The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Superbomb

by Neal Bascomb

The book I've recommended without having read it—a great, true story that readers have loved—most enthusiastically this year. Perhaps I should read it myself!

The Performance of Becoming Human

by Daniel Borzutzky

It took a National Book Award to get me to take a look, but I'm already drawn in by the inviting, existential opening pages.

Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?: Stories

by Kathleen Collins

A collection of rediscovered stories from a pioneering filmmaker who died too young.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond

Often Laura reads a book and then I feel like I don't have to, but when she likes it as much as she did this one, it follows me around until I do.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant

by Seth Dickinson

Oh, the title of this recent SF/fantasy release alone is enough to draw me in, along with an excellent and convincing recommendation from a customer.

In the Darkroom

by Susan Faludi

Despite fantastic reviews, despite Ann Patchett telling a packed house at Benaroya Hall that it's a masterpiece, and despite being named one of the New York Times's 10 Best of 2016, almost no one (in our store at least) has picked up Faludi's memoir of her discovery that her tyrannical, estranged father had sex-reassignment surgery in his 70s. And neither have I—yet!

How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS

by David France

France's acclaimed, epic account updates, and may even replace, Randy Shilts's classic And the Band Played On as the definitive account of the AIDS crisis.

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

An intriguing complement, a little heavier on the science, to the very popular Soul of an Octopus.

Caught

by Henry Green

Another wave in the perpetual rediscovery of the ambitious and innovative British novelist has arrived. I've loved the only one of his books I read (Living), and I've set this story of wartime Britain aside to be the next.

Hola and Goodbye: Una Familia in Stories

by Donna Miscolta

Hearing Donna read at our Dock Street Salon earlier this year made me eager for the release of her story collection, which just arrived in November.

Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray on Jazz and Blues

edited by Paul Devlin

One of the all-time great talkers, on his greatest subject.

Version Control

by Dexter Palmer

I've been intrigued by this "near-future" tale ever since it came out, perhaps because it sounds William Gibson-ish to me, although reviewers compare it to all kinds of other writers, from Franzen to Rowling to Pynchon. Out soon in paperback!

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America

by Patrick Phillips

Phillips, a National Book Award-nominated poet, looks back at the violent removal, a hundred years ago, of the entire black population from Forsyth County, Georgia, which continued to be enforced for decades after, up to his own childhood there.

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

by Sam Quinones

My only holdover from last year's list: my desire to read it has only grown stronger, especially after hearing Quinones's riveting interview on Marc Maron's WFT podcast.

Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White

by Michael Tisserand

Oh, boy. Herriman's cryptic, elemental, hilarious comic Krazy Kat is one of the great achievements of American culture, but Herriman himself has largely been a cipher, so I'm hungry to read this first major biography, just out this month.

Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939

by Volker Ullrich

Well, maybe it's finally time for me to read about how a modern democracy put an authoritarian madman in power. Ugh.

Bob Stevenson

by Richard WIley

Honestly, it's really that I love the cover so much, and the intriguing first page.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

by Ed Yong

My mind continues to be blown by the recently gained understanding of just how central our microbial symbiosis is to human biology and identity, and Yong's account is said to be marvelous.