By G. Willow Wilson (Grove)
50 notable works of fiction
Readers chose "Dear Life: Stories" by Alice Munro as one the year’s best 50 fiction books.
Wilson’s marvelous first novel takes events similar to those of the Arab Spring, adds a runaway computer virus, an unconventional love story and the odd genie to create an intoxicating, politicized amalgam of science fiction and fantasy. — Elizabeth Hand
By Ivan Doig (Riverhead)
In this subtle and engaging narrative, a 12-year-old boy tries to figure out the adult world, including his saloonkeeper father. Doig, 73, delivers a slow-paced novel filled with the joys of careful and loving observation. — Jon Clinch
By Jess Walter (Harper)
Hopscotching between 1960s Italy and today’s Hollywood, the story sends a young Italian in search of a long-remembered starlet in a plot that’s lively and well constructed — a lemon meringue pie of a novel: crisp and funny on top, soft and gooey inside. — Allegra Goodman
By Chase Novak (Mulholland)
One could think of this horror story about a couple trying to conceive a child as “Rosemary’s Baby’s Parents,” redolent of Roald Dahl at his creepy best, with enough humor to make the mayhem palatable.
— Dennis Drabelle
By Laura Moriarty (Riverhead)
In Moriarty’s captivating novel, we meet silent-screen star Louise Brooks long before her arrival in Hollywood. Fifteen-year-old Louise has been invited to take summer classes with a legendary New York dance troupe, but she may go only with a proper chaperone. This is a nuanced portrayal of social upheaval during the Jazz Age. — Caroline Preston
By Alice Munro (Knopf)
With her stunning new collection, Munro demonstrates that there is no writer quite as good at illustrating the foibles of love, the confusions and frustrations of life, or the inner cruelty and treachery that can be revealed in the slightest gestures. — Ron Hansen
By Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)
When a 42-year-old man with occasional anger-management issues gets hauled off to the psychiatric unit of a local hospital, it’s not clear whether he’ll ever get out. LaValle balances social satire, horror and mordant humor but never jettisons genuine affection for even the most damaged of his characters. — E.H.
By Mario Vargas Llosa (Farrar Straus Giroux)
A fiendishly clever re-imagining of the true story of Roger Casement, an Irishman who published reports of human-rights abuses in Congo and Peru at the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries. — Luis Alberto Urrea
By Barbara Kingsolver (Harper)
Yes, this is a climate-change novel, but not the op-ed in story form one might fear. The book’s success stems from Kingsolver’s willingness to stay focused on a conflicted young woman and her faltering marriage, while a strange symptom of the degraded environment — millions of lost butterflies — overwhelms her remote Tennessee town. — Ron Charles
By Bernice L. McFadden (Akashic)
In a voice ethereal, ancient and wise, McFadden tells the story of Money, Miss., where 14-year-old Emmett Till was killed in 1955. — Lisa Page
By Hari Kunzru (Knopf)
On the gaping expanse of the Mojave Desert, lost souls — including a Manhattan couple and their autistic son — seek salvation in the shadow of a rock formation. Then someone disappears; it’s a whirling wheelwork of a novel. — Marie Arana
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