Year-End Lists

Christian Science Monitor: 30 Best Books of 2017

[see also 2018]

Fiction

• Dark at the Crossing
  Elliot Ackerman
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• The Hate U Give
  Angie Thomas
• Strange the Dreamer
  Laini Taylor
• The Golden Legend
  Nadeem Aslam
• The Leavers
  Lisa Ko
• Salt Houses
  Hala Alyan
• The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories
  Penelope Lively
• Anything Is Possible
  Elizabeth Strout
• The Essex Serpent
  Sarah Perry
• The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
  Arundhati Roy
• Glass Houses
  Louise Penny
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward

Nonfiction

• The New Odyssey

  The Story of the Twenty-First Century Refugee Crisis
  Patrick Kingsley
• The Souls of China

  The Return of Religion After Mao
  Ian Johnson
• Thunder in the Mountains

  Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War
  Daniel J. Sharfstein
• I Was Told to Come Alone

  My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad
  Souad Mekhennet
• Hue 1968

  A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam
  Mark Bowden
• Sea Power

  The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans
  James Stavridis
• Be Free or Die

  The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls’ Escape from Slavery to Union Hero
  Cate Lineberry
• Reading with Patrick

  A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship
  Michelle Kuo
• Henry David Thoreau

  A Life
  Laura Dassow Walls
• An Odyssey

  A Father, a Son, and an Epic
  Daniel Mendelsohn
• The Future Is History

  How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
  Masha Gessen
• Code Girls

  The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
  Liza Mundy
• The Gourmands’ Way

  Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy
  Justin Spring
• Stanton

  Lincoln’s War Secretary
  Walter Stahr
• Grant
  Ron Chernow
• Lenin

  The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
  Victor Sebestyen
• Calder: The Conquest of Time: The Early Years: 1898-1940
  Jed Perl

The New York Times Book Review: 100 Notable Books of 2017

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 100 Notable Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 100 Notable Books of 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • 100 Notable Books of 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The 10 Best Books of 2014 • The 10 Best Books of 2013 • 100 Notable Books of 2012 • 10 Best Books of 2012 • 100 Notable Books of 2011 • Ten Best Books of 2011]

Fiction & Poetry

• American War
  Omar El Akkad
• Anything Is Possible
  Elizabeth Strout
• Autumn
  Ali Smith
• Bad Dreams and Other Stories
  Tessa Hadley
• Beautiful Animals
  Lawrence Osborne
• The Book of Joan
  Lidia Yuknavitch
• A Boy in Winter
  Rachel Seiffert
• The Changeling
  Victor LaValle
• Christmas Days

  12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days
  Jeanette Winterson
• Dance of the Jakaranda
  Peter Kimani
• The Dark Flood Rises
  Margaret Drabble
• The Dinner Party

  Stories
  Joshua Ferris
• The Essex Serpent
  Sarah Perry
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid
• Fast
  Jorie Graham
• Five-Carat Soul
  James McBride
• Forest Dark
  Nicole Krauss
• 4 3 2 1
  Paul Auster
• Fresh Complaint
  Jeffrey Eugenides
• Future Home of the Living God
  Louise Erdrich
• Giving Godhead
  Dylan Krieger
• History of Wolves
  Emily Fridlund
• Home Fire
  Kamila Shamsie
• Homesick for Another World
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• A Horse Walks into a Bar
  David Grossman
• The Idiot
  Elif Batuman
• Ill Will
  Dan Chaon
• A Kind of Freedom
  Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
• Less
  Andrew Sean Greer
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Manhattan Beach
  Jennifer Egan
• Mrs. Osmond
  John Banville
• My Absolute Darling
  Gabriel Tallent
• New People
  Danzy Senna
• The Ninth Hour
  Alice McDermott
• Pachinko
  Min Jin Lee
• The Power
  Naomi Alderman
• The Refugees
  Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Selection Day
  Aravind Adiga
• A Separation
  Katie Kitamura
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward
• Six Four
  Hideo Yokoyama
• Stay with Me
  Ayobami Adebayo
• The Stone Sky
  N.K. Jemisin
• Ties
  Domenico Starnone
• Transit
  Rachel Cusk
• Waking Lions
  Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
• WHEREAS
  Layli Long Soldier
• White Tears
  Hari Kunzru
• Who Is Rich?
  Matthew Klam

