National Book Critics Circle Award -- Fiction - Extreme Reader 2025Like this list

20 items

• Afterparties

  So, Anthony Veasna, 1992-2020,

  Add Afterparties to your for later shelf

  A debut story collection about Cambodian-American life-immersive and comic, yet unsparing-that marks the arrival of an indisputable new talent in American fiction.

• Blackouts

  Torres, Justin, 1980-

  Add Blackouts to your for later shelf

  Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Bliss Montage

  Ma, Ling, 1983-

  Add Bliss Montage to your for later shelf

  What happens when fantasy tears the screen of the everyday to wake us up? Could that waking be our end? In Bliss Montage, Ling Ma brings us eight wildly different tales of people making their way through the madness and reality of our…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Books of Jacob

  Or, A Fantastic Journey Across Seven Borders, Five Languages, and Three Major Religions, Not Counting the Minor Sects. Told by the Dead, Supplemented by the Author, Drawing From a Range of Books, and Aided by Imagination, the Which Being the Greatest Natural Gift of Any Person. That the Wise Might Have It for a Record, That My Compatriots Reflect, Laypersons Gain Some Understanding, and Melancholy Souls Obtain Some Slight Enjoyment

  Tokarczuk, Olga, 1962-

  Add The Books of Jacob to your for later shelf

  In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas--and a new unrest--begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Brother Alive

  Khalid, Zain,

  Add Brother Alive to your for later shelf

  In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul, and Youssef. They are adopted as infants and live in a shared bedroom perched atop a mosque in one of Staten Island's most diverse and precarious…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Detransition, Baby

  Peters, Torrey,

  Add Detransition, Baby to your for later shelf

  Reese had what previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Ames thought detransitioning to live as a man…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Dr. No

  Everett, Percival,

  Add Dr. No to your for later shelf

  A professor of mathematics who claims to be an expert at nothing partners with an aspiring villain who wants to break into Fort Knox to steal a shoebox containing nothing, with the help of a brainwashed astrophysicist.

• I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home

  Moore, Lorrie,

  Add I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home to your for later shelf

  A teacher visiting his dying brother in the Bronx. A mysterious journal from the nineteenth century stolen from a boarding house. A therapy clown and an assassin, both presumed dead, but perhaps not dead at all . . . With her distinctive,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• If I Survive You

  Escoffery, Jonathan,

  Add If I Survive You to your for later shelf

  A collection of humorous and harrowing linked stories following a Jamaican-American family as they seek stability upon moving to Miami.

• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

  Jeffers, Honorée Fanonne, 1967-

  Add The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois to your for later shelf

  To come to terms with who she is and what she wants, Ailey, the daughter of an accomplished doctor and a strict schoolteacher, embarks on a journey through her family's past, helping her embrace her full heritage, which is the story of the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• My Monticello

  Johnson, Jocelyn Nicole,

  Add My Monticello to your for later shelf

  An irresistibly accessible yet startlingly bold book of short stories and a novella, inspired by Black lives in America and featuring the gripping eponymous work "My Monticello.

• The Netanyahus

  An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family

  Cohen, Joshua, 1980-

  Add The Netanyahus to your for later shelf

  Corbin College, not-quite-upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian-but not an historian of the Jews-is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Night of the Living Rez

  Talty, Morgan, 1991-

  Add Night of the Living Rez to your for later shelf

  Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.

• North Woods

  Mason, Daniel (Daniel Philippe),

  Add North Woods to your for later shelf

  When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike.

• The Rabbit Hutch

  Gunty, Tess,

  Add The Rabbit Hutch to your for later shelf

  The automobile industry has abandoned Vacca Vale, Indiana, leaving the residents behind, too. In a run-down apartment building on the edge of town, commonly known as the Rabbit Hutch, a number of people now reside quietly, looking for ways…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The School for Good Mothers

  Chan, Jessamine,

  Add The School for Good Mothers to your for later shelf

  Set in near-future America, The School for Good Mothers introduces readers to a government-run reform program where bad mothers are retrained using robot doll children with artificial intelligence. Is there one right way to mother? Can a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Second Place

  Cusk, Rachel, 1967-

  Add Second Place to your for later shelf

  A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. His provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Tremor

  Cole, Teju,

  Add Tremor to your for later shelf

  A weekend spent antiquing is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speak out…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Vengeance Is Mine

  NDiaye, Marie,

  Add Vengeance Is Mine to your for later shelf

  Maître Susane, a quiet middle-aged lawyer living a modest existence in Bordeaux, known to all as a consummate and unflappable professional. But when Gilles Principaux shows up at her office asking her to defend his wife, who is accused of…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• When I Sing, Mountains Dance

  Solà, Irene, 1990-

  Add When I Sing, Mountains Dance to your for later shelf

  A spellbinding novel that places one family's tragedies against the uncontainable life force of the land itself.