Among our staff, we read widely, so starting last year we decided to give ourselves a vote as we busily aggregate and compute The Best Lists of all the year’s top fiction and nonfiction.
Notably, three present and former members of Team Lunch published deservedly praised works that merit a place on any list this year: Erin Somers‘ novel THE TEN-YEAR AFFAIR, as well as important works of researched nonfiction, Sarah Weinman‘s WITHOUT CONSENT and Kristen Martin‘s THE SUN WON’T COME OUT TOMORROW.
Beyond that, just like the listmakers this year, there was almost no consensus among staff favorites this year, except that a few of us rallied around HEART THE LOVER by Lily King. So instead, this year we offer a list in which we each picked one or two admired books that don’t appear on our consensus The Best Lists that we happily applaud and recommend:
Seduction Theory, by Emily Adrian
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, Kristen Arnett
Heartwood, Amity Gaige
Will There Ever Be Another You, Patricia Lockwood
People Like Us, Jason Mott
The Dance and The Fire, by Daniel Saldana Paris
Gliff, Ali Smith
Flesh, by David Szalay
So Far Gone, Jess Walter
Palaver, by Bryan Washington
It’s also a fine time to remind you that we have made it easy to give a Publishers Marketplace membership as a gift — for subscriptions of any length from one month to a full year!
And for the publishing person on your list who already belongs to PM, don’t forget our beloved (and still-relevant) doorstop, the 1,150-page, 6.7 pound definitive record of THE TRIAL: The DOJ’s Suit to Block Penguin Random House’s Acquisition of Simon & Schuster. As NY Magazine noted, “It’s like the Mueller report for publishing dorks. The definitive account of the saga.” You can buy it from Bookshop or Amazon.