BEST BOOKS 2018

"A lively and introspective look into Oklahoma City, where colorful city officials business leaders, artists, and sports fans have turned an unassuming Southwestern city into a thriving metropolis with a dazzling basketball team"--

"A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun is an intimate lens on the century's bloodiest conflict and a profound meditation on kinship, home, and freedom." -- Amazon.com.

On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York's experience...

Personal essays share the author's adventures after buying a vacation house on the Carolina coast and his reflections on middle age and mortality.

Learning that he does not have long to live, a widower needs to figure out how to provide for his developmentally disabled adult son. Taking a job as a census taker, the two leave on a cross-country journey through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet. They meet the townspeople, some of whom welcome them into their homes, while others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. As they approach...

"Narrated by 'Eddie' who receives a chalk drawing of a stick figure that hurtles him back to an innocent childhood game 30 years before which went terribly, terribly wrong. As history begins to repeat itself, it seems the game was never really over" --

"The dishy, rollicking, and deeply personal story of what really happened in the 2016 election, as seen through the eyes of the New York Times reporter who gave eight years of her life to covering the First Woman President who wasn't."--

"Jesus' Son meets Reservoir Dogs in a breakneck-paced debut novel about love, war, bank robberies, and heroin. Cleveland, 2003. A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love. But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York, and he flunks out of school and joins the army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq....

Seventeen-year-old Zélie, her older brother Tzain, and rogue princess Amari fight to restore magic to the land and activate a new generation of magi, but they are ruthlessly pursued by the crown prince, who believes the return of magic will mean the end of the monarchy.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child -- not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power -- the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones...