From The New York Times Top .From The New York Times Top 100 *The Fortunes – Peter Ho Davies *Mischling – Affinity Konar This meditation on 150 years of the Chinese-American Konar uses the unsettling and grievous history of Dr. Josef Ten of 2016 List of 2016 experience asks what it means to be a Chinese-American. Mengele’s experiments on children, particularly twins, to *The Association of Small Bombs– Karan Mahajan riveting effect in her debut novel. All that Man Is – David Szalay A Gambler’s Anatomy – Jonathan Lethem A finalist for the National Book Award, Mahajan’s novel — Szalay writes with voluptuous authority about masculinity A backgammon hustler with telepathic powers returns to *Mister Monkey – Francine Prose smart, devastating and unpredictable — opens with a under duress in this novel in stories. Berkeley, Calif., for surgery in Lethem’s inventive 10th The dreadful revival of a musical based on a children’s novel Kashmiri terrorist attack in a Delhi market, then follows the novel, the theme of which is remaining open to possibilities. about an orphaned chimp is observed through various points lives of those affected. This includes Deepa and Vikas *Another Brooklyn – Jacqueline Woodson of view in this fresh, Chekhovian novel. Khurana, whose young sons were killed, and the boys’ Girlhood and the half-life of its memory are the subjects of The Gloaming – Melanie Finn – injured friend Mansoor, who grows up to flirt with a form of this intense, moving novel, Woodson’s first for adults in A woman tries to remake her life in Africa in Finn’s *Moonglow Michael Chabon political terrorism himself. As the narrative suggests, nothing intricately plotted novel. In this beautifully written hybrid, a San Francisco writer years. recovers from a bomb: not our humanity, not our politics, not named Mike presents a memoir about his grandparents, a Grief Is the Thing with Feathers – Max Porter even our faith. *Barkskins – Annie Proulx World War II soldier and a Holocaust survivor. A father and his sons struggle with a death in this luminous Tracing two families and their part in the destruction of the – The North Water – Ian McGuire world’s forests, Proulx’s latest novel is a tale of long-term, novel. The Mortifications Derek Palacio This sweeping debut novel limns the exile and return of a Propelled by a vision that is savage, brutal and relentless, shortsighted greed. *Here Comes the Sun – Nicole Dennis-Benn McGuire relates the tale of an opium-addicted 19th-century Dennis-Benn’s tale of life in the impoverished neighborhoods Cuban-American family. – Irish surgeon who encounters a vicious psychopath on board *Before the Fall Noah Hawley of Montego Bay, Jamaica, sheds light on the island’s *My Name Is Lucy Barton – Elizabeth Strout A private-jet crash leads to a media firestorm in Hawley’s an Arctic-bound whaling ship. With grim, jagged lyricism, disenfranchised. A writer and her estranged mother attempt to reconnect McGuire describes violence with unsparing color and even readable thrill ride of a novel. during a brief visit in a Pulitzer Prize winner’s exquisite relish while suggesting a path forward for historical fiction. *Here I Am – Jonathan Safran Foer *Behold the Dreamers – Imbolo Mbue Private and public crises converge for four generations of a novel of careful words and vibrating silences. Picture a meeting between Joseph Conrad and Cormac In Mbue’s bighearted debut, set against the backdrop of the McCarthy in some run-down port as they offer each other a Jewish family in this ambitious, often brilliant novel, Foer’s *Ninety-Nine Stories of God – Joy Williams American financial crisis, a Cameroonian family makes a long, sour nod of recognition. third. This collection of micro-fictions is a treasure trove of tiny new life in Harlem. *Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi wry masterpieces. *The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead This wonderful debut by a Ghanaian-American novelist Black Water – Louise Doughty With a conceit as simple as it is bold, Whitehead’s brave, follows the shifting fortunes of the progeny of two half *The Nix – Nathan Hill Expecting to be assassinated, the hero of this excellent novel necessary novel imagines a slave fleeing north on a literal sisters, unknown to each other, in West Africa and America. In this entertaining debut novel, full of postmodern grapples with guilt over his actions in Indonesia. digressions, a young professor tries to write a biography of underground railroad — complete with locomotives, boxcars and conductors. By small shifts in perspective, the novel *Hot Milk – Deborah Levy his political activist mother. Children of the New World – Alexander Weinstein (winner of the National Book Award in fiction) ventures to In Levy’s evocative novel, dense with symbolism, a woman The terror that technology may rob us of authentic experience *Nutshell – Ian McEwan new places in the narrative of slavery, or rather to places struggles against her