FICTION



Disappearing Earth

Julia Phillips (Knopf)

One summer day on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, two young girls go missing, abducted by a man in his car. Time passes without any leads, and different people in the community are affected by the case. Quietly riveting.



Searching for Sylvie Lee

Jean Kwok (William Morrow)

Sylvie went to the Netherlands to see her dying grandmother, but the date of her return flight comes and goes with Sylvie nowhere to be found. As the days pass without any clues to her whereabouts, her sister Amy decides to go looking for her — and in doing so, family secrets come to light. A haunting novel.



Queenie

Candice Carty-Williams (Gallery/Scout Press)

Queenie is 25, a Jamaican-British woman living in London, struggling to get over a breakup and trying to make her way in the world. She’s flailing at work, sleeping with men who don’t treat her well and her new apartment leaves much to be desired. Sometimes achingly sad, at other times laugh-out-loud funny.



The Affairs of the Falcóns

Melissa Rivero (Ecco)

Ana Falcón and her husband, Lucho, are two undocumented Peruvian immigrants in 1990s New York trying to make a better life for their children. But life is grim, grinding and difficult; they’re living with cousins who would like them to move on, Lucho wants to return to Peru and Ana is indebted to a loan shark. Raw and beautiful.



The Beekeeper of Aleppo

Christy Lefteri (Ballantine Books)

Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Asra, an artist. They lead simple lives in Syria until the war comes, destroying most of what they know and love. They make the decision to leave, setting out on a dangerous journey they hope will bring them to the UK. A gorgeous, heartbreaking novel inspired by the author’s time working as a volunteer at a UNICEF-supported refugee center in Athens.



The Most Fun We Ever Had

Claire Lombardo (Doubleday)

Marilyn and David have raised four daughters, all grown up now with varying degrees of success and independence. But just as the couple is settling happily into their retirement, a buried family secret emerges, sending shock waves through the clan. A sweeping epic.



Fleishman Is in Trouble

Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Random House)

Toby Fleishman is getting a divorce, and he’s just barely getting through the days. When his soon-to-be-ex-wife fails to pick up the kids one week, he frantically tries to keep the family going. This novel stuns and surprises with shifting perspectives.



Dominicana

Angie Cruz (Flatiron Books)

Ana Cancion is 15 and growing up in the Dominican countryside when a man twice her age proposes to her and invites her to live with him in New York. It’s not an offer her family can refuse: Moving means that her relatives can eventually follow her to the US. But life in NYC is cold and unforgiving, her husband cruel and Ana dreams about leaving.



Ask Again, Yes

Mary Beth Keane (Scribner)

In 1973, two rookie New York cops end up moving next to each other in a suburb outside the city. Their children become friends, even though the adults always keep their distance. One of the wives struggles with mental illness, eventually culminating in a shocking act that changes both families forever.



Akin

Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown)

Noah Selvaggio is an Upper West Side widower, looking forward to a trip back to Nice, his childhood home, to celebrate his 80th birthday. Then he receives a call from social services: He is the closest available relative of an 11-year-old grandnephew whom he’s never met, and the boy’s mother is in jail. With that one call, his life — and travel plans — are upended in ways both maddening and hilarious. From the author of the bestselling novel “Room.”



The Topeka School

Ben Lerner (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Adam Gordon goes to Topeka High School, where he is part of the Class of ’97. The son of a feminist author and a psychiatrist, his parents are trying to raise him to be a good man in a culture of toxic masculinity.



Normal People

Sally Rooney (Hogarth)

Connell and Marianne are classmates in a small Irish town: Connell is popular, while Marianne is socially ostracized. His mother cleans their house. An uneasy friendship forms, becoming a romance that follows them to university. This is a book that sneaks up on you.



The Other Americans

Laila Lalami (Pantheon)

Moroccan immigrant Driss Guerraoui was killed at a California intersection one night, a hit-and-run that sends shock waves through his grieving family and his daughter Nora, who is determined to find out who did it. A beautiful novel about place, loss and secrets.



All This Could Be Yours

Jami Attenberg (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

A grand dysfunctional family drama that kicks off with a patriarch on his deathbed in New Orleans. Daughter Alex Tuchman travels there (reluctantly) to be with her parents, while brother Gary avoids making the trip. Darkly hilarious.



