Popular Books That Actually Live Up To The Hype

A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage — Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.

Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family. What’s the truth? Depends on who you ask … Like a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it is a riveting, provocative, and haunting story of family — sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times.

Who hasn’t wanted to murder an ex — figuratively, at least? In this explosive debut thriller, a woman’s seemingly perfect romantic life is on the verge of collapse as she uncovers a hidden history surfacing dark secrets that have deadly consequences.

A woman receives an unexpected gift from the man she loved and lost — a year of books, one for every month — launching a reading-inspired journey to live, dream, and love again in this glimmering and heart-stopping novel.

From Mieko Kawakami, award-winning author of Breasts and Eggs, comes a bold novel of sacrifice and the tumultuous bonds of sisterhood, set in the gritty Tokyo of the 1990s. A story of enduring friendship and deep betrayal, Sisters in Yellow is a masterpiece of teenage dreams and adult cruelties that confirms Mieko Kawakami as one of the great writers of her generation.

A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: All traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. It is fierce, funny, suspenseful, and impossible to put down — full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.

Sam and Sadie — two college friends, often in love, but never lovers — become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have read before.

Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation — awkward but electrifying — something life changing begins. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together.  Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.

A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

A story of summer, secrets, love, and lies: In the course of a singular day on Cape Cod, one woman must make a life-changing decision that has been brewing for decades. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.

In 1950s Paris, a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni. With sharp, probing insight, James Baldwin’s classic novel delves into the mysteries of love and tells a deeply moving story that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early-twentieth-century rural Georgia. The novel draws readers into a rich and memorable portrayal of Black women — their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully reimagined, The Color Purple breaks the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, and carries readers on an epic and spirit-affirming journey toward transformation, redemption, and love.

The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you’re from.

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby, she ignores her sister Elinor’s warning that her impulsive behavior leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment. Through their parallel experience of love — and its threatened loss — the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

From the bestselling author of Kafka on the Shore: A magnificent coming-of-age story steeped in nostalgia, “a masterly novel” (The New York Times Book Review) blending the music, the mood, and the ethos that were the sixties with a young man’s hopeless and heroic first love.

Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families — the Trasks and the Hamiltons — whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: The mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love’s absence.

This is Kazuo Ishiguro’s profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the “great gentleman,” Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington’s “greatness,” and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.

The author of the award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears … Under mounting pressure from the police and the media, the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter — but is he really a killer? The “mercilessly entertaining” (Vanity Fair) instant classic “about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships” (Lev Grossman, TIME “One of the Best Books of the Decade).

Neither Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of the impossibility of their new home, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story — of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams … House of Leaves is a masterpiece of horror and an astonishingly immersive, maze-like reading experience that redefines the boundaries of a novel.