best selling fiction books of 2015

The New York Times Best Sellers - August 02, 2015

Authoritatively ranked lists of books sold in the united states, sorted by format and genre..

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• Combined Print & E-Book Fiction

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GO SET A WATCHMAN

by Harper Lee

In the mid-1950s, a grown-up Jean Louise Finch returns to Maycomb and realizes that her adored father is a racist.

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5 weeks on the list

by E. L. James

A sequel told from Christian's point of view.

27 weeks on the list

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

by Paula Hawkins

A psychological thriller set in the environs of London is full of complications and betrayals.

by Ernest Cline

A teenage gamer helps save the Earth from an alien invasion.

44 weeks on the list

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

by Anthony Doerr

The lives of a blind French girl and a gadget-obsessed German boy before and during World War II; the winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize.

• Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

A meditation on race in America as well as a personal story by the national correspondent of The Atlantic, framed as a letter to his teenage son.

61 weeks on the list

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

by Daniel James Brown

The University of Washington’s eight-oar crew and their quest for gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

4 weeks on the list

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

by Holly Madison

Life inside the Playboy Mansion, by a former bunny and girlfriend of Hugh Hefner.

MODERN ROMANCE

by Aziz Ansari with Eric Klinenberg

The comedian enlists a sociologist to help him understand today’s dating scene.

11 weeks on the list

THE WRIGHT BROTHERS

by David McCullough

The story of the bicycle mechanics from Ohio who ushered in the age of flight; by the author of “1776” and “The Greater Journey.”

• Hardcover Fiction

In the mid-1950s, a grown-up Jean Louise Finch returns home to Macomb find that her adored father is not as perfect as she believed.

A psychological thriller set in the environs of London.

63 weeks on the list

The lives of a blind French girl and a gadget-obsessed German boy before and during World War II; the winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize.  

3 weeks on the list

THE ENGLISH SPY

by Daniel Silva

Gabriel Allon, an art restorer and occasional spy for the Israeli secret service, helps British intelligence track down the killer of a beautiful former member of the royal family.

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• Hardcover Nonfiction

The story of the bicycle mechanics from Ohio who ushered in the age of flight.

41 weeks on the list

BEING MORTAL

by Atul Gawande

The surgeon and New Yorker writer considers how doctors fail patients at the end of life and how they can do better.

• Paperback Trade Fiction

A sequel, told from Christian’s point of view, revisits the tortured romance between the controlling billionaire and the unassuming Ana.

38 weeks on the list

THE MARTIAN

by Andy Weir

After a dust storm forces his crew to abandon him, an astronaut embarks on a dogged quest to stay alive on Mars.

363 weeks on the list

THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho

In this fable, a Spanish shepherd boy ventures to Egypt in search of treasure and his destiny.

89 weeks on the list

DARK PLACES

by Gillian Flynn

A woman who, as a child, was spared when her mother and sisters were murdered begins to reinvestigate the case against her imprisoned brother.

15 weeks on the list

THE GOLDFINCH

by Donna Tartt

After his mother is killed in a museum explosion, a young man grapples with the world alone while hiding a prized Dutch painting.

• Paperback Mass-Market Fiction

FLESH AND BLOOD

by Patricia Cornwell

Kay Scarpetta finds herself in pursuit of a serial sniper in the series's 22nd installment.

A PERFECT LIFE

by Danielle Steel

A television anchor's on-air poise belies her unsettled life.

by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

After witnessing a coordinated lion ambush in Africa, a young biologist races to warn world leaders about the reasons for escalating animal attacks on cities.

2 weeks on the list

EARTH BOUND

by Christine Feehan

A stranger becomes infatuated with Lexi after freeing her from a cult's clutches; a Sea Haven novel.

by Catherine Coulter

An escaped psychopath seeks revenge against the F.B.I. agent who brought down his mother's cult.

• Paperback Nonfiction

60 weeks on the list

A group of American rowers pursued gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

7 weeks on the list

I AM MALALA

by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb

The Nobel Peace Prize-winner and teenage activist recounts her path to learning.

196 weeks on the list

by Malcolm Gladwell

Why some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent.

368 weeks on the list

THE GLASS CASTLE

by Jeannette Walls

The author recalls a bizarre childhood during which she was constantly on the move.

