Best new fiction books 2018

The Poetry I Was Grateful For in 2018

Vibrant protagonists struggle against the confines of their worlds in novels by the likes of Rachel Kushner, Tayari Jones , Ottessa Moshfegh and more. Here, the best fiction books of A young artist descended from chestnut farmers, a field biologist, a Vietnam War veteran and six other characters brush up against the mysterious power of trees and, intertwined, sound an urgent call to preserve our environment. Available on Amazon. The author of Fates and Furies, who moved to Florida over a decade ago, channels her palpable ambivalence toward her adopted state.

This has been another tough year in a string of tough years. At first critics claimed we needed literature more than ever, but sometimes it has felt too easily forgotten. Like many, I have worried that political horror has made me cold and bitter; in the past 12 months, cynicism has seemed to bleed into every facet of life. The relentless churn of mini- and mega-scandals has proven a constant distraction from deep reading. As I looked back on my year, I remembered all these months of frustrated reading.

It's been a tough year. But despite all the bad news, people created some truly phenomenal art in the last year, and the 30 best fiction books of the year prove that to be true. This past year, The Song of Achilles author Madeline Miller released her first novel in seven years, Circe, a feminist retelling of countless Greek myths through the eyes of the first witch in literature. It was an instant 1 New York Times bestseller. Not to mention, fan-favorite authors Megan Abbott, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Melissa Broder released novels about internal worlds and external pressures. And let's not forget that Lisa Halliday and R. This past year — despite all the bad that happened — many women and gender non-binary writers created good art.