The Best Literary Fiction of 2018

Winner of The Man Booker Prize, this long-awaited first novel from George Saunders is a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

This novel about marriage, immigration, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream tells the unforgettable story of a young Cameroonian couple making a new life in New York just as the Great Recession upends the economy.

An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this novel that reverberates with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation.

It’s Christmas, and for the first time in years the entire Birch family will be under one roof. In close proximity, not much can stay hidden for long, and as revelations and long-held tensions come to light, nothing is more shocking than the unexpected guest who’s about to arrive…

Jodi Picoult tackles a complicated issue in this gripping and nuanced novel. How do we balance the rights of pregnant women with the rights of the unborn they carry? What does it mean to be a good parent? A Spark of Light will inspire debate, and conversation.

Ellis and Michael are twelve-year-old boys when they first become friends, and for a long time it is just the two of them. And then one day this closest of friendships grows into something more.

Lucy and Gabe meet as seniors at Columbia University on a day that changes both of their lives forever. Together, they decide they want their lives to mean something, to matter. What follows is a thirteen-year journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, betrayals, and, ultimately, of love.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Set in Kenya in the 1950s against the fading backdrop of the British Empire, a story of self-discovery, betrayal, and an impossible love from the author of The Fever Tree.

William Boyd gives us a sweeping new novel that unfolds across fin-de-siècle Europe as it tells a story of ineffable passions–familial, artistic, romantic–and their power to shape, and destroy, a life.