The Greatest Books Since 2000
How is this list generated?
This list is generated from 130 "best of" book lists from a variety of great sources. An algorithm is used to create a master list based on how many lists a particular book appears on. Some lists count more than others. I generally trust "best of all time" lists voted by authors and experts over user-generated lists. On the lists that are actually ranked, the book that is 1st counts a lot more than the book that's 100th. If you're interested in the details about how the rankings are generated and which lists are the most important(in my eyes) please check out the list details page.
If you have any comments, suggestions, or corrections please feel free to e-mail me.
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201
. Seven Years by Peter Stamm
"Alexander is torn between two very different women. Sonia, his wife and business partner, is everything a man could want: intelligent, gorgeous, charming, and ambitious. But when the seven-year it...
- Google
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202
. The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
This is the way the world ends. For the last time. A season of endings has begun. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the su...
- Google
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-
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203
. The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
The only novel from MacArthur Genius Award winner, Aleksandar Hemon -- the National Book Critics Circle Award winning The Lazarus Project. On March 2, 1908, nineteen-year-old Lazarus Averbuch, an E...
- Google
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204
. The Sluts by Dennis Cooper
Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts...
- Google
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-
-
205
. Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
Five women. One question. What is a woman for? In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grant...
- Google
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-
-
206
. The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers
The Time of Our Singing (2003) is a novel by American writer Richard Powers. It tells the story of two brothers involved in music, dealing heavily with issues of prejudice. Their parents met at Mar...
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-
-
207
. The Needle's Eye by Fanny Howe
Fanny Howe's The Needle's Eye: Passing through Youth is a sequence of essays, short tales, and lyrics that are intertwined by an inner visual logic. The book contains filmic images that subvert the...
- Google
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-
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208
. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: A Novel by Louise Erdrich
A New York Times Notable Book For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved Native American tribe, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. Now, nearin...
- Google
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-
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209
. Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
Dana Spiotta, whom Michiko Kakutani called "wonderfully observant and wonderfully gifted...with an uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadness of contemporary life" (The New York Times), has writt...
- Google
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210
. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
Super Sad True Love Story is the third novel by American writer Gary Shteyngart. The novel takes place in a near-future dystopian New York where life is dominated by media and retail.
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211
. The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories by Denis Johnson
Twenty-five years after Jesus' Son, a haunting new collection of short stories on mortality and transcendence, from National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Denis Johnson The...
- Google
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-
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212
. Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays by Eula Biss
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize A frank and fascinating exploration of race and racial identity Notes from No Man's Land...
- Google
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213
. Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
Catamount Notes, the Eastern Valley High School alumni newsletter, is filled with tales of success from the school's graduates, until Lewis "Teabag" Miner, class of 1989, sends a hilarious confessi...
- Google
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214
. Sleeping It Off in Rapid City by August Kleinzahler
The first broad retrospective of August Kleinzahler's career, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City gathers poems from his major works along with a rich portion of new poems that visit different voice regi...
- Google
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215
. All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
Who is Andrea Bern? When her dippy therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she’s a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it’s what she leaves unsaid—she’s alone, ...
- Google
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216
. Fine Just the Way It Is by Annie Proulx
A collection of nine western-themed tales features an array of pioneer country inhabitants from different backgrounds.
- Google
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217
. Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier
Tanuja Desai Hidier's fantastically acclaimed cross-cultural debut comes to PUSH! Dimple Lala doesn't know what to think. Her parents are from India, and she's spent her whole life resisting their ...
- Google
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-
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218
. Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton
This is the powerful story of one girl's struggle for survival amid the African HIV/AIDS pandemic a story of harsh realities and hard-won hopefulness, leavened with humour and the possibility of ch...
- Google
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219
. City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende
Fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold accompanies his fearless grandmother, a magazine reporter for International Geographic, on an expedition to the dangerous, remote world of the Amazon to document the...
- Google
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220
. Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Mary Lawson's debut novel is a shimmering tale of love, death and redemption set in a rural northern community where time has stood still. Tragic, funny and unforgettable, this deceptively simple m...