AMERICAN SNIPER

by Chris Kyle with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice

A memoir recounts the battlefield experiences in Iraq by the Navy SEALs sniper; a 2014 movie.

• E-Book Fiction

A sequel told from Christian’s point of view.

NAKED GREED

by Stuart Woods

In the 34th Stone Barrington novel, the New York lawyer becomes the target of a group of toughs.

• E-Book Nonfiction

78 weeks on the list

• Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous

THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP

by Marie Kondo

112 weeks on the list

THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES

by Gary Chapman

THUG KITCHEN

by the staff of Thug Kitchen

13 weeks on the list

THE WHOLE30

by Melissa Hartwig and Dallas Hartwig

19 weeks on the list

GET WHAT'S YOURS

by Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Philip Moeller and Paul Solman

• Hardcover Graphic Books

162 weeks on the list

BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE

by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland

This critically acclaimed story from 1988 offers a possible origin for the Joker.

JUSTICE LEAGUE, VOL. 6

by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis and Jason Fabok

Tension mounts between the members of the League after the arrival of their newest member: Lex Luthor!

CAN'T WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING MORE PLEASANT?

by Roz Chast

In this memoir, the cartoonist examines her parents from their early days as mother and father to their later years facing old age and poor health.

IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME: SWANN'S WAY

by Marcel Proust. Adapted and illustrated by Stéphane Heuet. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer

The first part of Proust’s seven–volume novel is adapted here, where the narrator recalls moments from his childhood.

22 weeks on the list

THE SCULPTOR

by Scott McCloud

A young artist in a creative and financial rut makes a pact with Death where he is granted incredible powers, but has only 200 days to use them before he dies.

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The 20 best fiction books of 2015

Love getting lost in a good story? Goodreads rounded up the best fiction books of 2015 .

To compile the list, Goodreads' editors nominated titles frequently reviewed on the site, which were then voted on by readers.

This year's selections cover everything from immigration to disease to true tests of friendship.

Scroll to see the 20 fiction titles you need to add to your reading list before 2015 is over.

“Go Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee

Twenty years after the conclusion of “To Kill A Mockingbird,” an older Scout Finch returns home to Maycomb, Alabama, where she uncovers shocking truths about her family.

As old memories are dredged up and the South moves through a tense civil-rights movement, Scout begins to question everything she stands for.

Find the book here »

“After You” by Jojo Moyes

The sequel to Moyes’ best-selling “Me Before You,” this novel picks up with protagonist Louisa Clark in the wake of losing Will Traynor, the quadriplegic man she spent six transformative months caring for and falling in love with.

In the midst of her grief, an accident lands Lou back home with her family, and things get even more complicated when an abandoned teenager named Lily shows up on her doorstep.

“The Royal We” by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

When Bex Porter leaves the US to attend Oxford University, she never expects to live down the hall from Prince Nicholas, the heir to the British throne. Even less expected, Bex falls in love with Nicholas and finds herself entangled in the complicated world of high society.

From attending glamorous events to dealing with the difficult secrets of the famously private royal family, Bex must put everything that defines her on the line for the man she loves.

“A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara

This novel follows the lives of four friends — Willem, an actor; JB, an artist; Malcolm, an architect; and Jude, a lawyer — who meet in college and move to New York City after graduation. As the years pass, the story narrows in on Jude and his struggle to overcome his traumatic past.

Brutal at times, “A Little Life” provides a powerful depiction of both deep tragedy and unbreakable friendship.

“My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry” by Fredrik Backman

When 7-year-old Elsa’s grandmother — who doubles as her best and only friend — dies, she leaves behind a trove of letters for her granddaughter. The notes send Elsa on a grand adventure, through which she learns about life, death, and accepting yourself as you are.

“Fates and Furies” by Lauren Groff

A New York Times best-seller and finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, “Fates and Furies” follows the marriage of Lotto and Mathilde over the course of 24 years. Wed at only 22 years old, the couple starts out fresh-faced and glamorous, but things soon start to unravel.

Told from both Lotto's and Mathilde's perspectives "Gone Girl"-style, the story proves a powerful page-turner.

