barton
Berkley Books, 02/16/2016
 
A New York Times bestseller
An NPR Best Book of 2016
One of The Wall Street Journal's 5 "Killer Books" of the Year

Now in Paperback!



When ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Why They Run the Way They Do: Stories
by Susan Perabo
Simon & Schuster, 02/16/2016
 
In Why They Run the Way They Do, critically acclaimed author Susan Perabo illustrates the triumphs and tragedies of daily life. Perfectly distilled ...more
Short Stories
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
by Mona Awad
Penguin Books, 02/23/2016
 
Growing up in the suburban hell of Misery Saga (a.k.a. Mississauga), Lizzie has never liked the way she looks - even though her best friend Mel says ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
A Midsummer's Equation: A Detective Galileo Mystery
by Keigo Higashino
Minotaur Books, 02/23/2016
 
Manabu Yukawa, the physicist known as "Detective Galileo," has traveled to Hari Cove, a once-popular summer resort town that has fallen on hard times....more
Carry Me
by Peter Behrens
Pantheon Books, 02/23/2016
 
During childhood summers on the sunstruck Isle of Wight in the years before the First World War, Billy is entranced by Karin, the elusive daughter of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Flight of Dreams
by Ariel Lawhon
Doubleday, 02/23/2016
 
On the evening of May 3, 1937, Emilie Imhof boards the Hindenburg. As the only female crewmember, Emilie has access to the entire airship, from the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Green Island
by Shawna Yang Ryan
Knopf, 02/23/2016
 
February 28, 1947: Trapped inside the family home amid an uprising that has rocked Taipei, Dr. Tsai delivers his youngest daughter, the unnamed ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
I'm Glad About You
by Theresa Rebeck
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 02/23/2016
 
Their meeting in a parking lot outside a high school football game was both completely forgettable and utterly life-changing.  Because no matter ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond
by Sonia Shah
Sarah Crichton Books, 02/23/2016
 
Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have either newly emerged or reemerged, appearing in territories where they've ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Bitter Side of Sweet
by Tara Sullivan
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 02/23/2016
 
Fifteen-year-old Amadou counts the things that matter. For two years what has mattered are the number of cacao pods he and his younger brother, Seydou...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Other Woman
by Therese Bohman
Other Press, 02/23/2016
 
She works at Norrköping Hospital, at the very bottom of the hierarchy: in the cafeteria, below the doctors, the nurses, and the nursing ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Titans
by Victoria Scott
Scholastic, 02/23/2016
 
Ever since the Titans appeared in her Detroit neighborhood, Astrid Sullivan's world has revolved around the mechanical horses. It's not just the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Try Not to Breathe
by Holly Seddon
Ballantine Books, 02/23/2016
 
Some secrets never die. They're just locked away.

Alex Dale is lost. Destructive habits have cost her a marriage and a journalism career. All she ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Version Control
by Dexter Palmer
Pantheon Books, 02/23/2016
 
Rebecca Wright has gotten her life back, finding her way out of grief and depression following a personal tragedy years ago. She spends her days ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
You Could Look It Up: The Reference Shelf From Ancient Babylon to Wikipedia
by Jack Lynch
Bloomsbury USA, 02/23/2016
 
You Could Look It Up chronicles the captivating stories behind these great works and their contents, and the way they have influenced each other. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Behave
by Andromeda Romano-Lax
Soho Press, 03/01/2016
 
Behave is the story of Rosalie Rayner, Watson's ambitious young wife and the mother of two of his children.

In 1920, when she graduated from Vassar...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Bottomland
by Michelle Hoover
Black Cat, 03/01/2016
 
In the weeks after Esther and Myrle's disappearance, their siblings desperately search for the sisters, combing the stark farmlands, their neighbors' ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Character, Driven
by David Lubar
Tor Books, 03/01/2016
 
With only one year left of high school, seventeen-year-old Cliff Sparks is desperate to "come of age" - a.k.a., lose his virginity. But he's never had...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War
by Fred Kaplan
Simon & Schuster, 03/01/2016
 
As cyber-attacks dominate front-page news, as hackers join terrorists on the list of global threats, and as top generals warn of a coming cyber war, ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
For A Little While
by Rick Bass
Little Brown & Company, 03/01/2016
 
To read his fiction is to feel more alive-connected, incandescently, to "the brief longshot of having been chosen for the human experience," as one of...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Lesser Evils
by Joe Flanagan
Europa Editions, 03/01/2016
 
When the first young boy goes missing in a quiet Cape Cod town, Lieutenant Bill Warren is pulled into a morass that promises no happy ending. As his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Mrs. Houdini
by Victoria Kelly
Atria Books, 03/01/2016
 
Before escape artist Harry Houdini died, he vowed he would find a way to speak to his beloved wife Bess from beyond the grave using a coded message ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation
by Timothy J. Jorgensen
Princeton University Press, 03/01/2016
 
More than ever before, radiation is a part of our modern daily lives. We own radiation-emitting phones, regularly get diagnostic x-rays, such as ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Ancient Minstrel: Novellas
by Jim Harrison
Grove Press, 03/01/2016
 
New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison is one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. In The Ancient ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero
by Timothy Egan
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 03/01/2016
 
The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy: A Novel
by Rachel Joyce
Kids@Random, 03/01/2016
 
A runaway international bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry followed its unassuming hero on an incredible journey as he traveled the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Unfortunate Englishman: A Joe Wilderness Novel
by John Lawton
Atlantic Monthly Press, 03/01/2016
 
Having shot someone in what he believed was self-defense in the chaos of 1963 Berlin, Wilderness finds himself locked up with little chance of escape....more
Work Like Any Other
by Virginia Reeves
Scribner, 03/01/2016
 
Roscoe T Martin set his sights on a new type of power spreading at the start of the twentieth century: electricity. It became his training, his life's...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Death Descends on Saturn Villa: The Gower Street Detective: Book 3
by M. R. C. Kasasian
Pegasus Books, 03/07/2016
 
Gower Street, London: 1883.

March Middleton is the niece of London's greatest (and most curmudgeonly) private detective, Sidney Grice. March has ...more
Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens
by Steve Olson
W.W. Norton & Company, 03/07/2016
 
For months in early 1980, scientists, journalists, sightseers, and nearby residents listened anxiously to rumblings in Mount St. Helens, part of the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence
by George Zarkadakis
Pegasus Books, 03/07/2016
 
Zarkadakis explores one of humankind's oldest love-hate relationships - our ties with artificial intelligence, or AI. He traces AI's origins in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
A Man Lies Dreaming
by Lavie Tidhar
Melville House, 03/08/2016
 
Winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize
Shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award
A Guardian Best Science Fiction Book of the Year
A Scotland...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
All Things Cease to Appear
by Elizabeth Brundage
Knopf, 03/08/2016
 
Late one winter afternoon in upstate New York, George Clare comes home to find his wife killed and their three-year-old daughter alone - for how many ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Burn Baby Burn
by Meg Medina
Candlewick Press, 03/08/2016
 
Nora Lopez is seventeen during the infamous New York summer of 1977, when the city is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Crazy Blood
by T. Jefferson Parker
St. Martin's Press, 03/08/2016
 
The Carson dynasty rules the ski resort town of Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. Founded by patriarch Adam, the town is ...more
Goodbye to the Dead: A Jonathan Stride Novel
by Brian Freeman
Quercus, 03/08/2016
 
At the time, Cindy and Stride were on opposite sides of a domestic murder investigation. Gorgeous, brilliant Janine Snow - a surgeon transplanted to ...more
Hour of the Bees
by Lindsay Eagar
Candlewick Press, 03/08/2016
 
While her friends are spending their summers having pool parties and sleepovers, twelve-year-old Carolina — Carol — is spending hers in the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Innocents and Others
by Dana Spiotta
Scribner, 03/08/2016
 
Dana Spiotta's new novel is about two women, best friends, who grow up in LA in the 80s and become filmmakers. Meadow and Carrie have everything in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Lottery Boy
by Michael Byrne
Candlewick Press, 03/08/2016
 
Twelve-year-old Bully has lost his mum and his old life. Living rough on the streets of London with his dog, Jack, he can't imagine a future. But one ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Off the Grid: A Joe Pickett Novel
by C. J. Box
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/08/2016
 
Nate Romanowski is off the grid, recuperating from wounds and trying to deal with past crimes, when he is suddenly surrounded by a small team of elite...more
Peacekeeping
by Mischa Berlinski
Sarah Crichton Books, 03/08/2016
 
When Terry White, a former deputy sheriff and a failed politician, goes broke in the 2007-2008 financial crisis, he takes a job working for the UN, ...more
Rain Dogs: A Detective Sean Duffy Novel
by Adrian McKinty
Seventh Street Books, 03/08/2016
 
When journalist Lily Bigelow is found dead in the courtyard of Carrickfergus castle, it looks like a suicide. Yet there are just a few things that ...more
Scary Old Sex
by Arlene Heyman
Bloomsbury USA, 03/08/2016
 
Scary Old Sex was written and rewritten over a period of thirty years. In her youth, Arlene Heyman had been a promising writer, studying with Bernard ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
The Best Place on Earth: Stories
by Ayelet Tsabari
Random House, 03/08/2016
 
From Israel to India to Canada, Tsabari's indelible characters grapple with love, violence, faith, the slipperiness of identity, and the challenges of...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
The Night Sister
by Jennifer McMahon
Anchor Books, 03/08/2016
 
The Tower Motel was once a thriving attraction of rural Vermont. Today it lies in disrepair, alive only in the memories of the three women—...more
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
by Ken Liu
Simon & Schuster, 03/08/2016
 
With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie. This...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Return of the Witch
by Paula Brackston
Thomas Dunne Books, 03/08/2016
 
Paula Brackston returns to the world of The Witch's Daughter with The Return of the Witch, another bewitching tale of love and magic.

After five ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Two-Family House
by Lynda Cohen Loigman
St. Martin's Press, 03/08/2016
 
Brooklyn, 1947: in the midst of a blizzard, in a two-family brownstone, two babies are born minutes apart to two women. They are sisters by marriage ...more
Literary Fiction
The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End
by Katie Roiphe
The Dial Press, 03/08/2016
 
In The Violet Hour, Katie Roiphe takes an unexpected and liberating approach to the most unavoidable of subjects. She investigates the last days of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Waters of Eternal Youth: Guido Brunetti #25
by Donna Leon
Atlantic Monthly Press, 03/08/2016
 
Fifteen years ago, a teenage girl fell into a canal late at night. Unable to swim, she went under and started to drown, only surviving thanks to a ...more
Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran
by Shirin Ebadi
Random House, 03/08/2016
 
For years the Islamic Republic tried to intimidate Ebadi, but after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rose to power in 2005, the censorship and persecution ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
We Are Afghan Women: Voices of Hope
by George W. Bush Institute
Scribner, 03/08/2016
 
Afghanistan has been described as "the worst nation in the world to be a woman." More than fifty percent of girls who are forced into marriage are ...more
What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours: Stories
by Helen Oyeyemi
Riverhead Books, 03/08/2016
 
Playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Throwback Special
by Chris Bachelder
W.W. Norton & Company, 03/14/2016
 
Here is the absorbing story of twenty-two men who gather every fall to painstakingly reenact what ESPN called "the most shocking play in NFL history" ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
As Close to Us as Breathing
by Elizabeth Poliner
Lee Boudreaux Books, 03/15/2016
 
In 1948, a small stretch of the Woodmont, Connecticut shoreline, affectionately named "Bagel Beach," has long been a summer destination for Jewish ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
At the Edge of the Orchard
by Tracy Chevalier
Viking, 03/15/2016
 
1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck – in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Blood of the Oak: A Mystery
by Eliot Pattison
Counterpoint Press, 03/15/2016
 
Duncan McCallum follows ritualistic murders that are strangely connected to both the theft of an Iroquois artifact and a series of murders and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Exit, Pursued by a Bear
by E.K. Johnston
Dutton Children's Books, 03/15/2016
 
Hermione Winters is captain of her cheerleading team, and in tiny Palermo Heights, this doesn't mean what you think it means. At PHHS, the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Ladies Night at the Dreamland: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction Series
by Sonja Livingston
University of Georgia Press, 03/15/2016
 
In this lyrical collection, Sonja Livingston weaves together strands of research and imagination to conjure figures from history, literature, legend, ...more
Essays
Margaret the First
by Danielle Dutton
Catapult, 03/15/2016
 
Margaret the First dramatizes the life of Margaret Cavendish, the shy, gifted, and wildly unconventional 17th-century Duchess. The eccentric Margaret ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Paint Your Wife
by Lloyd Jones
Text Publishing Company, 03/15/2016
 
Long ago, when the men were away at the war, Alma began painting the women of the town. They sat for him in lieu of payment for his work catching rats...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Shelter
by Jung Yun
Picador, 03/15/2016
 
Why should a man care for his parents when they failed to take care of him as a child?

Kyung Cho is a young father burdened by a house he can't ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Cosmopolitans
by Sarah Schulman
The Feminist Press, 03/15/2016
 
Earl, a black, gay actor working in a meatpacking plant, and Bette, a white secretary, have lived next door to each other in the same Greenwich ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Eloquence of the Dead: A Mystery
by Conor Brady
Minotaur Books, 03/15/2016
 
This captivating, expertly crafted mystery captures the life and essence of Victorian Dublin and draws the reader on a gripping journey of murder and ...more
The Girl in the Well Is Me
by Karen Rivers
Algonquin Books, 03/15/2016
 
Newcomer Kammie Summers has fallen into a well during a (fake) initiation into a club whose members have no intention of letting her join. Now Kammie'...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Midwife and the Assassin: A Midwife Mystery
by Sam Thomas
Minotaur Books, 03/15/2016
 
In this thrilling new mystery from the critically acclaimed author of The Witch Hunter's Tale midwife Bridget Hodgson travels to London where she's ...more
The Rope
by Kanan Makiya
Pantheon Books, 03/15/2016
 
When the nameless narrator stumbles upon a corpse on April 10, 2003, the day of the fall of Saddam Hussein, he finds himself swept up in the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Watcher in the Wall: A Stevens and Windermere Novel
by Owen Laukkanen
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/15/2016
 
Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere of the joint BCA-FBI violent crime task force have handled shocking cases before, but this one is different. Stevens...more
A Place Called Winter
by Patrick Gale
Grand Central Publishing, 03/22/2016
 
Forced to abandon his wife and child, Harry signs up for emigration to the newly colonised Canadian prairies. Remote and unforgiving, his allotted ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Dimestore: A Writer's Life
by Lee Smith
Algonquin Books, 03/22/2016
 
For the inimitable Lee Smith, place is paramount. For forty-five years, her fiction has lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Far From True: A Promise Falls Novel
by Linwood Barclay
NAL, 03/22/2016
 
After the screen of a run-down drive-in movie theater collapses and kills four people, the daughter of one of the victims asks private ...more
Fool Me Once
by Harlan Coben
Dutton, 03/22/2016
 
In the course of eight consecutive #1 New York Times bestsellers, millions of readers have discovered Harlan Coben's page-turning thrillers, filled ...more
March: Book One (Oversized Edition)
by John Lewis
Top Shelf Productions, 03/22/2016
 
Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.