Nonfiction

• Age of Anger

  A History of the Present
  Pankaj Mishra
• American Fire

  Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land
  Monica Hesse
• Animals Strike Curious Poses
  Elena Passarello
• The Blood of Emmett Till
  Timothy B. Tyson
• Born a Crime

  Stories from a South African Childhood
  Trevor Noah
• Bunk

  The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News
  Kevin Young
• Churchill and Orwell

  The Fight for Freedom
  Thomas E. Ricks
• The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
  Elizabeth Hardwick
• A Colony in a Nation
  Chris Hayes
• The Color of Law

  A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
  Richard Rothstein
• The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution

  Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic
  Ganesh Sitaraman
• The Dawn Watch

  Joseph Conrad in a Global World
  Maya Jasanoff
• The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
  Dan Egan
• Destined for War

  Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
  Graham Allison
• Devil’s Bargain

  Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency
  Joshua Green
• The Evangelicals

  The Struggle to Shape America
  Frances FitzGerald
• The Evolution of Beauty

  How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World – and Us
  Richard O. Prum
• Fasting and Feasting

  The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray
  Adam Federman
• Flâneuse

  Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London
  Lauren Elkin
• Friends Divided

  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
  Gordon S. Wood
• The Future Is History

  How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
  Masha Gessen
• Generation Revolution

  On the Front Line Between Tradition and Change in the Middle East
  Rachel Aspden
• The Glass Universe

  How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
  Dava Sobel
• Grant
  Ron Chernow
• Greater Gotham

  A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919
  Mike Wallace
• The Gulf

  The Making of An American Sea
  Jack E. Davis
• Hamlet Globe to Globe

  Two Years, 193,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play
  Dominic Dromgoole
• Henry David Thoreau

  A Life
  Laura Dassow Walls
• The House of Government

  A Saga of the Russian Revolution
  Yuri Slezkine
• The Invention of Angela Carter

  A Biography
  Edmund Gordon
• Janesville

  An American Story
  Amy Goldstein
• Killers of the Flower Moon

  The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
  David Grann
• Krazy

  George Herriman, a Life in Black and White
  Michael Tisserand
• Lenin

  The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
  Victor Sebestyen
• Letterman

  The Last Giant of Late Night
  Jason Zinoman
• Locking Up Our Own

  Crime and Punishment in Black America
  James Forman Jr.
• Looking for The Stranger

  Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic
  Alice Kaplan
• The Lost City of the Monkey God

  A True Story
  Douglas Preston
• Nomadland

  Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
  Jessica Bruder
• Notes on a Foreign Country

  An American Abroad in a Post-American World
  Suzy Hansen
• Prairie Fires

  The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
  Caroline Fraser
• Priestdaddy
  Patricia Lockwood
• The Songs We Know Best

  John Ashbery’s Early Life
  Karin Roffman
• Tenements, Towers & Trash

  An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City
  Julia Wertz
• To Siri with Love

  A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of Machines
  Judith Newman
• The Undoing Project

  A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
  Michael Lewis
• We Were Eight Years in Power

  An American Tragedy
  Ta-Nehisi Coates
• What Happened
  Hillary Rodham Clinton
• World Without Mind

  The Existential Threat of Big Tech
  Franklin Foer
• You Say to Brick

  The Life of Louis Kahn
  Wendy Lesser

The Guardian: 31 Best Fiction Books of 2017

[see also 2021 • 2020]

• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid
• Reservoir 13
  Jon McGregor
• H(A)PPY
  Nicola Barker
• House of Names
  Colm Tóibín
• Mrs. Osmond
  John Banville
• The Golden House
  Salman Rushdie
• The Sparsholt Affair
  Alan Hollinghurst
• Manhattan Beach
  Jennifer Egan
• The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
  Arundhati Roy
• Birdcage Walk
  Helen Dunmore
• Home Fire
  Kamila Shamsie
• Dunbar
  Edward St. Aubyn
• We That Are Young
  Preti Taneja
• When I Hit You or a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife
  Meena Kandasamy
• The End of Eddy
  Édouard Louis
• First Love
  Gwendoline Riley
• Fever Dream
  Samanta Schweblin
• Such Small Hands
  Andrés Barba
• Flights
  Olga Tokarczuk
• The Lie of the Land
  Amanda Craig
• Homegoing
  Yaa Gyasi
• My Absolute Darling
  Gabriel Tallent
• Conversations with Friends
  Sally Rooney
• Spoils
  Brian Van Reet
• The President’s Gardens
  Muhsin Al-Ramli
• Madame Zero

