Here are our reading groups’ favorite fiction books of 2017 based on our survey results.
OUR SOULS AT NIGHT
Kent Haruf
In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf's inimitable fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters. Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades;…
THE PARIS ARCHITECT
Charles Belfoure
Like most gentiles in Nazi-occupied Paris, architect Lucien Bernard has little empathy for the Jews. So when a wealthy industrialist offers him a large sum of money to devise secret hiding places for Jews, Lucien struggles with the choice of risking his life for a cause he doesn’t really believe…
THE READERS OF BROKEN WHEEL RECOMMEND
Katarina Bivald
Once you let a book into your life, the most unexpected things can happen… Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her book-loving pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds Amy's funeral guests just leaving. The…
THE CURIOUS CHARMS OF ARTHUR PEPPER
Phaedra Patrick
In this poignant and curiously charming debut, a lovable widower embarks on a life-changing adventure Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. He gets out of bed at precisely 7:30 a.m., just as he did when his wife, Miriam, was alive. He dresses in the same gray slacks and mustard…
THE OTHER EINSTEIN
Marie Benedict
In the tradition of The Paris Wife and Mrs. Poe, The Other Einstein offers us a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein’s enormous shadow. It is the story of Einstein’s wife, a brilliant physicist in her own right, whose contribution to the special theory…
A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW
Amor Towles
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel With his breakout debut novel, Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing…
ALL THE STARS IN THE HEAVENS
Adriana Trigiani
The movie business is booming in 1935 when twenty-one-year-old Loretta Young meets thirty-four-year-old Clark Gable on the set of The Call of the Wild. Though he’s already married, Gable falls for the stunning and vivacious young actress. Far from the glittering lights of Hollywood, Sister Alda Ducci has been forced…
PACHINKO
Min Jin Lee
“There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones.” History is seldom kind. In Min Jin Lee’s bestselling, magisterial epic, four generations of a poor, proud immigrant family fight to control…
IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT
Judy Blume
In this brilliant new novel—her first for adults since Summer Sisters—Judy Blume takes us back to the 1950s and introduces us to the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she herself grew up. Here she imagines and weaves together a vivid portrait of three generations of families, friends, and strangers,…
THE BURIED GIANT
Kazuo Ishiguro
From one of the most preeminent writers of our times comes The Buried Giant, an extraordinary new novel that poses powerful questions about love, loss, and mortality. The novel centers around an elderly couple, Beatrice and Axl, who set out on an epic journey through war-torn lands in hopes of…