LitHub's 50 Favorite Books of the YearLike this list

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• Our 50 Favorite Books of the Year

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• Ninth House

  Bardugo, Leigh,

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  Bardugo’s first foray into adult fantasy is a meaty, satisfying novel that reimagines (I hope) Yale’s secret societies as houses of magic—Skull and Bones holds prognostications where they sift through the guts of unwitting “volunteers,” Manuscript…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Territory of Light

  Tsushima, Yuko,

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  Originally published in 1979 in monthly installments, Territory of Light is a novel that seems to be in direct conversation with so many modern contemporary novels about motherhood. The story follows a young woman, recently divorced, who moves into…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Underland

  a Deep Time Journey

  Macfarlane, Robert, 1976-

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  Throughout the history of humankind, Robert Macfarlane writes, people have buried “that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love and wish to save.” Underland is a stunning exploration of what lies beneath the surface of the earth—from…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Disturbance

  Lançon, Philippe,

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  I must imagine that Philippe Lançon’s Disturbance (trans. Steven Rendall), an unsurprising critical success in France, must take on new meaning for readers in the United States. In 2019, the mass shootings in Dayton, El Paso, and Midland-Odessa…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Shadowlands

  Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff : a Western Tale of America in Crisis

  McCann, Anthony,

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  In January 2016, Ammon Bundy stood in front of a crowd of heavily armed American “patriots” in Burns, Oregon and proposed an insurrection. Specifically, Bundy—son of Nevada rancher Cliven, infamous for his 2014 grazing rights standoff with federal…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Yellow House

  Broom, Sarah M.,

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  Sarah M. Broom’s National Book Award-winning debut is a history. It is a history of self, of family, of place, of disaster, and of structural injustice. It is both expansive and deeply personal, local (the book’s home, like Broom’s, is New Orleans)…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• America Was Hard to Find

  a Novel

  Alcott, Kathleen,

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  For my money one of the most brilliant and under-appreciated novels of 2019, I’m genuinely baffled as to why Kathleen Alcott’s epic, haunting reimagining of the Cold War era hasn’t appeared on more Best of the Year lists or award shortlists. America…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Swallows

  a Novel

  Lutz, Lisa,

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  Lisa Lutz’s new stand-alone cements her place in the crime writing pantheon, and is as timely as it is well-written. The Swallows takes place in an elite private school, where a new teacher discovers a secret website filled with rather uncouth…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Your House Will Pay

  a Novel

  Cha, Steph,

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  Cha’s Your House Will Pay was one of the year’s most ambitious crime novels, an electric depiction of racial tensions and civil unrest in 1990s Los Angeles. It begins with the respective stories of two families and returns time and again to the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

  Native America From 1890 to the Present

  Treuer, David,

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• The Heavens

  Newman, Sandra, 1965-

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  In Newman’s latest, she pulls off a nearly impossible feat: she convincingly presents us with a world, and then changes it—degrades it, really—as the novel goes on. That is, she bends reality for her characters and for the reader in a way that I…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Ghost Wall

  Moss, Sarah,

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  There is a particular male obsession with life in “purer” times, a nostalgic yearning for the independence of the old frontier, say, or the freedom and adventure of the high seas. This longing, of course, is in fact a very self-interested desire for…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Girl, Woman, Other

  Evaristo, Bernardine, 1959-

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  Girl, Woman, Other is breaking all the rules. First off, it was so impressive to the Booker Prize judges that they decided to split this year’s win. Second, it’s a novel told in verse. Four hundred and fifty-two pages of prose poetry dedicated to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Collected Schizophrenias

  Essays

  Wang, Esmé Weijun,

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  Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias is a thoughtful, very multi-faceted assemblage of experiences, all concerning the illnesses she has lived with (which range from the psychological to the physiological). The essays are all shards, each…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Nickel Boys

  a Novel

  Whitehead, Colson, 1969-

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  Here’s a secret for you: I thought The Nickel Boys was even better (more personal, and more harrowing) than his much beloved previous novel The Underground Railroad. Don’t tell anyone, internet.

• "I"

  New and Selected Poems

  Derricotte, Toi, 1941-

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  In many ways, we’re living in the world Toi Derricotte created. Two decades ago, with Cornelius Eady, she launched Cave Canem and made it one of the most effective enlarging spaces American literature has ever seen. It is one of the major reasons…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Water Cure

  a Novel

  Mackintosh, Sophie,

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  This is a feral fable about three young women raised to fear men—and in fact any outsiders to their strange cloistered island, where they live in simplicity with their parents. Simplicity, except for the supposedly immunizing rituals the girls are…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Orange World and Other Stories

  Russell, Karen, 1981-

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  I should probably preface the following with a disclaimer: I doubt Karen Russell could write anything I wouldn’t love. A most memorable moment of 2019 was when my mother called me to tell me she had picked up the orange book I left on the coffee…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Women Talking

  a Novel

  Toews, Miriam, 1964-

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  A wry, scorching, utterly enthralling novel based on a horrendous true story. In an isolated Mennonite colony, for over two years, more than one hundred women and girls have been drugged and sexually assaulted in the night. When it’s discovered that…Read moreRead more of this annotation