“Inside the O’Briens” by Lisa Genova

Joe O’Brien lives a picturesque life: He’s a respected police officer, married to his high-school sweetheart, and the father of four adult children. But after he begins losing focus, losing his temper, and losing control of his movements, Joe discovers he has Huntington’s, a fatal neurodegenerative disease with no cure.

The story follows his family’s battle with the diagnosis as told through the perspectives of Joe as well as his 21-year-old daughter Katie, who has a 50% chance of developing the disease.

“Girl at War” by Sara Novic

In 1991, 10-year-old Ana Juric struggles to survive in Yugoslavia after civil war breaks out, ending the safe world she once knew. Ten years later, she’s a college student in New York who can’t escape the memories of her childhood, so she decides to return to Croatia for the first time in a decade.

“Girl at War” seamlessly switches back and forth between Ana’s past and present, exposing just how inextricable we are from our pasts.

“Our Souls at Night” by Kent Haruf

In its essence, “Our Souls at Night” is a novel about happiness — happiness in the everyday sense. But it starts with two people who are unbelievably lonely.

Widow Addie Monroe and widower Louis Waters have both lived in the small town of Holt, Colorado, for decades, since long before their spouses passed. They come together in the twilight of their lives, sharing pleasure, pain, and the raw emotions of being human.

“Trail of Broken Wings” by Sejal Badani

After years away from a home, Indian-American photographer Sonya returns when her father falls into a coma. She reunites with sisters Trisha and Marin and the three remember the violence and racism that perpetuated their childhoods.

As their father remains unconscious and the women grapple with their pasts, years of secrets begin to boil over.

“The Sound of Glass” by Karen White

When Merritt Heyward learns that she inherited the family home of her late husband, she packs up her life in Maine and moves down to South Carolina in hopes of starting over there.

However, Heyward’s life quickly becomes more complicated than ever when her stepmother and 10-year-old half-brother show up at her door.

“Kitchens of the Great Midwest” by J. Ryan Stradal

After his wife left, Lars Thorvald raised his daughter, Eva, alone, quietly instilling in her his love for food and cooking. Now the hottest chef in the Midwest, Eva throws complex and quasi-secret dinner parties that cost thousands of dollars per head and command a wait list years long.

Each chapter of “Kitchens of the Great Midwest” highlights a particular dish and character, telling Eva’s story through the foods that define her and our culture at large.

“First Frost” by Sarah Addison Allen

Each of the Waverly women possesses a special gift: Claire is a brilliant chef, her sister Sydney’s charm is irresistible, and Sydney’s daughter, Bay, inherently understands everything’s place in the world. But when a mystical stranger shows up in their sleepy small town and challenges the bonds and history of their family, the women must learn to rely on each other in ways they never have before.

Esoteric without being overly farfetched, “First Frost” tackles a theme that resonates universally: the importance of family.

“The Secret Wisdom of the Earth” by Christopher Scotton

After witnessing the death of his brother, teenager Kevin Gillooly and his mother leave their home in Indiana to spend the summer with Kevin’s grandfather in a small coal town in Kentucky.

The story is told from the perspective of a much older Kevin as he reflects on the profound and life-changing summer during which he learned about grief, hatred, prejudice, and friendship.

“Did You Ever Have a Family” by Bill Clegg

In a single tragic moment, an explosion on her daughter’s wedding day takes the lives of everyone close to June Reid: her ex-husband, her boyfriend, her daughter, and her daughter’s fiancé.

The novel follows June as she drives across the country in search of a solution to her grief as a host of voices — including everyone from June’s boyfriend’s outcast mother to the wedding florist — share their connections to those who were lost.

“When the Moon is Low” by Nadia Hashimi

When the Taliban rises to power in Afghanistan and kills her husband, Fereiba is forced to take her three children and flee the country, journeying toward safety at her sister’s home in England.

Along the way, Fereiba is separated from her teenage son, Saleem, but continues onward with her daughter and baby while Saleem gets caught up in the underground network of undocumented Afghans roaming across Europe.

“A Spool of Blue Thread” by Anne Tyler

Gradual, yet powerful, this novel follows a family through four generations, always linking back to their quaint Baltimore home.

The story centers on the lives of the Abby and Red Whitshank and their four grown children, providing glimpses into the love and joy, as well as the heartbreak and jealousy, that binds a family for life.