hypochondriacal mother to achieve her — that it may annihilate our very sense of self — is central to An unborn baby overhears his mother and her lover plotting where it actually has something new to say: about America’s own identity. this debut collection of short stories. to murder his father in McEwan’s compact, captivating foundational sins, and the ways black history is too often Iza’s Ballad – Magda Szabo novel. stolen by white narrators. *Commonwealth – Ann Patchett A meditative Hungarian novel about grief and history by the An engaging family portrait, tracing the lives of six author of The Door . *Reputations – Juan Gabriel V ásquez *The Vegetarian – Han King stepsiblings over half a century. A slender but impactful Colombian novel about a political In Han’s unsettling novel, a seemingly ordinary housewife — *LaRose – Louise Erdrich cartoonist who re-examines his accusations against a described by her husband as “completely unremarkable in *Do Not Say We Have Nothing – Madeleine Thien A man who accidentally killed his best friend’s son gives the Chinese-Canadian professor probes the mystery of her politician. every way” — becomes a vegetarian after a terrifying dream. man his own child in this powerful story about justice and Han’s treatments of submission and subversion find form in father’s life amid upheavals in China in this ambitious novel. forgiveness, set in and near a North Dakota Ojibwe *The Sport of Kings – C.E. Morgan the parable, as the housewife’s self-abnegation turns Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo – Boris Fishman reservation. Three Kentucky dynasties — black, white and equine — increasingly severe and surreal. This spare and elegant A family from the former Soviet Union embarks on an converge in this vitally written if melodramatic novel. translation renders the original Korean in pointed and vivid The Life-Writer – David Constantine American road trip in a novel that is a joy to read. A widow immerses herself in the letters her late husband Still Here – Lara Vapnyar English, preserving Han’s penetrating exploration of whether true innocence is possible in a vicious and bloody world. received from an earlier lover in Constantine’s lyrical novel. In this razor-funny novel, four Russian friends try to make – *End of Watch Stephen King their way in New York. The gloriously fitting final installment of King’s trilogy *The Little Red Chairs – Edna O’Brien War and Turpentine – Stefan Hertmans featuring the retired police detective Bill Hodges is a big In her harrowing, boldly imagined novel, O’Brien both *Swing Time – Zadie Smith Inspired by the notebooks and reminiscences of his genre-busting romp. explores Irish provincial life and offers an unsettling fabulist Two multiracial girls in North London dream of becoming grandfather, a painter who served in the Belgian Army in vision. dancers (one has talent, the other doesn’t) in Smith’s World War I, Hertmans writes with an eloquence reminiscent *Everybody’s Fool – Richard Russo exuberant new novel about friendship, music, race and global *The Mirror Thief – Martin Seay of W.G. Sebald as he explores the places where narrative This sequel to Nobody’s Fool , set 10 years later in the same politics. authority, invention and speculation flow together. Weaving upstate New York town, presents engaging characters and Linked narratives and various Venices reflect one another in his grandfather’s stories into accounts of his own visits to benign humor. this clever first novel. *Today Will Be Different – Maria Semple In this brainy, seriously funny novel by the author of sites that shaped the old man’s development as a husband and father as well as an artist, Hertmans has produced a masterly Where’d You Go, Bernadette , a Seattle woman confronts book about memory, art, love and war. private school parents, a husband’s secret life and more. *Valiant Gentlemen – Sabina Murray *Lily and the Octopus – Steven Rowley *To the Bright Edge of the World – Eowyn Ivey An audacious historical novel about the Irish revolutionary Dog people will recognize many things in this humorous, It’s 1885, and Col. Allen Forrester has been asked to lead a martyr Roger Casement. heart-wrenching story about a man and his 12-year-old small group of soldiers, trappers and Native Americans up dachshund with cancer. the uncharted Wolverine River and cross Alaska. Weathering – Lucy Wood This poetic debut novel, set in a damp house near a roaring *Miss Jane – Brad Watson *The Trespasser – Tana French Using language that is both candid and askew, Watson Brings back the two young detectives from the Dublin river, explores the relationship between mothers and daughters. describes the quiet, often solitary life of a girl born in 1915 in Murder Squad, Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran. This rural Mississippi with a genital defect. time around, they are assigned to investigate the murder of a *Zero K – Don DeLillo young woman found dead in her Dublin home.