St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 50 Best Books of 2015

Fiction

• Ancillary Mercy
  Ann Leckie
• Brush Back
  Sara Paretsky
• Did You Ever Have a Family
  Bill Clegg
• Eyes: Novellas and Stories
  William H. Gass
• Fates and Furies
  Lauren Groff
• Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years
  Thomas Mallon
• The First Bad Man
  Miranda July
• Fortune Smiles: Stories
  Adam Johnson
• Girl Waits with Gun
  Amy Stewart
• God Help the Child
  Toni Morrison
• A God in Ruins
  Kate Atkinson
• Golden Age
  Jane Smiley
• A History of Loneliness
  John Boyne
• In the Unlikely Event
  Judy Blume
• Inside the O’Briens
  Lisa Genova
• A Little Life
  Hanya Yanagihara
• Marry, Kiss, Kill
  Anne Flett-Giordano
• Our Souls at Night
  Kent Haruf
• Purity
  Jonathan Franzen
• The Secret Chord
  Geraldine Brooks
• Shanghai Redemption
  Qiu Xiaolong
• A Spool of Blue Thread
  Anne Tyler
• The State We’re In: Maine Stories
  Ann Beattie
• Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
  Salman Rushdie
• The Whites
  Richard Price (as Harry Brandt)

Nonfiction

• Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947
  Bruce Hoffman
• The Art of Memoir
  Mary Karr
• Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine
  Damon Tweedy
• Between the World and Me
  Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land
  Sandy Tolan
• Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America
  T.J. Stiles
• Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
  Erik Larson
• Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
  Jon Meacham
• Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
  Sam Quinones
• F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature
  William J. Maxwell
• The Ferguson Report: Department of Justice Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department
  United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division
• The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom
  Blaine Harden
• H Is for Hawk
  Helen Macdonald
• Katrina: After the Flood
  Gary Rivlin
• Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig
  Mark Essig
• My Life on the Road
  Gloria Steinem
• On the Move: A Life
  Oliver Sacks
• Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story
  David Maraniss
• The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey
  Rinker Buck
• Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
  Robert D. Putnam
• Pitch by Pitch: My View of One Unforgettable Game
  Bob Gibson and Lonnie Wheeler
• The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War
  Samuel Hynes
• Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s First Leader
  Robert Middlekauff
• Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped
  Garry Kasparov
• Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land
  Robert Crawford

The San Francisco Chronicle: Top 10 Books of 2015

[see also 100 Recommended Books of 2016, Top 10 Books of 2016]

Fiction

• Fortune Smiles: Stories
  Adam Johnson
• A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
  Lucia Berlin
• The Sellout
  Paul Beatty
• The Story of the Lost Child: Book 4, The Neapolitan Novels: “Maturity, Old Age”
  Elena Ferrante
• The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories
  Anthony Marra

Nonfiction

• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
  William Finnegan
• Between the World and Me
  Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
  Jill Leovy
• H Is for Hawk
  Helen Macdonald
• Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga
  Pamela Newkirk

Harper’s Bazaar: 15 Best Books of 2015

[see also 2017]

1. Between the World and Me
   Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. Purity
   Jonathan Franzen
3. M Train
   Patti Smith
4. God Help the Child
   Toni Morrison
5. Go Set a Watchman
   Harper Lee
6. My Life on the Road
   Gloria Steinem
7. Fates and Furies
   Lauren Groff
8. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
   Salman Rushdie
9. City on Fire
   Garth Risk Hallberg
10. My Journey
    Donna Karan
11. Beauty Is a Wound
    Eka Kurniawan
12. The Book of Lost and Found
    Lucy Foley
13. A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
    Lucia Berlin
14. The Girl On The Train
    Paula Hawkins
15. The Folded Clock: A Diary
    Heidi Julavits

Brain Pickings: 15 Best Books of 2015. (This general list of books is filed under 2015 Books instead of 2015 Poetry, but it includes a few books that are by or about poets.)

[see also 2016]

1. On the Move: A Life
   Oliver Sacks
2. H Is for Hawk
   Helen Macdonald
3. Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
   David Whyte
4. M Train
   Patti Smith
5. The Light of the World: A Memoir
   Elizabeth Alexander
6. Ongoingness: The End of a Diary
   Sarah Manguso
7. Felicity
   Mary Oliver
8. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer
   Sydney Padua
9. Rising Strong
   Brené Brown
10. Enormous Smallness: A Story of E. E. Cummings
    Matthew Burgess
11. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
    Elizabeth Gilbert
12. Negroland: A Memoir
    Margo Jefferson
13. Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe
    Lisa Randall
14. Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids
    Meghan Daum
15. Hurry Up and Wait
    Maira Kalman and Daniel Handler

David L. Ulin: Top 10 Books of 2015, as published by The Los Angeles Times

• Between the World and Me
  Ta-Nehisi Coates
• The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy
  Masha Gessen
• Eventually Everything Connects
  Loris Lora
• Honeydew: Stories
  Edith Pearlman
• Killing and Dying
  Adrian Tomine
• The Meursault Investigation
  Kamel Daoud
• M Train
  Patti Smith
• The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir
  Vivian Gornick
• Then Comes Marriage: United States V. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA
  Roberta Kaplan with Lisa Dickey
• Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond
  Suzanne Lummis