The Library

It Ends With Us

Colleen Hoover

A young florist in Boston falls for a neurosurgeon, then has to decide what to do when the pattern she grew up watching starts repeating. The BookTok book.

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara, Oliver Wyman, Koen Tachelet, Ivo van Hove

Four friends make lives in New York, and one of them is carrying more than he can say. Long, heavy, and the kind of book readers don't forget.

Improbable destinies

fate, chance, and the future of evolution

Jonathan Losos

A secret shared between a pastor's son and a grieving girl in a Southern California Black church community. Bennett's debut, already sure-footed.

The Vanishing Half

A Novel

Brit Bennett

Twin sisters from a small Louisiana town split at sixteen and live the next decades on opposite sides of the color line. A clear-eyed southern novel.

Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist)

Min Jin Lee

Four generations of a Korean family making a life in twentieth-century Japan. Long, patient, quietly heartbreaking.

There There

Tommy Orange, Julia Osuna Aguilar

Twelve urban Native characters converge on a powwow in Oakland. Orange's debut, furious and generous.

The Water Dancer

Ta-Nehisi Coates

A young enslaved man in Virginia discovers a mysterious power tied to memory and water. Coates's first novel, Oprah's first pick of the new era.

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates

A letter from Coates to his teenage son about living in a Black body in America. Short, unflinching, National Book Award winner.

Hillbilly Elegy

A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

J. D. Vance

A Yale-educated lawyer on growing up in Ohio and Kentucky Appalachia. Controversial, widely read, and worth reading critically.

The little friend

Donna Tartt

A twelve-year-old girl in 1970s Mississippi sets out to solve her older brother's long-ago murder. Tartt's southern novel.

The secret history

Donna Tartt

A small group of classics students at a Vermont college commit a murder; Tartt opens the book by telling you that. The rest is why.

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt, Katia Benovich

A boy survives a museum bombing, steals a small Dutch painting, and spends the next decade tangled up with it. Pulitzer winner, Dickensian in scope.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan

Linked stories about music, time, and people who keep turning up in each other's lives. Pulitzer winner, famously includes a PowerPoint chapter.

The Two Kinds of Decay

A Memoir

Sarah Manguso, Sarah Manguso, Sarah Manguso

An old Iowa preacher writes a long letter to his young son explaining who he was. Pulitzer-winning, unhurried, luminous.

The Lincoln Highway

A Novel

Amor Towles

A 1954 road trip east instead of west, with four boys who each have a different destination in mind. Towles doing ensemble.

A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

A Russian count is sentenced to lifetime house arrest in the Metropol Hotel in 1922 and makes a whole life out of it. Civilized, warm, quietly funny.

Beautiful World, Where Are You

A Novel

Sally Rooney, Octavi Gil Pujol

Four friends in their late twenties email each other about love, work, and whether the world is ending. Rooney continuing to do Rooney things.

Lenin

The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror

Victor Sebestyen

Two college friends in Dublin get tangled up with an older married couple. Smart, cool, a little chilly on purpose.

Normal People

A Novel

Sally Rooney

Two Irish teenagers keep finding each other through high school and college and can't quite say what they are. Rooney's breakout.

The Turn of the Key

Ruth Ware

A nanny writes from prison, trying to explain how the child she was hired to care for ended up dead. Smart-house gothic.

In a Dark, Dark Wood

Ruth Ware

A bachelorette weekend in a glass house in the English woods goes very wrong. Ware's debut and still a clean recommendation.

Mind Illuminated

A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness

Culadasa John Yates, Matthew Immergut PhD, Sean Runnette, Jeremy Graves

A travel journalist on a luxury cruise hears a body go overboard; no passenger is missing. Ware in her element.

The Woman in the Window: A Novel

A. J. Finn

An agoraphobic child psychologist spies on her neighbors from a Harlem brownstone and thinks she sees a murder. Rear Window with pills and wine.

The Girl On the Train

Paula Hawkins

A hungover commuter watches the same couple from her train window every morning, until one day the wife disappears. The post-Gone Girl thriller that actually lived up to the comparison.