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Here is the standout fiction and nonfiction of the year, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.
As you browse, you can keep track of how many you’ve read or want to read. By the time you reach No. 100, you’ll have a personalized reading list to share. (Want to be among the first to see our 10 Best Books?
As you browse, you can keep track of how many you’ve read or want to read. By the time you reach No. 100, you’ll have a personalized reading list to share. (Want to be among the first to see our 10 Best Books?
Challenge Books
13
A Film in Which I Play Everyone
Mary Jo Bang
The poems in Bang’s latest collection, her ninth, are full of pleasure, color, sound and light — but also torment.
14
Forest of Noise: Poems
Mosab Abu Toha
Written in the months since Israel’s invasion of Gaza, these poems conjure memories of orange trees, lost family and brutal airstrikes with palpable grief and uncertainty. “Even our souls,” writes Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet, “get stuck under the rubble.”
15
Funny Story
Emily Henry
In this heartfelt and humorous romp, a librarian and a bartender move in together after their respective partners leave them for each other. Though they’re polar opposites — she’s introspective and insecure; he’s gregarious but emotionally guarded — they have an immediate connection. This book pulls out all of Henry’s signature stops: sparkling banter, thoughtfully rendered family trauma and a charming community of side characters.
16
Ghostroots
‘Pemi Aguda
These stories, set in an alternate version of Lagos, Nigeria, in which supernatural phenomena make the impossible commonplace, unflinchingly explore complicated human emotions. Wildly inventive and odd, but written with surgeonlike precision, they herald the arrival of a major voice in speculative fiction.
17
The God of the Woods
Liz Moore
A pair of missing siblings at an Adirondack summer camp spark a reckoning about the powerful, wealthy and possibly wicked family whose house — and presence — loom over the lakeside idyll.
18
Godwin
Joseph O'Neill
This globe-trotting novel by the author of “Netherland” chronicles the quest of a man named Mark Wolfe to find a mysterious soccer prodigy in West Africa and the unraveling of his workplace back in Pittsburgh. Mark shares narratorial duties with his colleague Lakesha Williams; their stories build into a study of greed and ambition that our critic called “populous, lively and intellectually challenging.”
19
Good Material
Dolly Alderton
Alderton’s novel, about a 35-year-old struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, funny meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind clichéd gender roles and the traditional marriage plot.
20
Great Expectations
Vinson Cunningham
In this impressive first novel, a Black campaign aide coolly observes as aspiring power players angle to connect with a candidate who more than resembles Barack Obama.
21
Headshot
Rita Bullwinkel
Set at a young women’s boxing tournament in Reno, Nev., this novel centers on eight contestants, and the fights — physical and emotional — they bring to the ring. As our critic wrote, this story’s impact “lasts a long time, like a sharp fist to your shoulder.”
22
The Hunter
Tana French
French’s moody, mesmerizing thriller — a sequel of sorts to “The Searcher” — paints a rich portrait of a rural community in western Ireland roiling with “unseen things,” where a Chicago cop has decided to retire.
23
Intermezzo
Sally Rooney
Rooney’s latest novel is about brothers, a successful barrister and a competitive chess player, who are mourning the death of their father and navigating the lingering bitterness between them. But its primary subject, as in all of Rooney’s work, is love in its various permutations, the minutiae of falling in and out of it.
24
James
Percival Everett
In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own, with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.