Richard Russo is the author of seven previous novels; two collections of stories; and Elsewhere, a memoir. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which like Nobody’s Fool was adapted to film, in a multiple-award-winning HBO miniseries.
The Lost Story (2024) Meg Shaffer "If our sad, brutal, cynical, cowardly, unkind, exhausting world is too much for you, if you'd like to dream instead of a parallel world where love and loyalty and friendship are the magic that transforms the least of us into genuine heroes, then Meg Shaffer's The Lost Story is the book you've been waiting for. And here's the real magic. When you return from that enchanted place to the world you wanted to escape from, you'll find it's changed. Why? Because you have."
Familiaris (2024) (Sawtelle Family, book 2) David Wroblewski "Suppose you could do one impossible thing," John Sawtelle says in David Wroblewski's stunning new novel Familiaris. What would you do? Clearly, what the author would do and has done is write this impossibly wise, impossibly ambitious, impossibly beautiful book."
Help Wanted (2024) Adelle Waldman "Help Wanted isn't just smart and funny and wise. It's also important-vital, really-to our understanding of how and why the American dream is becoming increasingly inaccessible to working class Americans, even as that long-shot dream stubbornly refuses to die."
Bad Animals (2024) Sarah Braunstein "Sarah Braunstein's Bad Animals is a dazzling high-wire act. Absolutely chilling."
Set for Life (2024) Andrew Ewell "Have you ever wondered why some of the smartest, best educated people you know are among the most hopelessly lost? Well, so has Andrew Ewell, and he'd love to explain it to you in Set for Life, his sharp, witty and surprisingly moving academic novel."
Welcome Home, Stranger (2023) Kate Christensen "Kate Christensen's new novel, Welcome Home, Stranger, is a revelation, offering characters as real as your family and friends, a rich, vividly drawn setting, grab-you-by-the-throat drama and always, lurking in the shadows, a fierce authorial intelligence. What more could you ask?"
Wellness (2023) Nathan Hill "Ambitious, deeply engrossing, whip-smart and ultimately heartbreaking, Nathan Hill's Wellness is all this and much more."
The Heart of It All (2023) Christian Kiefer "For anyone who believes, as I do, that the best hope for our fractured country is local, not national, Christian Kiefer's new novel The Heart of it All will provide a welcome balm for the spirit. Here are people worth spending time with, not because they're perfect, but because they're not. What's wrong with them isn't nearly as consequential as how hard they fight for a better life, and not just for themselves. You set the book down and think, 'This is what we're made of.' Or should be."
Pete and Alice in Maine (2023) Caitlin Shetterly "When we first meet the title characters of Caitlin Shetterly's gripping novel Pete and Alice in Maine, they're fleeing pandemic ravaged New York with their children for the relative safety of their second home. How satisfying it would be in this age of easy social media judgment to despise them for their privilege. The only thing preventing it, really, is that this very fine novel - like all good novels - insists upon getting to know them. I loved it."
The Road to Dalton (2023) Shannon Bowring "The kind of book that too often flies under the literary radar these days: measured, wise, beautiful."
Silver Alert (2023) Lee Smith "Lee Smith's Silver Alert doesn't just soar. It seems at times to defy the laws of literary gravity. That a book so full of hope should emerge right now is truly remarkable."
Groundskeeping (2022) Lee Cole "It's one thing for a writer to have a great eye and another for him to know what it's for. Lee Cole's constantly roving eye is sharp and unerring and it misses exactly nothing. In his debut novel, Groundskeeping, he witnesses with great sympathy the painful passage between youth and adulthood that leaves us all the worse for wear."
Carry the Dog (2021) Stephanie Gangi "I can’t remember the last time I was as completely bewitched by a fictional character as I was by Bea Seger . . . What a treat to view life through the eyes of this funny, smart, gutsy woman."
The Sweetness of Water (2021) Nathan Harris "What a gifted, assured writer Nathan Harris is. He does what all novelists are supposed to do—give birth to vivid characters, people worth caring about, and then get out of their way. The result is better than any debut novel has a right to be. With The Sweetness of Water, Harris has, in a sense, unwritten Gone With the Wind, detonating its phony romanticism, its unearned sympathies, its wretched racism."
Morningside Heights (2021) Joshua Henkin "You know a novel is good when the thought of leaving the world it creates and the people who live there fills you with sadness and a profound sense of loss. Joshua Henkin’s Morningside Heights is just such a novel."
The Cape Doctor (2021) E J Levy "The Cape Doctor does what the best novels do. It invites us to put aside our own lives for a time in order to live someone else’s. And it repays the moral imagination that requires with something like wisdom."
Olympus, Texas (2021) Stacey Swann "Olympus, Texas is the most wildly entertaining novel I've read in a long time, and Stacey Swann is a writer to watch."
