4.18 avg rating — 2,795 ratings

"2019: Well worth the wait for this book to drop... Full of irrefutable evidence documenting the Trump administration's connections to the Russians during the 2016 election & his efforts to obstruct the ensuing Russia investigation by the former FBI Director, Bob Mueller. "

3.94 avg rating — 880,426 ratings

"2018: This debut thriller by the now pseudonymously discredited Dan Mallory (see New Yorker article Feb. 4, 2019 & his 'trail of deceptions') nevertheless spins a terrific yarn - the kind of suspense Hitchcock might've used if he'd done books instead of movies. Alternate 2018 choice: The Witch Elm by Tana French. She's an absolutely brilliant writer, so it's no surprise that her first stand-alone novel contains elements of suspense & mystery, but it's told from the victim's point of view, with the twist that he may be the perp in a crime he has no memory of committing..."

4.31 avg rating — 1,109,250 ratings

"2017: Movie tie-ins count... Technically, this novel came out in 2014 in Australia, but thanks to HBO, American audiences got turned onto Big Little Lies in a big way in 2017 (Season 1). "

4.32 avg rating — 660,120 ratings

"2016: In a thin year, A Gentleman in Moscow stands out as 1st-rate fiction, and took many readers by surprise, with this heart-warming story about an aristocrat sentenced to house arrest in the once-elegant Metropol Hotel after the Russian revolution deemed him a Non-person... "

3.96 avg rating — 3,263,840 ratings

"2015: Undeniably, this novel flew off the bookshelves with its clever, delectable set-up of a flawed heroine who may or may not have seen something from the train... Alternate choice for 2015: Sapiens: A Brief History of Human kind, Yuval Noah Harari's brilliant dive into why our species succeeded in becoming the dominant one on earth, for good or for bad. I really recommend the audiobook version of this excellent non-fiction bestseller! "

4.31 avg rating — 1,955,399 ratings

"2014: What a stunning historical novel this turned out to be! Its the unforgettable story of a blind French girl & an orphaned German boy whose lives cross during WWII. Confession: it inspired me to go read Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"... "

4.12 avg rating — 5,679,255 ratings

"2013: It's kind of a toss up between this book and Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg's remarkable self-help book for women eager to climb the corporate ladder, but I feel like Lean In came and went too fast to matter while The Fault in Our Stars made a more lasting impression... "

4.15 avg rating — 3,420,939 ratings

"2012: What a sensational page-turner this turned out to be. I didn't expect to like it nearly as much as I did. Or be drawn into such a killer marriage. "

4.61 avg rating — 65,036 ratings

"2011: There's no doubt that Game of Thrones was on everybody's lips by the time the HBO series came out of George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy. I just loved the way he handles multiple characters and weaves together all these plot threads. "

4.39 avg rating — 993,479 ratings

"2010: This powerful survival story swept up everyone in Louis Zamperini's incredible life, first as an Olympic runner and then as a bombardier in WWII who had the good luck to survive a crash in the Pacific but the bad luck to wash up on a Japanese island... Terrific, harrowing experience, related expertly by Laura Hillenbrand. "

4.47 avg rating — 3,001,995 ratings

"2009: Popular even before the movie, it's almost a send-up of "it" books in action..."

3.66 avg rating — 105,426 ratings

"2008: A big book by a little-known author soon had everyone wondering what a Sawtelle dog actually looked like... Alternate choice: Olive Kitteridge which quickly caught on & made author Elizabeth Strout an overnight sensation after she won the Pulitzer for her loosely linked short-stories about a sharply observant 7th-grade math teacher Olive Kitteridge & other recurring characters in the coastal town of Crosby, Maine. "

3.64 avg rating — 1,837,212 ratings

"2007: Although not to everyone's taste - one person called it Puke, Cheat, Rage - this book was passed from one hand to the next until it seems like it was the only book everyone was reading (of course, the movie tie-in didn't hurt sales)... "

3.70 avg rating — 611,280 ratings

"2006: It seems to me that by the time the paperback of this book came out in the summer of 2006, that's all anyone was talking about. It's a good story, a sad one that hinges on an ethical decision to give away a child, but it's not as memorable as two other books that also appeared that same year: (1) The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a terrific novel by Muriel Barbery, about a prickly French concierge who can't conceal her intelligence from an intellectually precocious girl; and (2) Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a marvelous nonfiction book by a former Washington Post reporter, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, that looks inside Bagdad's Green Zone, a walled-off compound of swimming pools and luxurious amenities in U.S.-occupied Iraq, at jarring odds with the country itself... "

4.36 avg rating — 3,468,675 ratings

"2005: A massive run-away bestseller, this novel made everyone want to run out & buy a kite:) Alternate choice: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the 1st in Stieg Larsson's blockbuster Swedish crime series about cyber-hacking genius Lisbeth Salander..."