  9 Stories
  Sarah Hall
• Room Little Darker
  June Caldwell
• Attrib. and other stories
  Eley Williams
• Midwinter Break
  Bernard MacLaverty
• Winter
  Ali Smith

O, The Oprah Magazine: 11 Favorite Books of 2017

[see also 2020 • 2019 • 2018]

• We Were Eight Years in Power

  An American Tragedy
  Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Sour Heart
  Jenny Zhang
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid
• Goodbye, Vitamin
  Rachel Khong
• The Leavers
  Lisa Ko
• The Future Is History

  How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
  Masha Gessen
• Her Body and Other Parties
  Carmen Maria Machado
• There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce
  Morgan Parker
• Future Home of the Living God
  Louise Erdrich
• The Hate U Give
  Angie Thomas

Megan O’Grady: 10 Best Books of 2017, as published by Vogue

• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward
• What We Lose
  Zinzi Clemmons
• Go, Went, Gone
  Jenny Erpenbeck
• The Dawn Watch

  Joseph Conrad in a Global World
  Maya Jasanoff
• The Burning Girl
  Claire Messud
• The Rules Do Not Apply
  Ariel Levy
• The Idiot
  Elif Batuman
• Conversations with Friends
  Sally Rooney
• The Answers
  Catherine Lacey

Powell's Books: Best Nonfiction of 2017

[see also Best Nonfiction of 2023 • Best Fiction of 2023 • Best Nonfiction of 2022 • Best Fiction of 2022 • The 14 Best Nonfiction Books of 2021 • The 18 Best Novels of 2021 • Best Fiction of 2020 • Best Nonfiction of 2020 • Best Fiction of 2019 • Best Nonfiction of 2019 • Best Fiction of 2018 • Best Nonfiction of 2018 • Best Fiction of 2017 • Best Fiction of 2016 • Best Nonfiction of 2016 • Best Nonfiction Books of 2015 • Best Fiction Books of 2015 • Best Fiction of 2014 • Best Nonfiction of 2014]

• Hourglass

  Time, Memory, Marriage
  Dani Shapiro
• On Tyranny

  Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
  Timothy Snyder
• Killers of the Flower Moon

  The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
  David Grann
• World Without Mind

  The Existential Threat of Big Tech
  Franklin Foer
• Surpassing Certainty

  What My Twenties Taught Me
  Janet Mock
• Tell Me How It Ends

  An Essay in 40 Questions
  Valeria Luiselli

The A.V. Club: 24 Favorite Books of 2017

[see also 2021 • 2020 • 2018 • 2015]

• What We Lose
  Zinzi Clemmons
• The Book of Dust

  La Belle Sauvage (Volume 1)
  Philip Pullman
• The Answers
  Catherine Lacey
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• The Mother of All Questions
  Rebecca Solnit
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid
• Homesick for Another World
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• Theft by Finding

  Diaries (1977-2002)
  David Sedaris
• A Separation
  Katie Kitamura
• 21st-Century Yokel
  Tom Cox
• Idaho
  Emily Ruskovich
• Imaginary Cities

  A Tour of Dream Cities, Nightmare Cities, and Everywhere in Between
  Darran Anderson
• The Unwomanly Face of War

  An Oral History of Women in World War II
  Svetlana Alexievich
• Paperbacks from Hell

  The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction
  Grady Hendrix
• Word by Word

  The Secret Life of Dictionaries
  Kory Stamper
• Strange the Dreamer
  Laini Taylor
• Out in the Open
  Jesús Carrasco
• Sour Heart
  Jenny Zhang
• The Last Days of Café Leila
  Donia Bijan
• Vacationland

  True Stories from Painful Beaches
  John Hodgman
• Flâneuse

  Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London
  Lauren Elkin
• Why I Am Not A Feminist