Book One spans John Lewis' youth in ...more
Biography/Memoir
Rush Oh!
by Shirley Barrett
Little Brown & Company, 03/22/2016
 
1908: It's the year that proves to be life-changing for our teenage narrator, Mary Davidson, tasked with providing support to her father's boisterous ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Terrible Virtue
by Ellen Feldman
Harper, 03/22/2016
 
The daughter of a hard-drinking, smooth-tongued free thinker and a mother worn down by thirteen children, Margaret Sanger vowed her life would be ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World's Oldest Bible
by Chanan Tigay
Ecco, 03/22/2016
 
In the summer of 1883, Moses Wilhelm Shapira--archaeological treasure hunter, inveterate social climber, and denizen of Jerusalem's bustling ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Searcher
by Christopher Morgan Jones
Penguin Press, 03/22/2016
 
The acclaimed author of The Silent Oligarch and The Jackal's Share, Christopher Morgan Jones returns to a murky world where corporate spies and ...more
The Way of the Gun: A Bloody Journey into the World of Firearms
by Iain Overton
Harper, 03/22/2016
 
We live in the Age of the Gun. Around the globe, firearms are ubiquitous and define countless lives; in some places, it's even easier to get a gun ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Cold Barrel Zero
by Matthew Quirk
Mulholland, 03/29/2016
 
John Hayes is a Special Operations legend who went rogue on a deep-cover mission and betrayed his own soldiers. Disgraced and on the run, he returns ...more
Forty Martyrs
by Philip F. Deaver
Burrow Press, 03/29/2016
 
Forty Martyrs follows the intertwining lives of the people of Tuscola, Illinois, a small Midwestern college town that, over the course of the book, ...more
Short Stories
Hard Red Spring
by Kelly Kerney
Viking, 03/29/2016
 
In 1902, a young girl watches her family's life destroyed by corrupt officials and inscrutable natives. In 1954, the wife of the American ambassador ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
London Rain: A Josephine Tey Mystery
by Nicola Upson
HarperCollins Publishers, 03/29/2016
 
London, 1937. Following the gloomy days of the abdication of King Edward VIII, the entire city is elated to welcome King George. Just one of the many ...more
Lust & Wonder: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs
St. Martin's Press, 03/29/2016
 
In chronicling the development and demise of the different relationships he's had while living in New York, Augusten Burroughs examines what it means ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Summerlost
by Ally Condie
Dutton, 03/29/2016
 
It's the first real summer since the devastating accident that killed Cedar's father and younger brother, Ben. But now Cedar and what's left of her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Infidel Stain: A Blake and Avery Novel
by M.J. Carter
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/29/2016
 
London, 1841. Returned from their adventures in India, Jeremiah Blake and William Avery have both had their difficulties adapting to life in Victorian...more
The Little Red Chairs
by Edna O'Brien
Little Brown & Company, 03/29/2016
 
Vlad, a stranger from Eastern Europe masquerading as a healer, settles in a small Irish village where the locals fall under his spell. One woman, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Stopped Heart: A Novel
by Julie Myerson
Harper Perennial, 03/29/2016
 
Mary Coles and her husband, Graham, have just moved to a cottage on the edge of a small village. The house hasn't been lived in for years, but they ...more
Thursday's Children: A Frieda Klein Mystery
by Nicci French
Penguin Books, 03/29/2016
 
Drawn to brilliant and solitary London psychotherapist Frieda Klein, a growing readership is discovering Nicci French's acclaimed series with each ...more
The Performance of Becoming Human
by Daniel Borzutzky
Brooklyn Arts Press, 04/01/2016
 
Following in the path of his acclaimed collections The Book of Interfering Bodies (Nightboat, 2011) and In The Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy (...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Butcher Bird
by S.D. Sykes
Pegasus Books, 04/04/2016
 
Oswald de Lacy is growing up fast in his new position as Lord of Somershill Manor. However, there is still the same amount of work to be done in the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
A Burglar's Guide to the City
by Geoff Manaugh
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/05/2016
 
At the core of A Burglar's Guide to the City is an unexpected and thrilling insight: how any building transforms when seen through the eyes of someone...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Alice & Oliver
by Charles Bock
Random House, 04/05/2016
 
Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Charles Bock earned vast critical acclaim for his debut novel, Beautiful Children. Now, in Alice &...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Booked
by Kwame Alexander
Houghton Mifflin Books For Younger Readers, 04/05/2016
 
In this follow-up to the Newbery-winning novel The Crossover,  soccer, family, love, and friendship, take center stage as twelve-year-old Nick ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
Chasing the North Star: A Novel
by Robert Morgan
Algonquin Books, 04/05/2016
 
In his latest historical novel, bestselling author Robert Morgan brings to full and vivid life the story of Jonah Williams, who, in 1850, on his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Essential Maps for the Lost
by Deb Caletti
Simon Pulse, 04/05/2016
 
There are many ways to be lost.

Sometimes people want to be lost. Madison - Mads to everyone who knows her - is trying her best to escape herself ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Even in Paradise
by Elizabeth Nunez
Akashic Books, 04/05/2016
 
Peter Ducksworth, a Trinidadian widower of English ancestry, retires to Barbados, believing he will find an earthly paradise there. He decides to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Every Heart a Doorway: Wayward Children #1
by Seanan McGuire
Tor Books, 04/05/2016
 
But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she's back. The things she's experienced... they ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Exposure
by Helen Dunmore
Atlantic Monthly Press, 04/05/2016
 
It's London, 1960. The Cold War is at its height, and a spy may be a friend or neighbor, colleague or lover. Two colleagues, Giles Holloway and Simon ...more
I Will Find You: A Reporter Investigates the Life of the Man Who Raped Her
by Joanna Connors
Atlantic Monthly Press, 04/05/2016
 
When Joanna Connors was thirty years old on assignment for the Cleveland Plain Dealer to review a play at a college theater, she was held at knife ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Lab Girl
by Hope Jahren
Knopf, 04/05/2016
 
Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she's studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Lilac Girls: A Novel
by Martha Hall Kelly
Ballantine Books, 04/05/2016
 
New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline's world is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Miller's Valley: A Novel
by Anna Quindlen
Random House, 04/05/2016
 
For generations the Millers have lived in Miller's Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Night Work: A Michael Cassidy Novel
by David C. Taylor
Forge Books, 04/05/2016
 
Michael Cassidy, a New York cop plagued by dreams that sometimes come true, escorts a prisoner accused of murder to Havana on the cusp of Fidel Castro...more
Olio
by Tyehimba Jess
Wave Books, 04/05/2016
 
Part fact, part fiction, Tyehimba Jess's much anticipated second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
Panther's Prey: A Leo Maxwell Mystery
by Lachlan Smith
Mysterious Press, 04/05/2016
 
After working to free his father from prison in Fox Is Framed, Leo has now left private practice and is working as a public defender in San Francisco....more
Sent to the Devil: A Lorenzo Da Ponte Mystery
by Laura Lebow
Minotaur Books, 04/05/2016
 
In 1788 Vienna, Court Poet Lorenzo Da Ponte is putting some finishing touches on the libretto for the premiere of his new opera with Mozart, Don ...more
Setting the World on Fire: The Brief, Astonishing Life of St. Catherine of Siena
by Shelley Emling
St. Martin's Griffin, 04/05/2016
 
One of only two patron saints of Italy, the other being St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine was ahead of her time. As a political powerhouse in late ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Tell Me Three Things
by Julie Buxbaum
Delacorte Press, 04/05/2016
 
Everything about Jessie is wrong. At least, that's what it feels like during her first week of junior year at her new ultra-intimidating prep ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Dig
by John Preston
Other Press, 04/05/2016
 
In the long, hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war, but on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind. Mrs. Pretty, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Father: Made in Sweden, Part I
by Anton Svensson
Quercus, 04/05/2016
 
An epic crime novel with the excitement of Jo Nesbo's Headhunters and the narrative depth of We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Father is inspired by ...more
The Golden Condom: And Other Essays on Love Lost and Found
by Jeanne Safer
Picador, 04/05/2016
 
Dr. Jeanne Safer has dedicated much of her decades' long career in psychotherapy to exploring taboo subjects that we all think about in private but ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos: A Novel
by Dominic Smith
Sarah Crichton Books, 04/05/2016
 
Amsterdam, 1631: Sara de Vos becomes the first woman to be admitted as a master painter to the city's Guild of St. Luke. Though women do not paint ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts: Murder and Memory in an American City
by Laura Tillman
Scribner, 04/05/2016
 
On March 11, 2003, in Brownsville, Texas - one of America's poorest cities - John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered their three young children. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer
by Skip Hollandsworth
Henry Holt and Company, 04/05/2016
 
In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Murder of Mary Russell: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
by Laurie R. King
Bantam Books, 04/05/2016
 
Mary Russell is used to dark secrets - her own, and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. Trust is a thing slowly given, but over ...more
Mysteries
The Railwayman's Wife
by Ashley Hay
Atria Books, 04/05/2016
 
Amidst the strange, silent aftermath of World War II, a widow, a poet, and a doctor search for lasting peace and fresh beginnings in this ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Translation of Love: A Novel
by Lynne Kutsukake
Doubleday, 04/05/2016
 
After spending the war years in a Canadian internment camp, thirteen-year-old Aya Shimamura and her father are faced with a gut-wrenching choice: Move...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Memory Jar
by Elissa Janine Hoole
Flux, 04/08/2016
 
Since the accident, Taylor's memory has been fuzzy. But at least she's awake. Who knows what her boyfriend, Scott, will remember when he comes out of ...more
A Death Along the River Fleet: A Lucy Campion Mystery
by Susanna Calkins
Minotaur Books, 04/12/2016
 
Lucy Campion, a ladies' maid turned printer's apprentice in 17th-century London, is crossing Holborn Bridge over the murky waters of the River Fleet ...more
A Fierce and Subtle Poison
by Samantha Mabry
Algonquin Books, 04/12/2016
 
Everyone knows the legends about the cursed girl - Isabel, the one the senoras whisper about. They say she has green skin and grass for hair, and she ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
An Honorable Man
by Paul Vidich
Emily Bestler Books (Atria), 04/12/2016
 
Publishers Weekly Top Ten Mysteries & Thrillers of Spring 2016

Washington D.C., 1953. The Cold War is heating up: McCarthyism, with all its fear ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Mysteries
 Debut Author
Arab Jazz
by Karim Miské
MacLehose Press, 04/12/2016
 
Ahmed Taroudant is an archetypal French Arab-non-observant, unable to reconcile his conflicting identities, and troubled by the past. A crime fiction ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Mysteries
 Debut Author
Close Your Eyes
by Michael Robotham
Mulholland, 04/12/2016
 
A mother and her teenage daughter are found murdered in a remote farmhouse, one defiled by multiple stab wounds and the other posed like Sleeping ...more
Daredevils
by Shawn Vestal
Penguin Press, 04/12/2016
 
At the heart of this debut novel, set in Arizona and Idaho in the mid-1970s, is fifteen-year-old Loretta, who slips out of her bedroom every evening ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Golden Boys
by Sonya Hartnett
Candlewick Press, 04/12/2016
 
Colt Jenson and his younger brother, Bastian, have moved to a new, working-class suburb. The Jensons are different. Their father, Rex, showers them ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter
by Barbara Leaming
St. Martin's Press, 04/12/2016
 
The daughter of the American ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Kick swept into Britain's aristocracy like a fresh wind on a sweltering summer ...more
Biography/Memoir
Most Wanted
by Lisa Scottoline
St. Martin's Griffin, 04/12/2016
 
Donor 3319 Profile:
Tall. Blonde. Blue eyes.
Medical Student.
Wanted for Serial Murder.

Christine Nilsson and her husband, Marcus, are ...more
Mount Pleasant
by Patrice Nganang
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/12/2016
 
In Cameroon in 1931, Sara is taken from her family and brought to Mount Pleasant as a gift for Sultan Njoya, the Bamum leader cast into exile by ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light
by Cordelia Strube
ECW Press, 04/12/2016
 
Harriet is 11 going on 30. Her mixed-media art is a source of wonder to her younger brother, Irwin, but an unmitigated horror to the panoply of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
by Ibram X. Kendi
Nation Books, 04/12/2016
 
Some Americans cling desperately to the myth that we are living in a post-racial society, that the election of the first Black president spelled the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Bed Moved: Stories
by Rebecca Schiff
Knopf, 04/12/2016
 
A New Yorker, trying not to be jaded, accompanies a cash-strapped pot grower to a "clothing optional resort" in California. A nerdy high-schooler has ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
The Last Goodnight: A World War II Story of Espionage, Adventure, and Betrayal
by Howard Blum
Harper, 04/12/2016
 
Betty Pack was charming, beautiful, and intelligent - and she knew it. As an agent for Britain's MI-6 and then America's OSS during World War II, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird's Egg
by Tim Birkhead
Bloomsbury USA, 04/12/2016
 
Renowned ornithologist Tim Birkhead opens this gripping story as a female guillemot chick hatches, already carrying her full quota of tiny eggs within...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Passion of Dolssa
by Julie Berry
Viking, 04/12/2016
 
Buried deep within the archives of a convent in medieval France is an untold story of love, loss, and wonder and the two girls at the heart of it all....more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Regional Office is Under Attack!
by Manuel Gonzales
Riverhead Books, 04/12/2016
 
At its helm, the mysterious Oyemi and her oracles seek out new recruits and root out evil plots. Then a prophecy suggests that someone from inside ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
This Is the Story of You
by Beth Kephart
Chronicle Books, 04/12/2016
 
On Haven, a six-mile long, half-mile-wide stretch of barrier island, Mira Banul and her Year-Rounder friends have proudly risen to every challenge. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Vexation Lullaby
by Justin Tussing
Catapult, 04/12/2016
 
Peter Silver is a young doctor treading water in the wake of a breakup - his ex-girlfriend called him a "mama's boy" and his best friend considers him...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Life Without a Recipe: A Memoir of Food and Family
by Diana Abu-Jaber
W.W. Norton & Company, 04/18/2016
 
On one side, there is Grace: prize-winning author Diana Abu-Jaber's tough, independent sugar-fiend of a German grandmother, wielding a suitcase full ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Before the Wind
by Jim Lynch
Knopf, 04/19/2016
 
Joshua Johannssen has spent all of his life surrounded by sailboats. His grandfather designed them, his father built and raced them, his Einstein-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Before We Visit the Goddess
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Little Simon, 04/19/2016
 
The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Chasing the Last Laugh: Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-the-World Comedy Tour
by Richard Zacks
Doubleday, 04/19/2016
 
In 1895, at age sixty, Mark Twain was dead broke and miserable - his recent novels had been critical and commercial failures, and he was bankrupted by...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Eligible: A modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice
by Curtis Sittenfeld
Random House, 04/19/2016
 
This version of the Bennet family - and Mr. Darcy - is one that you have and haven't met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Hystopia
by David Means
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/19/2016
 
At the bitter end of the 1960s, after surviving multiple assassination attempts, President John F. Kennedy has created a vast federal agency, the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Noble Chase
by Michael Rudolph
Ballantine Books, 04/19/2016
 
Sic transit gloria. Beth Swahn, a young lawyer, makes a rookie mistake: She believes her client. While basking in the glory of winning a hundred-...more
The Dark Lady's Mask
by Mary Sharratt
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 04/19/2016
 
Shakespeare in Love meets Shakespeare's Sister in this novel of England's first professional woman poet and her collaboration and love affair ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Darkest Corners
by Kara Thomas
Delacorte Press, 04/19/2016
 
There are ghosts around every corner in Fayette, Pennsylvania. Tessa left when she was nine and has been trying ever since not to think about it after...more
The Excellent Lombards
by Jane Hamilton
Grand Central Publishing, 04/19/2016
 
Mary Frances "Frankie" Lombard is fiercely in love with her family's sprawling apple orchard and the tangled web of family members who inhabit it. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Fires of Spring
by Shelly Culbertson
St. Martin's Griffin, 04/19/2016
 
The "Arab Spring" all started when a young Tunisian fruit-seller set himself on fire in protest of a government official confiscating his apples ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture
by Pamela Haag
Basic Books, 04/19/2016
 
Americans have always loved guns. This special bond was forged during the American Revolution and sanctified by the Second Amendment. It is because of...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Letter Writer
by Dan Fesperman
Knopf, 04/19/2016
 
The first thing Woodrow Cain sees when he steps off the train in New York City on February 9, 1942, is smoke from an ocean liner in flames in the ...more
The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond
by Christophe Galfard
Flatiron Books, 04/19/2016
 
Quantum physics, black holes, string theory, the Big Bang, dark matter, dark energy, parallel universes: even if we are interested in these ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
by Frans de Waal
W.W. Norton & Company, 04/25/2016
 
What separates your mind from an animal's? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future?all...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles: A True Story of Love, Science, and Cancer
by Mary Elizabeth Williams
National Geographic, 04/26/2016
 
After being diagnosed in her early 40s with metastatic melanoma - a "rapidly fatal" form of cancer - journalist and mother of two Mary Elizabeth ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Father's Day
by Simon Van Booy
Harper, 04/26/2016
 
At the age of six, a little girl named Harvey learns that her parents have died in a car accident. As she struggles to understand, a kindly social ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Gold of Our Fathers: A Darko Dawson Mystery
by Kwei Quartey
Soho Press, 04/26/2016
 
Darko Dawson has just been promoted to Chief Inspector in the Ghana Police Service - the promotion even comes with a (rather modest) salary bump. But ...more
Great Falls
by Steve Watkins
Candlewick Press, 04/26/2016
 
Shane has always worshiped his big brother, Jeremy. But three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken their toll, and the easy-go-lucky brother Shane...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Here Comes Exterminator!: The Longshot Horse, the Great War, and the Making of an American Hero
by Eliza McGraw
Thomas Dunne Books, 04/26/2016
 
Eliza McGraw's Here Comes Exterminator! draws readers into the Golden Age of Racing, with all its ups and downs, the ever-involving interplay of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Hide Away: An Eve Duncan Novel
by Iris Johansen
St. Martin's Griffin, 04/26/2016
 
DARK SECRETS
World-famous forensic sculptor Eve Duncan has landed in a well-guarded hospital room in Carmel, California. But hidden danger looms for...more
Jungle of Stone: The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
by William Carlsen
William Morrow, 04/26/2016
 
Imagine The Lost City of Z, except the fabled lost jungle civilization really was found - an "Egypt in the Americas" in which 1,500-year-old pyramids ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Keep Me in Mind
by Jaime Reed
Counterpoint Press, 04/26/2016
 
Ellia Dawson doesn't recognize the handsome boy who sits in tears by her hospital bed. He claims he's her boyfriend, Liam. But to Ellia, he's a ...more
Literary Fiction
Murder at the 42nd Street Library: A Mystery
by Con Lehane
Minotaur Books, 04/26/2016
 
In his search for the reasons behind the murder, Ambler uncovers hidden - and profoundly disturbing - relationships between visitors to the library. ...more
Rescued: Ape Quartet #3
by Eliot Schrefer
Scholastic, 04/26/2016
 
John grows up with everything he could possibly want. His father is a businessman who travels far and wide. One day, he comes home with a rare gift ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Sleeping Giants
by Sylvain Neuvel
Del Rey, 04/26/2016
 
A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Adventurist
by J. Bradford Hipps
St. Martin's Griffin, 04/26/2016
 
Haunted by her death, and by a strange angst he describes as "the pall," Henry seeks escape in a quest for love and purpose occasioned by a crisis in ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Alaskan Laundry
by Brendan Jones
Mariner Books, 04/26/2016
 
