NPR fiction favourites

This book got me out of a reading rut! It's about a mom who is struggling to keep her life together – while simultaneously trying to solve the mystery of her son's missing classmate. It's got fun twists and turns and characters who surprise you. Very plot driven and definitely hard to put down. — Elissa Nadworny, correspondent

It's your oldest friends who can really grind your gears. Hal Ebbott's debut novel starts off as an examination of this relationship – two families spend a weekend in a house together to celebrate a birthday and, of course, old resentments and jealousies creep in and out of friendly tennis games and predinner drinks. But then something happens and everything shifts and all those resentments don't seem so old anymore and the jealousy blooms into something else altogether. — Andrew Limbong, correspondent, host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast

In the middle of reading Animal Instinct, I had to stop to text this to a friend: Divorce is so HOT right now!" In this story, Rachel is stuck inside her Brooklyn apartment at the start of the COVID-19 shutdowns. She craves everything from flirting to full-on sex after her divorce, and as she cruises through the dating apps, she starts to think: What if I could create the perfect AI partner, who would always say just the right thing? She's got the tech savvy to bring her idea to "life," but it might take more than chat to satisfy her animal instincts. — Sarah Handel, senior editor, All Things Considered"

A novel that's both an epic and an omen, this work of historical fiction is rooted in Dust Bowl tragedies that transcend time and place. In a landscape that surely feels cursed, Karen Russell introduces us to, among others, a Prairie Witch, whose gift is radical listening, providing a kind of proto-therapy that takes the weight of whatever they can't stand to know" from her patrons. Histories we collectively cannot withstand and what they mean for our future are at the core of this novel, in which Russell masterfully renders the strange quotidian and imbues the everyday with menace or magic. — Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming and Production"

I guess I could explain the plot to you – a woman meets up with a man who is convinced she's his mother. It turns out she's not. I think? Maybe she is? Or, maybe she's not but actually kind of is? What is a mother? The most impressive thing about this book is how Katie Kitamura plays with narrative and toys with these questions presented to the reader without being overly clever about it all. She's stingy with details and answers, but generous with intrigue and depth. — Andrew Limbong, correspondent, host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast

Author Grady Green thinks he has the perfect marriage, an adoring wife – Abby – who will celebrate a long-awaited success with him. But when he calls her with the good news, the line goes dead and she doesn't make it home to him. A year after Abby goes missing, he's downtrodden and wrestling writer's block when his agent convinces him that time on a remote Scottish island is what he needs to finish his next novel. Once there, he thinks he sees Abby among the inhabitants and it becomes clear that both they, and he, aren't as they appear. Twisty reveals galore. — Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming and Production

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is many things: a clever nesting doll of narratives, a sanguine revenge thriller stitched inside the corpse of an old vampire yarn, and a fearsome accounting of America's murderous past. Lucky for us, Stephen Graham Jones has bound it all together with a hero (antihero?) for the ages – a man from the Blackfeet tribe, aptly named Good Stab, who is determined to right the wrongs of the past, even if it takes him a few lifetimes. — Cory Turner, correspondent, Education

This novel bends genres and time. It opens on the 30th birthday of twin sisters Clara and Dempsey. As children, after the death of their mother, they were raised in different families and have little in common – until that birthday, when they are pulled together after Clara swears she sees their dead mother, very much alive and also ... 30 years old. The first half of The Catch is riveting. It's a nearly impossible story to land," but an ending is perhaps beside the point – the story could go on and on ... — Shannon Rhoades, senior editor, Weekend Edition"

It is 1989, and the residents of the Austrian village of Darkenbloom are uneasy. East German refugees on the village's border with Hungary are raising the specter of World War II. The town has secrets; good Nazis" and bad Nazis abound, and there are no Jews left. The book succeeds on multiple levels – it's a gossipy small-town satire that's laugh-out-loud funny but also a historical mystery that lays bare the complicity of characters who have convinced themselves it is possible to see evil only in hindsight. It is this last idea that sticks with you. "There was always so much to do, we couldn't pay attention to that," the Greek chorus whispers. Pay attention, says the book. — Barrie Hardymon, senior editor"

Archivist and mother Sara T. Hussein gets detained at an airport. Her crime? A dream deemed too high risk by an AI algorithm. Writing incisively, Laila Lalami brilliantly builds a world where a pre-crime system collides with surveillance capitalism. With the novel's compelling cast of characters and endless parallels to today, I found The Dream Hotel instructive for navigating a society beset by mass surveillance – where the only escape can be found in shouldering risk together. — Emily Kwong, host, Short Wave and Inheriting

The banal sentence, This is the best novel I've read in years," captures what I've told friends about The Emperor of Gladness – which is that Ocean Vuong's gorgeous prose makes every line I've ever written seem wan by comparison. "Best novel I've read in years"? How insipid! This book tells the story of an unlikely friendship between a college dropout and an elderly woman with dementia. It paints a picture of the bond that forms among workers at a fast-food restaurant in a small New England town. And writing these sentences, all I can think is – Vuong would phrase it so much more beautifully. — Ari Shapiro, host, All Things Considered"