Gillian Rose’s memoir of love and death, Love’s Work

Harry Mulisch’s novel of World War II and its aftermath in the Netherlands, The Assault

Mike Royko’s biography of Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, Boss

A.R. Ammons’s long poem, Sphere: The Form of a Motion

Ellen Ullman’s memoir of software development, Close to the Machine

Colin MacInnes’s novel of 1950s London, Absolute Beginners

John Langston Gwaltney's oral history of African Americans, Drylongso

Sanora Babb’s novel of small-town Kansas, The Lost Traveler

Diana Athill’s memoir, Instead of a Letter

Kim Thúy’s novel of a Vietnamese refugee in Canada, Ru

Rockwell Kent’s memoir of a sailing adventure to Greenland, N by E

Gwendolyn Brooks’s novel of a life in Chicago, Maud Martha