Tara Marconi has made her way to "The Rock," a remote island in Alaska governed by the seasons and the demands of the world of commercial fishing. She...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Incident on the Bridge
by Laura McNeal
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 04/26/2016
 
When Thisbe Locke is last seen standing on the edge of the Coronado Bridge, it looks like there is only one thing to call it. But her sister Ted is ...more
The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks: Life and Death Under Soviet Rule
by Igort
Simon & Schuster, 04/26/2016
 
After spending two years in Ukraine and Russia, collecting the stories of the survivors and witnesses to Soviet rule, masterful Italian graphic ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
These Heroic, Happy Dead: Stories
by Luke Mogelson
Tim Duggan Books, 04/26/2016
 
Troubled veterans first introduced as criminals in "To the Lake" and "Visitors" are shown later in "New Guidance" and "Kids," during the deployments ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Double Down: Lois Lane Series
by Gwenda Bond
Switch Press, 05/01/2016
 
Lois Lane has settled in to her new school. She has friends, for maybe the first time in her life. She has a job that challenges her. And her ...more
Graphic Novels
A Different Kind of Daughter: The Girl Who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight
by Maria Toorpakai, Katharine Holstein
Twelve Books, 05/03/2016
 
Maria Toorpakai hails from Pakistan's violently oppressive northwest tribal region, where the idea of women playing sports is considered haram-un-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
A Fine Imitation: A Novel
by Amber Brock
Crown, 05/03/2016
 
Vera Bellington has beauty, pedigree, and a penthouse at The Angelus--the most coveted address on Park Avenue. But behind the sparkling social whirl, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Amateurs
by Dylan Hicks
Coffee House Press, 05/03/2016
 
Archer is a semi-celebrated novelist and sex-toy heir. His best friend, John, is as earnest as Archer is feckless. John's girlfriend, Sara, envies ...more
Literary Fiction
Born on a Tuesday
by Elnathan John
Black Cat, 05/03/2016
 
In far northwestern Nigeria, Dantala lives among a gang of street boys who sleep under a kuka tree. During the election, the boys are paid by the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Britt-Marie Was Here
by Fredrik Backman
Atria Books, 05/03/2016
 
Britt-Marie can't stand mess. A disorganized cutlery drawer ranks high on her list of unforgivable sins. She begins her day at 6 a.m., because only ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Desert Boys
by Chris McCormick
Picador, 05/03/2016
 
This series of powerful, intertwining stories illuminates Daley Kushner's world - the family, friends and community that have both formed and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Eleven Hours
by Pamela Erens
Ballantine Books, 05/03/2016
 
  • The Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2016
  • Flavorwire's Most Anticipated Book

Lore arrives at the hospital alone - no husband, no partner, no friends....

more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years
by John Guy
Viking, 05/03/2016
 
Elizabeth was crowned at twenty-five after a tempestuous childhood as a bastard and an outcast, but it was only when she reached fifty and all hopes ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Fall of Man in Wilmslow
by David Lagercrantz
Knopf, 05/03/2016
 
June 8, 1954. Several English nationals have defected to the USSR, while a witch hunt for homosexuals rages across Britain. In these circumstances, no...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood
by Terry Masear
Mariner Books, 05/03/2016
 
Before he collided with a limousine, Gabriel, an Anna's hummingbird with head and throat cloaked in iridescent magenta feathers, could spiral hundreds...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Heat and Light
by Jennifer Haigh
Ecco, 05/03/2016
 
Forty years ago, Bakerton coal fueled the country. Then the mines closed, and the town wore away like a bar of soap. Now Bakerton has been granted a ...more
Literary Fiction
In the Country We Love: My Family Divided
by Diane Guerrero, Michelle Burford
Henry Holt and Company, 05/03/2016
 
Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just fourteen years old on the day her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Inherited Disorders: Stories, Parables & Problems
by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
Regan Books, 05/03/2016
 
Adam Ehrlich Sachs's Inherited Disorders is a rueful, absurd, and endlessly entertaining look at a most serious subject - the eternally vexed ...more
Short Stories
 Debut Author
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea
by Teffi (Author), Robert Chandler (Translator), Anne Marie Jackson (Translator), Elizabeth Chandler (Translator), Edythe Haber (Introduction)
New York Review Books, 05/03/2016
 
In 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Teffi, whose stories and journalism had made her a celebrity in Moscow, was invited ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well-Set Table
by Ellen Wayland-Smith
Picador, 05/03/2016
 
In the early nineteenth century, many Americans were looking for an alternative to the Puritanism that had been the foundation of the new country. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story
by Matti Friedman
Algonquin Books, 05/03/2016
 
The hill, in Lebanon, was called the Pumpkin; flowers was the military code word for "casualties." Award-winning writer Matti Friedman re-creates the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Relativity
by Antonia Hayes
Gallery Books, 05/03/2016
 
Twelve-year-old Ethan Forsythe, an exceptionally talented boy obsessed with physics and astronomy, has been raised alone by his mother in Sydney, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Sergio Y.
by Alexandre Vidal Porto (Author), Alex Ladd (Translator)
Europa Editions, 05/03/2016
 
Armando is one of the most renowned therapists in São Paulo. One of his patients, a 17-year-old boy by the name of Sergio, abruptly interrupts ...more
Literary Fiction
Sweet Lamb of Heaven
by Lydia Millet
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/03/2016
 
Lydia Millet's chilling new novel is the first-person account of a young mother, Anna, escaping her cold and unfaithful husband, a businessman who's ...more
The Blood Between Us
by Zac Brewer
HarperTeen, 05/03/2016
 
Growing up, Adrien and his sister, Grace, competed viciously for everything. It wasn't easy being the adopted sibling, but Adrien tried to get along; ...more
The Bridge Ladies: A Memoir
by Betsy Lerner
Harper Wave, 05/03/2016
 
After a lifetime defining herself in contrast to her mother's "don't ask, don't tell" generation, Lerner finds herself back in her childhood home, not...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Defense
by Steve Cavanagh
Flatiron Books, 05/03/2016
 
Former con artist turned lawyer Eddie Flynn gave up the law a year ago after a disastrous case, and he vowed never to step foot in a courtroom again. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror
by Joyce Carol Oates
Mysterious Press, 05/03/2016
 
In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin's doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Ecliptic
by Benjamin Wood
Penguin Press, 05/03/2016
 
Situated on a Turkish island, Portmantle might be the strangest, most exclusive artists' colony around. Its brilliant residents linger for years, all ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Edge of the Empire: A Journey to Britannia: From the Heart of Rome to Hadrian's Wall
by Bronwen Riley
Pegasus Books, 05/03/2016
 
AD 130. Rome is the dazzling heart of a vast empire and Hadrian its most complex and compelling ruler. Faraway Britannia is one of the Romans' most ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Map of Bones: The Fire Sermon Trilogy Book 2
by Francesca Haig
Gallery Books, 05/03/2016
 
Four hundred years in the future, the Earth has turned primitive following a nuclear fire that has laid waste to civilization and nature. Though the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria
by Janine di Giovanni
Liveright / WW Norton, 05/03/2016
 
Doing for Syria what Imperial Life in the Emerald City did for the war in Iraq, The Morning They Came for Us bears witness to one of the most brutal, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Sport of Kings
by C. E. Morgan
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/03/2016
 
Hellsmouth, an indomitable thoroughbred with the blood of Triple Crown winners in her veins, runs for the glory of the Forge family, one of Kentucky's...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Veins of the Ocean
by Patricia Engel
Grove Press, 05/03/2016
 
Reina Castillo is the alluring young woman whose beloved brother is serving a death sentence for a crime that shocked the community, throwing a baby ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Versions of Us
by Laura Barnett
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 05/03/2016
 
The one thing that's certain is they met on a Cambridge street by chance and felt a connection that would last a lifetime. But as for what happened ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb
by Neal Bascomb
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 05/03/2016
 
It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to be the first to build a weapon unlike any known before. They have the physicists, they have the uranium, and now...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Traitor Angels
by Anne Blankman
Balzer + Bray, 05/03/2016
 
Six years have passed since England's King Charles II returned from exile to reclaim the throne, ushering in a new era of stability for his subjects. ...more
White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World
by Geoff Dyer
Pantheon Books, 05/03/2016
 
Geoff Dyer's perennial search for tranquility, for "something better," continues in this series of fascinating and seemingly unrelated ...more
Wilde Lake
by Laura Lippman
William Morrow, 05/03/2016
 
Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Zero K
by Don DeLillo
Scribner, 05/03/2016
 
Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Brain Damage
by Freida McFadden
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 05/04/2016
 
Then one night, a bullet rips through the right side of her skull and she loses everything.

As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury,...more
Thrillers
Signs for Lost Children
by Sarah Moss
Europa Editions, 05/05/2016
 
Set in the Victorian Age, Signs for Lost Children grapples with central themes of early feminism, mental health reform, and marriage as an imposed ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Red Files
by Lisa Bird-Wilson
Nightwood Editions, 05/07/2016
 
Inspired by family and archival sources, Bird-Wilson assembles scraps of a history torn apart by colonial violence. The collection takes its name from...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
A Perfect Life
by Eileen Pollack
Ecco, 05/10/2016
 
A young researcher at MIT, Jane Weiss is obsessed with finding the genetic marker for Valentine's Disease, a neurodegenerative disorder. Her pursuit ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Allegheny Front: Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction
by Matthew Neill Null
Sarabande Books, 05/10/2016
 
Set in the author's homeland of West Virginia, this panoramic collection of stories traces the people and animals who live in precarious balance in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Amp'd
by Ken Pisani
St. Martin's Griffin, 05/10/2016
 
Aaron is not a man on a hero's journey. In the question of fight or flight, he'll choose flight every time. So when a car accident leaves him suddenly...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Constellation
by Adrien Bosc
Other Press, 05/10/2016
 
On October 27, 1949, Air France's new plane, the Constellation, launched by the extravagant Howard Hughes, welcomed thirty-eight passengers aboard. On...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Everland
by Wendy Spinale
Scholastic, 05/10/2016
 
London has been destroyed in a blitz of bombs and disease. The only ones who have survived are children, among them Gwen Darling and her siblings, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Every Exquisite Thing
by Matthew Quick
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 05/10/2016
 
Nanette O'Hare is an unassuming teen who has played the role of dutiful daughter, hardworking student, and star athlete for as long as she can ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Highly Illogical Behavior
by John Corey Whaley
Dial Books, 05/10/2016
 
Sixteen-year-old Solomon is agoraphobic. He hasn't left the house in three years, which is fine by him.

Ambitious Lisa desperately wants to get ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
LaRose
by Louise Erdrich
Harper, 05/10/2016
 
North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence - but ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The California Wife
by Kristen Harnisch
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/10/2016
 
It is 1897, and Sara and Philippe Lemieux, newly married and full of hope for the future, are determined to make Eagle's Run, their Napa vineyard, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Fall of Butterflies
by Andrea Portes
HarperTeen, 05/10/2016
 
Willa Parker, 646th and least-popular resident of What Cheer, Iowa, is headed east to start a new life. Did she choose this life? No, because that ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Lie Tree
by Frances Hardinge
Amulet Books, 05/10/2016
 
Faith Sunderly leads a double life. To most people, she is reliable, dull, trustworthy - a proper young lady who knows her place as inferior to men. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Miracle on Monhegan Island
by Elizabeth Kelly
Liveright / WW Norton, 05/10/2016
 
When Spark - the rakish prodigal son - returns unannounced to the dilapidated family home on Maine's Monhegan Island, his arrival launches one ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Pier Falls: And Other Stories
by Mark Haddon
Doubleday, 05/10/2016
 
The tales in Mark Haddon's lyrical and uncompromising new collection take many forms - Victorian adventure story, science fiction, morality tale, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945
by Max Hastings
Harper, 05/10/2016
 
Spies, codes and guerrillas played critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution
by Nathaniel Philbrick
Viking, 05/10/2016
 
In September 1776, the vulnerable Continental Army under an unsure George Washington (who had never commanded a large force in battle) evacuates New ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Written in Dead Wax: A Vinyl Detective Mystery
by Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 05/10/2016
 
He is a record collector - a connoisseur of vinyl, hunting out rare and elusive LPs. His business card describes him as the "Vinyl Detective" and some...more
A Country Road, A Tree
by Jo Baker
Knopf, 05/17/2016
 
Paris, 1939. The pavement rumbles with the footfall of Nazi soldiers marching along the Champs-Élysées. A young, unknown writer - Samuel ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Anatomy of a Soldier
by Harry Parker
Knopf, 05/17/2016
 
Let's imagine a man called Captain Tom Barnes, aka BA5799, who's leading British troops in the war zone. And two boys growing up together there, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
At the Edge of Summer
by Jessica Brockmole
Ballantine Books, 05/17/2016
 
Luc Crépet is accustomed to his mother's bringing wounded creatures to their idyllic château in the French countryside, where healing comes ...more
Historical Fiction
Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud
by David Dayen
The New Press, 05/17/2016
 
They called it foreclosure fraud: millions of families were kicked out of their homes based on false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Devil and the Bluebird
by Jennifer Mason-Black
Amulet Books, 05/17/2016
 
Blue Riley has wrestled with her own demons ever since the loss of her mother to cancer. But when she encounters a beautiful devil at her town ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Draw the Line
by Laurent Linn
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 05/17/2016
 
Adrian Piper is used to blending into the background at his Texas high school. He may be a talented artist, a sci-fi geek, and gay, but none of those ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg: A Thriller
by Mishka Ben-David
Atheneum Books, 05/17/2016
 
Yogev Ben-Ari has been sent to St. Petersburg by the Mossad - ostensibly to network and set up business connections. His life is solitary, ordered, ...more
High Tide: Two Novels: The Beach Club and Summer People
by Elin Hilderbrand
St. Martin's Griffin, 05/17/2016
 
In The Beach Club, Mack Petersen has returned as always on the first day of May to once again open and manage the Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel ...more
Romance
Nitro Mountain
by Lee Clay Johnson
Knopf, 05/17/2016
 
Set in a bitterly benighted, mine-polluted corner of Virginia, Nitro Mountain follows a group of people bound together by alcohol, small-time crime ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Paper: Paging Through History
by Mark Kurlansky
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/17/2016
 
Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Places No One Knows
by Brenna Yovanoff
Delacorte Press, 05/17/2016
 
Waverly Camdenmar spends her nights running until she can't even think. Then the sun comes up, life goes on, and Waverly goes back to her perfectly ...more
Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman
by Lindy West
Hachette Books, 05/17/2016
 
West has rocked readers in work published everywhere from The Guardian to GQ to This American Life. She is a catalyst for a national conversation in a...more
Essays
 Debut Author
Silence Is Goldfish
by Annabel Pitcher
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 05/17/2016
 
My name is Tess Turner - at least, that's what I've always been told.

I have a voice but it isn't mine. It used to say things so I'd fit in, to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories
by Stephanie Perkins
St. Martin's Griffin, 05/17/2016
 
Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories, written by twelve bestselling young adult writers and edited by the international bestselling ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Sweet Caress
by William Boyd
Bloomsbury USA, 05/17/2016
 
Moving freely between London and New York, between photojournalism and fashion photography, and between the men who love her on complicated terms, ...more
Historical Fiction
The Fireman
by Joe Hill
William Morrow, 05/17/2016
 
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one ...more
The Gene: An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Scribner, 05/17/2016
 
The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has a written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Second Life of Nick Mason
by Steve Hamilton
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/17/2016
 
Nick Mason has already spent five years inside a maximum security prison when an offer comes that will grant his release twenty years early.  He ...more
The Singer from Memphis: An Athenian Mystery
by Gary Corby
Soho Press, 05/17/2016
 
Nicolaos, the only private investigator in ancient Athens, discovers that helping an author with his book research can be very dangerous. The would-be...more
The Weekenders: A Novel
by Mary Kay Andrews
St. Martin's Griffin, 05/17/2016
 
Some people stay all summer long on the idyllic island of Belle Isle, North Carolina. Others come only for the weekends-and the mix between the ...more
Literary Fiction
This is the Part Where You Laugh
by Peter Brown Hoffmeister
Knopf, 05/17/2016
 
Travis plans to spend the summer as follows:

  • Working on his basketball game with his friend, Creature.
  • Reading excerpts from Creature's ...

more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Dear Fang, With Love
by Rufi Thorpe
Knopf, 05/24/2016
 
Lucas and Katya were boarding school seniors when, blindingly in love, they decided to have a baby. Seventeen years later, after years of absence, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Enchanted Islands
by Allison Amend
Nan A. Talese, 05/24/2016
 
Born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1882 to immigrant parents, Frances Frankowski covets the life of her best friend, Rosalie Mendel, who has everything ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Last Ride to Graceland
by Kim Wright
Gallery Books, 05/24/2016
 
Blues musician Cory Ainsworth is barely scraping by after her mother's death when she discovers a priceless piece of rock 'n' roll memorabilia hidden ...more
Literary Fiction
Marlene
by C. W. Gortner
William Morrow, 05/24/2016
 
Raised in genteel poverty after the First World War, Maria Magdalena Dietrich dreams of a life on the stage. When a budding career as a violinist is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
No Way But Gentlenesse: A Memoir of How Kes, My Kestrel, Changed My Life
by Richard Hines
Bloomsbury USA, 05/24/2016
 
Born and raised in the South Yorkshire mining village of Hoyland Common, Richard Hines remembers sliding down heaps of coal dust, hearing whispers of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Outrun the Moon
by Stacey Lee
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/24/2016
 