“The Perfect Son” by Barbara Claypole White

Obsessed with perfection and haunted by past abuse from his father, Felix Fitzwilliam takes nearly no interest in forming a relationship with his son, Harry, who struggles with Tourette’s syndrome, anxiety, and other mental disorders.

But when his wife, Ella, Harry’s primary caregiver, has a heart attack, both Felix and Harry must learn how to bend and adapt, or risk watching their family swiftly deteriorate.

“Signs Preceding the End of the World” by Yuri Herrera

In this short novel, heroine Makina is smuggled across the US-Mexican border with two secret messages in tow: a plea from her mother for her brother to return home and a suspicious package from an infamous drug lord. Makina’s journey tackles the physical and emotional reality of what it’s like to cross the border, exploring the true price of a “better” life in the US.

Originally written in Spanish by Yuri Herrera, Lisa Dillman brilliantly translates the story into English.

“Purity” by Jonathan Franzen

Purity Tyler, more commonly known as "Pip," is drowning in student loans, putting in long hours at a job she hates, and has only a loose grip on her own identity — largely thanks to her mother cutting ties with all of their relatives before Pip was even born.

But when German peace activists offer Pip an internship that would teach her to manipulate the Dark Web, Pip sees it as an opportunity to finally uncover all the secrets her mother has been hiding.

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Bestselling Books of 2015

Harper Lee, Marie Kondo, and Jeff Kinney topped the print bestseller lists in 2015 for adult fiction, adult nonfiction, and juvenile books, respectively. Here are the 20 bestselling books of the year in each of those categories.

Nielsen BookScan Adult Fiction Top 20

Nielsen BookScan Adult Nonfiction Top 20

Nielsen BookScan Juvenile Top 20

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USA TODAY's top 100 books of 2015

Here are the top 100 books of 2015, according to data from USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is the runaway hit at No. 1.

1. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins 2. Grey  by E.L. James 3. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee 4. The Martian by Andy Weir 5. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 6. American Sniper by Chris Kyle with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice 7. Paper Towns by John Green 8. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo 9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 10. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School by Jeff Kinney

11. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah 12. Killing Reagan by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard 13. Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham 14. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James 15. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand 16. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown 17. The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks

18. See Me by Nicholas Sparks 19. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn 20. Memory Man by David Baldacci 21. Gray Mountain by John Grisham 22. Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James 23. Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard by Rick Riordan  24. The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime by Ree Drummond 25. The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz 26. StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath 27. Wild by Cheryl Strayed 28. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn 29. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough 30. First 100 Words by Roger Priddy 31. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss

32. Make Me by Lee Child 33. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty  34. The Isle of the Lost: A Descendants Novel by Melissa de la Cruz 35. Dead Wake by Erik Larson 36. The Maze Runner by James Dashner  37. Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James 38. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney 39. The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty 40. The Scorch Trials by James Dashner 41. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline 42. The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman 43. Wonder by R.J. Palacio 44. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon 45. The Guilty by David Baldacci 46. The Escape by David Baldacci 47. Tricky Twenty-Two by Janet Evanovich 48. 14th Deadly Sin by James Patterson 49. The Crossing by Michael Connelly

50. Looking for Alaska by John Green 51. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young 52. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande 53. The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition by Carol Aebersold and Chanda Bell 54. The Death Cure by James Dashner 55. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho 56. The Liar by Nora Roberts 57. The 20/20 Diet by Phil McGraw 58. Still Alice  by Lisa Genova  59. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs 60. Cross Justice  by James Patterson 61. Finders Keepers by Stephen King 62. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 63. Insurgent by Veronica Roth 64. The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt, art by Oliver Jeffers 65. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch, art by Sheila McGraw 66. Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll 67. Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids by Rob Elliott 68.  What Pet Should I Get by Dr. Seuss 69. Humans of New York: Stories by Brandon Stanton 70. Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King 71. Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle by E.L. James 72. The Stranger by Harlan Coben 73. Little Blue Truck Board Book by Alice Schertle, art by Jill McElmurry 74. The Very Hungry Caterpillar Board Book by Eric Carle 75. The Murder House by James Patterson and David Ellis

