Best Books of 2018Like this list

100 items

• The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

  Turton, Stuart,

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  A man dressed in a tuxedo wakes up in a forest with no idea where or who he is, only that he is looking for a woman. Stumbling out of the forest, he sees a country house in the distance, and when he arrives at the door, he discovers that…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Air Traffic

  a Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America

  Pardlo, Gregory,

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  Pro tip: when a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet turns to prose, you know you're in for some particularly fine writing. At the core of Pardlo's family history is the impact of the air traffic controllers strike of 1981, which knocked his…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• All You Can Ever Know

  a Memoir

  Chung, Nicole,

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  Growing up in a mostly white town in Oregon, raised by her white adoptive parents, Nicole Chung had no connection to her Korean ancestry. She knew she looked different from everyone around her, and knew she didn't like being different, but…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• America Is Not the Heart

  Castillo, Elaine,

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  In this debut family saga, Pol and Paz are forced to leave the Philippines due to political upheaval. Five years later, their niece Hero must do the same and join them in the San Francisco Bay Area. As Hero adjusts to her new life in…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• An American Marriage

  Jones, Tayari,

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  Told in three distinct parts, through three narrators – Roy, Celestial and Andre – this novel explores love, circumstance and the marriage of a young couple. Roy is an up-and-coming business man who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• American Prison

  a Reporter's Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment

  Bauer, Shane,

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  Investigative journalist, Bauer, goes undercover as a corrections officer in Winnfield, Louisiana to learn in depth about the business of private prisons. Chapters alternate between Bauer’s eye-opening account of life inside the prison and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Asymmetry

  a Novel

  Halliday, Lisa,

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  A sensation in literary New York when it was first published, this brilliant debut novel is written in 3 parts: in part 1 ("Folly"), Alice, a publishing assistant in her 20s is approached one day in Central Park by a highly celebrated…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Bad Blood

  Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

  Carreyrou, John,

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  Silicon Valley has a term for products that are being hyped to investors, but aren't ready: vaporware. But what if the company used vaporware to test patients' blood and give medical results? After a tip, journalist John Carreyrou began to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Bearskin

  McLaughlin, James A.,

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  When Rice Moore discovers a bear carcass on the grounds of the remote forest preserve in the Appalachians where he has recently been hired as caretaker, his world turns upside down. Rice had been looking forward to quietly observing the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Beneath a Ruthless Sun

  a True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found

  King, Gilbert,

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  One of the more disturbing stories to come out of the Jim Crow South, King's history narrative tells the story of the unchecked power of a small-town sheriff and the institutional discrimination that kept him in power. An assault of a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Big Fella

  Babe Ruth and the World He Created

  Leavy, Jane,

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  The term superstar gets thrown around pretty liberally in today’s cult of celebrity, where social media and the 24-hour news cycle can make one famous simply for being famous (the Kardashians come to mind). With this as perspective, it is…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Blackfish City

  Miller, Sam J.,

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  The lives of four strangers intersect in a post-apocalyptic world largely destroyed by climate change and rising water levels. The setting is Quaanaaq, an eight-armed steel grid city built above the Artic Sea, where each arm houses…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Burning Down the Haus

  Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

  Mohr, Tim,

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  In 1980, a Sex Pistols concert broadcast from a British military radio show kicked off a revolution in East Germany. A handful of teenagers sparked a movement that stood up to a dictatorship and showed bravery in a time when conformity was…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Cabin at the End of the World

  a Novel

  Tremblay, Paul,

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  In a remote New Hampshire cabin, 7-year-old Wen and her dads are enjoying a peaceful getaway when four strangers emerge from the woods with oddly coordinated clothing and shoddily-constructed tools - or are they weapons? Leonard, their…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Calypso

  Sedaris, David,

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  David Sedaris has been entertaining fans with humorous stories about his family for decades now. This new collection of essays does the same, but in a much more serious way than previous books. This time around he delves deeper into his…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Circe

  a Novel

  Miller, Madeline,

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  A figure in Greek mythology, Circe is best known from her minor role in The Odyssey, the ancient epic that is one of the founding texts of Western civilization. Here novelist Miller (Song of Achilles) tells Circe’s full story, drawing not…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Court Dancer

  Sin, Kyŏng-suk,

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  Kyung-Sook Shin’s beautifully written novel gives a unique perspective on the complex themes of identity, patriotism and assimilation through the familiar lenses of love, family and loyalty. The central figure is court lady Yi Jin, an…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Death of Mrs. Westaway

  Ware, Ruth,

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  After her mother was killed by a hit-and-run driver when she was eighteen, Harriet Westaway took over her mother’s tarot reading booth on Brighton Pier and borrowed some money from a kindly stranger. Three years later, a loan shark is…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Directorate S

  the C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan

  Coll, Steve,

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  This sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Ghost Wars is another masterly work of history by investigative journalist Steve Coll. The book takes its name from the Pakistani equivalent to the C.I.A.’s Special Activities Unit.…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Disoriental

  Djavadi, Négar, 1969-

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  Djavadi's engrossing multigenerational debut shifts between timeframes, centering on the sprawling Iranian family of Kimia Sadr. We meet Kimia in a fertility office in Paris in 1996, where she begins to tell family stories which dovetail…Read moreRead more of this annotation