San Francisco, 1906: Fifteen-year-old Mercy Wong is determined to break from the poverty in Chinatown, and an education at St. Clare's School for...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets
by Svetlana Alexievich (Author), Bela Shayevich (Translator)
Random House, 05/24/2016
 
When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre," describing her work ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Stone Tablets
by Wojciech Zukrowski
Paul Dry Books, 05/24/2016
 
Stone Tablets is a richly rendered novel of the plight of a Hungarian diplomat working in India in 1956. As it opens, Istvan Terey, a poet and World ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Sweetbitter
by Stephanie Danler
Knopf, 05/24/2016
 
"Let's say I was born when I came over the George Washington Bridge..." This is how we meet unforgettable Tess, the twenty-two-year-old at the heart ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The 100 Year Miracle
by Ashley Ream
Flatiron Books, 05/24/2016
 
Once a century, for only six days, the bay around a small Washington island glows like a water-bound aurora. Dr. Rachel Bell, a scientist studying the...more
Literary Fiction
The Children
by Ann Leary
St. Martin's Press, 05/24/2016
 
Charlotte Maynard rarely leaves her mother's home, the sprawling Connecticut lake house that belonged to her late stepfather, Whit Whitman, and the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Safest Lies
by Megan Miranda
Crown, 05/24/2016
 
Kelsey has lived most of her life in a shadow of fear, raised to see danger everywhere. Her mother hasn't set foot outside their front door in ...more
The Summer Guest
by Alison Anderson
Harper, 05/24/2016
 
During the long, hot summer of 1888, an extraordinary friendship blossoms between Anton Chekhov and Zinaida Lintvaryova, a young doctor. Recently ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Wolf of Sarajevo
by Matthew Palmer
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/24/2016
 
Twenty years after the Srebrenica massacre that claimed the life of his friend and colleague, Eric Petrosian is back in Sarajevo at the American ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
This Too Shall Pass
by Milena Busquets
Hogarth Books, 05/24/2016
 
Blanca is forty years old and motherless. Shaken by the unexpected death of the most important person in her life, she suddenly realizes that she has ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
by Sebastian Junger
Twelve Books, 05/24/2016
 
Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians-but Indians ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Hero of France
by Alan Furst
Kids@Random, 05/31/2016
 
1941. The City of Light is dark and silent at night. But in Paris and in the farmhouses, barns, and churches of the French countryside, small groups ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Before the Fall
by Noah Hawley
Grand Central Publishing, 05/31/2016
 
On a foggy summer night, eleven people--ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter - depart Martha's Vineyard headed for New York. Sixteen minutes ...more
Modern Lovers
by Emma Straub
Riverhead Books, 05/31/2016
 
Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Some Possible Solutions: Stories
by Helen Phillips
Henry Holt and Company, 05/31/2016
 
Some Possible Solutions offers an idiosyncratic series of "What ifs": What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if you ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks
by Terry Tempest Williams
Sarah Crichton Books, 05/31/2016
 
America's national parks are breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why more than 300 million people ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
by Neil Gaiman
William Morrow, 05/31/2016
 
An enthralling collection of nonfiction essays on a myriad of topics - from art and artists to dreams, myths, and memories - observed in #1 New York ...more
Trail of Echoes: A Detective Elouise Norton Novel
by Rachel Howzell Hall
Forge Books, 05/31/2016
 
On a rainy spring day in Los Angeles, homicide detective Elouise "Lou" Norton is called away from a rare lunch date to Bonner Park, where the body of ...more
Voyager: Travel Writings
by Russell Banks
Ecco, 05/31/2016
 
Now in his mid-seventies, Russell Banks has indulged his wanderlust for more than half a century. "Since childhood, I've longed for escape, for ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
by Carol Anderson
Bloomsbury USA, 05/31/2016
 
As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Green and Ancient Light
by Frederic S. Durbin
Simon & Schuster, 06/07/2016
 
Set in a world similar to our own, during a war that parallels World War II, A Green and Ancient Light is the stunning story of a boy who is sent to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
American Girls
by Alison Umminger
Flatiron Books, 06/07/2016
 
Anna is a fifteen-year-old girl slouching toward adulthood, and she's had it with her life at home. So Anna "borrows" her stepmom's credit card and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
by Chuck Klosterman
Blue Hen Publishing, 06/07/2016
 
We live in a culture of casual certitude. This has always been the case, no matter how often that certainty has failed. Though no generation believes ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Goodnight, Beautiful Women
by Anna Noyes
Grove Press, 06/07/2016
 
Moving along the Maine Coast and beyond, the interconnected stories in Goodnight, Beautiful Women bring us into the sultry, mysterious inner lives of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
by Max Porter
Graywolf Press, 06/07/2016
 
Here he is, husband and father, scruffy romantic, a shambolic scholar - a man adrift in the wake of his wife's sudden, accidental death. And there are...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War
by Mary Roach
W.W. Norton & Company, 06/07/2016
 
Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries - panic, exhaustion, heat, noise - and introduces us to the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Julia Vanishes
by Catherine Egan
Knopf, 06/07/2016
 
Julia has the unusual ability to be ... unseen. Not invisible, exactly. Just beyond most people's senses.

It's a dangerous trait in a city that ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals
by Jesse Armstrong
Penguin Press, 06/07/2016
 
It's 1994, and war rages on in Yugoslavia - Sarajevo is under siege, and Bosnia's different ethnic groups are battling for control of the newly ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Marrow Island
by Alexis M. Smith
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 06/07/2016
 
It has been twenty years since Lucie Bowen left the islands. Twenty years ago, the May Day Quake set loose catastrophic waves along the west coast, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Property of the State: The Legend of Joey
by Bill Cameron
Atheneum Books, 06/07/2016
 
Joey Getchie has been property of the state longer than he was in parental custody. But he's a survivor, and he has a Plan: graduate high school and ...more
Mysteries
Rocks Fall Everyone Dies
by Lindsay Ribar
Kathy Dawson Books, 06/07/2016
 
Aspen Quick has never really worried about how he's affecting people when he steals from them. But this summer he'll discover just how strong the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Security
by Gina Wohlsdorf
Algonquin Books, 06/07/2016
 
When the gleaming new Manderley Resort opens in twenty-four hours, Santa Barbara's exclusive beachfront hotel will offer its patrons the ultimate in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
The Extra
by A. B. Yehoshua
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 06/07/2016
 
Noga, forty-two and a divorcee, is a harpist with an orchestra in the Netherlands. Upon the sudden death of her father, she is summoned home to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Girls in the Garden
by Lisa Jewell
Atria Books, 06/07/2016
 
Imagine that you live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people's ...more
The Good Lieutenant
by Whitney Terrell
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/07/2016
 
The Good Lieutenant literally starts with a bang as an operation led by Lieutenant Emma Fowler of the Twenty-seventh Infantry Battalion goes ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Hatred of Poetry
by Ben Lerner
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/07/2016
 
No art has been denounced as often as poetry. It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Leaving
by Tara Altebrando
Bloomsbury USA, 06/07/2016
 
Eleven years ago, six kindergartners went missing without a trace. After all that time, the people left behind moved on, or tried to.

Until today. ...more
The Loose Ends List
by Carrie Firestone
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 06/07/2016
 
Seventeen-year-old Maddie O'Neill Levine lives a charmed life, and is primed to spend the perfect pre-college summer with her best friends and young-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan
by Laurence Leamer
William Morrow, 06/07/2016
 
On a Friday night in March 1981 Henry Hays and James Knowles scoured the streets of Mobile in their car, hunting for a black man. The young men were ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Second Girl
by David Swinson
Mulholland, 06/07/2016
 
Frank Marr knows crime in Washington, DC. A decorated former police detective, he retired early and now ekes a living as a private eye for a defense ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Mysteries
 Debut Author
True Letters from a Fictional Life
by Kenneth Logan
HarperTeen, 06/07/2016
 
If you asked anyone in his small Vermont town, they'd tell you the facts: James Liddell, star athlete, decent student, and sort-of boyfriend to cute, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Wintering
by Peter Geye
Knopf, 06/07/2016
 
The two principal stories at play in Wintering are bound together when the elderly, demented Harry Eide escapes his sickbed and vanishes into the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
A House Full of Daughters: A Memoir of Seven Generations
by Juliet Nicolson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/14/2016
 
All families have their myths and legends. For many years Juliet Nicolson accepted hers - the dangerous beauty of her flamenco dancing great-great-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Before the Feast
by Sasa Stanisic (author), Anthea Bell (translator)
Ballantine Books, 06/14/2016
 
It's the night before the feast in the village of Furstenfelde (population: an odd number). The village is asleep. Except for the ferryman - he's dead...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Brighton
by Michael Harvey
Ecco, 06/14/2016
 
An extraordinary thriller - gripping, haunting, and marvelously told - about two friends growing up in a rapidly changing Boston, who must face the ...more
Falling: A Daughter, a Father, and a Journey Back
by Elisha Cooper
Pantheon Books, 06/14/2016
 
Elisha Cooper spends his mornings writing and illustrating children's books, his afternoons playing with his two daughters. The phrase he hates most ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Grace
by Natashia Deon
Counterpoint Press, 06/14/2016
 
For a runaway slave in the 1840s south, life on the run can be just as dangerous as life under a sadistic Massa. That's what fifteen-year-old Naomi ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Here's to Us
by Elin Hilderbrand
Little Brown & Company, 06/14/2016
 
Laurel Thorpe, Belinda Rowe, and Scarlett Oliver share only two things; a love for the man they all married, Deacon Thorpe—a celebrity chef with...more
Romance
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
by Iain Reid
Gallery/Scout Press, 06/14/2016
 
I'm thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It's always there. Always.

Jake once said, "Sometimes ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
If I Forget You
by Thomas Christopher Greene
Thomas Dunne Books, 06/14/2016
 
Deeply affecting and compulsively readable, The Headmaster's Wife was a breakout book for Thomas Christopher Greene. Now, Greene returns with a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
In the Darkroom
by Susan Faludi
Metropolitan Books, 06/14/2016
 
"In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality
by Debbie Cenziper, Jim Obergefell
William Morrow, 06/14/2016
 
In June 2015, the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law in all fifty states in a decision as groundbreaking as Roe v Wade and Brown v Board of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Marked for Life
by Emelie Schepp
Harlequin Mira, 06/14/2016
 
When a high-ranking head of the migration board is found shot to death in his living room, there is no shortage of suspects, including his wife. But ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Murder on the Quai: An Aimée Leduc Investigation
by Cara Black
Soho Press, 06/14/2016
 
November 1989: Aimée Leduc is in her first year of college at Paris's preeminent medical school. She lives in a 17th-century apartment that ...more
Shanghai Grand: Forbidden Love and International Intrigue in a Doomed World
by Taras Grescoe
St. Martin's Press, 06/14/2016
 
Emily "Mickey" Hahn was a legendary New Yorker journalist whose vivid writing played a crucial role in opening Western eyes to the realities of life ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation: The Grantchester Mysteries
by James Runcie
Bloomsbury USA, 06/14/2016
 
It's the summer of love in late 1960s England. Basil D'Oliveira has just been dropped from the English cricket team before for a test series in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty
by Ramona Ausubel
Riverhead Books, 06/14/2016
 
Labor Day, 1976, Martha's Vineyard. Summering at the family beach house along this moneyed coast of New England, Fern and Edgar—married with ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Steeplejack: An Alternative Detective Novel
by A. J. Hartley
Tor Books, 06/14/2016
 
Seventeen-year-old Anglet Sutonga lives repairing the chimneys, towers, and spires of the city of Bar-Selehm. Dramatically different communities live ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Butler's Child: An Autobiography
by Lewis M. Steel, Beau Friedlander
Thomas Dunne Books, 06/14/2016
 
The Butler's Child is the personal story of a Warner Brothers family grandson who spent more than fifty years as a fighting, no holds barred civil ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Dead Don't Bleed
by David Krugler
Pegasus Books, 06/14/2016
 
Washington D.C., 1945. Victory in the war looms, but a new fear transfixes the wartime capital. Fear of communist spies and the atomic secrets they ...more
The Girls
by Emma Cline
Random House, 06/14/2016
 
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library Novel)
by Genevieve Cogman
Ace Books, 06/14/2016
 
One thing any Librarian will tell you: the truth is much stranger than fiction...

Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, a ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Tumbling Turner Sisters: A Novel
by Juliette Fay
Gallery Books, 06/14/2016
 
In 1919, the Turner sisters and their parents are barely scraping by. Their father is a low-paid boot-stitcher in Johnson City, New York, and the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Under the Harrow: A Novel
by Flynn Berry
Penguin Books, 06/14/2016
 
When Nora takes the train from London to visit her sister in the countryside, she expects to find her waiting at the station, or at home cooking ...more
We Were Never Here
by Jennifer Gilmore
HarperTeen, 06/14/2016
 
Did you know your entire life can change in an instant?

For sixteen-year-old Lizzie Stoller that moment is when she collapses out of the blue. The ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Romance
 Debut Author
Worldly Goods
by Alice Petersen
Biblioasis, 06/14/2016
 
An old record player; an unposted letter; a pearl necklace never purchased; a badly written poem from the woman you love: tokens, gifts, and objects ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
As Good as Gone
by Larry Watson
Algonquin Books, 06/21/2016
 
It's 1963, and Calvin Sidey, one of the last of the old cowboys, has long ago left his family to live a life of self-reliance out on the prairie. He's...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide
by Charles Foster
Metropolitan Books, 06/21/2016
 
How can we ever be sure that we really know the other? To test the limits of our ability to inhabit lives that are not our own, Charles Foster set out...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Mirror in the Sky
by Aditi Khorana
Razorbill, 06/21/2016
 
For Tara Krishnan, navigating Brierly, the academically rigorous prep school she attends on scholarship, feels overwhelming and impossible. Her junior...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Since She Went Away
by David Bell
NAL, 06/21/2016
 
Three months earlier, Jenna Barton was supposed to meet her lifelong best friend Celia. But when Jenna arrived late, she found that Celia had ...more
Thrillers
Vinegar Girl: Hogarth Shakespeare Series
by Anne Tyler
Hogarth Books, 06/21/2016
 
Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus,...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
by Nancy Isenberg
Viking, 06/21/2016
 
The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement. They were alternately known as "waste people," ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Willnot
by James Sallis
Bloomsbury USA, 06/21/2016
 
In the woods outside the town of Willnot, the remains of several people have suddenly been discovered, unnerving the community and unsettling Hale, ...more
Buffalo Jump Blues: A Sean Stranahan Mystery
by Keith McCafferty
Viking, 06/28/2016
 
In the wake of Fourth of July fireworks in Montana's Madison Valley, Hyalite County sheriff Martha Ettinger and Deputy Sheriff Harold Little ...more
Collecting the Dead
by Spencer Kope
Minotaur Books, 06/28/2016
 
Magnus "Steps" Craig is part of the elite three-man Special Tracking Unit of the FBI. Called in on special cases where his skills are particularly ...more
Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America
by Calvin Trillin
Random House, 06/28/2016
 
In the early sixties, Calvin Trillin got his start as a journalist covering the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Over the next five decades of ...more
Look at You Now: My Journey from Shame to Strength
by Liz Pryor
Random House, 06/28/2016
 
In 1979, Liz Pryor is a seventeen-year-old girl from a good family in the wealthy Chicago suburbs. Halfway through her senior year of high school, she...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Missing, Presumed
by Susie Steiner
Random House, 06/28/2016
 
At thirty-nine, Manon Bradshaw is a devoted and respected member of the Cambridgeshire police force, and though she loves her job, what she longs for ...more
Never Missing, Never Found
by Amanda Panitch
Random House Children's Publishing, 06/28/2016
 
Some choices change everything. Scarlett chose to run. And the consequences will be deadly.