- Google
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221
. Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
Anil’s Ghost is the critically acclaimed fourth novel by Michael Ondaatje. It was first published in 2000 by McClelland and Stewart.
Anil’s Ghost follows the life of Anil Tissera, a native Sri L...
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222
. A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron
This is the remarkable story of one endearing dog’s search for his purpose over the course of several lives. More than just another charming dog story, A Dog’s Purpose touches on the universal ques...
- Google
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-
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224
. LaRose by Louise Erdrich
LaRose is a novel by the author Louise Erdrich, published in 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers. The book was reviewed by multiple publications, including The New York Times, The Kansas City Star, Wi...
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225
. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A blind French girl on the run from the German occupation and a German orphan-turned-Resistance tracker struggle with their respective beliefs after meeting on the Brittany coast.
- Google
-
-
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226
. Let the Great World Spin: A Novel by Colum McCann
In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is runnin...
- Google
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-
-
227
. The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel by Adam Johnson
The son of an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jon...
- Google
-
-
-
228
. The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near-fatal accident. His older sister, Karin, his only near kin, returns reluctantly to their h...
-
-
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229
. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
A small, fictional mill town in Maine called Empire Falls, though once booming in industry, is quickly deteriorating. Owned by the powerful Whiting family, the town can no longer sustain itself. Se...
-
-
-
230
. Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg
A collection of short works includes the tales of a group of friends whose efforts to acquire a luxurious Manhattan sublet are halted by the September 11 attacks, a teacher's Roman holiday in the w...
- Google
-
-
-
-
232
. The Vegetarian: A Novel by Han Kang
The Vegetarian is a South Korean three-part drama novella written by Han Kang and first published in 2007. Based on Kang's 1997 short story "The Fruit of My Woman", The Vegetarian is set in modern-...
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-
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233
. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Ready Player One is a 2011 LitRPG science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. The story, set in a dystopian 2040s, follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for a...
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-
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234
. Looking for Alaska by John Green
Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal ...
- Google
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-
-
235
. Ghost by Jason Reynolds
Aspiring to be the fastest sprinter on his elite middle school's track team, gifted runner Ghost finds his goal challenged by a tragic past with a violent father.
- Google
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-
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236
. Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado
Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction “[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange.”—Roxane Gay “In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged t...
- Google
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-
-
237
. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
From the author of Fun Home -- the lives, loves, and politics of cult fav characters Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice, and others For twenty-five years Bechdel’s path-breaking Dyk...
- Google
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-
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238
. The Shack by William P Young
Mackenzie Allen Phillips's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation. Evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon ...
- Google
-
-
-
239
. I, Alex Cross by James Patterson
You can't run Detective Alex Cross is pulled out of a family celebration and given the awful news that a beloved relative has been found brutally murdered. Alex vows to hunt down the killer, and so...
- Google
-
-
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240
. Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh’s dark, confident, prickling stories are mostly about youngish men and women who have taken a wrong turn somewhere and find themselves hunkering down in nowhere towns, dismal cabin...
- NY Times
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-
-
241
. American Innovations by Rivka Galchen
A brilliant new collection of short stories from "the conspicuously talented" (Time) Rivka Galchen In one of the intensely imaginative stories in Rivka's Galchen's American Innovations, a young wom...
- Google
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-
-
242
. Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
A debut collection of extraordinary stories from an award-winning author.
- Google
-
-
-
243
. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for t...
- Google
-
-
-
244
. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
In the tradition of Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" and James Jones's "The Thin Red Line," Marlantes tells the powerful and compelling story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and...
- Google
-
-
-
245
. Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL (born 23 December 1955 in Glasgow) is a British poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed ...
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-
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247
. You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
In his first novel, Dave Eggers has written a moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free themselves from a profound loss. It remin...
- Google
-
-
-
248
. Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
In a novel set in a small-town "Heaven," the rural Kentucky farmer-philosopher returns to his fictional Port William to explore themes of love, suffering, and joy. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.
- Google
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-
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249
. March by Geraldine Brooks
Mr. March, an abolitionist and chaplain, is driven by his conscience to leave his home and family in Concord, Massachusetts in order to participate in the war. During this time, March writes letter...
