Fiction
Night Watch, by Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf)
A beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia’s Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War where a severely wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, long abused by a Confederate soldier, struggle to heal.
Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper)
A masterful recasting of “David Copperfield,” narrated by an Appalachian boy whose wise, unwavering voice relates his encounters with poverty, addiction, institutional failures and moral collapse–and his efforts to conquer them.
Trust, by Hernan Diaz (Riverhead Books)
A riveting novel set in a bygone America that explores family, wealth and ambition through linked narratives rendered in different literary styles, a complex examination of love and power in a country where capitalism is king.
The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family, by Joshua Cohen (New York Review Books)
A mordant, linguistically deft historical novel about the ambiguities of the Jewish-American experience, presenting ideas and disputes as volatile as its tightly-wound plot.
The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich (Harper)
A majestic, polyphonic novel about a community’s efforts to halt the proposed displacement and elimination of several Native American tribes in the 1950s, rendered with dexterity and imagination.
The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
A spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption.
The Overstory, by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton)
An ingeniously structured narrative that branches and canopies like the trees at the core of the story whose wonder and connectivity echo those of the humans living amongst them.
Less, by Andrew Sean Greer (Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company)
A generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love.
The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
For a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America.
The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)
A layered immigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a "man of two minds" -- and two countries, Vietnam and the United States.
All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
An imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology.
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown)
A beautifully written coming-of-age novel with exquisitely drawn characters that follows a grieving boy's entanglement with a small famous painting that has eluded destruction, a book that stimulates the mind and touches the heart.
The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson (Random House)
An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.
No award given
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (Alfred A.. Knopf)
An inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age, displaying a big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed.
Tinkers, by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press)
A powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality.
Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)
A collection of 13 short stories set in small-town Maine that packs a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, blunt, flawed and fascinating.