50 notable works of fiction

The new collection by the English short-story virtuoso Hadley concerns her familiar themes: the oft-doomed quest for an authentic self; families that are distant and duplicitous; and exhausted marriages. (Book World review.)

Schwartz’s first novel follows a meandering course through the late 19th century into the early 20th, focusing on the lives and overlapping connections of an array of real women, most of them artists. The result is not quite narrative fiction and not quite history either, but it is both fascinating and brilliant. (Book World review.)

On the first page of this sprawling saga of a thriller, a Mercedes speeding through Delhi careens off the street and kills five people, including a pregnant woman. That deadly accident ricochets through one of India’s most powerful crime families — and from there the intrigue never pauses to take a breath. (Book World review.)

In this dark comedy, the hidden story of a difficult marriage is slowly revealed as a husband cares for his terminally ill wife. Bronsky has carefully constructed a novel about fragile identities and the intimacies of small-town German life. (Book World review.)

In New Zealand, a collective of guerrilla gardeners ends up at odds with a brash billionaire who wants land to build a bunker. Ten years after Catton won the Booker Prize for “The Luminaries,” this sleek thriller proves she’s a master at adapting literary forms to her own sly purposes. (Book World review.)

Torres’s shimmering, fable-like novel revolves around a heavily modified edition of “Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns,” a landmark report from 1941. The novel’s text is intercut with photographs, illustrations and heavily redacted passages from “Sex Variants.” (Book World review.)

This satire about prison inmates used for gladiator-style entertainment is a devastating indictment of our penal system and our attendant enthusiasm for violence. Like “1984” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of doing. (Book World review.)

Two best friends found a company that promises consumers a lifetime of bliss. Watching their con come undone is part of the pleasure of this page-turning satire, which skewers bloviating billionaires, scam start-ups and the wellness industrial complex. (Book World review.)

The latest novel by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Whitehead is a sequel to his best-selling “Harlem Shuffle.” With these books, Whitehead has identified deficiencies in the noir genre, and injected beauty and grace into its often too-predictable and clichéd conventions. (Book World review.)

“Dayswork” is a brief, illuminating book about Herman Melville and marriage. Co-authored by a married couple, its fragments of words seem to bob on a sea of blank white pages, the ideas coming together elegantly and with deadpan timing. (Book World review.)

This deeply humane political thriller by the author of “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” takes place in Haiti following the 1991 coup. Fountain deftly re-creates this geopolitical crisis without a hint of the lecturing tone that can make some works of historical fiction feel as lively as a textbook. (Book World review.)

When a London-based Palestinian actress visits family in Haifa, she winds up agreeing to appear in a West Bank production of “Hamlet.” As she begins to confront her complex guilt about the politically unencumbered life she leads in England, the production reels her to the heart of the political tensions in the region. (Book World review.)

A man in free fall after the death of his partner returns home to Houston, where he numbs himself with drugs and anonymous sex. But all is not lost. Washington is a generous writer, with a profound capacity to face the cruelty and pain of contemporary American life while still allowing for hope. (Book World review.)

Acevedo’s first novel for adults explores the bonds of a Dominican family in New York, tracing the lives of each of the family’s women to highlight the sometimes riotous, sometimes hard-won love of immigrant families and their sacrifices. (Book World review.)

In 10 compelling stories, Engel explores the indignities faced by new Americans. What makes the collection so rich and compelling is that the Colombian American author places her tales in the context of universal themes. (Book World review.)

In the 1860s, a butcher with a shadowy past claimed that he was Sir Roger Tichborne, the heir to a vast fortune who had been presumed dead. This case is just part of what powers the latest by Smith, who shows herself as adept with historical fiction as she is with courtroom drama. (Book World review.)

This quintessentially American tale is a smoldering exploration of desire and deception from the point of view of an escort. When she begins receiving threatening text messages from an old acquaintance demanding the money she stole, she escapes to the Hamptons. Needing food and a place to stay — and painkillers if she can find them — she looks upon these summer folks as a field ready to harvest. (Book World review.)

This remake of Shirley Jackson’s gothic classic “The Haunting of Hill House” is a perfect hybrid of old and new. The story stays true to Jackson’s vision while becoming a thrill of its own. (Book World review.)

Loosely based on “Little Women,” Napolitano’s latest centers on William, who marries into a March-like family. Napolitano catalogues the multitudes of love and hurt that families contain, and lays bare their powers to both damage and heal. (Book World review.)

Eng’s historical novel reimagines W. Somerset Maugham’s visit to Malaysia, an experience that inspired his short story “The Letter.” Tan folds Maugham into a multilayered tale about high-society Penang, British colonialism and Chinese rebellions. (Book World review.)

“The House on Via Gemito” is a vivid, richly detailed drama, narrated by a boy at pains to understand his father, a struggling artist. An additional note of interest: Many Italians believe that Starnone is the writer behind the pseudonym Elena Ferrante. (Book World review.)

Wilson has forged a poetic style in English that captures the essence of Homeric Greek. Avoiding both glorification of violence and mere tedium allows her to bring out the real themes of the poem: the human relationships that bind us into communities, made bittersweet by mortality and loss. (Book World review.)

In this meta murder mystery, Makkai explores the way the mistreatment of women and girls is repressed, mythologized, and transmuted into lurid gossip and entertainment. Bodie Kane, a professor and podcaster, returns to her prestigious New Hampshire school 25 years after a murder there. (Book World review.)

This is a novel of survival and longing and love, and in many ways a modern portrait of an artist as a young man. Its protagonist, known to us as K, is the youngest of three Muslim Iranian American brothers. In telling K’s story, Khabushani perfectly captures the Iranian American experience. (Book World review.)

“In Memoriam” is a World War I novel with an aching love story at its core. With echoes of “Brokeback Mountain,” Winn elegantly portrays a time and place where homosexual love was repressed, leaving two boarding school classmates unsure whether their affection for the other is reciprocated.

Two-time National Book Award winner Ward travels back in time to tell the story of an enslaved girl named Annis who’s a descendant of an African warrior. As she’s forced to march hundreds of miles to New Orleans, her horrifying journey is punctuated by visions of ghosts, including that of her indomitable grandmother. (Book World review.)

LaValle’s horror-tinged latest takes place on the starkest Great Plains frontier. In 1915, Adelaide Henry flees her Black farming community in Southern California to homestead on a bare-bones Montana acreage, toting a loosely shackled steamer trunk that barely restrains a fitful demon. (Book World review.)

In 19th-century Texas, Benjamin, a young carpenter, winds up on a dangerous journey after he meets a pregnant woman and her 4-year-old son, who are on the run from her murderous husband. Benjamin agrees to shepherd the pair toward a faraway haven, but their journey is littered with obstacles.

In 2021, Sarr’s novel was awarded France’s premier literary prize, the Goncourt. The story is told by a Paris-based Senegalese writer who, while struggling to produce a second novel of great literary merit, becomes obsessed with the story of a once-promising and now-forgotten writer. (Book World review.)

Based on the true story of a group in Vatican City whose daring exploits during World War II saved lives, O’Connor’s narrative charts the buildup and countdown to their mission. The result is a gripping drama featuring the unlikeliest of heroes, whom the reader will root for every step of the way. (Book World review.)

Skyhorse takes the classic immigrant success story and ferments it in MAGA hysteria. His heroine — whose real name is Inés — was raised in the United States by Mexican-born parents determined to give her every advantage of their adopted land. Heeding her parents’ advice, she becomes an ideal upper-middle-class citizen. At least, until a wall suddenly appears in her yard, rising higher all the time. (Book World review.)

Bump’s second novel is the story of a grieving young couple, two academics, who decide to found a utopian community in western Massachusetts. The tale also follows several pilgrims making their way to the experiment and explores the many ways in which a utopia is hard to realize.

Khalifa, who died in September, was one of Syria’s most celebrated contemporary novelists, though his work is banned there. Here he plunges into Aleppo’s past in a lush, elegiac story of two friends whose lives are altered by a flood that devastates their village. (Book World review.)

Barry’s protagonist, Tom Kettle, is a retired police detective who finds himself caught up in an unsolved case from decades before. The story plays out in ways that repeatedly surprise, but its twists and turns are less important than its steady emotional beats.