-
-
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250
. Redeployment by Phil Klay
Redeployment is a collection of short stories by American writer Phil Klay. His first published book, it won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle's 2014 Joh...
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-
This list is generated from 130 "best of" book lists from a variety of great sources. An algorithm is used to create a master list based on how many lists a particular book appears on. Some lists count more than others. I generally trust "best of all time" lists voted by authors and experts over user-generated lists. On the lists that are actually ranked, the book that is 1st counts a lot more than the book that's 100th. If you're interested in the details about how the rankings are generated and which lists are the most important(in my eyes) please check out the list details page.
If you have any comments, suggestions, or corrections please feel free to e-mail me.
-
201 . Seven Years by Peter Stamm
"Alexander is torn between two very different women. Sonia, his wife and business partner, is everything a man could want: intelligent, gorgeous, charming, and ambitious. But when the seven-year it...
- Google -
202 . The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
This is the way the world ends. For the last time. A season of endings has begun. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the su...
- Google -
203 . The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
The only novel from MacArthur Genius Award winner, Aleksandar Hemon -- the National Book Critics Circle Award winning The Lazarus Project. On March 2, 1908, nineteen-year-old Lazarus Averbuch, an E...
- Google -
204 . The Sluts by Dennis Cooper
Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts...
- Google -
205 . Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
Five women. One question. What is a woman for? In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grant...
- Google -
206 . The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers
The Time of Our Singing (2003) is a novel by American writer Richard Powers. It tells the story of two brothers involved in music, dealing heavily with issues of prejudice. Their parents met at Mar...
-
207 . The Needle's Eye by Fanny Howe
Fanny Howe's The Needle's Eye: Passing through Youth is a sequence of essays, short tales, and lyrics that are intertwined by an inner visual logic. The book contains filmic images that subvert the...
- Google -
208 . The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: A Novel by Louise Erdrich
A New York Times Notable Book For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved Native American tribe, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. Now, nearin...
- Google -
209 . Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
Dana Spiotta, whom Michiko Kakutani called "wonderfully observant and wonderfully gifted...with an uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadness of contemporary life" (The New York Times), has writt...
- Google -
210 . Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
Super Sad True Love Story is the third novel by American writer Gary Shteyngart. The novel takes place in a near-future dystopian New York where life is dominated by media and retail.
-
211 . The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories by Denis Johnson
Twenty-five years after Jesus' Son, a haunting new collection of short stories on mortality and transcendence, from National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Denis Johnson The...
- Google -
212 . Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays by Eula Biss
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize A frank and fascinating exploration of race and racial identity Notes from No Man's Land...
- Google -
213 . Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
Catamount Notes, the Eastern Valley High School alumni newsletter, is filled with tales of success from the school's graduates, until Lewis "Teabag" Miner, class of 1989, sends a hilarious confessi...
- Google -
214 . Sleeping It Off in Rapid City by August Kleinzahler
The first broad retrospective of August Kleinzahler's career, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City gathers poems from his major works along with a rich portion of new poems that visit different voice regi...
- Google -
215 . All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
Who is Andrea Bern? When her dippy therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she’s a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it’s what she leaves unsaid—she’s alone, ...
- Google -
216 . Fine Just the Way It Is by Annie Proulx
A collection of nine western-themed tales features an array of pioneer country inhabitants from different backgrounds.
- Google -
217 . Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier
Tanuja Desai Hidier's fantastically acclaimed cross-cultural debut comes to PUSH! Dimple Lala doesn't know what to think. Her parents are from India, and she's spent her whole life resisting their ...
- Google -
218 . Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton
This is the powerful story of one girl's struggle for survival amid the African HIV/AIDS pandemic a story of harsh realities and hard-won hopefulness, leavened with humour and the possibility of ch...
- Google -
219 . City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende
Fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold accompanies his fearless grandmother, a magazine reporter for International Geographic, on an expedition to the dangerous, remote world of the Amazon to document the...
- Google -
220 . Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Mary Lawson's debut novel is a shimmering tale of love, death and redemption set in a rural northern community where time has stood still. Tragic, funny and unforgettable, this deceptively simple m...
