ANTHONY MARRA is the winner of a Whiting Award, Pushcart Prize, and the Narrative Prize. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena won the 2014 National Book Critics Circles inaugural John Leonard Prize and the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in fiction, as well as the inaugural 2014 Carla Furstenberg Cohen Fiction Award. Marras novel was a National Book Award long list selection as well as a shortlist selection for the Flaherty-Dunnan first novel prize. In addition, his work has been anthologized in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012. He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where he teaches as the Jones Lecturer in Fiction. He has lived and studied in Eastern Europe, and now resides in Oakland, CA. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is his first novel.
Ways and Means (2024) Daniel Lefferts "Deadly serious in ambition, wildly entertaining in execution, Ways and Means is a remarkably accomplished debut . . . Every line of this gorgeous novel glows with Lefferts' intelligence and compassion."
The Road from Belhaven (2024) Margot Livesey "The Road from Belhaven is a marvel. In this radiantly beautiful novel, Margot Livesey introduces us to Lizzie Craig, an unforgettable 19th-century Scottish clairvoyant haunted by her future as much as her past. Livesey has crafted a story as thrilling as it is thoughtful, one animated by life's fundamental question: how do we change?"
Wellness (2023) Nathan Hill "Wellness is one of the funniest, saddest, smartest novels I've ever read. In his portrait of one foundering marriage, Nathan Hill has encapsulated the pathologies and possibilities of our troubled era. With his razor-sharp satire and heartbreaking pathos, his stylistic virtuosity and human warmth, Hill has written both a propulsive page-turner and an artistic achievement of the highest order. I didn't think I could love a book more than The Nix until I read Wellness. It's a flat-out masterpiece."
North Woods (2023) Daniel Mason "North Woods is a sui generis work of pure brilliance, an epic written with a miniaturist's precision. Daniel Mason has unearthed, in the centuries-spanning history of a single New England home, a universal story of loss and reclamation. This is the best book I've read in ages."
Happiness Falls (2023) Angie Kim "A riveting, revelatory masterpiece . . . I stayed up half the night to finish this novel, and when I woke in the morning, I turned back to the first page to begin again."
Do Tell (2023) Lindsay Lynch "Do Tell is an absolute marvel: page-turning yet thought-provoking, historical in its setting yet contemporary in its concerns. With a keen eye for period detail, Lindsay Lynch explores how the power of secrets were the secret to power in Hollywood's Golden Age. The result is a deeply moving, immensely satisfying, blockbuster of a debut novel."
The Incredible Events in Women's Cell Number 3 (2023) Kira Yarmysh "Kira Yarmysh can do more with a single detention cell than most writers can with an entire continent. In The Incredible Events in Women's Cell Number 3, she updates and upends the traditions of the Russian prison novel, and in doing so, creates a startling panorama of contemporary Russian society. The result is required reading for anyone who wants to better understand life under Putin."
The Return of Faraz Ali (2022) Aamina Ahmad "Mesmerizing . That a novel so epic in scope can remain so intimate at heart is nothing short of astonishing."
Immediate Family (2021) Ashley Nelson Levy "For all the orphans populating the pages of contemporary fiction, there are vanishingly few novels that honestly explore the complexities of adoption in modern America. Those of us whose immediate families are formed by this process will read Ashley Nelson Levy’s novel with recognition and revelation: it plumbs the ethical ambiguities, surveys the fault lines of race and privilege, creates space for the uncertainties and obligations so often written out. Composed with emotional candor and intellectual clarity, Immediate Family is about the improbable relentlessness of love. It's a testament to the reality that no family, regardless of origin or composition, is ever fully formed: most days the best we can do is keep each other from coming undone. It's a book that refuses tidy conclusions, and yet by the time I turned the last page, this book that had undone me had also left me magnificently whole."
Damnation Spring (2021) Ash Davidson "In her astonishingly accomplished first novel, Ash Davidson reminds us that we are never more profoundly shaped by our environment than when we destroy it. Nearly every page left me in awe."
A Passage North (2021) Anuk Arudpragasam "A novel of tragic power and uncommon beauty. In his depiction of the processes through which history sculpts human fate, Anuk Arudpragasam achieves something akin to grace."
The Lowering Days (2021) Gregory Brown "The Lowering Days is expansive in its scope and intimate in its details, a lyrical and sincere work by a novelist fully alive to the natural world."
Meadowlark (2020) Melanie Abrams "Meadowlark is a riveting, vividly rendered journey into the haunted past and uncertain future that await a mother and daughter in the Nevada desert. Melanie Abrams is a writer of remarkable power and insight, and in these pages, she is at the top of her game."
Mother Country (2019) Irina Reyn "Mother Country is a beautifully envisioned, morally urgent novel set at the disputed borderlands of a divided family and country. Irina Reyn is a superb chronicler of America, Ukraine, and all points between, resulting in a book of uncommon power and purpose."
Leading Men (2019) Christopher Castellani "Leading Men is glorious, a meditation on the ravages of fame, an investigation into the private lives of public artists, and one of the most moving love stories I've read in ages. It's hard to imagine better company on the page than Tennessee Williams and those who loved and loathed him. By bringing to life these literary visionaries, Christopher Castellani proves himself their eminently worthy heir."
The Far Field (2019) Madhuri Vijay "The Far Field is remarkable, a novel at once politically timely and morally timeless. Madhuri Vijay traces the fault lines of history, love, and obligation running through a fractured family and country. Few novels generate enough power to transform their characters, fewer still their readers. The Far Field does both."
The Bone Clocks (2014) David Mitchell "Reading a David Mitchell novel is a little like wandering through a multiplex during that September sweet spot when the best summer blockbusters are screened alongside autumn’s more serious fare. The Bone Clocks is no exception. Mitchell’s generous imagination saturates every sentence, character, and setting to create a story as thrilling in its language as in its plot. It’s my favorite novel I’ve read this year, and the only one I’ve already reread."