'Train,' 'Grey,' 'Watchman' top book sales

76. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck 77. Private Vegas by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro 78. The Survivor by Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills 79. Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger 80. The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak 81. Hope to Die by James Patterson 82. Allegiant by Veronica Roth 83. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 84. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green 85. Gathering Prey by John Sandford 86. NYPD Red 3 by James Patterson and Marshall Karp 87. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey 88. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 89. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie 90. Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Perfect Pet Sitter by Rachel Renée Russell 91. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 92. Divergent by Veronica Roth 93. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty 94. Dork Diaries 9: Tales from a Not-So-Dorky Drama Queen by Rachel Renée Russell 95. 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse by J.J. Smith 96. Yes Please by Amy Poehler 97. The Giver by Lois Lowry 98. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz 99. Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae, art by Guy Parker-Rees 100. Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling

Research by Christopher Schnaars; based on data from USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list tracked between Dec. 29, 2014 and Jan. 3, 2016

The 18 Best Fiction Books Of 2015

Books and Culture Writer, HuffPost

In 2015, we were overwhelmed by the thoroughly kickass roster of new books on offer. We tore through some, and others we savored slowly. A few disappointed us , while many more thrilled us unexpectedly . Sci-fi, memoir, magical realism, short fiction, very (very) long novels, and genre-bending masterpieces have taken us on a constant adventure through ever-changing literary scenery.

Now that the year is drawing to a close, we're already eager to see what next year has in store for us readers. But first, we're taking a moment to look back on a year in reading. Every critic has her favorites, and these were ours:

Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson

Johnson’s latest novel hit an odd note in the year of Black Lives Matter; it’s almost too timely of a satire on America’s fatal race problem in the South and beyond. D’aron Davenport, a doughy white boy raised in the titular small Georgia town, can’t wait to escape to college at Berkeley. Once there, he befriends three kids who couldn’t be more unlike him -- Louis, an in-your-face Malaysian-American comedian; Candice, a liberal do-gooder from the Midwest; and Charlie, a black inner-city kid with a serious drive to succeed. Then D’aron unwisely reveals to them that his hometown stages a yearly Civil War reenactment, and they’re off to spend the break conspiring to disrupt the reenactment with a protest. Though D’aron refuses to believe his home harbors anything but good at its heart, the naive actions of the gang of friends will have consequences devastating beyond comprehension. By turns darkly hilarious and bone-achingly tragic, Welcome to Braggsville rips open the thin camouflage Northerners and Southerners, liberals and conservatives alike throw over our race problems to reveal the ugly truth beneath. - Claire Fallon

Read our review.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

It’s been called the literary Gone Girl , but it’s so much more than that. Lauren Groff’s novel tells the story of a successful marriage from the vantage point of both parties -- bubbly, vivacious Lotto and private, hard-working Mathilde. From Lotto’s perspective, the couple’s happy marriage is the result of some rare magic -- but then again, he’s always been a bit dramatic. For Mathilde, taking care of the inconveniences of daily life behind the scenes has mostly been a happy chore, and yet she still feels unworthy of her husband’s affections. Through their intertwining perspectives on their short courtship and the years that follow, Groff suggests it’s the secrets we keep, as much as the intimate moments we share, that form the bedrock of our lasting relationships. - Maddie Crum

You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman

The title of You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine reads like a dare to Kleeman’s target audience not to pick up her book. It’s not a diet book, obviously, or a magical thinking manual; think less The Secret and more DeLillo and Pynchon. The protagonist, A, lives in an unnamed city with her roommate, B. She occupies herself watching TV with her boyfriend, C, or eating popsicles with B, who seems to be growing more and more obsessed with her. C, meanwhile, begins to pressure A to appear on a dystopian couples game show with him, while she’s zoning out on the increasingly weird Kandy Kakes commercials that hold her attention more than the programs themselves. Touching on body image, mass media, consumerist religiosity, and the tortured relationships between ourselves, our bodies, our food, and each other, Kleeman’s haunting, dazzlingly-written novel pulls you inexorably into another world, where the rules are different yet painfully familiar. - Claire

Read our interview with the author.

