McNally Jackson's Bestselling Fiction Staff Picks
If you want a "romance" novel that's more concerned with the concept of being, than it is with overused tropes and poorly written sex scenes, then this is for you.
— Lexi B.
Scores before me (in this very bookstore) lauded Williams' exquisite meditation on the sober, luminous banality of the arc of days. Devastatingly beautiful, lucid passages abound. When I jump a bandwagon I like a harvest bountiful. R.E.M sang: "come on aboard I promise you it won't hurt the horse. We'll treat him well and feed him well." Nourish.
— Doug S.
Once I heard one of my professors say, “Never become an academic. Your family will never understand the sacrifice you’ve made.” Unglamorous and restrained, Stoner is the story of a man whose love of literature alienates him from his loved ones all his life. To live and die lonely and misunderstood would be an unendurable fate –– were it not for all the good books.
— Franki G.
This book is a hard sell. Page one tells you this is a story about a guy whose life sucks and then he dies… But stick with it! Stoner is a deeply affecting, profoundly human novel about what it means to live a rich, full life. Devastating, engaging, intimate. A true American classic. More people should know this book!
— Greg N.
No amount of "this book is so good" could have prepared me for how so good this book is. With neither a single missing nor extraneous word, Williams grants us an exquisite depiction of the banality of the sacrifices and frustrations, the successes and failures of a middling life.
— Max H.
I've never laughed harder when reading a novel. Chock-full of the most delicious one liners, Sheed understands soi-disant left-wing intellectual and artsy types, undoubtedly because he was one himself, and satirizes them and their desperation to escape oblivion and powerlessness to perfection. Underneath the comedy, there stand some of the most finely chiseled studies of character ever written.
— Aurora M.
Forget your to-be-read pile and pick up this instant American classic from one of the most incisive, unique writers working today. I don't expect there to be a sequel, but I would devour one - James' narrative voice should go down as one of the most engaging in American literature, right alongside Huck's own. Like a catfish pilfered from a Mississippi trotline, you'll be hooked.
— Nick F.
James solidifies Percival Everett as one of the greatest writers of our time. He expands, reimagines, and somehow even improves The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a way that not only exceeded my expectations, but simply blew me away. Just like we teach Twain in school, I hope we soon teach Everett.
— Greg N.
Lorrie Moore is the only writer that has made me both laugh out loud and tear up within the span of a few pages. In Like Life, she magnifies the beauty in the absurd little things people do that make us love and hate them, and with every sentence I found myself pulled further and further out of the clutches of what had felt like terminal jadedness. Read this and then read her other books, too.
— Riley M.
One of the most bracing and clear-eyed mediations on alienation and depression ever written, No Longer Human, follows Ōba Yōzō (a loose stand in for Dazai himself) through his life, from young boy to adult, as he tries and fails repeatedly to in some way exist within a society he feels unable to connect to. Lacking the self-pity that would have marred lesser works, No Longer Human is an unflinching yet powerful look at the way desolation can twist someone to the point of feeling completely dejected from the world around them.
— David G.
Do you ever feel like you're not only the worst person you know but perhaps the worst person in the entire world? It's most likely not the truth and as you read the meditative and heartbreaking story of Oba Yozo you will realize that despite your failures, to someone, you just might be their angel.
— Sol J.
Would you like to turn your brain off? Welcome to the world of Sarah J. Maas. Everyone is sexy and angry and there's magic! Grab a glass of wine, hit the off switch, and do yourself a favor, buy book 2 right now.
— Jess L.
I had to see what all the buzz was about and now can honestly say I was not disappointed. This was a great read for romance and fantasy lovers and would be great starting point for anyone looking to break into either genre. It truly is a lot of fun and worth a read. Get a strong cup of tea, a snuggly blanket, and this book and you'll have yourself a fun weekend.
— Samantha M.
Bitingly funny, sad, and true. For the one who loves hard, and has known loss. For the dog lover, literature buff, jaded New Yorker. The friend offers all the feels, and a lot of room for reflection on the big and small questions of life.
— Genay J.
The best book ever written about dogs and grief.
— Gage T.
A book about grief that transcends death and applies to any kind of loss — the absence of a friendship, the end of your 20s or 30s or 40s, the dissolution of a fantasy. This book helped me through a rough time and really tempted me to cheat on my cat…
— Greg N.