“Open Throat” is about a queer mountain lion, but only in the way “The Metamorphosis” is about a large bug. It was inspired by the true story of a cougar that prowled around Los Angeles for a decade. Hoke’s narrator is thirsty and hungry — and transfixed by what he sees around him. (Book World review.)

A masterpiece of genre mash-up, the Argentine writer’s first novel published in English slathers on supernatural conceits. How better to respond to her country’s violent history than with a shadowy sect teeming with wraiths and demons and a dynastic family that would sacrifice its own to maintain power? (Book World review.)

Set in the Jim Crow South in 1950, “The Reformatory” unsparingly depicts the violence and trauma inflicted on the children and teenagers at a juvenile-detention home inspired by a real-life story. From this grim past, Due has fashioned an enthralling tale of resilience and hope. (Book World review.)

“Same Bed Different Dreams” is a supremely cool novel, commanding an eye-popping array of cultural references in the service of a conspiratorial narrative about the secret history of Korea. Its prevailing tone is elegant and a little arch, with titrated moments of loveliness. (Book World review.)

Lehane is in “Mystic River” territory here: 1970s Boston, where a teen is missing from her Southie home and a parent is hellbent on finding her. Mary Pat Fennessy’s quest to track down her daughter — and her killer — is set against the backdrop of a city alight with racial tensions. (Book World review.)

Set in the expanding American West, Chun’s haunting saga honors the resilience of 19th-century Chinese immigrants despite the horrors they faced. Sold to a human trafficker by her desperate mother, 10-year-old Sixiang arrives in America hoping to find her father and reunite their family.

Set in late-1970s Hollywood, Tanabe’s latest gets its shape and heft from another decadent decade: the 1920s, and more specifically “The Great Gatsby.” Tanabe casts women in the main roles in a novel that offers a surprising twist on a classic. (Book World review.)

Patchett’s bestseller is about all kinds of love: romantic love, marital love and maternal love, but also the love of animals, the love of stories, love of the land and trees. A heart is broken at some point, but it breaks without affecting the remarkable warmth of the book, set in summer’s fullest bloom. (Book World review.)

Cole, the author of “Open City,” continues to demonstrate just how elastic a novel can be. His new book, revolving around a Nigerian-born professor, lacks a traditional plot but is animated by its protagonist’s persistent introspection and his constant negotiation with America and its mythologizing impulse. (Book World review.)

Mathis’s second novel (after the best-selling “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” in 2012) is about the struggles of a woman named Ava and her son, Toussaint, in 1980s Philadelphia, as well as Ava’s estranged mother in Alabama. The novel is an antidote to the casual depersonalization its characters endure. (Book World review.)

Small-time actor Dick Kallman became tabloid news in 1980 when he and his partner were brutally murdered. Part murder mystery, part showbiz history, Mallon’s fictionalized account of Kallman’s life and death is an engaging portrayal of a closeted celebrity hungry for success and a portrait of ’80s New York. (Book World review.)

This novel about a lonely French lawyer revisited by a figure from her past is set against the backdrop of a sensational murder trial. NDiaye’s ability to simultaneously embody all the fractured parts of a character’s mind makes her protagonist’s spiral engrossingly, utterly human. (Book World review.)

Though this novel was completed before Rushdie was brutally attacked at the Chautauqua Institution in 2022, it’s impossible not to read parts of the grand fantasy as an allegory of the author’s struggles against sectarian hatred and ignorance. (Book World review.)

“Vintage Contemporaries” centers on two young women new to New York and eager to make their mark. Kois channels the more subtle appeal of Laurie Colwin’s novels, which celebrate the small joys of life — friendship, martini olives, a handwritten note. (Book World review.)

In this wondrous novel, Enright explores the lasting impact of a father abandoning his critically ill wife and two young daughters. His departure reverberates through three generations of women, leaving them with a knotted legacy of pain, mystery, confusion — and love. (Book World review.)

This would be an audacious title for a book by anybody except God — or Hemon. His charismatic novel wends its way across Europe and Asia during the first half of the 20th century as two soldiers fall in love while trying to survive the trenches of World War I. (Book World review.)