1. megan abbott fever (2014, little, brown and company)
Based on a real-life outbreak of unexplained physical ailments in teenagers, Megan Abbott’s Fever unfolds in fantastical, creepy and terrifying ways. So many books try to explain the secret lives of teenage girls, and the rush manages to capture them, at least at one angle. Abbott is a master of the unsettling and unsettling, and you are gripped by the fever until his final pages.
2. americanah by chimamanda ngozi adichie (2013, knopf)
There’s a reason everyone and their sister have been crazy about Americanah ever since it was published two years ago. Spanning the United States, England, and Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s love and life story separates class, race, gender, and relationships with rich, elegant language, deep understanding, and dark humor. adichie expertly balances her characters’ self-aware self-deprecation and the experiences of the moment to capture reality.
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3. the handmaid’s tale by margaret atwood (1985, mcclelland and stewart)
After 30 years, Margaret Atwood’s classic fable about life in the dystopian near future, The Handmaid’s Tale, feels more like a warning every year. what if all women’s health care rights were stripped away by a sweeping act of congress after a terrorist attack, and women of childbearing age became broodmares for the ruling class? these days, that doesn’t sound as darkly fantastic as one might expect.
4. kin of eighth e. butler (1979, double day)
octavia e. Butler’s genre-crossing novel Kindred uses time travel as a conceit to delve deeper into race, gender, and class in the United States. African-American Dana is suddenly transported from 1976 California to pre-war Maryland to save the life of a little white boy. This begins a saga that spans decades and centuries, as Dana and her target husband move back and forth in time, witnessing and experiencing the horrors of slavery while negotiating their own realities as modern people. Butler is brutal and kind, and no matter how bad he gets, she won’t let you turn your back on her.
5. Jonathan Strange & mr norrell by susanna clarke (2004, bloomsbury)
susanna clarke took 10 years to write jonathan strange & mr norrell, a historical fiction story in which magic is real but only two people know how to wield it. Clarke maintains a light touch throughout the book’s nearly 800 pages and 200 footnotes, in which she meticulously details the history of Strange, Norrell, and the mysterious forces that alternately control and are controlled. It’s weird, funny and creepy, and Clarke draws you so completely into her world that you’ll have to drag yourself back to reality when she’s done.
6. the name of the rose by umberto eco, translated by william weaver (1983, harcourt)
A postmodern novel about semiotics involving a book of which no copies remain sounds like something you would never willingly take up, much less put down. But Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, a murder mystery set in a 14th-century Italian monastery, is masterfully crafted, and as you weave your way through literal and literary twists with novice monk Adso and his brilliant master, William of Baskerville, you may not even realize how much you’re learning about literature, history, or religion.
7. blackout: remembering the things i drank to forget by sarah hepola (2015, grand central publishing)
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Sarah Hepola spent more than two decades getting drunk, freaking out, and forgetting everything in a haze the next morning, if not the night. With alcohol as her co-pilot emboldening and enabling her, she built a life and career as a writer, and she nearly lost it all. In Her Blackout, Hepola boldly traces her progression from experimental kid to wild twenty-something to barely functioning thirty-something, linking her alcoholism to society and culture, and exploring the science behind her experience. not so unique to her.
8. the talented mr. ripley by patricia highsmith (1955, coward-mccann)
anthony minghella’s 1999 film has nothing to do with patricia highsmith’s crime classic, the talented mr. ripley, in which sociopathic tom ripley meets the man of his dreams and steals his life. Although Highsmith openly wrote about same-sex relationships in the excellent 1952 book The Price of Salt, here she only hints at the many ways Ripley is attracted to Dickie Greenleaf, as envy and desire turn to jealousy. and violence. Highsmith’s atmospheric prose makes you feel the warm Italian sun, the coldness of Ripley’s unflinching gaze, and the glee of a criminal who gets away with murder, but for how long?
9. we’ve always lived in the castle by shirley jackson (1962, viking press)
Shirley Jackson’s latest novel is a perfect example of the domestic horror genre she perfected, in which the ordinary becomes disturbing and strange. Sisters Merricat and Constance and their invalid Uncle Julian are the only Blackwoods left in her large old house on the outskirts of a small New England town; Four other members of the family have died of arsenic poisoning, and the entire town believes that Constance is guilty of murder, treating the remaining Blackwoods as monsters. The sisters seem content within the confines of their estate, until estranged cousin Charles comes to visit, throwing everything into disarray.
10. going through nella larson (1929, knopf)
nella larson is transcendent, so smart and cruel and charming in passing, her story of mestizo irene redfield, her life with her black husband in harlem high society, and her friend clare, who is married to a white man racist and “passing” as white herself. This short, sad story is about race, of course, but it’s also about female friendships, love and betrayal, and class. She’s thoroughly American, and Larson hits that Edith Wharton/Henry James sweet spot, subtly capturing the most beautiful and ugliest facets of human nature.
11. auxiliary justice by ann leckie (2013, orbit)
The first of Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy (the finale is out this October) is an odyssey unleashed by tragedy. Ostensibly a sci-fi mystery, Auxiliary Justice plays with concepts of identity, colonialism, and imperialism, all through the eyes of Breq, an unreliable narrator who has no concept of gender. It is also a literary criticism of the war in Iraq. If that sounds incredibly complicated, it is, but it’s worth it. let leckie’s careful worldbuilding draw you in, as breq searches for answers and hides truths even from herself.