A truly astonishing novel of the American frontier. There's something timeless about Diaz's prose, both modern in its vertiginous probing of inner spaces and almost classical in its precision and austerity. Totally transporting, In the Distance belongs without a doubt on any list of Great American Novels.
— Nick F.
EPIC! I just loved it. Loved, loved, loved. In The Distance is a classic western about a Swedish immigrant stranded in California who has to somehow get back to NYC. Through a young boy's eyes time distorts, language confounds, and the world endlessly expands and congeals - a child becomes an adult. An enthralling, disorienting story written by one of the most confident writers working today.
— Greg N
SHMUTZ in Yiddish refers to anything dirty, filthy and unclean. In Felicia Berliner's extraordinary debut novel SHMUTZ refers to the pornography discovered by ultra-Orthodox Raizl, on the laptop given by her employer. Of marriageable age, Raizl's search is one of discovery and wonder. This magical novel is about venturing into the unknown, in search of pleasure. Funny, insightful and lovey, it is a unique insight into what is a very closed world.
— Cheryl PS.
Told in a series of short fragments, I devoured this tense and strange book in a single afternoon. What is work? What is life? What is a human? Prepare to be unsettled as you puzzle your way through these questions and try to figure out who or what is inhabiting the Six Thousand Ship. The sterile world of the ship is actually teeming with lifeforms and mysterious objects around each creepy corner.
— Jess L.
A series of mysterious objects onboard a ship elicit strong emotional and mental responses from the human and humanoid crew. The rest is unknown. Really unknown. I'm still not sure what happened and that's the raw beauty of Ravn's work! Exploring the relationships we have to work, to the objects around us, and much more, take a trip through this future space and see what you find...
— Kasey G.
The cowboy story to end all others. Sometimes you leave a book feeling changed, maybe even as if you've just loped crosscountry alongside your compañeros. You've roped charging cattle, dodged enemy bullets, buried lost friends, felt the pangs of love, and braved a wild new world. Lonesome Dove is many things at once, and sure to be eternally woven into your heart. So get yer dern boots on already.
— Julianne DV.
The holidays may be gone but it’s never not the season to let a story like this, about why we should always try and ease the misery of others, into your heart (and to serve as a reminder there’s always one more reason why the Catholic Church sucks).
— Aurora M.
The Magdalene laundries were a part of history I did not know much about. I was left speechless. A hard read at times, but an important one.
— Nora L.
I love this book with my whole heart. Its reputation as one of the great American novels is not unfounded - it will captivate your every emotion. Mattie Ross (fourteen, no nonsense, quick-witted) enlists U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (mean, alcoholic, missing an eye) to track the man who killed her father and exact revenge. Much chaos ensues. I laughed, I cried, I gasped. It’s quite perfect.
— Julianne DV.
Not only a gripping sci-fi thriller set in a gorgeously-imagined and all too plausible future, the Mountain in the Sea is also an amazing work of applied philosophy, grappling with the nature of consciousness and the possibility (or impossibility) of communication between fundamentally alien minds. I seriously couldn't tear myself away.
— Nick F.
Get caught in Delusion. Experience your own "Gradiva."
After reading this book you will be stuck asking yourself: "Who was my mom before me?" or, more hauntingly, "Was she really, truly, actually, just me?"— Camille H.
This book truly filled the Sally Rooney sized hole in my heart. Characters whose lives are so intertwined, but they often fail to see a traditional romantic relationship come to fruition. While this kind of love and companionship is far from perfect, it feels so visceral and real - and I’ll eat it up every single time.
— Merrell W.
If Mary Anne and Wanda from the song “Goodbye Earl” had a book club, this would probably be their first pick. With gender politics that are far more complex than your typical kill your abuser revenge fantasy, OUT is a sharp and excruciatingly suspenseful story of women coming together, falling apart, and coming together again. Best read in broad daylight and better with a friend, just make sure it’s not that friend who recently went through a bad break up.
— Kat P.
Simon Rich is the only person I know to have left an SNL writing job (where he wrote with John Mulaney for three years) for an even cooler writing job — staff writing at Pixar. He also created some of my favorite hidden gem TV shows like Man Seeking Woman and Miracle Workers. Rich’s short stories are so clever, I literally caught myself saying out loud, “Oooo, that’s smart.”
— Greg N.
In college, my best friends and I sisterhood-of-the-traveling-pantsed this book. We passed it around, shocked by how perfectly it fit us all, wooed by Heti’s vulnerability. We’ve since purchased our own copies, our notes in the margins all too personal to ever be lendable.