On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong (Penguin Press)

A letter from a son to a mother who cannot read, this tells both the story of the narrator — Little Dog, a Vietnamese immigrant — and a family history that began in Vietnam decades before his birth.



Trust Exercise

Susan Choi (Henry Holt & Co.)

At an elite performing-arts high school set in the 1980s, two students fall in and out of love with each other. A novel about adolescent love and friendship, different perspectives and growing up.



The Border

Don Winslow (William Morrow)

Winslow is the absolute master of his genre, and this conclusion to the epic Cartel trilogy, in which the DEA’s Art Keller tries to stem the heroin epidemic while fighting his own government, does not disappoint.



The Chain

Adrian McKinty (Mulholland Books)

This one won my Page-Turner of the Year Award. The premise: You receive a call, saying that your child has been kidnapped. The only way to get them back? Kidnap someone else’s child. If you call the authorities, your child will be killed.

NONFICTION



Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Caroline Criado Perez (Harry N Abrams)

We rely on data to make decisions in everything from health care to education and public policy and more. But a lot of data fails to take gender into account, treating men as the default and women as atypical. The result: discrimination that is baked into the system. A fascinating expose and the winner of the Financial Times & McKinsey and Co. Business Book of the Year Award.



Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster

Adam Higginbotham (Simon & Schuster)

The definitive account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, drawing on hundreds of interviews conducted over the course of 10 years.



A Castle in Wartime

Catherine Bailey (Viking)

Fey von Hassell led a privileged life in an Italian villa; the daughter of Ulrich von Hassell, Hitler’s ambassador to Italy, she was married to an Italian aristocrat. Even as war gripped Europe in 1940, she seemed untouched. But when her father is executed for his involvement in an assassination attempt against Hitler, it brings the Gestapo to her doorstep — and takes her children away from her. An absolutely fascinating narrative of a family in war.



The Great Pretender

Susannah Cahalan (Grand Central Publishing)

Post reporter Susannah Cahalan takes a look at the 1973 study, led by a charismatic Stanford professor, that would change our national understanding of mental illness forever. The catch is that the professor took some big liberties with the study findings. A page-turner of a true medical mystery.



The Meritocracy Trap

Daniel Markovits (Penguin Press)

Markovits makes the surprising and thought-provoking argument that meritocracy, often regarded as the foundation of the American dream, has become a complete sham and has replicated the old aristocracy by transmitting wealth and opportunity from one generation to the next.



The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You

Dina Nayeri (Catapult)

Dina Nayeri fled Iran at age 8 with her mother and brother, eventually coming to the United States, where they were granted asylum. A moving, honest memoir about what it’s like to be an immigrant.



The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

Garrett M. Graff (Simon & Schuster)

Based on more than 500 oral histories, this book, the first comprehensive oral history of 9/11, is important and heartbreaking. A labor of love and a credit to the victims and their families.



The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars

Meghan Daum (Gallery Books)

Meghan Daum is over the 24/7 outrage culture, and the result is this book of thoughtful, provocative essays on everything from the Trump presidency to identity politics to generational differences and beyond. At a time when nuance of any kind is often dismissed, Daum offers thoughtful takes on hot-button topics.



Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse

Timothy P. Carney (Harper)

The death of the American dream isn’t just an economic issue, but a social one, finds Carney, as he travels across the country to find out what made one town thrive while another failed. A moving, thoroughly researched exploration of the power of community and engagement in our towns.



Wild Game

Adrienne Brodeur (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

When Adrienne was 14, her mother woke her up one summer night with one sentence that would change the course of their lives: Ben Souther just kissed me. Ben Souther was her stepfather’s closest friend, and with those words Adrienne became her mother’s confidante and wingwoman. A fascinating memoir about a troubled mother-daughter bond and the effect that decades of lies has on two families.



Say Nothing

Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday)

In December 1972, a 38-year-old mother of 10 was abducted from her Belfast home by armed intruders — and never seen again. The neighborhood knew who was responsible: the IRA. But in a climate of fear, no one was willing to say anything about it. In 2003, her bones were discovered on a beach. Part true crime, part history of a guerrilla war.



Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America

Chris Arnade (Sentinel)

Chris Arnade left his Wall Street career to document poverty in The Bronx, hearing people’s stories and gaining their trust. For this moving book of photo essays, he widened his scope, traveling the country to find stories of resilience and dignity from America’s struggling “back row” — the people who have been left behind by meritocracy.