3.86 avg rating — 2,456,285 ratings

"2004: There's no doubt this novel spoke to a lot of people - and touched a lot of hearts, what with its 14-yr.-old murder victim narrating the story looking down from heaven on her grieving family - though I found it a bit cloying, personally."

3.93 avg rating — 2,511,981 ratings

"2003: Can't imagine a better beach read than this thriller, which for all its drawbacks, provides an enthralling glimpse into the inner workings of the Catholic Church - thanks to all the cryptic clues in Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings & the discovery of a religious mystery..."

3.94 avg rating — 1,746,517 ratings

"2002: In a slow year, the paperback of this novel sped to the top of the best-seller lists, especially after winning the Booker for fiction (who doesn't want to know how a teenager & a tiger in a lifeboat turns out?) despite the rumors of plagiarism that still plague the author (didn't someone in So. America write a story about a panther in a boat with a boy...?). Alternate choice: Across the Nightingale Floor, an international bestseller & the 1st of the Tales of the Otori trilogy by Lian Hearn - beautifully written & fabulously imagined:)"

4.23 avg rating — 168,157 ratings

"2001: I don't know whose story grabbed readers more: the author's with her physical challenges overcoming a debilitating illness to write the book, or the undersized horse Seabiscuit who beat the odds of becoming a champion thoroughbred racehorse & became the top money-winning racehorse in the US during the Depression. "

3.79 avg rating — 174,156 ratings

"2000: This ambitious novel by a remarkably self-assured young British author generated a lot of buzz on both sides of the pond. Zadie Smith takes on race & class but with a light touch, centering the story on an unlikely friendship between two men whose families come from Britain's former colonies in Africa & India, and in the process gives readers a startling view into modern London society. "

4.58 avg rating — 4,798,277 ratings

"1999: The 2nd in the Harry Potter series dropped--and flew off bookstore shelves. Only Muggles complained these were children's books..."

3.81 avg rating — 1,020,320 ratings

"1998: Who could resist this hilarious modern wink at Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice? "

4.47 avg rating — 11,313,649 ratings

"1997: Smash debut of J.K. Rowling's highly imaginative Harry Potter books. In which we discover the magical world of Hogwarts, where 11-yr.-old orphan boy Harry Potter channels his inner wizard, wins MVP in quidditch, discovers an old invisibility cloak, and with help from his best buds Ron & Hermione summons his magical powers to find out the truth about what happened to his parents...and by extension himself. Great stuff. "

3.63 avg rating — 6,166 ratings

"1996: Everyone had to know who wrote this wickedly revealing, thinly veiled novelization of the Clintons' marriage. It had the kind of details only an eye-witness would know. Half the fun was trying to figure out who "Anonymous" was. The other half was the gossip the novel generated. "

3.94 avg rating — 71,828 ratings

"1995: Mary Karr made good use of her father's ability to tell a good tale in this memoir about her upbringing in East Texas, somehow managing to make the harrowing funny. Alternate choice: The first novel Blind Justice came out the same year but got very little fanfare despite turning out to be the beginning of a terrific series known as the Sir John Fielding Mysteries. The legendary Sir John Fielding (brother of the more famous novelist Henry Fielding) was a magistrate & founder of the Bow Street Runners police force in London. He also happened to be blind (a clever play on words in the title). In 1768, when a 13-yr.-old boy is brought before him falsely accused as a thief, Sir John sees through that charge and soon recruits young Jeremy Proctor to serve as his eyes in solving criminal cases. "

3.86 avg rating — 193,898 ratings

"1994: Without a doubt, this book got a lot of attention for an unknown author and went on to win the PEN Faulkner Award for Fiction. "

3.72 avg rating — 106,192 ratings

"1993: Although The Bridges of Madison County was undeniably a hot ticket that summer, it didn't really live up to all the hype. Alternate choice: The novel that really made a big dent in the literary landscape was A Very Long Engagement by a French writer known more for his mysteries than for historical fiction. And yet there is a mystery at the heart of this moving novel: what happened to a young woman's fiancée during WWI? The title is a wonderful play on words since, of course WWI was a very long war, as was her engagement to a young man who may or may not have been a conscientious objector or a deserter or even a miraculous survivor of one of the worst engagements of the war, the Battle of the Somme... Powerful, unforgettable storytelling!"