— Quinn A.
I have never been to Spain, but I have spent six summers in the garden of a villa on the Mediterranean Sea watching the follies and foibles of the 1920’s Spanish upper crust. The action is reported by the gardener and is balanced by his rich internal life. When I read this book I am fully transported: I am laying in the sun, one foot dipped into a deep tiled pool, languidly draining the afternoon until the sun sets and the earth cools and the nightly festivities can begin.
— Kathryn H.
After reading "Rebecca," you'll pull your collar against the fog and look at everyone askance, assuming they have a dark, sordid history and cannot under any circumstance be trusted. It's true. They cannot. Do not trust them.
— Landon M.
A meek bride, an aloof husband, a terrorizing servant, and the incomparable woman that beguiles them all: Rebecca. Daphne Du Maurier's classic novel evokes Jane Eyre with its unassuming narrator and gothic manor, but swerves a romantic plot into a tale of simmering suspense and haunting passion. The perfect read for a dark night by a smoky fire.
— Chris B.
I think of this book often, like a distant yet enduring memory. Put on Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1 and slip into the eerie English countryside, where passions run high and a ghost haunts all. Do you dare say her name? Take caution as you lose yourself to Rebecca…
— Julianne D.V.
I wish I could live my life with as much reckless abandon as Cookie Mueller. I cling to my routine and stability more than Cookie did, but luckily I have her writing as a window into a life that's somehow both rugged and glamorous. She did it so I don't have to.
— Ben R.
If you’re looking for a gay fantasy fiction with a classic love story. quirky characters, and masterful world-building. look no further! Filled to the brim with pure, unadulterated joy, The House in the Cerulean Sea is unapologetically queer and unapologetically delightful. Perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston’s Red, White, and Royal Blue.
— Gage T.
I never give my favorite books as gifts because everyone I know has such specific tastes. So far, I've given this book to FOUR people. It also made me cry happy tears on the subway, and I'm not a crier, happy or otherwise. Just ask my mother (who received this book as a gift from me, read it, and loved it). Witty, whimsical, and sure to charm the pants off even the most crotchety of curmudgeons.
— Melanie R.
Weird, unsettling, disturbing, and often heartwrenching. Through the eyes of an unnamed, unreliable protagonist referred to only as “the biologist.” Vandermeer ventures into uncharted territory, crafting a novel that is just as much about grief as it is filled with horror.
— Gage T.
Understated; unsettling; unnecessarily well written.
— ALEX H.
Surely deserving of a place among the great novels of the city of New York. Dos Passos’s high-speed interborough epic, published in 1925, darts kinetically between decades, class strata and neighborhoods, painting a vivid portrait of a metropolis and its metamorphoses.
— Tom G.
Simply one of the greatest books ever written about young women, sex and going-nowhere love. Just heart-rendingly beautiful. Smart. Precise. Full of deltas and rivers and French colonial heat. The Lover moves me beyond words. I can't even form real sentences about how much I love this book.
— Madeleine W.
What a shimmering novel about an affair in defiance of the reigning taboos in French colonial society in Vietnam. Duras writes of the self-determination that emerges from a curious mix of power dynamics, lust, discovery, and betrayal. "Either [desire] was there at first glance or else it had never been. It was instant...or it was nothing." And this book, dear reader, is certainly not about nothing
— Kat P.
To put it kindly, this book is the diary-style ramblings of an unreliable, raging narcissist with a superiority complex. You'll be taken on a winding journey to the day that a woman causes his comeuppance. And you know what? I think he's just frustrated that he hadn't thought of her schemes first! There are no lessons learned and no grand meanings, only fodder for more self-authored books, and it's perfect that way.
— Kasey G.
Forbidden evokes an image of temptation, dark desire, taboo...and that's what the notebook is to Valeria, who at the ripe age of 42, has begun to journal in a notebook she is not supposed to have. The notebook represents a clandestine rupture...as her inner life develops and fortifies, we begin to wonder which version of her life is distorted and disfigured - the before or the after?
— Swati S.
The ferocious facsimile manifesto/poetry collection by one of the best American poets out there; Williams takes the concept of imagination within poetry and completely throws it through a loop. I still think about this book in the dead of night. CD wright’s intro is unmatched. So much depends on the little blue book that changed the way I thought of creating art.
— Ry C.