Stolen from her family as a young girl, Scarlett was ...more
Ping-Pong Heart: A Sergeants Sueño and Bascom Novel
by Martin Limon
Soho Press, 06/28/2016
 
South Korea, 1974. US Army CID Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom are assigned an underwhelming case of petty theft: Major Frederick M. ...more
The Life of the World to Come
by Dan Cluchey
St. Martin's Griffin, 06/28/2016
 
Leo Brice is dead, in a sense (not the traditional one). When the neurotic law student meets his cosmic match in Fiona Haeberle, an impulsive spirit ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Natural Way of Things
by Charlotte Wood
Europa Editions, 06/28/2016
 
Drugged, dressed in old-fashioned rags, and fiending for a cigarette, Yolanda wakes up in a barren room. Verla, a young woman who seems vaguely ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
We Are Not Such Things: The Murder of a Young American, a South African Township, and the Search for Truth and Reconciliation
by Justine van der Leun
Spiegel & Grau, 06/28/2016
 
The story of Amy Biehl is well known in South Africa: The twenty-six-year-old white American Fulbright scholar was brutally murdered on August 25, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

True Crime
We Could Be Beautiful
by Swan Huntley
Doubleday, 06/28/2016
 
Catherine West has spent her entire life surrounded by beautiful things. She owns an immaculate Manhattan apartment, she collects fine art, she buys ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Intrusion
by Mary McCluskey
Little A, 07/01/2016
 
Kat and Scott Hamilton are dealing with the hardest of losses: the death of their only child. While Scott throws himself back into his law practice in...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Absalom's Daughters
by Suzanne Feldman
Henry Holt and Company, 07/05/2016
 
Self-educated and brown skinned, Cassie works full time in her grandmother's laundry in rural Mississippi. Illiterate and white, Judith falls for "...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Amour Provence
by Constance Leisure
Simon & Schuster, 07/05/2016
 
In the south of France farm life unfolds with the rhythm of the seasons. But the lives of these villagers in Amour Provence reflect the reality that ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
House Revenge: A Joe DeMarco Thriller
by Mike Lawson
Atlantic Monthly Press, 07/05/2016
 
In House Revenge, Congressional fixer Joe DeMarco is dispatched to his boss Congressman John Mahoney's hometown of Boston. Mahoney wants him to help ...more
I Am No One
by Patrick Flanery
Tim Duggan Books, 07/05/2016
 
After a decade living in England, Jeremy O'Keefe returns to New York, where he has been hired as a professor of German history at New York University....more
Jonathan Unleashed
by Meg Rosoff
Viking, 07/05/2016
 
Jonathan Trefoil's boss is unhinged, his relationship baffling, and his apartment just the wrong side of legal. His girlfriend wants to marry someone ...more
Learning to Swear in America
by Katie Kennedy
Bloomsbury USA, 07/05/2016
 
An asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. A big, bad one. Maybe not kill-all-the-dinosaurs bad, but at least kill-everyone-in-California-and-wipe-out-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Problems
by Jade Sharma
Coffee House Press, 07/05/2016
 
Maya's been able to get by in New York on her wits and a dead-end bookstore job for years, but when her husband leaves her and her favorite professor ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Boy in the Shadows
by Carl-Johan Vallgren (author), Rachel Willson-Broyles (translator)
Quercus, 07/05/2016
 
1970: In an overcrowded Stockholm subway station, a harried father and his two boys are late for their train. Joel, the youngest, is howling in his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Mysteries
 Debut Author
The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History
by Thomas Harding
Picador, 07/05/2016
 
In the summer of 1993, Thomas Harding traveled to Germany with his grandmother to visit a small house by a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. It had ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
by Hisham Matar
Random House, 07/05/2016
 
When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent ...more
Biography/Memoir
You Are Having a Good Time: Stories
by Amie Barrodale
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 07/05/2016
 
In You Are Having a Good Time, Amie Barrodale's collection of highly compressed and charged tales, the veneer of normality is stripped from her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
A Curious Beginning: Veronica Speedwell Mystery #1
by Deanna Raybourn
Berkley Books, 07/12/2016
 
London, 1887. After burying her spinster aunt, orphaned Veronica Speedwell is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry—...more
Everything I Don't Remember
by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Atria Books, 07/12/2016
 
A young man named Samuel dies in a horrible car crash. Was it an accident or was it suicide? To answer that question, an unnamed writer with an agenda...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Heartbreaker: Stories
by Maryse Meijer
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 07/12/2016
 
In her debut story collection Heartbreaker, Maryse Meijer peels back the crust of normalcy and convention, unmasking the fury and violence we are ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Pond
by Claire-Louise Bennett
Riverhead Books, 07/12/2016
 
Immediately upon its publication in Ireland, Claire-Louise Bennett's debut began to attract attention well beyond the expectations of the tiny Irish ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Siracusa
by Delia Ephron
Blue Rider Press, 07/12/2016
 
New Yorkers Michael, a famous writer, and Lizzie, a journalist, travel to Italy with their friends from Maine - Finn; his wife, Taylor; and their ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Sixty Degrees North: Around the World in Search of Home
by Malachy Tallack
Pegasus Books, 07/12/2016
 
The sixtieth parallel marks a borderland between the northern and southern worlds. Wrapping itself around the lower reaches of Finland, Sweden, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
 Debut Author
Stranger, Father, Beloved
by Taylor Larsen
Gallery Books, 07/12/2016
 
When Michael sees his wife Nancy chatting with a stranger at a party, his intuition tells him that he's watching her with the man she should have ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Asset
by Shane Kuhn
Simon & Schuster, 07/12/2016
 
Kennedy - a private airport security contractor - knows more about airports than the head of the TSA, and he feels more comfortable in his British ...more
The Black Widow
by Daniel Silva
Harper, 07/12/2016
 
Gabriel Allon, the art restorer, spy, and assassin described as the most compelling fictional creation "since Ian Fleming put down his martini and ...more
The Heavenly Table
by Donald Ray Pollock
Doubleday, 07/12/2016
 
It is 1917, in that sliver of border land that divides Georgia from Alabama. Dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence with ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The House at the Edge of Night: A Novel
by Catherine Banner
Random House, 07/12/2016
 
Castellamare is an island far enough away from the mainland to be forgotten, but not far enough to escape from the world's troubles. At the center of ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome Is Revolutionizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life
by Rodney Dietert PhD
Dutton, 07/12/2016
 
The Human Superorganism makes a sweeping, paradigm-shifting argument. It demolishes two fundamental beliefs that have blinkered all medical ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Last One
by Alexandra Oliva
Ballantine Books, 07/12/2016
 
She wanted an adventure. She never imagined it would go this far.

It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules: A Novel (League of Pensioners)
by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg
Harper, 07/12/2016
 
Martha Andersson may be seventy-nine-years-old and live in a retirement home, but that doesn't mean she's ready to stop enjoying life. So when the new...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Shadow Hour: The Girl At Midnight Series
by Melissa Grey
Delacorte Press, 07/12/2016
 
Everything in Echo's life changed in a blinding flash when she learned the startling truth: she is the firebird, the creature of light that is said to...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
by Kate Summerscale
Penguin Books, 07/12/2016
 
In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London - for ...more
Critics' Consensus:

True Crime
Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money, and Murder in New York's Chinatown
by Scott D. Seligman
Viking, 07/12/2016
 
Nothing had worked. Not threats or negotiations, not shutting down the betting parlors or opium dens, not house-to-house searches or throwing Chinese ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Towers Falling
by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 07/12/2016
 
When her fifth-grade teacher hints that a series of lessons about home and community will culminate with one big answer about two tall towers once ...more
Historical Fiction
Trying to Float: Coming of Age in the Chelsea Hotel
by Nicolaia Rips
Scribner, 07/12/2016
 
New York's Chelsea Hotel may no longer be home to its most famous denizens - Andy Warhol, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, to name a few - but the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Wolf Lake: A Dave Gurney Novel
by John Verdon
Counterpoint Press, 07/12/2016
 
Could a nightmare be used as a murder weapon? That's the provocative question confronting Gurney in the thrilling new installment in this series of ...more
You'll Grow Out of It
by Jessi Klein
Grand Central Publishing, 07/12/2016
 
As both a tomboy and a late bloomer, comedian Jessi Klein grew up feeling more like an outsider than a participant in the rites of modern femininity. ...more
A World Without You
by Beth Revis
Razorbill, 07/19/2016
 
Seventeen-year-old Bo has always had delusions that he can travel through time. When he was ten, Bo claimed to have witnessed the Titanic hit an ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Bloodline: Wars of the Roses Book 3
by Conn Iggulden
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 07/19/2016
 
Winter 1461: Richard, Duke of York, is dead - his ambitions in ruins, his head spiked on the walls of the city.

King Henry VI is still held ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Fall from Grace: A David Raker Mystery
by Tim Weaver
Viking, 07/19/2016
 
After decades of service, Leonard Franks has stepped down from the Metropolitan Police as a high-ranking detective in the Homicide and Serious Crime ...more
Falling
by Jane Green
Berkley Books, 07/19/2016
 
When Emma Montague left the strict confines of upper-crust British life for New York, she felt sure it would make her happy. Away from her parents and...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Here Comes the Sun
by Nicole Dennis-Benn
Liveright / WW Norton, 07/19/2016
 
Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect, Nicole Dennis- Benn pens a tender hymn to a world hidden among pristine beaches and the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Mata Hari's Last Dance
by Michelle Moran
Touchstone, 07/19/2016
 
Paris, 1917. The notorious dancer Mata Hari sits in a cold cell awaiting freedom…or death. Alone and despondent, Mata Hari is as confused as the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Monterey Bay
by Lindsay Hatton
Penguin Press, 07/19/2016
 
In 1940, fifteen year-old Margot Fiske arrives on the shores of Monterey Bay with her eccentric entrepreneur father. Margot  has been her father'...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
The Baker Street Jurors: A Baker Street Mystery
by Michael Robertson
Minotaur Books, 07/19/2016
 
A nation's greatest sports hero has been accused of murder. The trial is approaching, and the public is clamoring - both for and against. And in a ...more
The Castle of Kings
by Oliver Pötzsch
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 07/19/2016
 
In 1524, in what is now Germany, hundreds of thousands of peasants revolted against the harsh treatment of their aristocratic overlords. Agnes is the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Imperial Wife
by Irina Reyn
Thomas Dunne Books, 07/19/2016
 
Two women's lives collide when a priceless Russian artifact comes to light.

Tanya Kagan, a rising specialist in Russian art at a top New York ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Inseparables
by Stuart Nadler
Little Brown & Company, 07/19/2016
 
In less than a year, Henrietta has lost her husband and nearly all of her money, and is about to lose her hard-won anonymity. After a lifetime spent ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Kurdish Bike: A Novel
by Alesa Lightbourne
Alesa Lightbourne, 07/19/2016
 
Gold Medal: Best Regional Fiction e-Book. Independent Publishers Book Awards 2017
First Place: Best Fiction of 2017. North Street Book Contest

"...more
Literary Fiction
The Secret Language of Stones: A Daughters of La Lune Novel
by M. J. Rose
Atria Books, 07/19/2016
 
Nestled within Paris's historic Palais Royal is a jewelry store unlike any other. La Fantasie Russie is owned by Pavel Orloff, protégé to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Sunlight Pilgrims
by Jenni Fagan
Hogarth Books, 07/19/2016
 
It's November of 2020, and the world is freezing over. Each day colder than the last. There's snow in Israel, the Thames is overflowing, and an ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
A Step from Heaven
by An Na
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 07/26/2016
 
At age four, Young Ju moves with her parents from Korea to Southern California. She has always imagined America would be like heaven: easy, blissful, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind: A Natural History of Moving Air
by Bill Streever
Little Brown & Company, 07/26/2016
 
Scientist and bestselling nature writer Bill Streever goes to any extreme to explore wind - the winds that built empires, the storms that wreck them -...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Cousin Joseph: A Graphic Novel
by Jules Feiffer
Liveright / WW Norton, 07/26/2016
 
With the New York Times bestseller Kill My Mother, legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer began an epic saga of American noir fiction. With Cousin Joseph,...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
Dark Matter
by Blake Crouch
Crown, 07/26/2016
 
"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Gemini
by Sonya Mukherjee
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 07/26/2016
 
Seventeen-year-old conjoined twins Clara and Hailey have lived in the same small town their entire lives - no one stares at them anymore. But there ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Good as Gone
by Amy Gentry
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 07/26/2016
 
Thirteen-year-old Julie Whitaker was kidnapped from her bedroom in the middle of the night, witnessed only by her younger sister. Her family was ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Heroes of the Frontier
by Dave Eggers
Knopf, 07/26/2016
 
Josie and her children's father have split up, she's been sued by a former patient and lost her dental practice, and she's grieving the death of a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Leaving Lucy Pear
by Anna Solomon
Viking, 07/26/2016
 
One night in 1917 Beatrice Haven sneaks out of her uncle's house on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, leaves her newborn baby at the foot of a pear tree, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew
by Susan Fletcher
VIRAGO, 07/26/2016
 
For years, the fragile have come here and lived quietly, found rest behind the shutters and high, sun-baked walls.

Tales of the new arrival - his ...more
Historical Fiction
Riverkeep
by Martin Stewart
Viking Books for Younger Readers, 07/26/2016
 
The Danék is a wild, treacherous river, and the Fobisher family has tended it for generations - clearing it of ice and weed, making sure boats ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Games: A Global History of the Olympics
by David Goldblatt
W.W. Norton & Company, 07/26/2016
 
Renowned sportswriter David Goldblatt has been hailed by the Wall Street Journal for writing "with the expansive eye of a social and cultural critic" ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Hidden Letters of Velta B.
by Gina Ochsner
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 07/26/2016
 
Young Maris has been summoned to his mother's bedside as she nears the end of her life; she feels she must tell him her version of their family ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Muse
by Jessie Burton
Ecco, 07/26/2016
 
England, 1967. Odelle Bastien is a Caribbean émigré trying to make her way in London. When she starts working at the prestigious Skelton ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Unseen World
by Liz Moore
W.W. Norton & Company, 07/26/2016
 
Ada Sibelius is raised by David, her brilliant, eccentric, socially inept single father, who directs a computer science lab in 1980s-era Boston. Home-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Truly Madly Guilty
by Liane Moriarty
Flatiron Books, 07/26/2016
 
In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty turns her unique, razor-sharp eye towards three seemingly happy families.

Sam and Clementine have a wonderful...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Valley of the Moon
by Melanie Gideon
Ballantine Books, 07/26/2016
 
San Francisco, 1975. A single mother, Lux Lysander is overwhelmed, underpaid, and living on the edge of an emotional precipice. When her adored ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
We Come to Our Senses: Stories
by Odie Lindsey
W.W. Norton & Company, 07/26/2016
 
Lacerating and lyrical, We Come to Our Senses centers on men and women affected by combat directly and tangentially, and the peculiar legacies of war....more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
You Will Know Me
by Megan Abbott
Little Brown & Company, 07/26/2016
 
How far will you go to achieve a dream? That's the question a celebrated coach poses to Katie and Eric Knox after he sees their daughter Devon, a ...more
Carousel Court
by Joe McGinniss Jr.
Simon & Schuster, 08/02/2016
 
Nick and Phoebe Maguire are a young couple with big dreams who move across the country to Southern California in search of a fresh start for ...more
Christodora
by Tim Murphy
Grove Press, 08/02/2016
 
The Christodora is home to Milly and Jared, a privileged young couple with artistic ambitions. Their neighbor, Hector, a Puerto Rican gay man who was ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Don't Tell Me You're Afraid: A Novel
by Giuseppe Catozzella (author), Anne Milano Appel (translator)
Penguin Books, 08/02/2016
 
At eight years of age, Samia lives to run. She shares her dream with her best friend and neighbor, Ali, who appoints himself her "professional coach."...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Five Children on the Western Front
by Kate Saunders
Delacorte Press, 08/02/2016
 
The sand fairy, also known as the Psammead, is merely a creature from stories Lamb and Edith have heard their older brothers and sisters tell ... ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Half Wild: Stories
by Robin MacArthur
Ecco, 08/02/2016
 
Spanning nearly forty years, the stories in Robin MacArthur's formidable debut give voice to the hopes, dreams, hungers, and fears of a diverse cast ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
How I Became a North Korean: A Novel
by Krys Lee
Viking, 08/02/2016
 
Yongju is an accomplished student from one of North Korea's most prominent families. Jangmi, on the other hand, has had to fend for herself since ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
It Ends with Us: A Novel
by Colleen Hoover
Atria Books, 08/02/2016
 
Sometimes it is the one who loves you who hurts you the most.