3.86 avg rating — 138,939 ratings

"1992: One of those rare novels that managed to be both literary and popular. The constellation of characters brought together in WWII is what really made this book glitter. (The casting of Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, and Colin Firth didn't hurt, either:)"

4.26 avg rating — 1,147,695 ratings

"1991: Technically, the year this fab fantastic historical romance appeared on the scene didn't catch on right away. But, wow, by the early 1990s, everyone was reading it--or recommending it (thanks, Ann!). Alternate choice: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley blew me & plenty of other readers away. Think King Lear in the Midwest. "

3.97 avg rating — 708,290 ratings

"1990: This multi-generational novel took the publishing world by storm. And soon word-of-mouth did the rest. "

4.14 avg rating — 356,696 ratings

"1989: This quiet, exquisite novel about a British butler written by a Japanese author wowed everyone-- and soon had them wondering how on earth he did it. Alternate choice: Another stunner that year was the novel Power of One by an Australian ad exec, Bruce Courtney, spinning his memories of So. Africa into the story of a boy named Peekay who wants to be the welter-weight champion of the world. "

3.88 avg rating — 7,062 ratings

"1988: Despite the perennial presence of Tom Clancy on the best-seller lists, this tautly constructed story put Pete Dexter on the literary map when it won the National Book Award for its portrait of a small-town Georgia store owner Paris Trout given to 'outcroppings of brutality' -- I've never been so afraid for another woman in my life as I was for his wife... "

4.09 avg rating — 125,750 ratings

"1987: Scott Turow broke new ground with this phenomenally successful legal thriller, which tells the story of Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor charged with the murder of his female colleague, but told from his perspective as the accused in the case... Alternate choice: Beloved, Toni Morrison's powerful slave narrative set right after the Civil War. It soon created a big groundswell of interest, but wasn't published until after summer ended that Sept. "

4.26 avg rating — 215,938 ratings

"1986: I liked The Great Santini better, but The Prince of Tides certainly pleased a ton of readers. Set in the low country of So. Carolina, it's about a former football player Tom Wingo & his family. Alternate choice: The Perfect Spy may not be Le Carre's best novel either, but it proved catnip to his fans, with its masterful deep-dive into the character of Magnus Pym, a 50-ish senior spymaster for Britain... I'll stick with Smiley, the enigmatic career-intelligence officer with 'The Circus', the British overseas intelligence agency, who is no one's idea of spy, which of course makes him an ideal secret agent... "

4.57 avg rating — 236,315 ratings

"1985: Larry McMurtry's epic Western novel roped in lovers of good storytelling with his tale of cow pokes, call girls, and mad savages on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana led by two old cowboys, Woodrow Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae... "

4.01 avg rating — 28,442 ratings

"1984: This story about two intertwined families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines, broke new ground, not just because it was set on an Ojibwe reservation in No. Dakota, or because it was structured as a novel-in-stories, but because of Louise Erdrich's uniquely poetic narrative style. Plus who doesn't want a dose of love medicine? "

4.14 avg rating — 393,769 ratings

"1983: The year this medieval-mystery thriller was published in English. Set in 1327, in a wealthy Italian monastery, this novel became a surprise hit once it hit this side of the Atlantic - catapulting Umberto Eco, an Italian professor of semiotics, into the upper stratosphere of literary fame. "

4.03 avg rating — 20,000 ratings

"1982: Sometime between 1981 when the hardcover first came out and 1983 when the paperback was published, this inspirational little book took off. So many people found themselves facing the same predicament that a rabbi, Harold Kushner, voices here: "I would write it for those people who wanted to go on believing, but whose anger at God made it hard for them to hold on to their faith and be comforted by religion. And I would write it for all those people whose love of God and devotion to Him led them to blame themselves for their suffering and persuade themselves that they deserved it.""

