There are so many books being published every month, so how can we boil a year's worth of titles down to a few bests. Though if you're looking for the best comics or graphic novels, we have. Some are conversation-drivers, others are hidden gems. Even if you're the kind of reader who's alwaysstart adding these books to your must-read pile. You'll get around to them eventually. Written by: Alyssa Cole An Extraordinary Union, A Hope Divided Publish date: February best novels to read Why it's worth reading: Cole is known for historical romances set at pivotal moments in American history, but here she tries out contemporary rom-com, with winning results. But the emails are not spam, and this former foster kid is indeed a long-lost princess. What follows is a fairy-tale romance rooted in the very real world. Written by: Carl Zimmer A Planet of Viruses, Evolution: Making Sense of Life Publish date: May 29 Why it's worth reading: Science journalism can often seem impersonal, though the best writers infuse their personality Mary Roach, Ed Yong or personal narrative Alan Burdick, Rebecca Skloot to great effect. The result is a rich and wide-ranging exploration of the mysterious best novels to read that makes us, somehow, best novels to read we are. Or what about a soaring testament to the power of collaborative art and its reach beyond the theater seats. The point is, this is a book about one play and about so, so much more. The World Only Spins Forward is funny, moving, and utterly fascinating, a portrait of artists coming together to make something radically new and beautiful. In Beneath the Sugar Sky, a girl named Rini falls from the sky into a pool on the school's grounds, seeking her mother -- long dead, since before Rini was even conceived. Which makes it even more important that Rini find a way to save her mother before Rini herself ceases to exist. Rini is joined on her quest by several young residents of the Wayward home into a world called Confection, equally dark and whimsical. The adventure that follows carries a sincere belief in the power of friendship. Written by: Jim Holt Why Does The World Exist. Publish date: May best novels to read Why it's worth reading: Jim Holt approaches some of the biggest questions on the blurry boundary between science and philosophy, not as a journalist making a beeline for empirical truth, but as an essayist, circling and spiraling toward understanding. This book also offers a collection of biographical sketches of some of the greatest thinkers from the last century, including Benoit Mandelbrot, Alan Turing, and the titular pair, specifically the unlikely friendship they developed at Princeton in the '40s. Together these essays create a complex though unfortunately overwhelmingly male portrait of the great minds of the twentieth century and an illuminating exploration of their ideas. Candace Chen could be any disaffected office worker, spending her days on the production of specialty bibles and her nights watching movies with her boyfriend. But then she turns out to be one of the very few people immune to Shen Fever, an epidemic that turns its victims into zombies, of sorts: they become consumed by habitual actions, setting the table or folding clothing until they waste away. Everything in this book is sharper and funnier and stranger in practice than in summary. Candace joins a band of survivors heading for a promised refuge, but she knows to be skeptical of that kind of hope. Written by: Crystal Hana Kim Publish date: August 7 Why it's worth reading: If You Leave Me opens in 1951, in a refugee camp in South Korea. Sixteen-year-old Haemi finds respite at night by sneaking out with her childhood friend, Kyunghwan, trying to get into makeshift bars. But of course, escape is the exception, not the rule, and the realities of war -- and life -- are harsh for Haemi. This is a beautiful, heartbreaking story, told in equally beautiful prose. Miryem is the daughter of a Jewish moneylender, and takes charge to save her family from destitution. Written by: Joseph Cassara Publish date: February 6 Why it's worth reading: In The House of Impossible Beauties, Joseph Cassara brings readers into the Harlem drag ball scene of the 1980s, awash in glitter and beauty and pain. Many are runaways, literally or figuratively, searching for a place where they can be known as themselves and loved. The story of that world is full of anger and sorrow and joy. Written by: Alisha Rai Forbidden Hearts series, The Karimi Siblings series Publish date: March 27 In the third and final installment of her Forbidden Hearts series, Rai brings the whole thing home with satisfying closure. Written by: Melissa Broder Last Sext, So Sad Today Publish date: May 1 Why it's worth reading: The Pisces had its origin in a thought experiment: What if the traditional mermaid-human man love story were flipped. What if a woman fell in love with a merman. Long story short, she meets Theo, who turns out to be a merman. What follows is sexy, funny, dark, and surprisingly complex. The result is a book about reality and fantasy, love and obsession, mental health and so much more. Written by: Kevin Wilson Perfect Little World, The Family Fang Publish date: August 7 Why it's worth reading: Kevin Wilson is known for his sweet and sharp novels, Perfect Little World and The Family Fang, and his short stories are just as potent. Wilson writes about family with plenty of love, but his stories are never saccharine, veering instead toward the quirky, strange, sad, and disturbing. Written by: Alice Bolin Publish date: June 26 Why it's worth reading: From its title, you know that Dead Girls carries a heavy premise -- this is an essay collection about our cultural obsession with dead, abused, and objectified women. Why are we best novels to read by watching women die onscreen, and by the stories of men who are obsessed with them. Bolin links Twin Peaks, Serial, Pretty Little Liars, and more to construct a theory of The Dead Girl, where a pristine victim becomes a symbol, a stand-in, and, often enough, a justification for more violence. Because as a girl herself, very much alive, Bolin has to think about her place in all this. She finds her way to the high desert of Eastern California, a strange and isolated area, where she gets tangled up in the lives of her neighbors -- including an anti-government secessionist. Questions of family, freedom, and identity fill the pages of this rich