1. "State of Wonder" by Ann Patchett
A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh journeys into the heart of the Amazonian delta to check on a field team that has been silent for two years--a dangerous assignment that forces Marina to confront the ghosts of her past.
2. "
The Marriage Plot" by Jeffrey Eugenides
A group of college students deals with a struggling economy by indulging in illegal drugs. As Madeleine Hanna finds herself in different relationships with three young men, she begins questioning the nature of love.
3. "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach
A baseball star at a small college near Lake Michigan launches a routine throw that goes disastrously off course and inadvertently changes the lives of five people, including the college president, a gay teammate, and the president's daughter.
4. "
Catherine the Great" by Robert K. Massie
Presents a reconstruction of the eighteenth-century empress's life that covers her efforts to engage Russia in the cultural life of Europe, her creation of the Hermitage, and her numerous scandal-free romantic affairs.
5. "Swamplandia!" by Karen Russell
Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family's struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.
6. "
The Leftovers" by Tom Perrotta
What would happen if The Rapture actually took place and millions of people just disappeared from the earth? How would normal people respond? The residents of Mapleton use a variety of coping mechanisms in this thought-provoking novel about love, connection, and loss.
7. "
The Uncoupling" by Meg Wolitzer
When the new drama teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School decides on Lysistrata for the year's school play, fiction mirrors real life, or rather vice versa. In the play, the women of Greece control their husbands and gain newfound independence by withholding sex. Coincidentally, the women and teens of Stellar Plains also turn their men away from the bedroom for reasons they cannot rationally explain.
8. "
Townie" by Andre Dubus III
After their parents divorce in the 1970's, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence, Andre learned to use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself. He was on a fast track to getting killed, or killing someone else, or to beatings-for-pay as a boxer. Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays. The clash of worlds couldn't have been more stark or more difficult for a son to communicate to a father. Only by becoming a writer himself could Andre begin to bridge the abyss and save himself.
9. "
What is Like to Go to War" by Karl Marlantes
In his memoir, Marlantes relates his combat experiences in Vietnam and discusses the daily contradictions warriors face in the grind of war, where each battle requires them to take life or spare life. He also underscores the need for returning veterans to be counseled properly.
10. "
Rin Tin Tin" by Susan Orlean
Rin-Tin-Tin was discovered on a WWI battlefield in 1918. The adorable German shepherd went on to star in several movies throughout the 1920s and 30s. Eventually, his legacy was cemented in a popular 1950s television program.
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