Heavy snow and difficult travel expected again, heaviest snow in southern Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

This week, The Thread is sharing some of our favorite books of the year.

Nonfiction

Young adult


"Rabbit Cake" is a peculiar, dark, grab-your-heart story of a family clawing its way out of grief. It's narrated by 11-year-old Elvis Babbitt, whose life is upturned when her sleepwalking, sleep-swimming mother drowns in the river running through Freedom, Ala. Elvis should be in contention for best narrator of the year; her voice feels like a mix of Scout Finch and Harriet the Spy, pushed to the edge by loneliness.


"Dark at the Crossing" by Elliot Ackerman


Elliot Ackerman's second novel drops readers into a setting that has flooded headlines this year: the Turkish border with Syria. Enter Haris, who dreams of crossing the border to fight against the Assad regime. When his plans are disrupted, he finds himself in the company of a Syrian refugee who also desperately wishes to cross the border and return home.

Emily Fridlund's debut novel unfolds in the isolation of northern Minnesota, where the perpetually misunderstood teenage Linda lives with her parents in the remnants of a nearly abandoned commune. When a young family moves into a new house across the lake, Linda finds herself caught up in their lives beyond her control. Fridlund's novel basked in the spotlight this year, landing on the short list for the Man Booker Prize.

Dustin Tillman is a man risen from the ashes of his own dark past, but the life he's built as a psychologist in the Ohio suburbs is thrown into chaos with a flood of news. A serial killer is on the loose, preying on male college students, and Dustin's own half-brother, who was convicted of killing their parents, has just been released from prison after several decades, thanks to DNA evidence.

"It's a literary novel and it's a horror novel at the same time," said bookseller Michael Herrmann said. "It's very ambitious. It has a few narratives that stretch across three decades. ... There's half a dozen main characters. There's two unsolved killing sprees. He writes in first, second and third person, he writes in past and present tense. ... You don't even notice it really, because the narrative just carries you along."

Would the world be different if it were run by women? Naomi Alderman takes this age-old thought experiment and turns it into a thrilling, twisted story of our darkest impulses. Her novel imagines a world in which women develop a new muscle — a skein at their collarbone that generates electricity, allowing them to unleash bolts of it on anything or anyone. This 

 power unseats the global balance of power, and Alderman tracks the repercussions across the globe. The novel has been 

 as "The Handmaid's Tale" for a new generation.


Jesmyn Ward leads readers into rural Mississippi, to the pain and grief and struggle of a family who can't escape history. The novel jumps between Jojo, already world-weary at 13, and his mother Leonie, who has visions of her dead brother every time she gets high. Ward's uniquely lyrical prose ties the family's modern-day struggles to the literal ghosts of Southern history. The National Book Award judges took note; the book took home the 2017 prize for fiction.

"Fever Dream" is a slim, sly, lose-an-afternoon read that will get under your skin. The premise is simple and devastating: A woman lies dying in a hospital room. A young boy is by her side, but he's not her son. At his insistence, she struggles to recount the last day she can remember, to reach an answer about what's happening to her. It's a dose of modern horror for those who want to devour a dark tale.

"Stephen Florida" is a study in obsession. A college wrestler in the plains of North Dakota, Stephen wants just one thing: to take home the championship. After devoting four years of his life to make it happen, he has one final chance. He eats/sleeps/breathes/sweats/dreams of victory, with no space for anything or anyone else. The reader comes to know his every interior thought, even through injury, manipulation and his ill-fated forays into emotions beyond the wrestling mat. 


Omar El Akkad turns up the volume on America's ugliest impulses in the dystopian landscape of "American War." The novel opens in 2074, in the grip of the second Civil War. The North and South have split once more; oil is outlawed; the changing climate has ravaged the country; and sabotaged drones dot the skies, firing at random. Amid the chaos, the Chestnut family is forced into a refugee camp, where young Sarat gets an education in what can turn a human into a weapon.

"My Favorite Thing is Monsters" by Emil Ferris

Warning: Dark. Morbid. And brilliantly told. Emil Ferris' graphic novel unfolds in the form a 10-year-old girl's diary. Living in Chicago in the tumult of the 1960s, Karen becomes obsessed with the murder of her upstairs neighbor, a Holocaust survivor. As Karen investigates, everyone in her life becomes a suspect, and the story casts its reach as far back as her neighbor's early life in Germany.


Let one of modern literature's most inventive minds run wild in thousands of years of myth, and 

: "Norse Mythology." Neil Gaiman works his magic on ancient tales, reinventing the pantheon of Odin, Thor and Loki. (No, this isn't a Marvel movie.) Gaiman's clever and irreverent spin on these classic tales makes them sing (and yell and dance) again.


Here's your private eye caper for 2017. Celine is a masterful investigator based in New York with a track record for finding whoever's missing — especially when law enforcement can't or won't. Then, in the grand tradition of mysteries, a woman comes asking for help. Her father's gone missing in the wilds of Montana, and authorities assume it's a bear attack. But when Celine and her partner decamp for Yellowstone to investigate, they find themselves tangled in a plot fueled by family secrets.

"Magpie Murders" delivers two mysteries in one. This twisty, form-defying novel is built around a manuscript for a murder mystery. The manuscript is traditional in the best ways possible, recounting a series of murders that shake an English village and turn everyone into a suspect, a la Agatha Christie. But the manuscript is framed by the story of its editor, who regrets ever touching the papers in the first place. "Unlike me," she writes, "you've been warned."

"Future Home of the Living God" by Louise Erdrich


Louise Erdrich can do anything. The National Book Award-winning author with more than 10 novels to her name takes a leap into dystopia with her newest work — and she lands flawlessly. "Future Home" imagines a world where evolution starts rolling backward, and the government — or whoever the government has become — rounds up all pregnant women for study. Caught in the middle is Cedar, a Native American adoptee raised by wealthy white liberals in Minneapolis, who reconnects with her birth family just as the world is coming apart.

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Euan Kerr

Author

Stephanie Curtis

Tracy Mumford

Murder mysteries, family secrets and the end of the world -- the best fiction of 2017 features dark tales and moments of beauty.

The good, the thrilling, the beautiful: Best books of 2017

The best books to give and get: Fiction picks of 2017

Go Deeper.

Like this?