The Stacks
239 honest reviews across fiction, non-fiction, mystery, sci-fi, romance, and more.
Showing 49-72 of 239
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 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.
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 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.
by Holly Black
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black 2018 review. Jude Duarte, a human raised in the High Court of Faerie, navigates Prince Cardan's cruel politics. Canonical contemporary YA romantasy.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell 2022 review. Lucrezia di Cosimo de' Medici recognizes that her husband, the Duke of Ferrara, intends to kill her. O'Farrell's Hamnet follow-up.
by Stuart Turton
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton 2018 review. Aiden Bishop wakes in eight different bodies at a 1920s country house and must solve a murder. Costa First Novel Award winner.
by Erik Larson
The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson 2024 review. The five months between Lincoln's November 1860 election and Fort Sumter. Larson's follow-up to The Splendid and the Vile and one of the canonical narrative non-fiction books of the year.
by Sally Rooney
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney 2024 review. Two Dublin brothers - a lawyer and a chess player - navigate grief and romance after their father's death. Rooney's fourth novel and her structurally most ambitious yet.
by Samantha Shannon
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon 2019 review. A standalone epic fantasy across four kingdoms preparing for the return of a banished ancient dragon. Canonical contemporary literary epic fantasy.
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman 2020 review. A failed bank robber takes a Stockholm apartment-viewing hostage. Backman's structurally most ambitious novel and the basis for the Netflix limited series.
by Tommy Orange
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange 2024 review. The historical-and-contemporary follow-up to There There. The Red Feather ancestral chain from Sand Creek 1864 through the present.
