The Stacks
773 honest reviews across fiction, non-fiction, mystery, sci-fi, romance, and more.
Showing 49-72 of 773
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 2015 review. A book-length letter to his fifteen-year-old son about race in America. National Book Award winner.
by John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving 1989 review. Johnny Wheelwright narrates his friendship with Owen Meany, a tiny child convinced he is God's instrument, across decades. Irving's canonical work.
by Tana French
Broken Harbor by Tana French 2012 review. A Dublin family is murdered in their half-finished suburban-development house. Fourth Dublin Murder Squad book and French's structural masterwork.
by Jenny Jackson
Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson 2023 review. Three Brooklyn Heights heirs of the Stockton family navigate one calendar year. Reese Witherspoon Hello Sunshine Book Club selection.
by Marlon James
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James 2019 review. A hunter with a heightened sense of smell seeks a missing child across a sub-Saharan African fantasy continent. First Dark Star book.
by Jonathan Franzen
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen 2021 review. The Hildebrandt family across the first months of 1971 in suburban Chicago. Franzen's structural return to form and first book of the Key trilogy.
by Percival Everett
The Trees by Percival Everett 2021 review. Brutal murders in Money, Mississippi, all link to the 1955 Emmett Till lynching. Booker Prize shortlist 2022.
Erasure by Percival Everett 2001 review. A Black literary novelist writes a deliberately stereotype-saturated parody novel that becomes a commercial sensation. The basis for American Fiction (2023).
by David Grann
The Lost City of Z by David Grann 2009 review. The 1925 disappearance of British explorer Percy Fawcett in the Amazon. Grann's debut narrative non-fiction and the basis for the James Gray film.
by Ann Patchett
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett 2019 review. A brother and sister exiled from their childhood home park on the curb across the street for fifty years. Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett 2001 review. South American guerrillas take an opera singer and her audience hostage in a vice-presidential mansion. Orange Prize and PEN/Faulkner winner.
by Fredrik Backman
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman 2012 review. A fifty-nine-year-old Swedish curmudgeon plans his suicide until a young family moves in across the courtyard. Backman's debut.
by Pat Barker
The Women of Troy by Pat Barker 2021 review. Briseis narrates the days after the fall of Troy as the Greeks wait for favorable winds. Barker's sequel to The Silence of the Girls.
by Cormac McCarthy
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy 1979 review. An educated Knoxville man lives as a fisherman among the city's underclass. McCarthy's pre-Blood-Meridian comic-tragic masterwork.
by Colson Whitehead
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead 2021 review. A Harlem furniture-store owner navigates three crime arcs across 1959-1964. Whitehead's pivot from Pulitzer-winning literary fiction to a Harlem crime trilogy.
by Brit Bennett
The Mothers by Brit Bennett 2016 review. A seventeen-year-old in a Black Oceanside church community has a secret pregnancy with the pastor's son. Bennett's debut and the structural predecessor to The Vanishing Half.
by Amor Towles
Table for Two by Amor Towles 2024 review. Six New York stories and the Eve in Hollywood novella that continues Rules of Civility into 1938 Los Angeles. Towles's first short-fiction collection.
by Maggie O'Farrell
I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell 2018 review. A memoir told through seventeen brushes with death. O'Farrell's structural pre-Hamnet memoir and one of the canonical contemporary British memoirs.
by Paul Auster
Baumgartner by Paul Auster 2023 review. A seventy-year-old Princeton philosophy professor a decade after his wife's drowning. Auster's final novel before his 2024 death.
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles 2011 review. A working-class Manhattan secretary navigates 1938 New York society. Towles's debut and the literary commercial breakthrough before A Gentleman in Moscow.
by Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout 2008 review. A retired Maine math teacher across thirteen interlinked stories. Pulitzer Prize 2009 and canonical contemporary American interconnected-novels project.
by Richard Osman
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman 2020 review. Four Kent retirees who discuss cold cases weekly land an actual murder in their retirement village. Canonical contemporary British cozy mystery.
by Amanda Peters
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters 2023 review. A 1962 Mi'kmaq blueberry-picking family loses a four-year-old daughter in rural Maine. Andrew Carnegie Medal winner 2024.
by Ray Nayler
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler 2022 review. A scientist studies a possibly-sentient octopus species on a Con Dao island. Nebula Award finalist and the canonical contemporary literary science fiction of its year.