Lily hasn't always had it easy, but that's never stopped her from working hard for the ...more
Literary Fiction
Land of Enchantment
by Leigh Stein
Plume, 08/02/2016
 
When Leigh Stein received a call from an unknown number in July 2011, she let it go to voice mail, assuming it would be her ex-boyfriend Jason. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Landmarks
by Robert Macfarlane
Penguin Books, 08/02/2016
 
For years now, the British writer Robert Macfarlane has been collecting place-words: terms for aspects of landscape, nature, and weather, drawn from ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
March: Book Three
by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
Top Shelf Productions, 08/02/2016
 
Welcome to the stunning conclusion of the award-winning and best-selling March trilogy. Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Please Enjoy Your Happiness: A Memoir
by Paul Brinkley-Rogers
Touchstone, 08/02/2016
 
Pulitzer Prize–winning war correspondent Paul Brinkley-Rogers has lived an adventurous life all over the world. But there is one story he cannot ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Secrets of Nanreath Hall
by Alix Rickloff
William Morrow, 08/02/2016
 
Cornwall, 1940. Back in England after the harrowing evacuation at Dunkirk, WWII Red Cross nurse Anna Trenowyth is shocked to learn her adoptive ...more
Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Still Here
by Lara Vapnyar
Hogarth Books, 08/02/2016
 
In her warm, absorbing and keenly observed new novel, Lara Vapnyar follows the intertwined lives of four immigrants in New York City as they grapple ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Tastes Like Chicken: A History of America's Favorite Bird
by Emelyn Rude
Pegasus Books, 08/02/2016
 
How did chicken achieve the culinary ubiquity it enjoys today? It's hard to imagine, but there was a point in history, not terribly long ago, that ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Bones of Paradise
by Jonis Agee
William Morrow, 08/02/2016
 
Ten years after the Seventh Cavalry massacred more than two hundred Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, J.B. Bennett, a white rancher, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran
by Andrew Scott Cooper
Henry Holt and Company, 08/02/2016
 
In this remarkably human portrait of one of the twentieth century's most complicated personalities, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Andrew Scott Cooper traces ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Gilded Cage
by Lucinda Gray
Henry Holt and Company, 08/02/2016
 
After growing up on a farm in Virginia, Walthingham Hall in England seems like another world to sixteen-year-old Katherine Randolph. Her new life, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin
by Stephanie Knipper
Algonquin Books, 08/02/2016
 
Sisters Rose and Lily Martin were inseparable when they were kids. As adults, they've been estranged for years, until circumstances force them to come...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Watching Edie
by Camilla Way
NAL, 08/02/2016
 
Beautiful, creative, a little wild… Edie was the kind of girl who immediately caused a stir when she walked into your life. And she had dreams ...more
The Wages of Desire: A World War II Mystery (Inspector Lamb)
by Stephen Kelly
Pegasus Books, 08/08/2016
 
In the late summer of 1941, as the war in Europe drags on, long-buried secrets begin to surface in the Hampshire village of Winstead, when the body of...more
All True Not a Lie in It
by Alix Hawley
Ecco, 08/09/2016
 
Here is Daniel Boone as you've never seen him: debut novelist Alix Hawley presents Boone's life, from his childhood in a Quaker colony, through two ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Clothed, Female Figure: Stories
by Kirstin Allio
Dzanc Books, 08/09/2016
 
Clothed, Female Figure opens a singular investigation on women: mothers, daughters, gardeners, housecleaners, employers, friends, aunts, nannies. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Gesell Dome
by Guillermo Saccomanno (Author), Andrea G. Labinger (translator)
Open Letter, 08/09/2016
 
Opening with reports of a child abuse scandal at an elementary school, then weaving its way through dozens of sordid storylines and characters - ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
I Will Send Rain
by Rae Meadows
Henry Holt and Company, 08/09/2016
 
Annie Bell can't escape the dust. It's in her hair, covering the windowsills, coating the animals in the barn, in the corners of her children's dry, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
In the Not Quite Dark: Stories
by Dana Johnson
Counterpoint Press, 08/09/2016
 
In "The Liberace Museum," a mixed-race couple leave the South toward the destination of Vegas, crossing miles of road and history to the promised land...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Known and Strange Things: Essays
by Teju Cole
Random House, 08/09/2016
 
With this collection of more than fifty pieces on politics, photography, travel, history, and literature, Teju Cole solidifies his place as one of ...more
Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets
by Luke Dittrich
Random House, 08/09/2016
 
In 1953, a twenty-seven-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaison - who suffered from severe epilepsy - received a radical new version of the then-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
The Cauliflower
by Nicola Barker
Henry Holt and Company, 08/09/2016
 
To the world, he is Sri Ramakrishna - godly avatar, esteemed spiritual master, beloved guru. To Rani Rashmoni, she of low caste and large inheritance,...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Girl Who Drank the Moon
by Kelly Barnhill
Algonquin Books, 08/09/2016
 
Winner of the 2017 Newbery Medal
The New York Times Bestseller
An Entertainment Weekly Best Middle Grade Book of 2016
A New York Public Library ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Glamour of Strangeness: Artists and the Last Age of the Exotic
by Jamie James
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/09/2016
 
From the early days of steamship travel, artists stifled by the culture of their homelands fled to islands, jungles, and deserts in search of new ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Glorious Heresies
by Lisa McInerney
Tim Duggan Books, 08/09/2016
 
When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Hating Game
by Sally Thorne
William Morrow, 08/09/2016
 
Nemesis (n.) 1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome.

2) A person's undoing

3) Joshua Templeman

Lucy Hutton and Joshua ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Romance
 Debut Author
The Hero's Body: A Memoir
by William Giraldi
Liveright / WW Norton, 08/09/2016
 
At just forty-seven years old, William Giraldi's father was killed in a horrific motorcycle crash while racing on a country road. This tragedy, which ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
The Jump
by Doug Johnstone
Faber and Faber, 08/09/2016
 
Struggling to come to terms with the suicide of her teenage son, Ellie lives in the shadows of the Forth Road Bridge, lingering on its footpaths and ...more
The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir
by Susan Daitch
City Lights Publishers, 08/09/2016
 
A series of archeological expeditions unfolds through time, each one looking for the ruins of a fabled underground city-state that once flourished in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Widower's Wife: A Thriller
by Cate Holahan
Crooked Lane Books, 08/09/2016
 
Investigator Ryan Monahan is a numbers man. So when his company sends him the Bacon case, which could net a ten million dollar payout, Monahan doubts ...more
When Watched: Stories
by Leopoldine Core
Penguin Books, 08/09/2016
 
In Leopoldine Core's stories, you never know where you are going to end up. Populated by sex workers and artists, lovers and friends, her characters ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
When We Was Fierce
by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo
Candlewick Press, 08/09/2016
 
We wasn't up to nothin'
new really.
Me and Jimmy, Catch and Yo-Yo.
We just comin' down the street keepin' cool.
We was good at stayin' low
Especially ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
A House Without Windows
by Nadia Hashimi
William Morrow, 08/16/2016
 
For two decades, Zeba was a loving wife, a patient mother, and a peaceful villager. But her quiet life is shattered when her husband, Kamal, is found ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
A Quiet Place
by Seicho Matsumoto
Bitter Lemon Press, 08/16/2016
 
While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news ...more
Thrillers
All at Sea: A Memoir
by Decca Aitkenhead
Nan A. Talese, 08/16/2016
 
On a hot, still morning on a beautiful beach in Jamaica, Decca Aitkenhead's life changed forever. Her four-year-old son was paddling peacefully at the...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Beyond Human: How Cutting-Edge Science Is Extending Our Lives
by Eve Herold
Thomas Dunne Books, 08/16/2016
 
Eve Herold's Beyond Human examines the medical technologies taking shape at the nexus of computing, microelectronics, engineering, nanotechnology, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
Divorce Is in the Air
by Gonzalo Torne
Knopf, 08/16/2016
 
There's a lot about Joan-Marc that his second wife doesn't know - and that he now sets out to tell her, come what may. He begins with his disastrous ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Rise the Dark
by Michael Koryta
Little Brown & Company, 08/16/2016
 
Rise the dark. These were the last words written in Lauren Novak's notebook before she was murdered in a strange Florida village. They've never meant ...more
Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils
by Lydia Pyne
Viking, 08/16/2016
 
Over the last century, the search for human ancestors has spanned four continents and resulted in the discovery of hundreds of fossils. While most of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
The Golden Age
by Joan London
Europa Editions, 08/16/2016
 
Thirteen-year-old Frank Gold's family, Hungarian Jews, escape the perils of World War II to the safety of Australia in the 1940s. But not long after ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Last Days of Night: A Novel
by Graham Moore
Random House, 08/16/2016
 
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Eddie Redmayne.

New York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Obelisk Gate: The Broken Earth #2
by N. K. Jemisin
Orbit, 08/16/2016
 
Essun -- once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger -- has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
by Heather Ann Thompson
Pantheon Books, 08/23/2016
 
On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. Holding ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Company Confessions: Secrets, Memoirs, and the CIA
by Christopher Moran
Thomas Dunne Books, 08/23/2016
 
Spies are supposed to keep quiet, never betraying their agents or discussing their operations. Somehow, this doesn't apply to the CIA, whose former ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Falling Awake: Poems
by Alice Oswald
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/23/2016
 
Alice Oswald's award-winning and highly acclaimed volume Memorial ("wryly ingenious," said the New York Times Book Review) portrays fallen soldiers ...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Now I Sit Me Down: From Klismos to Plastic Chair: A Natural History
by Witold Rybczynski
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/23/2016
 
In Now I Sit Me Down, the distinguished architect and writer Witold Rybczynski chronicles the history of the chair from the folding stools of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Spontaneous
by Aaron Starmer
Dutton Children's Books, 08/23/2016
 
Mara Carlyle's senior year is going as normally as could be expected, until - wa-bam! - fellow senior Katelyn Ogden explodes during third period pre-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time
by Keith Houston
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/23/2016
 
We may love books, but do we know what lies behind them? In The Book, Keith Houston reveals that the paper, ink, thread, glue, and board from which a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Dollhouse
by Fiona Davis
Dutton, 08/23/2016
 
"The Dollhouse... That's what we boys like to call it... The Barbizon Hotel for Women, packed to the rafters with pretty little dolls. Just like you."...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
The One Man
by Andrew Gross
Minotaur Books, 08/23/2016
 
Poland. 1944. Alfred Mendl and his family are brought on a crowded train to a Nazi concentration camp after being caught trying to flee Paris with ...more
The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis
by Elizabeth Letts
Ballantine Books, 08/23/2016
 
In the chaotic last days of the war a small troop of battle-weary American soldiers captures a German spy and makes an astonishing find - his ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Blood & Sand: Suez, Hungary, and Sixteen Days of Crisis That Changed the World
by Alex Von Tunzelmann
Simon & Schuster, 08/25/2016
 
Over sixteen extraordinary days in October and November 1956, the twin crises of Suez and Hungary pushed the world to the brink of a nuclear conflict ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Torch Against the Night: An Ember in the Ashes Novel
by Sabaa Tahir
Razorbill, 08/30/2016
 
Following the events of the Fourth Trial, an army led by Masks hunts the two fugitives as they escape the city of Serra and journey across the vast ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Ashes of Fiery Weather
by Kathleen Donohoe
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 08/30/2016
 
"There isn't anything in the world that hurts like a burn." No one knows the pain of a fire more than the women of the Keegan/O'Reilly clan. Kathleen ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit
by Jaye Robin Brown
HarperTeen, 08/30/2016
 
Joanna Gordon has been out and proud for years, but when her popular radio evangelist father remarries and decides to move all three of them from ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Girl in Pieces
by Kathleen Glasgow
Delacorte Press, 08/30/2016
 
Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she's already lost more than most people do in a lifetime. But she's learned how to forget. The broken ...more
Literary Fiction
Hell Fire: Inspector Sejer Mystery
by Karin Fossum
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 08/30/2016
 
The details of the deaths of Bonnie Hayden and her five-year-old son Simon are mysterious. There is no sign of robbery or assault. Who would brutally ...more
Just Kill Me
by Adam Selzer
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 08/30/2016
 
Megan Henske isn't one to heed warnings…

When the last letters in her alphabet cereal are D, I, and E, she doesn't crawl right back into bed. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Tell Me Something Real
by Calla Devlin
Atheneum Books, 08/30/2016
 
There are three beautiful blond Babcock sisters: gorgeous and foul-mouthed Adrienne, observant and shy Vanessa, and the youngest and best-loved, Marie...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Call
by Peadar O'Guilin
David Fickling Books, 08/30/2016
 
THREE MINUTES

You wake up alone in a horrible land. A horn sounds. The Call has begun.

TWO MINUTES

The Sidhe are close. They're the most ...more
As I Descended
by Robin Talley
HarperTeen, 09/06/2016
 
Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are their school's ultimate power couple - but one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Because I'm Watching: A Virtue Falls Novel
by Christina Dodd
St. Martin's Griffin, 09/06/2016
 
The survivor of a college dorm massacre, a woman accused of her lover's murder, Madeline Hewitson is haunted by ghosts and tormented by a killer only ...more
Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter's Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy
by Elizabeth Rynecki
NAL, 09/06/2016
 
Moshe Rynecki's body of work reached close to eight hundred paintings and sculptures before his life came to a tragic end. It was his great-...more
Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Dear Mr. M
by Herman Koch
Hogarth Books, 09/06/2016
 
Once a celebrated writer, M had his greatest success with a suspense novel based on a real-life disappearance. It told the story of a history teacher ...more
Family of Earth: A Southern Mountain Childhood
by Wilma Dykeman
The University of North Carolina Press, 09/06/2016
 
Focusing on her childhood in Buncombe County, Dykeman reveals a perceptive and sophisticated understanding of human nature, the environment, and ...more
Biography/Memoir
Girl Mans Up
by M-E Girard
HarperTeen, 09/06/2016
 
All Pen wants is to be the kind of girl she's always been. So why does everyone have a problem with it? They think the way she looks and acts means ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
by Margot Lee Shetterly
William Morrow, 09/06/2016
 
Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Karolina's Twins
by Ronald H. Balson
St. Martin's Griffin, 09/06/2016
 
She made a promise in desperation.
Now it's time to keep it.

Lena Woodward, elegant and poised, has lived a comfortable life among Chicago Society...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Lady Cop Makes Trouble: Girl Waits with Gun #2
by Amy Stewart
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 09/06/2016
 
After besting (and arresting) a ruthless silk factory owner and his gang of thugs in Girl Waits with Gun, Constance Kopp became one of the nation's ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Leave Me
by Gayle Forman
Algonquin Books, 09/06/2016
 
Every woman who has ever fantasized about driving past her exit on the highway instead of going home to make dinner, and every woman who has ever ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Letters from Paris
by Juliet Blackwell
Berkley Books, 09/06/2016
 
After surviving the accident that took her mother's life, Claire Broussard has worked hard to escape her small Louisiana hometown. But these days she ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Lucy and Linh
by Alice Pung
Knopf, 09/06/2016
 
Lucy is a bit of a pushover, but she's ambitious and smart, and she has just received the opportunity of a lifetime: a scholarship to a prestigious ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies
by Ross King
Bloomsbury USA, 09/06/2016
 
Claude Monet is perhaps the world's most beloved artist, and among all his creations, the paintings of the water lilies in his garden at Giverny are ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
March (Trilogy Slipcase Set)
by John Lewis
Top Shelf Productions, 09/06/2016
 
March is the award-winning, #1 bestselling graphic novel trilogy recounting his life in the movement, co-written with Andrew Aydin and drawn by Nate ...more
Graphic Novels
Matilda
by Roald Dahl
Viking Books for Younger Readers, 09/06/2016
 
From the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG comes the story of girl with extraordinary abilities. Matilda is a sweet,...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Perfume River
by Robert Olen Butler
Atlantic Monthly Press, 09/06/2016
 
Robert Quinlan is a seventy-year-old historian, teaching at Florida State University, where his wife Darla is also tenured. Their marriage, forged in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland
by Miriam Horn
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/06/2016
 
Many of the men and women doing today's most consequential environmental work - restoring America's grasslands, wildlife, soil, rivers, wetlands, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Razor Girl
by Carl Hiaasen
Knopf, 09/06/2016
 
When Lane Coolman's car is bashed from behind on the road to the Florida Keys, what appears to be an ordinary accident is anything but (this is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron
by Richard Cohen
Little Simon, 09/06/2016
 
Nora Ephron (1941–2012) was a phenomenal personality, journalist, essayist, novelist, playwright, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, and movie ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Sleeping on Jupiter: A Novel
by Anuradha Roy
Graywolf Press, 09/06/2016
 
On a train bound for the seaside town of Jarmuli, known for its temples, three elderly women meet a young documentary filmmaker named Nomi, whose ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Swimming in the Sink: An Episode of the Heart
by Lynne Cox
Knopf, 09/06/2016
 
Lynne Cox is an elite athlete who broke many world records, among them swimming the English Channel at fifteen, being the first woman to swim across ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood
by Belle Boggs
Graywolf Press, 09/06/2016
 
When Belle Boggs's "The Art of Waiting" was published in Orion in 2012, it went viral, leading to republication in Harper's Magazine, an interview on ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Ballroom: A Novel
by Anna Hope
Random House, 09/06/2016
 
England, 1911. At Sharston Asylum, men and women are separated by thick walls and barred windows. But on Friday nights, they are allowed to mingle in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Hawkweed Prophecy
by Irena Brignull
Weinstein Books, 09/06/2016
 
Poppy Hooper and Ember Hawkweed couldn't lead more different lives. Poppy is a troubled teen: moving from school to school, causing chaos wherever she...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Revolutionaries Try Again
by Mauro Javier Cardenas
Coffee House Press, 09/06/2016
 
Everyone thinks they're the chosen ones, Masha wrote on Antonio's manuscript. See About Schmidt with Jack Nicholson. Then she quoted from Hope Against...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Risen: A Novel
by Ron Rash
Ecco, 09/06/2016
 
While swimming in a secluded creek on a hot Sunday in 1969, sixteen-year-old Eugene and his older brother, Bill, meet the entrancing Ligeia. A sexy, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Secret Ingredient of Wishes
by Susan Bishop Crispell
Thomas Dunne Books, 09/06/2016
 
Rachel isn't on the road long before she runs out of gas in a town that's not on her map: Nowhere, North Carolina - also known as the town of "Lost ...more
Literary Fiction
The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters
by Laura Thompson
St. Martin's Press, 09/06/2016
 
The eldest was a razor-sharp novelist of upper-class manners; the second was loved by John Betjeman; the third was a fascist who married Oswald Mosley...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The White Mirror: A Li Du Mystery
by Elsa Hart
Minotaur Books, 09/06/2016
 
In The White Mirror, the follow-up to Elsa Hart's critically acclaimed debut, Jade Dragon Mountain, Li Du, an imperial librarian and former exile in ...more
The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult
by Jerald Walker
Beacon Press, 09/06/2016
 
When The World in Flames begins, in 1970, Jerald Walker is six years old. His consciousness revolves around being a member of a church whose teachings...more
Biography/Memoir
Vampire in Love
by Enrique Vila-Matas (Author), Margaret Jull Costa (translator)
The New Press, 09/06/2016
 
An effeminate, hunchbacked barber on the verge of death falls in love with a choirboy. A fledgling writer on barbiturates visits Marguerite Duras's ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Beloved Poison: Jem Flockhart Mysteries, Book 1
by E. S. Thomson
Pegasus Books, 09/13/2016
 
Ramshackle and crumbling, trapped in the past and resisting the future, St. Saviour's Infirmary awaits demolition. Within its stinking wards and ...more
Black Water
by Louise Doughty
Sarah Crichton Books, 09/13/2016
 
John Harper is in hiding in a remote hut on a tropical island. As he lies awake at night, listening to the rain on the roof, he believes his life may ...more
Black Wave
by Michelle Tea
The Feminist Press, 09/13/2016
 
It's 1999 - and Michelle's world is ending.

Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and nineties San Francisco, Michelle ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Blood Crime
by Sebastia Alzamora (author), Martha Tennent & Maruxa Relaño (translators)
Soho Press, 09/13/2016
 
It is 1936, and Barcelona burns as the Spanish Civil War takes over. The city is a bloodbath. Yet in all this death, the murders of a Marist monk and ...more
Children of the New World: Stories
by Alexander Weinstein
Picador, 09/13/2016
 
Children of the New World introduces readers to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Darktown
by Thomas Mullen
Atria Books, 09/13/2016
 
Responding to orders from on high, the Atlanta Police Department is forced to hire its first black officers, including war veterans Lucius Boggs and ...more
Jerusalem
by Alan Moore
Liveright / WW Norton, 09/13/2016
 
In the epic novel Jerusalem, Alan Moore channels both the ecstatic visions of William Blake and the theoretical physics of Albert Einstein through the...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Loner
by Teddy Wayne
Little Simon, 09/13/2016
 
David Federman has never felt appreciated. An academically gifted yet painfully forgettable member of his New Jersey high school class, the withdrawn,...more
Nine Island
by Jane Alison
Catapult, 09/13/2016
 
Nine Island is an intimate autobiographical novel, told by J, a woman who lives in a glass tower on one of Miami Beach's lush Venetian Islands. After ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Nutshell
by Ian McEwan
Nan A. Talese, 09/13/2016
 
Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home - a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse - but John's not there. Instead, she...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Red Right Hand
by Chris Holm
Mulholland, 09/13/2016
 
When viral video of an explosive terrorist attack on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge reveals that a Federal witness long thought dead is still ...more
Sun, Sand, Murder: A Mystery
by John Keyse-Walker
Minotaur Books, 09/13/2016
 
As a Special Constable, Teddy Creque is the only police presence on the remote, sun-drenched island of Anegada, nestled in the heart of the British ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Mysteries
 Debut Author
The Bombs That Brought Us Together
by Brian Conaghan
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 09/13/2016
 
Fourteen-year-old Charlie Law has lived in Little Town, on the border with Old Country, all his life. He knows the rules: no going out after dark; no ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Bone Tree: A Penn Cage Novel, Natchez Burning Trilogy #2
by Greg Iles
William Morrow, 09/13/2016
 
Former prosecutor Penn Cage and his fiancée, reporter and publisher Caitlin Masters, have barely escaped with their lives after being attacked by...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Gloaming
by Melanie Finn
Two Dollar Radio, 09/13/2016
 
Pilgrim's husband left her for another woman, stranding her in a Swiss town where she is involved in an accident that leaves three children dead. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate?Discoveries from A Secret World
by Peter Wohlleben
Greystone Books, 09/13/2016
 
Are trees social beings? In this international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Last True Love Story
by Brendan Kiely
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 09/13/2016
 
The point of living is learning how to love.

That's what Gpa says. To Hendrix and Corrina, both seventeen but otherwise alike only in their ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Orphan Mother
by Robert Hicks
Grand Central Publishing, 09/13/2016
 
In the years following the Civil War, Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock - the "Widow of the South" - has quietly built a new life for ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Secrets of Wishtide: A Laetitia Rodd Mystery
by Kate Saunders
Bloomsbury USA, 09/13/2016
 
Mrs. Laetitia Rodd, aged fifty-two, is the widow of an archdeacon. Living in Hampstead with her confidante and landlady, Mrs. Bentley, who once let ...more
The Tea Planter's Wife
by Dinah Jefferies
Crown, 09/13/2016
 
In this lush, sexy, atmospheric page-turner, a young Englishwoman, 19-year-old Gwendolyn, marries a rich and seductively mysterious widower, Laurence ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Charlatan
by Kate Braithwaite
Fireship Press, 09/15/2016
 
1676. In a hovel in the centre of Paris, the fortune-teller La Voisin holds a black mass, summoning the devil to help an unnamed client keep the love ...more
Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Shame the Stars
by Guadalupe Garcia Mccall
Tu Books, 09/15/2016
 
Eighteen-year-old Joaquin del Toro's future looks bright. With his older brother in the priesthood, he s set to inherit his family s Texas ranch. He's...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
After the Dam
by Amy Hassinger
Red Hen Press, 09/16/2016
 
Undone by motherhood, judged by her husband, thirty-two-year-old Rachel Clayborne flees with her baby in the middle of the night for the one place on ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
A Truck Full of Money
by Tracy Kidder
Kids@Random, 09/20/2016
 
Tracy Kidder, the "master of the nonfiction narrative" (The Baltimore Sun) and author of the bestselling classic The Soul of a New Machine, now tells ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Blind Sight: A Mallory Novel
by Carol O'Connell
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 09/20/2016
 
A blind child and a Catholic nun disappear from a city sidewalk in plain sight of onlookers. There, then gone—vanished in seconds. Those who ...more
House of Lords and Commons: Poems
by Ishion Hutchinson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/20/2016
 
In House of Lords and Commons, the revelatory and vital new collection of poems from the winner of the 2013 Whiting Writers' Award in poetry, Ishion ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
Kids of Appetite
by David Arnold
Viking Books for Younger Readers, 09/20/2016
 
Victor Benucci and Madeline Falco have a story to tell.

It begins with the death of Vic's father.
It ends with the murder of Mad's uncle.

The ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Marrow: A Love Story
by Elizabeth Lesser
HarperCollins Publishers, 09/20/2016
 
A mesmerizing and courageous memoir: the story of two sisters uncovering the depth of their love through the life-and-death experience of a bone ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Reputations
by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Riverhead Books, 09/20/2016
 
Javier Mallarino is a living legend. He is his country's most influential political cartoonist, the consciousness of a nation. A man capable of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Bookshop on the Corner
by Jenny Colgan
William Morrow, 09/20/2016
 
Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Last Gods of Indochine
by Samuel Ferrer
Signal 8 Press, 09/20/2016
 
Jacquie Mouhot and Paaku the Lotus-Born are divided by six centuries but linked by a common curse. In medieval Cambodia, Paaku is an orphan whose ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Odds of Lightning
by Jocelyn Davies
Simon Pulse, 09/20/2016
 
Extraordinary things happen when we least expect them.

Tiny, Lu, Will and Nathaniel used to be best friends. Then life-defining events the summer ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Brightwood
by Tania Unsworth
Algonquin Books, 09/27/2016
 
Daisy Fitzjohn knows there are two worlds: the outside world and the world of her home, a secluded mansion called Brightwood Hall. But only Brightwood...more
Darling Days: A Memoir
by iO Tillett Wright
Ecco, 09/27/2016
 
Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto
by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Gallery Books, 09/27/2016
 
In 1942, one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw ghetto as a public health specialist. While there, she reached out ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
by Ruth Franklin
Liveright / WW Norton, 09/27/2016
 
Still known to millions primarily as the author of the "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) has been curiously absent from the mainstream ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Reckoning on Cane Hill
by Steve Mosby
Pegasus Books, 09/27/2016
 
The hardest crimes to acknowledge are your own.

Charlie Matheson died two years ago in a car accident. So how is a woman bearing a startling ...more
The Vanishing Year
by Kate Moretti
Atria Books, 09/27/2016
 
Zoe Whittaker is living a charmed life. She is the beautiful young wife to handsome, charming Wall Street tycoon Henry Whittaker. She is a member of ...more
Time Travel: A History
by James Gleick
Pantheon Books, 09/27/2016
 
Gleick's story begins at the turn of the twentieth century with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
November Storm: Iowa Short Fiction Award
by Robert Oldshue
University of Iowa Press, 10/01/2016
 
In each of the stories in Robert Oldshue's debut collection, the characters want to be decent but find that hard to define.

In the first story, an ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
A Most Extraordinary Pursuit
by Juliana Gray
Berkley Books, 10/04/2016
 
> February, 1906. As the personal secretary of the recently departed Duke of Olympia - and a woman of scrupulous character - Miss Emmeline Rose ...more
A Question of Mercy: A Novel
by Elizabeth Cox
Story River Books, 10/04/2016
 
Jess's odyssey of escape across four states leads into dark territories of life-and-death moral choices where compassion and grace offer faint ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
All That Man Is
by David Szalay
Graywolf Press, 10/04/2016
 
Nine men. Each of them at a different stage in life, each of them away from home, and each of them striving - in the suburbs of Prague, in an ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
By Gaslight
by Steven Price
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/04/2016
 
William Pinkerton is already famous, the son of the most notorious detective of all time, when he descends into the underworld of Victorian London in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Every Man a Menace
by Patrick Hoffman
Atlantic Monthly Press, 10/04/2016
 
San Francisco is about to receive the biggest delivery of MDMA to hit the West Coast in years. Raymond Gaspar, just out of prison, is sent to the city...more
Last Seen Leaving
by Caleb Roehrig
Feiwel & Friends, 10/04/2016
 
Flynn's girlfriend, January, is missing. The cops are asking question he can't answer, and her friends are telling stories that don't add up. All eyes...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Napoleon's Last Island
by Thomas Keneally
Atria Books, 10/04/2016
 
In October 1815, after losing the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte was banished to the island of Saint Helena. There, in one of the most remote ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Nicotine
by Nell Zink
Ecco, 10/04/2016
 
Recent business school graduate Penny Baker has rebelled against her family her whole life - by being the conventional one. Her mother, Amalia, was a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
North of Crazy: A Memoir
by Neltje
St. Martin's Press, 10/04/2016
 
Imagine a world of Gatsby-esque glamor, opulence, and cultural prestige, of exclusive parties and elegant dinners, of literary luminaries including ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Private Novelist: Fiction
by Nell Zink
Ecco, 10/04/2016
 
Years ago, Nell Zink resolved to write a book for her friend, the Israeli novelist Avner Shats, that would mirror his remarkable style. Unable to read...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Angel of History
by Rabih Alameddine
Atlantic Monthly Press, 10/04/2016
 
"There are many ways to break someone's heart, but Rabih Alameddine is one rare writer who not only breaks our hearts but gives every broken piece a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Explosion Chronicles
by Yan Lianke
Grove Press, 10/04/2016
 
With the Yi River on one side and the Balou Mountains on the other, the village of Explosion was founded more than a millennium ago by refugees ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Heart of Henry Quantum
by Pepper Harding
Gallery Books, 10/04/2016
 
Henry Quantum has several thoughts going through his head at any given time, so it's no surprise when he forgets something very important - ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Lives of Animals (The University Center for Human Values Series)
by J. M. Coetzee
Princeton University Press, 10/04/2016
 
Costello's son, a physics professor, admires her literary achievements, but dreads his mother's lecturing on animal rights at the college where he ...more
Literary Fiction
The Mortifications
by Derek Palacio
Times Books, 10/04/2016
 
In 1980, a rural Cuban family is torn apart during the Mariel Boat-lift. Uxbal Encarnación - father, husband, political insurgent - refuses to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Motion of Puppets
by Keith Donohue
Picador, 10/04/2016
 
In the Old City of Québec, Kay Harper falls in love with a puppet in the window of the Quatre Mains, a toy shop that is never open. She is ...more
The Trespasser
by Tana French
Viking, 10/04/2016
 
Being on the Murder squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems ...more
Today Will Be Different
by Maria Semple
Little Brown & Company, 10/04/2016
 
Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today, she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
When the Moon was Ours
by Anna-Marie McLemore
1stBooks Library, 10/04/2016
 
Anna-Marie McLemore's debut novel The Weight of Feathers was greeted with rave reviews, a YALSA Morris Award nomination, and spots on multiple "Best ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Winter Storms (Winter Street, 3)
by Elin Hilderbrand
Little Brown & Company, 10/04/2016
 
Some of the stormy weather of the past few seasons seems to have finally lifted for the Quinns. After a year apart, and an ill-fated affair with the ...more
Literary Fiction
Christmas On Nantucket
by Elin Hilderbrand
Hodder & Stoughton, 10/06/2016
 
A warm and enchanting festive novel from New York Times bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand.

Christmas on Nantucket finds Winter Street Inn owner...more
Literary Fiction
American Philosophy: A Love Story
by John Kaag
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/11/2016
 
In American Philosophy, John Kaag - a disillusioned philosopher at sea in his marriage and career - stumbles upon a treasure trove of rare books on an...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Another Place You've Never Been
by Rebecca Kauffman
Soft Skull Press, 10/11/2016
 
Most of us have experienced what it's like to know what someone is going to say right before they say it. Or perhaps you have been shocked by the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Beast
by Brie Spangler
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 10/11/2016
 
Tall, meaty, muscle-bound, and hairier than most throw rugs, Dylan doesn't look like your average fifteen-year-old, so, naturally, high school has not...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today
by Simon Morrison
Liveright / WW Norton, 10/11/2016
 
On a freezing night in January 2013, a hooded assailant hurled acid in the face of the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet. The ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
French Rhapsody
by Antoine Laurain
Gallic Books, 10/11/2016
 
Middle-aged doctor Alain Massoulier has received a life-changing letter—thirty-three years too late.

Lost in the Paris postal system for decades, ...more
Literary Fiction
In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine
by Tim Judah
Tim Duggan Books, 10/11/2016
 
Ever since Ukraine's violent 2014 revolution, followed by Russia's annexation of Crimea, the country has been at war. Misinformation reigns, more than...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Rani Patel In Full Effect
by Sonia Patel
Cinco Puntos Press, 10/11/2016
 
Almost seventeen, Rani Patel appears to be a kick-ass Indian girl breaking cultural norms as a hip-hop performer in full effect. But in truth, she's a...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Small Great Things
by Jodi Picoult
Ballantine Books, 10/11/2016
 
Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years' experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Still Life with Tornado
by A.S. King
Dutton Children's Books, 10/11/2016
 
Sarah can't draw. This is a problem, because as long as she can remember, she has "done the art." She thinks she's having an existential crisis. And ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Tetris: The Games People Play
by Brian
First Second, 10/11/2016
 
Simple yet addictive, Tetris delivers an irresistible, unending puzzle that has players hooked. Play it long enough and you'll see those brightly ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Clancys of Queens: A Memoir
by Tara Clancy
Crown, 10/11/2016
 
From scheming and gambling with her force-of-nature grandmother, to brawling with eleven-year-old girls on the concrete recess battle yard of MS 172, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Comet Seekers
by Helen Sedgwick
Harper, 10/11/2016
 
Róisín and François are immediately drawn to each other when they meet at a remote research base on the frozen ice sheets of Antarctica...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Ghosts of Birds
by Eliot Weinberger
New Directions Publishing, 10/11/2016
 
The Ghosts of Birds offers thirty-five essays by Eliot Weinberger: the first section of the book continues his linked serial-essay, An Elemental Thing...more
The Life-Writer
by David Constantine
Biblioasis, 10/11/2016
 
After the death of her beloved husband, Katrin, a literary biographer, copes with the loss by writing his personal history. While researching the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Lost Boy
by Camilla Lackberg
Pegasus Books, 10/11/2016
 
Detective Patrik Hedstrom is no stranger to tragedy. A murder case concerning Fjällbacka's dead financial director, Mats Sverin, is a grim but ...more
The Movie Version
by Emma Wunsch
Amulet Books, 10/11/2016
 
In the movie version of Amelia's life, the roles have always been clear. Her older brother, Toby: definitely the Star. As popular with the stoners as ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The People of the Broken Neck
by Silas Dent Zobal
Unbridled Books, 10/11/2016
 
From the woods where he hides with his nearly grown son Clarke and his young daughter King, ex-Army Ranger Dominick Sawyer watches Agent Charlie Basin...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
The Red Car
by Marcy Dermansky
Liveright / WW Norton, 10/11/2016
 
With each new novel, Marcy Dermansky deploys her "brainy, emotionally sophisticated" (New York Times) prose to greater and greater heights, and The ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Weight of Zero
by Karen Fortunati
Delacorte Press, 10/11/2016
 
Seventeen-year-old Catherine Pulaski knows Zero is coming for her. Zero, the devastating depression born of Catherine's bipolar disorder, almost ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
A Gambler's Anatomy
by Jonathan Lethem
Doubleday, 10/18/2016
 
Handsome, impeccably tuxedoed Bruno Alexander travels the world winning large sums of money from amateur "whales" who think they can challenge his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Borders
by Roy Jacobsen
Graywolf Press, 10/18/2016
 
The Ardennes, a forested, mountainous borderland that spans France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg, was crucial to Hitler's invasion of France and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation
by Anne Sebba
St. Martin's Press, 10/18/2016
 
Paris in the 1940s was a place of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation, and secrets. During the occupation, the swastika flew from the Eiffel...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Mister Monkey
by Francine Prose
Harper, 10/18/2016
 
Mister Monkey - a screwball children's musical about a playfully larcenous pet chimpanzee - is the kind of family favorite that survives far past its ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Nobody's Son: A Memoir
by Mark Slouka
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/18/2016
 
Born in Czechoslovakia, Mark Slouka's parents survived the Nazis only to have to escape the Communist purges after the war. Smuggled out of their own ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Notwithstanding (Vintage International)
by Louis de Bernieres
Vintage, 10/18/2016
 
It is, as it always has been, a place of pubs and cricket pitches, where local eccentrics - a retired colonel who has eschewed clothes, a spiritualist...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Paris for One and Other Stories
by Jojo Moyes
Pamela Dorman Books, 10/18/2016
 
