This impressive collection of stories moves deftly through geography, both literal and emotional. Molly Antopol writes with sensitivity and warmth, and her book offers a variety of pleasures.

Traces the experiences of protagonists from a range of cultures, including a blacklisted Hollywood actor who struggles to connect with his son, and a dissenting gallery worker who begins smuggling and curating underground art.

Plotlines involving brothers and sisters offer many possibilities, and Jandy Nelson limns her young brother-sister characters with lyricism and wit. I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN is a cleverly constructed and exciting offering from this YA writer.

The New York Times Bestselling story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone elsean even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, theyd have a chance to remake their world. This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughingoften all at once. "A wild, beautiful, and profoundly moving novel. Jandy Nelsons writing is so electric, so alive, her pages practically glow in the dark." Ransom Riggs, New York Times bestselling author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Hollow City "Jandy Nelson is a rare, explosive talent, and one of the best writers working today. Her prose is vivid, breathtaking, and drenched in passion, and her stories remind me why words can change the world." Tahereh Mafi, New York Times bestselling author of the Shatter Me series. "I love this book. Jandy Nelson is my new writing hero. Read this book. She'll be your favorite author as well." Holly Goldberg Sloan, New York Times bestselling author of Counting by 7s "Jandy Nelsons writing is poetic and mesmerizing. More importantly, Nelson weaves a novel that seeps into your bones like fire on a cold day . . . Ill Give You the Sun is a novel that promises a story like nothing else and then delivers it. Garret Freymann-Weyr, author of Printz Honor book, My Heartbeat "This is a stunning, artfully woven story. My heart burst open at the blazing, unforgettable end. Magnificent." Nova Ren Suma, author of Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone "An extraordinary book! I've never read anything like it. Lyrical-unique-passionate-magical-tragic-hopefulNelson's characters will fly off the page and into your heart." Nancy Garden, author of Annie on my Mind

The subject of elderly parents, rendered in brilliant cartoons, allows Chast great wit and depth. Beautiful to look at, sad and funny to behold, and just so, so true.

#1 New York Times Bestseller 2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the crazy closet-with predictable results-the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies-an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades-the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller.

The book that provided deep pleasure for me this year was The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which is rich, evocative, strange, hypnotic, and luxuriously long. As the story unspools, Tartt's prose can be close-grained or sweeping, depending on the scene. I found myself wanting to stick around in the enclosed world of this complex book until the last of its many pages ended, and I really had the sense that Donna Tartt enjoyed writing her commanding Goldfinch as much as I (and so many others) enjoyed getting lost inside it.

Also recommended by: Adam Savage, Brandon Stanton

The Goldfinch is the third novel by American author Donna Tartt, her first new book in 11 years. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014 among other honors. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

These four novels, apparently semi-autobiographical, by the droll, astute and fearless British writer Edward St. Aubyn, appear here in one satisfying and accomplished volume. From a childhood marked by shocking sexual abuse to an early adulthood of drug addiction and on into fatherhood, St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose leads us through the hell of a complicated life, and demonstrates the human reflex to simply go on, regardless of what's happened in the past.

In Bad News, the second installment in Edward St. Aubyns wonderful, wry and profound series, The Patrick Melrose Cycle, Patrick, now in his twenties, is traveling to New York to collect the ashes of his recently deceased father. Deep in the grasp of a crippling drug addiction, he spends most of his time searching for a fix, alternately suffering from withdrawals, hallucinations, and anguish over his tyrannical fathers death. Written in unflinching, breathtakingly resonant prose, St. Aubyn paints another haunting landscape of human suffering.

This groundbreaking non-fiction look at two Puerto Rican teenaged girls in the Bronx and their choices, chaotic lives, and constellations of family members, was based on ten years of reporting. But the depth of understanding LeBlanc brings to these people, and also to poverty, drugs, pregnancy, prison and many other topics, feels fathomless. An important and thrilling book.

Random Family tells the American outlaw saga lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. With an immediacy made possible only after ten years of reporting, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses the reader in the mind-boggling intricacies of the little-known ghetto world. She charts the tumultuous cycle of the generations, as girls become mothers, mothers become grandmothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation. Two romances thread through Random Family: the sexually charismatic nineteen-year-old Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and fourteen-year-old Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar, an aspiring thug. Fleeing from family problems, the young couples try to outrun their destinies. Chauffeurs whisk them to getaways in the Poconos and to nightclubs. They cruise the streets in Lamborghinis and customized James Bond cars. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a precarious dance between life and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy George's business activities; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and throughout it all, the insidious damage of poverty. Together, then apart, the teenagers make family where they find it. Girls look for excitement and find trouble; boys, searching for adventure, join crews and prison gangs. Coco moves upstate to dodge the hazards of the Bronx; Jessica seeks solace in romance. Both find that love is the only place to go. A gifted prose stylist and a profoundly compassionate observer, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc has slipped behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding inner-city life and come back with a riveting, haunting, and true urban soap opera that reveals the clenched grip of the streets. Random Family is a compulsive read and an important journalistic achievement, sure to take its place beside the classics of the genre.