The 10 Best Books of 2019
Best Books
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Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
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| Source: Amazon |
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One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year
A Best Book of 2019: Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, NPR, Kirkus, AV Club
National Book Award Finalist
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
National Best Seller
“Splendidly imagined . . . Thrilling” –Simon Winchester
“A genuine masterpiece” –Gary Shteyngart
Spellbinding, moving–evoking a fascinating region on the other side of the world–this suspenseful and haunting story announces the debut of a profoundly gifted writer.
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls–sisters, eight and eleven–go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.
Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty–densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska–and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused.
In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer’s virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
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| Source: Amazon ?????? |
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A NEW YORK TIMES, TIME, GQ, Vulture, and WASHINGTON POST TOP 10 BOOK of the YEAR
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Esquire, NPR, Vogue, Amazon, Kirkus, The Times (UK), The Telegraph (UK), Financial Times (UK), Lit Hub, The Times Literary Supplement (UK), SPY.com, and the New York Public Library
From the award-winning author of 10:04 and Leaving the Atocha Station, a tender and expansive family drama set in the American Midwest at the turn of the century: a tale of adolescence, transgression, and the conditions that have given rise to the trolls and tyrants of the New Right
Adam Gordon is a senior at Topeka High School, class of ’97. His mother, Jane, is a famous feminist author; his father, Jonathan, is an expert at getting “lost boys” to open up. They both work at a psychiatric clinic that has attracted staff and patients from around the world. Adam is a renowned debater, expected to win a national championship before he heads to college. He is one of the cool kids, ready to fight or, better, freestyle about fighting if it keeps his peers from thinking of him as weak. Adam is also one of the seniors who bring the loner Darren Eberheart―who is, unbeknownst to Adam, his father’s patient―into the social scene, to disastrous effect.
Deftly shifting perspectives and time periods, The Topeka School is the story of a family, its struggles and its strengths: Jane’s reckoning with the legacy of an abusive father, Jonathan’s marital transgressions, the challenge of raising a good son in a culture of toxic masculinity. It is also a riveting prehistory of the present: the collapse of public speech, the trolls and tyrants of the New Right, and the ongoing crisis of identity among white men.
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
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| Source: Amazon ?????? |
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ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
THE WASHINGTON POST • TIME MAGAZINE • NPR • ESQUIRE • VOX • THE A.V. CLUB • THE GUARDIAN • FINANCIAL TIMES • THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
“Exhalation by Ted Chiang is a collection of short stories that will make you think, grapple with big questions, and feel more human. The best kind of science fiction.” —Barack Obama, via Facebook
“THE UNIVERSE BEGAN AS AN ENORMOUS BREATH BEING HELD.”
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Lost Children Archive By Valeria Luiselli
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Publisher Description
One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year
A Best Book of 2019: Entertainment Weekly; TIME; NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; The Washington Post; GQ; The Guardian; Chicago Tribune; Dallas Morning News; and the New York Public Library
FINALIST FOR THE 2019 KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 BOOKER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE
“The novel truly becomes novel again in Luiselli’s hands—electric, elastic, alluring, new.” –Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
“Impossibly smart, full of beauty, heart and insight . . . Everyone should read this book.” –Tommy Orange
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Night Boat To Tangier
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One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2019
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, Lit Hub, The Millions, The Paris Review, and NPR
No. 1 Irish Times Bestseller
Longlisted for The Booker Prize
From the acclaimed author of the international sensations City of Bohane and Beatlebone, a striking and gorgeous new novel of two aging criminals at the tail ends of their damage-filled careers. A superbly melancholic melody of a novel full of beautiful phrases and terrible men.
In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen — Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs — sit at night, none too patiently. It is October 23, 2018, and they are expecting Maurice’s estranged daughter, Dilly, to either arrive on a boat coming from Tangier or depart on one heading there. This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals and serial exiles, rendered with the dark humor and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today.
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Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“A masterful history of the Troubles. . . Extraordinary. . .As in the most ingenious crime stories, Keefe unveils a revelation — lying, so to speak, in plain sight.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR
From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions
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The Club By Leo Damrosch
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Named one of the 10 Best Books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review
“Damrosch brings the Club’s redoubtable personalities — the brilliant minds, the jousting wits, the tender camaraderie — to vivid life…”—The New York Times Book Review
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The Yellow House By Sarah M. Broom
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Winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction
A New York Times Bestseller
Named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review
Named one of the “10 Best Books of 2019” by the New York Times Book Review, Seattle Times, Chicago Public Library, the Chicago Tribune, and Slate
Named a Best Book of 2019 by the Washington Post, NPR’s Book Concierge, NPR’s Fresh Air, the Guardian, BookPage, New York Public Library, and Shelf Awareness
Named a Best Memoir of the Decade by LitHub
A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East.
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No Visible Bruises By Rachel Louise Snyder
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Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEARNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY: Esquire, Amazon, Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Economist, New York Times Staff Critics“A seminal and breathtaking account of why home is the most dangerous place to be a woman . . . A tour de force.” ―Eve Ensler
“Terrifying, courageous reportage from our internal war zone.” ―Andrew Solomon
“Extraordinary.” ―New York Times ,“Editors’ Choice”
“Gut-wrenching, required reading.” ―Esquire
“Compulsively readable . . . It will save lives.” ―Washington Post
An award-winning journalist’s intimate investigation of the true scope of domestic violence, revealing how the roots of America’s most pressing social crises are buried in abuse that happens behind closed doors.
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Midnight in Chernobyl
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A New York Times Best Book of the YearA Time Best Book of the YearA Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Finalist
Journalist Adam Higginbotham’s definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster—and a powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters.
Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering history’s worst nuclear disaster. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute.
