New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century

Updated August 9, 2024
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Tree of smoke
Johnson, Denis
Paper Book
Once upon a time there was a war . . . and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the...
Bring up the bodies :
Mantel, Hilary,
Paper Book
The sequel to Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Bring Up the Bodies delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn. The basis for the TV show on BBC and PBS Masterpiece...
On beauty :
Smith, Zadie.
Paper Book
Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering professor at Wellington, a liberal New England arts college. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was....
Station eleven /
Mandel, Emily St. John,
Paper Book
This Anniversary Edition of Station Eleven, a finalist for the National Book Award and named a Best Book of the Twenty-First Century by the New York Times, celebrates ten years of this now iconic novel with a new color illustration and a guide to "The Mandelverse" A...
The emperor of all maladies : a biography of cancer
Mukherjee, Siddhartha.
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize -- Here is a magnificent, profoundly humane "biography" of cancer -- from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new...
Americanah
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
Paper Book
10th ANNIVERSARY EDITION * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A modern classic about star-crossed lovers that explores questions of race and being Black in America--and the search for what it means to call a place home. * From the award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Half of a...
Far from the tree : parents, children and the search for identity
Solomon, Andrew
Paper Book
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Books for a Better Life Award, and one of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2012, this masterpiece by the National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon features stories of parents who not only learn to...
We the animals
Torres, Justin
Paper Book
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE An exquisite, blistering debut novel Three brothers tear their way through childhood-- smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the...
The plot against America /
Roth, Philip
Paper Book
When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America. Not only had Lindbergh, in a nationwide radio address, publicly blamed the Jews for sel&...
Middlesex
Eugenides, Jeffrey.
CD
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school, Grosse Pointe, MI, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop - leads Callie to...
Nickel and dimed : on (not) getting by in America
Ehrenreich, Barbara.
Paper Book
TheNew York Times bestseller, and one of the most talked about books of the year, Nickel and Dimed has already become a classic of undercover reportage. Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She...
The flamethrowers :
Kushner, Rachel.
Paper Book
Named a Best Book of 2013 by The New York Times; Vogue; O, The Oprah Magazine; Time; Bookish; New York magazine; The New Yorker; Slate; Flavorwire; Publishers Weekly; Kirkus Reviews; Salon; and Complex.
The looming tower :
Wright, Lawrence,
Paper Book
A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright's remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of...
Tenth of December : stories
Saunders, George
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * NAMED ONE OF TIME'S TEN BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY AND BUZZFEED * NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE...
Runaway : stories
Munro, Alice
Paper Book
"In Alice Munro's new collection, we find stories about women of all ages and circumstances, their lives made palpable by the subtlety and empathy of this incomparable writer." "The runaway of the title story is a young woman who, though she thinks she wants to, is incapable of leaving her husband....
Life after life : a novel
Atkinson, Kate.
Paper Book
What if you could live again and again, until you got it right? On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty...
The goldfinch
Tartt, Donna.
Paper Book
A young New Yorker grieving his mother's death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth in this "extraordinary" and beloved Pulitzer Prize winner from the author of The Secret History that "connects with the heart as well as the mind" (Stephen King, New York Times Book...
A brief history of seven killings /
James, Marlon,
Paper Book
Winner of the Booker Prize One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century One of Entertainment Weekly's Top 10 Books of the Decade One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years ...
The line of beauty :
Hollinghurst, Alan
Paper Book
Winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the NBCC award. From Alan Hollinghurst, the acclaimed author of The Sparsholt Affair, The Line of Beauty is a sweeping novel about class, sex, and money during four extraordinary years of change and...
Cloud atlas : a novel
Mitchell, David
Paper Book
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The timeless, structure-bending classic that explores how actions of individual lives impact the past, present and future--from a postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in fiction One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the...
Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage : stories
Munro, Alice
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * From Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro come nine short stories with "the intimacy of a family photo album and the organic feel of real life" (The New York Times) "In Munro's hands, as in Chekhov's, a short story is more than big enough to hold...
Behind the beautiful forevers life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
Boo, Katherine.
CD
In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport...
The road /
McCarthy, Cormac,
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive that "only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle). One of...
The year of magical thinking /
Didion, Joan
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * A landmark work about grief, love, and survival from one of America's most iconic writers One of The New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century * One of The Guardian's 100 Best Books of the...
The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao /
Dâiaz, Junot,
Paper Book
Winner of: The Pulitzer Prize The National Book Critics Circle Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year One of The New York Times's 100 Best Books of the...
Gilead
Robinson, Marilynne
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER* A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * MORE THAN 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD "Quietly powerful [and...
Never let me go
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Paper Book
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER * From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes "a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist--a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic. One of The New York Times's 10...
The corrections /
Franzen, Jonathan
Wolf Hall
Mantel, Hilary
Paper Book
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his twenty-year marriage and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe oppose him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell, a wholly...

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