Nell is twenty-six and has never been to Paris. She's never even been on a romantic weekend away—to anywhere—before. Traveling abroad isn't ...more
Short Stories
Smoke and Mirrors: Magic Men Mysteries
by Elly Griffiths
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 10/18/2016
 
It's Christmas time in Brighton, and the city is abuzz about a local production of Aladdin, starring the marvelous Max Mephisto. But the holiday cheer...more
The Fall Guy
by James Lasdun
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/18/2016
 
It is summer, 2012. Charlie, a wealthy banker with an uneasy conscience, invites his troubled cousin Matthew to visit him and his wife in their ...more
The Girl from Venice
by Martin Cruz Smith
Simon & Schuster, 10/18/2016
 
Venice, 1945. The war may be waning, but the city known as La Serenissima is still occupied and the people of Italy fear the power of the Third Reich....more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Next
by Stephanie Gangi
St. Martin's Press, 10/18/2016
 
Joanna falls from her life, from the love of daughters and devoted dog, into an otherworldly landscape, a bleak infinity she can't escape until she ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age
by Gino Segrè (author), Bettina Hoerlin (author)
Henry Holt and Company, 10/18/2016
 
Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world's physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called the Pope by his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill
by Greg Mitchell
Crown, 10/18/2016
 
In the summer of 1962, one year after East German Communists built the Berlin Wall, a group of daring young West Germans came up with a plan. They ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South
by Beth Macy
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 10/18/2016
 
The year was 1899 and the place a sweltering tobacco farm in the Jim Crow South town of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie Muse were two little ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine
by Ibtisam Barakat
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/25/2016
 
Picking up where Tasting the Sky left off, Balcony on the Moon follows Ibtisam Barakat through her childhood and adolescence in Palestine from 1972 to...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary
by Joe Jackson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/25/2016
 
Black Elk, the Native American holy man, is known to millions of readers around the world from his 1932 testimonial, Black Elk Speaks. Adapted by the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Fields Where They Lay: A Junior Bender Mystery
by Timothy Hallinan
Soho Press, 10/25/2016
 
The halls are decked, the deck is stacked, and here comes that jolly old elf. Junior Bender, divorced father of one and burglar extraordinaire, finds ...more
Float
by Anne Carson
Knopf, 10/25/2016
 
Anne Carson consistently dazzles with her inventive, shape-shifting work and the vividness of her imagination. Float reaches an even greater level of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Essays
 Debut Author
On Living
by Kerry Egan
Riverhead Books, 10/25/2016
 
As a hospice chaplain, Kerry Egan didn't offer sermons or prayers, unless they were requested; in fact, she found, the dying rarely want to talk about...more
Critics' Consensus:

Advice
 Debut Author
Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood
by Ibtisam Barakat
Macmillan Publishers, 10/25/2016
 
With candor and courage, she stitches together memories of her childhood: fear and confusion as bombs explode near her home and she is separated from ...more
Biography/Memoir
Television: A Biography
by David Thomson
Thames & Hudson, 10/25/2016
 
In just a few years, what used to be an immobile piece of living room furniture, which one had to sit in front of at appointed times in order to watch...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Mistletoe Murder: And Other Stories
by P. D. James
Knopf, 10/25/2016
 
The newly appointed Sgt. Dalgliesh is drawn into a case that is "pure Agatha Christie." ... A "pedantic, respectable, censorious" clerk's secret taste...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Word Detective: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary
by John Simpson
Basic Books, 10/25/2016
 
What do you call the part of a dog's back it can't scratch? Can you drink a glass of balderdash? And if, serendipitously, you find yourself in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Uprooted: The Japanese American Experience During World War II
by Albert Marrin
Knopf, 10/25/2016
 
Just seventy-five years ago, the American government did something that most would consider unthinkable today: it rounded up over 100,000 of its own ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
We Show What We Have Learned and Other Stories
by Clare Beams
Lookout Books, 10/25/2016
 
The literary, historic, and fantastic collide in these wise and exquisitely unsettling stories. From bewildering assemblies in school auditoriums to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Teethmarks on My Tongue
by Eileen Battersby
Dalkey Archive Press, 10/28/2016
 
The gunning down of her mother in a Richmond street sets young Helen Stockton Defoe on a journey of self-discovery. A physical feature she had first ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier
by David Welky
W.W. Norton & Company, 11/01/2016
 
In 1906, from atop a snow-swept hill in the ice fields northwest of Greenland, hundreds of miles from another human being, Commander Robert E. Peary ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine
by Sophie Pinkham
W.W. Norton & Company, 11/01/2016
 
Ukraine has rebuilt itself over and over again in the last century, plagued by the same conflicts: corruption, poverty, substance abuse, ethnic ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Edinburgh
by Alexander Chee
Mariner Books, 11/01/2016
 
Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean-American boy growing up in Maine whose powerful soprano voice wins him a place as section leader of the first ...more
Literary Fiction
Fish in Exile
by Vi Khi Nao
Coffee House Press, 11/01/2016
 
How do you bear the death of a child? With fishtanks and jellyfish burials, Persephone's pomegranate seeds, and affairs with the neighbors. Fish in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Human Evolution: Our Brains and Behavior
by Robin Dunbar
Oxford University Press, 11/01/2016
 
In Human Evolution: Our Brains and Behavior, Robin Dunbar appeals to the human aspects of every reader, as subjects of mating, friendship, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
In the Country of the Blind
by Edward Hoagland
Arcade Publishing, 11/01/2016
 
This capstone novel, set in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, introduces Press, a stockbroker going blind. Press has lost his job and his wife and is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Iron Dawn: The Monitor, the Merrimack, and the Civil War Sea Battle that Changed History
by Richard Snow
Scribner, 11/01/2016
 
No single sea battle has had more far-reaching consequences than the one fought in the harbor at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in March 1862. The ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Monsters in Appalachia: Stories
by Sheryl Monks
Vandalia Press, 11/01/2016
 
The characters within these fifteen stories are in one way or another staring into the abyss. While some are awaiting redemption, others are fully ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Pull Me Under: A Novel
by Kelly Luce
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/01/2016
 
Kelly Luce's Pull Me Under tells the story of Rio Silvestri, who, when she was twelve years old, fatally stabbed a school bully. Rio, born Chizuru ...more
Literary Fiction
The Long Room
by Francesca Kay
Tin House Books, 11/01/2016
 
London. December 1981. The IRA is on the attack, a cold war is being waged, another war is just over the horizon, and Stephen Donaldson spends his ...more
The Spy Who Couldn't Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI's Hunt for America's Stolen Secrets
by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
NAL, 11/01/2016
 
Before Edward Snowden's infamous data breach, the largest theft of government secrets was committed by an ingenious traitor whose intricate espionage ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Thus Bad Begins
by Javier Marias (Author), Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)
Knopf, 11/01/2016
 
Madrid, 1980. Juan de Vere, nearly finished with his university degree, takes a job as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, an eccentric, once-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Valiant Gentlemen
by Sabina Murray
Grove Press, 11/01/2016
 
In prose that is darkly humorous and alive with detail, Valiant Gentlemen reimagines the lives and intimate friendships of humanitarian and Irish ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Virgin and Other Stories
by April Ayers Lawson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/01/2016
 
Set in the American South, at the crossroads of a world that is both secular and devoutly Christian, April Ayers Lawson's stories mine the inner lives...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Just Another Jihadi Jane
by Tabish Khair
Interlink Books, 11/03/2016
 
Two children of Muslim immigrants in England's industrial north - thoughtful Jamilla and rebellious Ameena - become best friends, and find in religion...more
Literary Fiction
Heart Attack and Vine: A Crush Novel
by Phoef Sutton
Prospect Park Books, 11/08/2016
 
When Rachel Fury, a con-artist friend who'd vanished for a couple of years after a big scam, reappears in Hollywood under a new name as a glitzy movie...more
Heartless
by Marissa Meyer
Feiwel & Friends, 11/08/2016
 
Catherine may be one of the most desired girls in Wonderland, and a favorite of the unmarried King of Hearts, but her interests lie elsewhere. A ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Merrow
by Ananda Braxton-Smith
Candlewick Press, 11/08/2016
 
The people of Carrick Island have been whispering behind Neen's back ever since her father drowned and her mother disappeared. The townspeople say her...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Millennium: From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed Over a Thousand Years
by Ian Mortimer
Pegasus Books, 11/08/2016
 
In Millennium, bestselling historian Ian Mortimer takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the last ten centuries of Western history. It is a journey ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Elephants in My Backyard: A Memoir
by Rajiv Surendra
Regan Books, 11/08/2016
 
"This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. I found myself standing dangerously close to the edge of a cliff. Far below me was an incredible ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
The Thieves of Threadneedle Street: The Incredible True Story of the American Forgers Who Nearly Broke the Bank of England
by Nicholas Booth
Pegasus Books, 11/08/2016
 
In the summer of 1873, four American forgers went on trial at the Old Bailey - London's iconic law court - for the greatest fraud the world had ever ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
These Are the Names
by Tommy Wieringa
Melville House, 11/08/2016
 
Despite its Biblical title - which comes from the opening lines of the Book of Exodus - award-winning novelist Tommy Wieringa has crafted perhaps his ...more
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
by Trevor Noah
Spiegel & Grau, 11/15/2016
 
Named one of the best books of the year by Michiko Kakutani, New York TimesUSA Today • San Francisco Chronicle • NPR • ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Coast Range: A Collection from the Pacific Edge
by Nick Neely
Counterpoint Press, 11/15/2016
 
Coast Range, the debut collection of essays from writer Nick Neely, meticulously and thoughtfully dwells on these intersections and much more. The ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Essays
 Debut Author
Desolation Flats: An Art Oveson Mystery
by Andrew Hunt
Minotaur Books, 11/15/2016
 
In the summer of 1938, as war clouds loom overseas, auto racers from around the world gather at the Bonneville Salt Flats west of Salt Lake City, ...more
Eat Live Love Die: Selected Essays
by Betty Fussell
Counterpoint Press, 11/15/2016
 
Betty Fussell is an inspiring badass. She's not just the award-winning author of numerous books ranging from biography and memoir to cookbooks and ...more
Essays
My Sister Rosa
by Justine Larbalestier
Soho Press, 11/15/2016
 
Seventeen-year-old Aussie Che Taylor loves his younger sister, Rosa. But he's also certain that she's a psychopath - clinically, threateningly, ...more
The Dispossessed
by Szilard Borbely
Harper Perennial, 11/15/2016
 
In a tiny village in northeast Hungary, close to the Romanian border, a young, unnamed boy warily observes day-to-day life and chronicles his family's...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Museum at the End of the World
by John Metcalf
Biblioasis, 11/15/2016
 
Set in Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and Ottawa, the stories in this collection span the life of writer Robert Ford and his wife Sheila. Playing ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Nerdy and the Dirty
by B. T. Gottfred
Henry Holt and Company, 11/15/2016
 
Pen Lupo is sick and tired of hiding who she is. On the outside, Pen is popular, quiet, and deferential to her boyfriend. On the inside, however, Pen...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age
by David Biello
Scribner, 11/15/2016
 
Civilization is in crisis, facing disasters of our own making on the only planet known to bear life in the vast void of the universe. We have become ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
This House Is Mine
by Dörte Hansen
St. Martin's Press, 11/15/2016
 
All her life Vera has felt like a stranger in the old and drafty half-timbered farmhouse she arrived at as a five-year-old refugee from East Prussia ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World
by Steven Johnson
Riverhead Books, 11/15/2016
 
This lushly illustrated history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
All the Gallant Men: An American Sailor's Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor
by Donald Stratton & Ken Gire
William Morrow, 11/22/2016
 
At 8:06 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Seaman First Class Donald Stratton was consumed by an inferno. A million pounds of explosives had detonated beneath ...more
Biography/Memoir
Novels, Tales, Journeys: The Complete Prose of Alexander Pushkin
by Alexander Pushkin (Author), Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (translators)
Knopf, 11/22/2016
 
The father of Russian literature, Pushkin is beloved not only for his poetry but also for his brilliant stories, which range from dramatic tales of ...more
Of Fire and Stars
by Audrey Coulthurst
Balzer + Bray, 11/22/2016
 
Betrothed since childhood to the prince of Mynaria, Princess Dennaleia has always known what her future holds. Her marriage will seal the alliance ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Romance
 Debut Author
Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs
by Douglas Smith
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/22/2016
 
A hundred years after his murder, Rasputin continues to excite the popular imagination as the personification of evil. Numerous biographies, novels, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Marches: A Borderland Journey between England and Scotland
by Rory Stewart
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 11/22/2016
 
In The Places in Between Rory Stewart walked through the most dangerous borderlands in the world. Now he walks along the border he calls home - where ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
The Mayakovsky Tapes
by Robert Littell
Thomas Dunne Books, 11/22/2016
 
The ladies, each of whom could claim to have been a muse to the poet, loved or loathed Mayakovsky in the course of his life, and as they piece ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
METRO 2033
by Dmitry Glukhovsky
Lulu.com, 11/27/2016
 
The book describes the consequences of an atomic war. Its only survivors strive for existence in the mazes of the Moscow subway (Metro) some two ...more
Literary Fiction
Normal
by Warren Ellis
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/29/2016
 
Some people call it "abyss gaze." Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you.

There are two types of people who think ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Mayor of Mogadishu: A Story of Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia
by Andrew Harding
St. Martin's Press, 11/29/2016
 
In The Mayor of Mogadishu, one of the BBC's most experienced foreign correspondents, Andrew Harding, reveals the tumultuous life of Mohamoud "Tarzan" ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Whole Town's Talking
by Fannie Flagg
Random House, 11/29/2016
 
Elmwood Springs, Missouri, is a small town like any other, but something strange is happening at the cemetery. Still Meadows, as it's called, is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind
by Siri Hustvedt
Simon & Schuster, 12/06/2016
 
Siri Husvedt has always been fascinated by biology and how human perception works. She is a lover of art, the humanities, and the sciences. She is a ...more
Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey
by Nicola Tallis
Pegasus Books, 12/06/2016
 
"Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same." These were the heartbreaking words of a seventeen-year-old girl, Lady...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Don't Turn Out the Lights: Commandant Martin Servaz
by Bernard Minier
Minotaur Books, 12/06/2016
 
"You did nothing."

hristine Steinmeyer thought the anonymous suicide note she found in her mailbox on Christmas Eve wasn't meant for her. But the ...more
Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future
by David Grinspoon
Grand Central Publishing, 12/06/2016
 
For the first time in Earth's history, our planet is experiencing a confluence of rapidly accelerating changes prompted by one species: humans. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine
by Sarah Lohman
Simon & Schuster, 12/06/2016
 
The United States boasts a culturally and ethnically diverse population which makes for a continually changing culinary landscape. But a young ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Of All That Ends
by Gunter Grass
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 12/06/2016
 
In spite of the trials of old age, and with the end in sight, suddenly everything seems possible again: love letters, soliloquies, scenes of jealousy,...more
The Divided City: A Gregor Reinhardt Novel
by Luke McCallin
Berkley Books, 12/06/2016
 
A year after Germany's defeat, Reinhardt has been hired back onto Berlin's civilian police force. The city is divided among the victorious allied ...more
Thrillers
The Gardens of Consolation
by Parisa Reza
Europa Editions, 12/06/2016
 
In the early 1920s, in the remote village of Ghamsar, Talla and Sardar, two teenagers dreaming of a better life, fall in love and marry. Sardar brings...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
The Gentleman from Japan: An Inspector O Novel
by James Church
Minotaur Books, 12/06/2016
 
Under the guise of machinery for making dumplings, a Spanish factory near Barcelona is secretly producing a key component in the production of nuclear...more
The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
by Dava Sobel
Viking, 12/06/2016
 
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or "human computers," to interpret the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Moravian Night: A Story
by Peter Handke (author), Krishna Winston (translator)
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 12/06/2016
 
Mysteriously summoned to a houseboat on the Morava river, a few friends, associates, and collaborators of a former writer gather to hear him tell a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
They Are Trying to Break Your Heart
by David Savill
Bloomsbury USA, 12/06/2016
 
In 1994, Marko Novak's world is torn apart by the death of his best friend, Kemal, a young soldier in the darkest days of the Bosnian war. After the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Kill the Next One
by Frederico Axat
Mulholland, 12/13/2016
 
Ted McKay had it all: a beautiful wife, two daughters, a high-paying job. But after being diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor he finds himself with ...more
The Private Life of Mrs Sharma
by Ratika Kapur
Bloomsbury USA, 12/13/2016
 
Renuka Sharma is a dutiful wife, mother, and daughter-in-law holding the fort in a modest rental in Delhi while her husband tries to rack up savings ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Hollow Men
by Rob McCarthy
Pegasus Books, 12/20/2016
 
Dr. Harry Kent likes to keep himself busy - juggling hospital duties with his work as a police surgeon for the London Metropolitan Police - anything ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Mysteries
 Debut Author
If Our Bodies Could Talk: A Guide to Operating and Maintaining a Human Body
by James Hamblin
Doubleday, 12/27/2016
 
In 2014, James Hamblin launched a series of videos for The Atlantic called "If Our Bodies Could Talk."  With it, the doctor-turned-journalist ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
The Ice Beneath Her
by Camilla Grebe
Ballantine Books, 12/27/2016
 
Winter's chill has descended on Stockholm as police arrive at the scene of a shocking murder. An unidentified woman lies beheaded in a posh suburban ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
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