  A Feminist Manifesto
  Jessa Crispin
• 300 Arguments
  Sarah Manguso
• Turtles All the Way Down
  John Green

Powell's Books: Best Fiction of 2017

[see also Best Nonfiction of 2023 • Best Fiction of 2023 • Best Nonfiction of 2022 • Best Fiction of 2022 • The 14 Best Nonfiction Books of 2021 • The 18 Best Novels of 2021 • Best Fiction of 2020 • Best Nonfiction of 2020 • Best Fiction of 2019 • Best Nonfiction of 2019 • Best Fiction of 2018 • Best Nonfiction of 2018 • Best Nonfiction of 2017 • Best Fiction of 2016 • Best Nonfiction of 2016 • Best Nonfiction Books of 2015 • Best Fiction Books of 2015 • Best Fiction of 2014 • Best Nonfiction of 2014]

• American War
  Omar El Akkad
• History of Wolves
  Emily Fridlund
• The Child Finder
  Rene Denfeld
• Swallowing Mercury
  Wioletta Greg
• Her Body and Other Parties
  Carmen Maria Machado
• Homesick for Another World
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• My Absolute Darling
  Gabriel Tallent
• The Refugees
  Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward
• Universal Harvester
  John Darnielle
• Bunkie Spills
  Bradley K. Rosen
• Autumn
  Ali Smith
• The Dark Dark
  Samantha Hunt
• What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
  Lesley Nneka Arimah
• The Invented Part
  Rodrigo Fresán
• The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter
  Kia Corthron
• Loner
  Teddy Wayne
• Paris in the Present Tense
  Mark Helprin
• My Cat Yugoslavia
  Pajtim Statovci
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid

Chicago Public Library: 10 Best Books of 2017

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014]

• Electric Arches
  Eve L. Ewing
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid
• Hunger

  A Memoir of (My) Body
  Roxane Gay
• Killers of the Flower Moon

  The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
  David Grann
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Little Fires Everywhere
  Celeste Ng
• Manhattan Beach
  Jennifer Egan
• My Favorite Thing Is Monsters
  Emil Ferris
• Pachinko
  Min Jin Lee
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward

The Los Angeles Times: 36 Best Books of 2017

Fiction

• The Power
  Naomi Alderman
• Ill Will
  Dan Chaon
• Shadowbahn
  Steve Erickson
• So Much Blue
  Percival Everett
• Exit West
  Mohsin Hamid
• A Legacy of Spies
  John le Carré
• Ka

  Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr
  John Crowley
• Dinner at the Center of the Earth
  Nathan Englander
• The Leavers
  Lisa Ko
• Her Body and Other Parties
  Carmen Maria Machado
• The Burning Girl
  Claire Messud
• A Book of American Martyrs
  Joyce Carol Oates
• Songy Of Paradise
  Gary Panter
• Mrs. Fletcher
  Tom Perrotta
• Wonder Valley
  Ivy Pochoda
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  George Saunders
• Home Fire
  Kamila Shamsie
• Borne
  Jeff VanderMeer
• Sing, Unburied, Sing
  Jesmyn Ward

Nonfiction

• Coach Wooden and Me

  Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court
  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
• You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me
  Sherman Alexie
• Wrestling With His Angel

  The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. II, 1849-1856
  Sidney Blumenthal
• What Happened
  Hillary Rodham Clinton
• We Were Eight Years in Power

  An American Tragedy
  Ta-Nehisi Coates
• World Without Mind

  The Existential Threat of Big Tech
  Franklin Foer
• The Great Quake

  How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet
  Henry Fountain
• High Noon

  The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic
  Glenn Frankel
• Shirley Jackson

  A Rather Haunted Life
  Ruth Franklin
• Hunger

  A Memoir of (My) Body
  Roxane Gay
• The Future Is History

  How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
  Masha Gessen
• Killers of the Flower Moon

  The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
  David Grann
• Calder: The Conquest of Time: The Early Years: 1898-1940
  Jed Perl
• Jonathan Swift

  The Reluctant Rebel
  John Stubbs
• The Blood of Emmett Till
  Timothy B. Tyson
• Bunk

  The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News
  Kevin Young
• Why Poetry
  Matthew Zapruder