How Lucky (2021) Will Leitch "What’s more thrilling than a fictional character speaking to us in a voice we haven’t heard before, a voice so authentic and immediate - think Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Mattie Ross - that we suspect it must’ve been there all along, that we somehow managed to miss it? Daniel, the protagonist of Will Leitch’s smart, funny, heartbreaking new novel How Lucky, is just such a voice, and I’m not sure it will ever completely leave my head, or that I want it to."
The Night Always Comes (2021) Willy Vlautin "The trick to writing a great thriller is both simple and very, very difficult: make us care about the person whose life is in jeopardy. I can’t remember the last time I worried myself sick about a fictional character the way I did about Lynette in Willy Vlautin’s terrific, big-hearted new novel The Night Always Comes. You won’t soon forget either her or the fraught world she so courageously navigates."
Raft of Stars (2021) Andrew J Graff "I had no idea people wrote books like Andrew J. Graff’s Raft of Stars anymore—a rousing adventure yarn full of danger and heart and humor and characters worth worrying about. It’s as if, after observing the deplorable state we’re all in right now, the author took it upon himself to raise our collective spirits. Bravo!"
The Lowering Days (2021) Gregory Brown "In The Lowering Days Gregory Brown gives us a lush, almost mythic portrait of a very specific place and time that feels all the more universal for its singularity. There’s magic here."
Radio Life (2021) Derek B Miller "Sure Derek Miller's novels are smart and full of heart and savvy . . . he's as dedicated as any writer I know to the proposition that readers should enjoy themselves, should delight in the experience of life and language. If our hearts get broken along the way, so much the better."
Nick (2021) Michael Farris Smith "Anybody who believes that the war is over when the enemy surrenders and the troops come home needs to read Michael Farris Smith's masterful new novel NICK. Its stark, unvarnished truth will haunt you."
Shuggie Bain (2020) Douglas Stuart "There’s no way to fake the life experience that forms the bedrock of Douglas Stuart’s wonderful Shuggie Bain. No way to fake the talent either. Shuggie will knock you sideways."
The Most Fun We Ever Had (2019) Claire Lombardo "In The Most Fun We Ever Had Claire Lombardo has given us a truly unforgettable American family. The book bristles on every page with intelligence and fierce wit. What a debut!"
Pickle's Progress (2019) Marcia Butler "The four main characters in Pickle's Progress seem more alive than most of the people we know in real life because their fears and desires are so nakedly exposed."
Elsey Come Home (2019) Susan Conley "What a quirky little gem of a book Susan Conley has written. I’m still trying to figure out how she created a character so seemingly lost to herself without losing me in the process. There’s genuine alchemy here."
My Ex-Life (2018) Stephen McCauley "My Ex-Life is a rich, yet delicate ragout of wonderfully vivid characters, hilarious dialogue, and spot-on cultural criticism. It satisfies on every level."
The Story of Arthur Truluv (2017) (Mason, book 1) Elizabeth Berg "I don't know if I've ever read a more affecting book about the natural affinity between the young and the elderly than Elizabeth Berg's The Story of Arthur Truluv. It makes the rest of us - strivers and preeners and malcontents - seem almost irrelevant."
The World of Tomorrow (2017) Brendan Mathews "What a beguiling debut Brendan Mathews has given us in The World of Tomorrow clever, smart, ambitious, richly textured, and moving."
Long Black Veil (2017) Jennifer Finney Boylan "This is Boylan's best book. It's one of the most eloquent pleas for empathy and moral imagination I've ever encountered."
The Cove (2012) Ron Rash "Ron Rash is a writer of both the darkly beautiful and the sadly true. The Cove solidifies his reputation as one of our very finest novelists."
Arcadia (2012) Lauren Groff "Richly peopled and ambitious and oh, so lovely, Lauren Groff's Arcadia is one of the most moving and satisfying novels I've read in a long time. It's not possible to write any better without showing off."
Father of the Rain (2010) Lily King "One of the most richly satisfying and haunting novels I've read in a long time."
American Wife (2008) Curtis Sittenfeld "Curtis Sittenfeld is an amazing writer, and American Wife is a brave and moving novel about the intersection of private and public life in America. Ambitious and humble at the same time, Sittenfeld refuses to trivialize or simplify people, whether real or imagined."
Tenney's Landing (2005) Catherine Tudish "The women of Tenney's Landing are the sort I'm always wishing I'd meet more often in real life - smart, large-hearted, soulful, brave."
The King of Limbo and Other Stories (2001) Adrianne Harun "Magical... Adrianne Harun possesses the rare ability to see the world at an odd tilt that makes everything appear new, at times even to shimmer."
Wide Blue Yonder (1995) Jean Thompson "In Wide Blue Yonder, Jean Thompson offers up a smart, stylish thriller, by turns dark and hilarious."
(b.1949)