- Google -
221 . Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
Anil’s Ghost is the critically acclaimed fourth novel by Michael Ondaatje. It was first published in 2000 by McClelland and Stewart. Anil’s Ghost follows the life of Anil Tissera, a native Sri L...
-
222 . A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron
This is the remarkable story of one endearing dog’s search for his purpose over the course of several lives. More than just another charming dog story, A Dog’s Purpose touches on the universal ques...
- Google -
-
224 . LaRose by Louise Erdrich
LaRose is a novel by the author Louise Erdrich, published in 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers. The book was reviewed by multiple publications, including The New York Times, The Kansas City Star, Wi...
-
225 . All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A blind French girl on the run from the German occupation and a German orphan-turned-Resistance tracker struggle with their respective beliefs after meeting on the Brittany coast.
- Google -
226 . Let the Great World Spin: A Novel by Colum McCann
In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is runnin...
- Google -
227 . The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel by Adam Johnson
The son of an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jon...
- Google -
228 . The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near-fatal accident. His older sister, Karin, his only near kin, returns reluctantly to their h...
-
229 . Empire Falls by Richard Russo
A small, fictional mill town in Maine called Empire Falls, though once booming in industry, is quickly deteriorating. Owned by the powerful Whiting family, the town can no longer sustain itself. Se...
-
230 . Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg
A collection of short works includes the tales of a group of friends whose efforts to acquire a luxurious Manhattan sublet are halted by the September 11 attacks, a teacher's Roman holiday in the w...
- Google -
232 . The Vegetarian: A Novel by Han Kang
The Vegetarian is a South Korean three-part drama novella written by Han Kang and first published in 2007. Based on Kang's 1997 short story "The Fruit of My Woman", The Vegetarian is set in modern-...
-
233 . Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Ready Player One is a 2011 LitRPG science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. The story, set in a dystopian 2040s, follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for a...
-
234 . Looking for Alaska by John Green
Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal ...
- Google -
235 . Ghost by Jason Reynolds
Aspiring to be the fastest sprinter on his elite middle school's track team, gifted runner Ghost finds his goal challenged by a tragic past with a violent father.
- Google -
236 . Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado
Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction “[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange.”—Roxane Gay “In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged t...
- Google -
237 . The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
From the author of Fun Home -- the lives, loves, and politics of cult fav characters Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice, and others For twenty-five years Bechdel’s path-breaking Dyk...
- Google -
238 . The Shack by William P Young
Mackenzie Allen Phillips's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation. Evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon ...
- Google -
239 . I, Alex Cross by James Patterson
You can't run Detective Alex Cross is pulled out of a family celebration and given the awful news that a beloved relative has been found brutally murdered. Alex vows to hunt down the killer, and so...
- Google -
240 . Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh’s dark, confident, prickling stories are mostly about youngish men and women who have taken a wrong turn somewhere and find themselves hunkering down in nowhere towns, dismal cabin...
- NY Times -
241 . American Innovations by Rivka Galchen
A brilliant new collection of short stories from "the conspicuously talented" (Time) Rivka Galchen In one of the intensely imaginative stories in Rivka's Galchen's American Innovations, a young wom...
- Google -
242 . Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
A debut collection of extraordinary stories from an award-winning author.
- Google -
243 . Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for t...
- Google -
244 . Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
In the tradition of Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" and James Jones's "The Thin Red Line," Marlantes tells the powerful and compelling story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and...
- Google -
245 . Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL (born 23 December 1955 in Glasgow) is a British poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed ...
-
-
247 . You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
In his first novel, Dave Eggers has written a moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free themselves from a profound loss. It remin...
- Google -
248 . Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
In a novel set in a small-town "Heaven," the rural Kentucky farmer-philosopher returns to his fictional Port William to explore themes of love, suffering, and joy. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.
- Google -
249 . March by Geraldine Brooks
Mr. March, an abolitionist and chaplain, is driven by his conscience to leave his home and family in Concord, Massachusetts in order to participate in the war. During this time, March writes letter...
-
250 . Redeployment by Phil Klay
Redeployment is a collection of short stories by American writer Phil Klay. His first published book, it won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle's 2014 Joh...