4.04 avg rating — 69,742 ratings

"1981: Martin Cruz Smith burst on the scene with Gorky Park, a groundbreaking Soviet thriller set in the Cold War era. Alternate choice: Ken Follett's breakthrough gem of a thriller The Eye of the Needle came out belatedly here in the US under the same name as the movie made in 1981--and introduced us to a fresh voice in historical suspense fiction with its heart-racing story about a Nazi agent who discovers the D-Day launch details which of course British intelligence can't let get into Hitler's hands... "

3.97 avg rating — 43,014 ratings

"1980: This WWII spy-thriller is so tautly plotted--and so much is at stake--that you won't be able to tear yourself away from finding out how the Brits thwart the most successful German agent ever to set foot in Egypt. The key to breaking the code he's using to transmit troop movements to Rommel is literally the book Rebecca. And Follett does a good job of weaving in some themes from that classic story, including obsession and jealousy (even the threesome at the end echoes the uneasy hold the 1st wife exerts over the 2nd wife's presence at Manderley). Alternate choice: Reflex also came out that year--and made a big splash on this side of Atlantic for an author well known in England. It's about a jockey-turned-to-photography who unravels nasty secrets of corruption, blackmail, and murder in the thoroughbred racing world, all with the modest unflinching courage typical of all Dick Francis heroes :)"

4.17 avg rating — 94,302 ratings

"1979: Styron's masterful telling of the exquisite moral dilemma faced by Sophie, a beautiful enigmatic young Polish woman who survived the death camps and now lives in the same Brooklyn boarding house as two men in love with her... Alternative choice: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was actually published in the UK this year but didn't reach cult status until the next couple of decades:) "

4.11 avg rating — 238,220 ratings

"1978: The only book anyone was reading that summer was John Irving's World According to Garp, a wonderful tragic-comic novel about a boy born out of wedlock who grows up to be a writer..."

4.25 avg rating — 363,954 ratings

"1977: A top Book Club of America choice, this epic saga of illicit love in the outback went on to became one of the most successful tv miniseries ever."

4.45 avg rating — 164,567 ratings

"1976: It wasn't til the mini-series aired that Alex Haley's book sold in the millions, but it created a name for the author (somewhat disparaged later for allegedly lifting parts of the story from a 1967 novel The African), but for sure Roots introduced millions to black history & won a special Pulitzer Prize for the work in 1977. "

3.90 avg rating — 46,366 ratings

"1975: This jazzy novel blended actual figures (Houdini) and imaginary ones (a family from New Rochelle) and captured not just the spirit of America between the turn of the century and the era of the First World War, but also some of ragtime's "lively and springy rhythms" on the page."

4.09 avg rating — 504,298 ratings

"1974: Who doesn't love an adventure novel? Especially one involving a brave band of rabbits in flight from man & his destruction of the land? Watership Down became an instant sensation, an obvious allegory of the spiritual journey to a mysterious promised and and a more perfect society... "

4.09 avg rating — 10,612 ratings

"1973: This brilliant historical novel ruffled a lot of feathers--and generated a lot of buzz--for irreverently portraying Aaron Burr as a fascinating & honorable gentleman and his opponents (Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton) as somehow fey & incompetent, i.e., mortal men. In doing so, he challenged the traditional mythology of the Founding Fathers... "

3.86 avg rating — 271,445 ratings

"1972: In retrospect, it's hard to know why this little book became such a sensation. Originally published in 1970, it topped the best-seller lists for a couple of years. It's a fable about a seagull who is trying to learn about life & flight. But one quote ought to give an idea of what appealed to people at that Watergate time: "To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing you have already arrived." 1,815,000 hard-cover copies sold in 1972 alone."

4.21 avg rating — 269,842 ratings

"1971: One of the most controversial novels ever written, this went on to become a literary phenomenon: It spent 57 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Inspired by a true story of a child’s demonic possession in the 1940's, Blatty also wrote the subsequent screenplay version for which he won an Academy Award."

3.65 avg rating — 64,120 ratings

"1970: What a tear-jerker! This simple love story had people falling in love with a couple of college students struck down by tragedy."

