Looking for a good book? Check out this list

With the holidays nearing, many of you will be putting a book or two on the gift list.

Others will involuntarily be getting a book you may or may not be happy with. But if we may, we’d suggest giving these books a second-chance. The Kojo Nnamdi Show from WAMU checked in with a number of experts to compile this list of books that might be perfect for reading this winter.

Let us know what books are missing and what books you think might be worth checking out this year.

Barbara Hoffert, Editor of the Book Review at Library Journal

Salvage the Bones: A Novel

by Jesmyn Ward

Bloomsbury USA

The Marriage Plot: A Novel

by Jeffrey Eugenides

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Our Man in the Dark: A Novel

by Rashad Harrison

Atria Books

Wunderkind: A Novel

by Nikolai Grozni

Free Press

The Emperor of Lies: A Novel

by Steve Sem-Sandberg

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Mirador: Dreamed Memories of Irene Nemirovsky by her Daughter (New York Review Books Classics)

by Elisabeth Gille

NYRB Classics

Hagar Before the Occupation / Hagar After the Occupation

by Amal al-Jubouri

Alice James Books

Lime Creek: Fiction

by Joe Henry

Random House

As If a Bird Flew By Me: A Novel

by Sara Greenslit

Fiction Collective 2

Best European Fiction 2012 (Best European Fiction)

by

Dalkey Archive Press

A History of the World in 100 Objects

by Neil MacGregor

Viking Adult

Van Gogh: The Life

by Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith

Random House

Michael Dirida, Book Critic, The Washington Post Book World

We Others: New and Selected Stories

by Steven Millhauser

Knopf

A Man of Parts

by David Lodge

Viking Adult

The Stranger’s Child

by Alan Hollinghurst

Knopf

1Q84

by Haruki Murakami

Knopf

Pym: A Novel

by Mat Johnson

Spiegel & Grau

The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Novel

by Anthony Horowitz

Mulholland Books

The Narrative of John Smith

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

British Library

Pirate King: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes (Russell & Holmes, Book 11)

by Laurie R. King

Bantam

A Study in Sherlock: Stories inspired by the Holmes canon

by

Bantam

On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling (Writers on Writers)

by Michael Dirda

Princeton University Press

1Q84

by Haruki Murakami

Knopf

Pym: A Novel

by Mat Johnson

Spiegel & Grau

Hav (New York Review Books Classics)

by Jan Morris

NYRB Classics

The Sojourn

by Andrew Krivak

Bellevue Literary Press

The Prague Cemetery

by Umberto Eco

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade

The Phantom Tollbooth 50th Anniversary Edition

by Norton Juster

Knopf Books for Young Readers

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane

by Andrew Graham-Dixon

W. W. Norton & Company

Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall – from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness

by Frank Brady

Crown

And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris (Vintage)

by Alan Riding

Vintage

The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 2, 1941-1956

by Samuel Beckett

Cambridge University Press

Becoming Ray Bradbury

by Jonathan R. Eller

University of Illinois Press


Parul Sehgal, NPR Books Editor, Digital Arts,
NPR

[sic]: A Memoir

by Joshua Cody

W. W. Norton & Company

Walking with the Comrades

by Arundhati Roy

Penguin (Non-Classics)

Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961

by Paul Hendrickson

Knopf

Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

by Christopher Hitchens

Twelve

Blue Nights

by Joan Didion

Knopf

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

by Robert K. Massie

Random House

Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms

by Eugenia Bone

Rodale Books

The Marriage Plot: A Novel

by Jeffrey Eugenides

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Sense of an Ending (Borzoi Books)

by Julian Barnes

Knopf

Luminarium

by Alex Shakar

Soho Press

The Call: A Novel

by Yannick Murphy

Harper Perennial

The Devil All the Time

by Donald Ray Pollock

Doubleday

Marcela Valdes, Editor, Publisher’s Weekly and The Washington Examiner

The Barbarian Nurseries: A Novel

by Héctor Tobar

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Habibi

by Craig Thompson

Pantheon

Last Man in Tower

by Aravind Adiga

Knopf

Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories

by Edith Pearlman, Ann Patchett (introduction)

Lookout Books

Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961

by Paul Hendrickson

Knopf

Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius

by Sylvia Nasar

Simon & Schuster

The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism

by Deborah Baker

Graywolf Press

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

by Stephen Greenblatt

W. W. Norton & Company

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