12. Lavinia de Ursula K. le guin (2008, harcourt)
when you read the aeneid, you may have noticed that lavinia, daughter of the king of the latins, functions only as spoils of war, never saying a word. in Ursula K. Le Guin’s retelling is Lavinia reciting the story of her life before the arrival of Aeneas, how she felt upon hearing a prophecy about herself, and how she worked to turn that dire prediction into the best possible future. Le Guin turns a minor character into a poet in his own right, conversing with Virgil and reflecting on how deeply she loved, how much he fought, and how much he lost. It turns out that when a woman is given a voice, she has a lot to say.
13. The Yoga Shop Murder: The Shocking True Story of Dan Morse’s Lululemon Murder (2013, Berkeley)
yeah, the title is horrible and the cover is terrible, but the yoga shop murder is an amazing piece of true crime. In 2011, Jayna Murray was violently murdered inside the Lululemon store in Bethesda, Maryland, where she worked. Her co-worker, Brittany Norwood, was found in another room, bound and injured, but alive. Journalist Dan Morse, who was one of the first reporters on the scene, provides a detailed, intelligent, and measured account of the case, showing us that the killer could only have been one person, and how he came to be. is one of the least sensational, well-balanced, and best-written true crime books out there, a truly compelling read.
14. stiff: the curious lives of human corpses by mary roach (2003, w.w. norton and company)
Mary Roach’s respect for science is so great and her sense of the absurd so honed that it seems inevitable that when she explores a particularly strange field, she can’t help but write the funniest and most interesting books about it. Stark: The Curious Lives of Human Corpses was her first effort in this genre, and it became an instant classic. roach takes you down all the post-mortem paths a body can take, for example: cadaver experiments are responsible for the incredible safety record of seat belts, and while he’s highly intelligent, he never loses his oblivious perspective on how weird it is. it is the science of death.
15. the sparrow by mary doria russell (1996, villard)
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mary doria russell’s sparrow attempts to answer some pretty important questions: what is faith? Is there a god, and does this god have a plan? – And in doing so, he puts the reader through the wringer. In the not too distant future, science confirms that the mysterious sounds of space are actually alien songs, and a small group of researchers, including a Jesuit priest, set out in search of their singers. what happens is beautiful and horrible. Russell immediately hooks you with allusions to a terrible mystery and leads you through a densely plotted but perfectly detailed story. be careful not to read too fast in your haste to find out what’s going on.
16. a thousand lives of julia scheeres (2011, free press)
what do you know about jonestown besides the expression “drink the kool-aid”? probably not much about the real people of the temple of the people, the jim jones church whose members moved to guyana and committed mass suicide. in a thousand lives, julia scheeres gives a voice to those who died and those who survived jonestown, and they have much to say. why did people flock to jones, a charismatic preacher in indianapolis? how did you convince them to move first to northern california and finally to an unsettled outpost in south america? the scheer reporting is excellent; this is vital and compelling reading.
17. the disaster artist: my life inside the room, the best bad movie ever made by greg sestero and tom bissell (2013, simon & schuster)
It is a universally established truth that The Room is one of the strangest films ever made. Tommy Wiseau, his writer, producer, director, sponsor and star, made a fortune (maybe) selling ragged jeans at Fisherman’s Wharf (possibly) that he used to finance his dream movie (definitely). He co-starred as Greg Sestero as a bride-stealing brand, who went on to write to the disaster artist about his friendship with the strangest person anyone could meet. “‘Prepare yourself physically and mentally for this madness,’ Tommy said.” sestero’s stories about wiseau are hilarious, moving, and so inexplicably weird you won’t be able to put them down.
18. three bags full by leonie swann, translated by anthea bell (2007, doubleday)
Everyone knows the classic English detective stories (their Sherlock Holmes, their Agatha Christies) and everyone knows the tropes they deal in. but they are satisfying in their predictability. What Leonie Swann does in Three Bags Full is apply those ideas to a flock of sheep. The smartest, Miss Maple, leads a team of sheep investigators to solve the mystery of who murdered her shepherd. Swann’s sheep ponder the nature of the murder, performing daring acts of surveillance and methodically amassing clues until they discover the killer. Swann’s novel is as addictive as any human-directed crime novel, and its protagonists are completely original.
19. the secret history of donna tartt (1992, knopf)
Who doesn’t want to read about louche 1 percent college students and their literal bacchanals and intense friendships and substance abuse and insanity at a creepy old private college in the woods of new england? Donna Tartt’s first novel, loosely based on her time at Bennington College in New Hampshire, is first-rate literary fiction. The secret story is told by outsider Richard, who falls in love with a trio of strange, wealthy friends who believe in a world larger and more mystical than the monotonous life of privilege that bores them so much. when their problems escalate into something more serious, things quickly degrade. As soon as you’re done, you’ll want to read it again.
20. connie willis doomsday book (1992, bantam spectra)
connie willis has a way of making sense of time travel so that science fiction fans and readers with a more literary bent can understand and appreciate it. This is not what makes her story of “what if modern people got stuck in 13th century England and had to deal with the plague” doomsday book so excellent, though it certainly helps. willis has a wonderful sense of lightness; without the few funny bits, all the fear and sadness would be unbearable, and being a novel about the plague, there is some gruesome death. she writes expansively and allows her characters to breathe and inhabit their worlds without getting bogged down in details.
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