Staff Picks
Washington Post Picks for Best Fiction of 2018
- Allison T.
- Tuesday, December 04, 2018
Collection
For those who still love a good book on CD, these are some of the best works of fiction of the year, according to the Washington Post.
Give Me Your Hand
Published in 2018
Kit Owens thought that she would never see Diane Fleming again. The pair were best friends in high school, until a confidence shared between them changed everything. Kit thinks she has moved on with her life, fulfilling the scientific dreams that Diane awakened within her. The dreams that Diane wanted for herself. But Kit thought wrong. When Diane shows up unannounced in Kit's lab one day, formidable competition for the fellowship that would make Kit's career, the past comes roaring back to life. And when the deadly secret that drove them apart threatens their lives in shocking, unexpected ways, Kit has to make a choice and decide whether extending a hand to her former friend will save her; or ruin them both.
The Poet X
Published in 2018
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers, especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.
Children of Blood and Bone
Published in 2018
Zľie Adebola remembers when the soil of Ors̐ha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zľie|s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zľie without a mother and her people without hope.
Transcription
Published in 2018
Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet Armstrong is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.
The Immortalists
Published in 2018
It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children, four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness, sneak out to hear their fortunes. A deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
The Flight Attendant a Novel
Published in 2018
When binge-drinking flight attendant Cassandra wakes up in a Dubai hotel next to a body, she has no idea what happened, and all she can think to do is lie about it. She lies to her coworkers, and eventually to the FBI agents who question her. Could she have killed him? If not, then who did?
Dark Sacred Night
Published in 2018
LAPD Detective Renee Ballard returns to Hollywood Station to find a stranger rifling through old file cabinets. The intruder is retired detective Harry Bosch, investigating the death of fifteen-year-old Daisy Clayton. Daisy was a runaway on the streets of Hollywood who was brutally murdered and left in a dumpster. Now, Ballard joins forces with Bosch to find out what happened to Daisy and finally bring her killer to justice.
The Woman in the Window
Published in 2018
Anna Fox lives alone, a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times, and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn|t, her world begins to crumble, and its shocking secrets are laid bare.
The Reckoning a Novel
Published in 2018
Pete Banning was Clanton's favorite son, a returning war hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, father, neighbor, and a faithful member of the Methodist church. Then one cool October morning in 1946. he rose early, drove into town, walked into the church, and calmly shot and killed the Reverend Dexter Bell. As if the murder wasn't shocking enough, it was even more baffling that Pete's only statement about it - to the sheriff, to his defense attorney, to the judge, to his family and friends, and to the people of Clanton - was 'I have nothing to say'. And so the murder of the esteemed Reverend Bell became the most mysterious and unforgettable crime Ford County had ever known.
The Great Alone
Published in 2018
Alaska, 1974. Untamed. Unpredictable. And for a family in crisis, the ultimate test of the human spirit.
An American Marriage a Novel
Published in 2018
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American dream and the new South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy's time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy's conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
The Music Shop
Published in 2018
It is 1988. On a dead-end street in a run-down suburb there is a music shop that stands small and brightly lit, jam-packed with records of every kind. Like a beacon, the shop attracts the lonely, the sleepless, and the adrift; Frank, the shop's owner, has a way of connecting his customers with just the piece of music they need. Then, one day, into his shop comes a beautiful young woman, Ilse Brauchmann, who asks Frank to teach her about music. Terrified of real closeness, Frank feels compelled to turn and run, yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems, and Frank has old wounds that threaten to reopen, as well as a past it seems he will never leave behind. Can a man who is so in tune with other people's needs be so incapable of connecting with the one person who might save him?
Sunburn a Novel
Published in 2018
Two lovers are locked in a passionate game of cat and mouse. But instead of rules, this game has dark secrets, forbidden desires, inevitable betrayals, and cold-blooded murder.
How to Be Safe
Published in 2018
Recently suspended for a so-called outburst, high school English teacher Anna Crawford is stewing over the injustice when she is shocked to hear she is named as a suspect in a shooting at her school. Though she is quickly exonerated, her life is held up for relentless scrutiny and judgment as this quiet town descends into media mania. Anna decides to wholeheartedly reject the culpability she's somehow been assigned, and the rampant sexism that comes with it, both in person and online.
Love and Ruin a Novel
Published in 2018
The bestselling author of The Paris Wife returns to the subject of Ernest Hemingway in a novel about his passionate, stormy marriage to Martha Gellhorn, a fiercely independent, ambitious young woman who would become one of the greatest war correspondents of the twentieth century.
Circe
Published in 2018
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child, not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology.
Blackfish City a Novel
Published in 2018
A visionary and gripping novel about a futuristic city beset by a dispassionate government and organized crime.
Killing Commendatore a Novel
Published in 2018
The much-anticipated new novel from the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, this is an epic tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art, as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby, and a stunning work of imagination from one of the greatest writers.
Warlight a Novel
Published in 2018
In a narrative as mysterious as memory itself, shadowed and luminous at once, this is a vivid, thrilling novel of violence and love, intrigue and desire.
There There
Published in 2018
Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame in Oakland. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life together after his uncle's death and has come to work the powwow and to honor his uncle's memory. Edwin Black has come to find his true father. Thomas Frank has come to drum the Grand Entry. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather; Orvil has taught himself Indian dance through YouTube videos, and he has come to the Big Oakland Powwow to dance in public for the very first time. Tony Loneman is a young Native American boy whose future seems destined to be as bleak as his past, and he has come to the Powwow with darker intentions.
You Think It, I'll Say It Stories
Published in 2018
A dazzling collection of short stories from the New York Times bestselling author of Prep, American Wife, and Eligible Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her "astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers' heads" ( The Washington Post ) is showcased like never before. Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I'll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided. In "The World Has Many Butterflies," married acquaintances play a strangely intimate game with devastating consequences. In "Vox Clamantis in Deserto," a shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate's seemingly enviable life. In "A Regular Couple," a high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. And in "The Prairie Wife," a suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome-lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie.
The Death of Mrs. Westaway
Published in 2018
On a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person, but also that the cold-reading skills she|s honed as a tarot card reader might help her claim the money. Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased; where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the center of it.
The Female Persuasion
Published in 2018
Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at sixty-three, has been a central pillar of the women's movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world. At its heart, this is a story about the people who guide and the people who follow (and how those roles evolve over time), and the desire within all of us to be pulled into the light.