4.40 avg rating — 461,633 ratings

"1969: Although Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) also came out the same year and enjoyed phenomenal success, it was The Godfather's glimpse into the Mafia world of Don Corleone that proved irresistible. Everyone gobbled up this mob drama of crime & betrayal. No surprise that it led to one of the greatest films of all times:) "

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 41,833 ratings

"1968: This book hooked readers with its fast-paced dramatic action involving a slew of characters on the ground and in the air trying to divert disaster from one flight beset by bombs & blizzards... Highly entertaining read."

4.12 avg rating — 1,096,410 ratings

"1967: The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel that tells the story of the Buendia family and chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love. (Jacket flap copy). "

3.86 avg rating — 76,980 ratings

"1966: This "trashy, kitsch entertainment" about drugs, sex, and ambition nevertheless hooked readers with its riveting look at the tragic rise & fall of three women (thinly disguised Hollywood stars like Judy Garland) descending into the valley of the dolls: the horrible nightworld of booze & pills. Lots of people could relate...
"

4.30 avg rating — 45,444 ratings

"1965: Maybe because there was a newspaper strike on that year, The Source seems to be the only thing people were reading... In typical James Michener fashion, this historic novel takes a grand, sweeping approach to telling the origin story of the Jewish people & the land of Israel, from prehistoric days to the birth of the modern State of Israel. "

4.09 avg rating — 125,894 ratings

"1964: This Cold War spy novel catapulted le Carre up the best-seller list soon after it was released in the States. Creating a world unlike any previously experienced in suspense fiction, le Carre drew on his unsurpassed knowledge culled from years in British Intelligence to bring to light the shadowy dealings of international espionage in the tale of a British agent, Alex Leamas, who longs to end his career but undertakes one final "bone-chilling assignment" in East Berlin where he's sent as a fake defector..."

3.68 avg rating — 17,254 ratings

"1963: This somewhat racy novel rapidly became "a book that everyone read without wanting to admit it," according to The Guardian in 2009. Its frank descriptions of sex, contraception, and breast-feeding as they affected eight Vassar graduates - known simply to their classmates as 'the group' - caused such a scandal that the novel was banned in Australia. Still, its continuing relevance is one of the book's most extraordinary attributes. When Candace Bushnell was advised by an editor in the early 1990s to write "the modern-day version of The Group", she responded with 'Sex and the City', a collection of confessional essays about a group of female friends that spawned a multimillion-dollar TV series & film. Alternate choice: Cat's Cradle, a science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way..."

4.21 avg rating — 2,108 ratings

"1962: A political thriller that could've come from today's news cycle: A brilliant, magnetic general, like a lot of people, believes the President is ruining the country. Unlike anyone else, he has the power to do something about it, something unprecedented and terrifying. That is, until a marine accidentally stumbles onto the plot. At first, he refuses to believe it; then he risks his life to stop it... Alternate choice: Ship of Fools, which outsold every other American novel published in 1962. Maybe because the 22-yr.-wait built up a great deal of eager expectation in the literary world. It's about passengers/staff on a 1931 sea voyage aboard a German passenger ship. But it's not the Love Boat. It's more like a freighter, weighed down by its cargo of metaphorical allusions to the rise of Nazism, the nature of evil, and many other disappointments of life."

4.09 avg rating — 96,430 ratings

"1961: The mass market paperback of this biographical novel surely had much to do with its popularity atop the best-seller list long after the hardcover edition was published (in 1958). The Agony and the Ecstasy brings Michelangelo to life in all his suffering glory as artist and man."

4.26 avg rating — 6,827,402 ratings

"1960: This novel appeared with little fanfare compared to books like Advise and Consent (Alan Drury) or Hawaii (James Michener), but it soon took off and never looked back as a classic of American lit."

4.01 avg rating — 102,575 ratings

"1959: Pasternak's epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987. One of the results of its publication in the West (Italy, 1957) and Pasternak being forced to decline the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 by the Soviets, was that his book quickly became an international best-seller. Alternate choice: Lolita, another controversial novel with a complicated publishing history. It was first written in English (pub. in Paris, 1955) but quickly attained classic status in the States, not least because of its erotic story of a middle-aged lit professor "Humbert Humbert" obsessed with his 12-yr.-old sexpot-of-a-stepdaughter "Lolita"... Nabokov later translated it into Russian himself (pub. in NY, 1967). "