novel, but that never slows down the narrative drive. The first is set in Chicago in the mid and late 1980s, centering on a circle of friends, mostly young gay men. Also in that circle is Fiona, whose brother, Nico, died of the disease. While this book is full of death and loss, it is also full of light and hope and connection, a powerful and sweeping story. Written by: Terese Marie Mailhot Publish date: February 13 Why it's worth reading: Mailhot started writing her memoir after suffering a breakdown and committing herself to a psychiatric hospital. Instead, the work is transcendent in the most literal sense, surpassing every readerly expectation about genre and form to create a truly unique book. Mailhot, who grew up on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia, writes deftly about mental illness and indigenous identity, about failure and yearning and ambition. This is a short book that packs a punch. But impersonating a deceased gentleman is a crime, and she knows the jig is almost up. Enter Alistair, an incredibly grumpy and bisexual marquess who finds himself surprisingly charmed by the young man he meets as Robbie. You can imagine where things go from there -- or at least the general sense; the getting there is surprising and delightful. Written by: Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles Publish date: April 10 In The Odyssey, Best novels to read is just one of many obstacles Odysseus must overcome, the witch or nymph who turns his men into swine. Miller is in full command of the Greek tales that she spins into something utterly, brilliantly new. This is a book of magic of mortals, of myths and mysteries, that honors its ancient origins while being powerfully of our time. The stories range from dystopian near-future to alarmingly real: one is set in a theme park where white patrons get to enact imaginary violence on people of color; another in a department store on Black Friday; a third sees a white man exonerated for the murder of five black children, by chainsaw, after pleading self-defense. But even the far-fetched premises hit disturbingly close to home. This is a sometimes bleak, surprisingly tender, always vicious debut. Written by: Sue Burke Publish date: February 6 Why it's worth reading: What if a clutch of human colonists landed on an alien planet and discovered that it was home to sentient plants. In Semiosis, an amazingly assured debut novel, Sue Burke takes this simple concept to soaring heights. In scenes spread across a century, Burke writes deeply believable characters -- young and old, men and women, and life beyond that, too -- and paints her human society and alien ecosystem with equally deft brushstrokes. This is up there with Ursula K. Le Guin: science fiction at its most fascinating and most humane. But when Chung was on the verge of becoming a mother herself, she decided to see what she could learn about her birth family of Korean immigrants. In this compelling memoir, she tracks that journey, as well as her childhood growing up with white parents in an overwhelmingly white small Oregon town. She writes with clarity, insight, and astonishing generosity about race, adoption, and family. There are stories of friendship, loving and barbed, of the tender violence of familial love, and of the freedom and pain of loneliness. This is a powerful and tender collection. Written by: Meghan Flaherty Publish date: June 19 Why it's worth reading: When Meghan Flaherty was in her mid-20s, she was in a relationship with her best friend -- a man who never touched her. What follows takes Flaherty from humdrum New York City dance studios to an intoxicating subculture that had been thrumming, unbeknownst to her, under the surface of her city all along. Flaherty lyrically captures the essence of the dance, as well as her stumbling journey into self-discovery, with a bit of toe sucking and bad sex along the way. But this unique voice gives a surreal sheen to the novel, best novels to read makes its gut punches all the more powerful. He sees it for what it is, with all its flaws and pitfalls, but this brilliant, insightful book is hardly the story of a guilty pleasure. He also writes about who he loves it with, namely his wife, and the result is a twinned exploration of popular culture and personal experience, best novels to read with resonance and nuance. Written by: Sarah Smarsh Publish date: September 18 Why it's worth reading: One of the most simplistic narratives of 21st century America is that of binaries: the heartland versus the coast, real Americans versus the out-of-touch elites, red and blue America. Perhaps no one has punctured that mythology with as much insight and illumination as Sarah Smarsh does in this memoir. Smarsh grew up in rural Kansas in the 1980s and '90s, and she interweaves her and her family's story with astute analysis of what it means to be poor in America and why so many hardworking people find themselves there. She confronts classism, racism, and sexism in an astonishing book that is both an indictment of America and a clear-eyed testament to Americans struggling to survive. An American Marriage delivers on both. But early in their marriage, Roy is falsely convicted of a crime, and his years in prison -- and then sudden release -- bring irrevocable change to their lives and their marriage. And it's also so current and so really now that I could not put it down. Written by: Kiese Laymon Long Division, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America Publish date: October 16 Why it's worth reading: Heavy is, in some ways, simply a memoir, the story of a young man growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, a life full of hardships and, eventually, some success. It is about race, family, weight, sex, art -- sweeping themes all inextricably tangled in Laymon's life and, especially, his relationship to his mother. He addresses the book to her, and their fraught relationship, full in equal measures of love and pain. The intensity of Best novels to read personal story would be enough to fuel a brilliant book, vividly told as it is, but Laymon has his eye on wider resonances, too, as he grapples with his life as a black man in America, the legacy he carries and the particular way he makes his way through the world. Laymon is an astonishing writer, always striving for honesty even when that means submitting to ambivalence and the impossibility of simple answers.