The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra

The subgenre of “Russian literature” calls to mind bearded men (OK, two particular bearded men) and distraught women stifled by the social strictures of their time. These are beautiful, important books, but as beautiful and as important is Anthony Marra’s recent addition to the chorus. Following an emotionally wrought novel set smack in the middle of the Chechen Wars is his collection of connected stories, all centering on post-Cold War tumult and isolation. A restoration artist commits a revolutionary act unforgivable by the state, a man reflects on fond memories of frolicking through man-made Lake Mercury, and a captured soldier clings to a gift from his brother: a mix tape he keeps in his pocket, fueling his dwindling hope for survival. - Maddie

The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard

Shepard has long been better known for his short story collections, which flaunt his unparalleled research skills and curiosity about every nook and cranny of history. But his latest book is a novel, focused on an unusual figure, Janusz Korczak, who ran an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto under the Nazis. Aron, the book’s narrator, is a young orphaned boy living in Warsaw who takes shelter in Korczak’s orphanage. Still a child, bereft of everything comforting and familiar, Aron is overwhelmed in the midst of events far beyond his understanding, as the once-powerful Korczak attempts to stave off Nazi attention from his orphanage for as long as possible. Heartbreaking, spare, deeply human, and somehow even funny, The Book of Aron is the rare new Holocaust novel that feels truly felt, not painstakingly historical. - Claire

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

Paul Beatty is a poet, and you’d know it by his winding, lyrical sentences. His novel, The Sellout , is a hilarious, artful riff on race in America today. Overeducated and underemployed, the narrator recalls his life as the subject of his father’s controversial, borderline abusive social experiments, which shaped how he thought about the way humans interact. When his home in Dickens, California -- an “agrarian ghetto,” he calls it -- is literally taken off the map, the narrator fights to save it, running into warring opinions on equality along the way. To capture the attention of those in charge, he radically suggests resegregating the local high school -- an act that lands him in the middle of a Supreme Court case. Come for the funny scenes, stay for the nuanced look at race in America. - Maddie

The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney

This slim novel is a story about stories on every level: Why we create them, who we create them for, how much value they have, whether they can define and change who we are. The narrator, Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, aka Highway, sees the story as his dental autobiography. Growing up without significant resources, stumbling into a bad marriage and then a divorce that separated him from his only child, Highway dreams of being able to afford dental implants. He turns his life around by becoming an auctioneer, claiming to be the greatest one in the world. With the money he amasses, he purchases the purported teeth of Marilyn Monroe herself, which he has implanted into his own mouth. But as the story twists and turns, we see how Highway’s fabulism both creates a captivating autobiography and makes it impossible to separate his reality from his fantasy. Luiselli, who worked closely with MacSweeney on the translation, has a deft comic touch and imbues her prose with a seemingly effortless lyricality. This unassuming gem works its way into your mind, where it will linger long after you’ve turned the last page. - Claire

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

The final book in a series for readers who aren’t so keen on book series, The Story of the Lost Child concludes the decades-long friendship between narrator Lena and her brilliant, troubled confidant and partner in crime, Lina. Though the two grew up in the same neighborhood, their paths diverged when Lena followed a traditional path toward education and Lina chose the path that more closely followed their hometown’s idea of success by getting married and working in her family’s shoe shop. Through the lens of her friendship with Lina, Lena recalls the tragedies and small triumphs of Naples, from burgeoning equality for women to petty, violent crimes. The result is as much a Dickensian social commentary as it is an intimate examination of the power of personal relationships. - Maddie

Read our thoughts on Ferrante fever.

Imperium: A Fiction of the South Seas by Christian Kracht, translated by Daniel Bowles

Published in Germany in 2012, Imperium made a splash in its home country and finally arrived on American shores this year. The novel fictionalizes the life of August Engelhardt, a German man who traveled to German New Guinea in 1902 in hopes of founding a sun-worshiping, fruitarian community in the tropics. Swiss author Kracht’s Engelhardt, a devout believer that humans should eat only coconuts, tries and fails to sustain a like-minded community there, and to maintain his diet in the face of severe malnutrition. Imperium delves into the extremist psychology behind such a rejection of society and traditional foods, satirizing the white, Western tendency to seek purity by relocating to a different, exoticized society, as well as the “genteel” racism endemic to such colonizing. In wry prose, Kracht replicates the absurd, overly intellectualized logic of such unhinged idealism, as in one brilliant passage justifying the choice of the coconut as the sole godly food. Morbid yet funny, outlandish yet profound, Imperium is the satirical South Seas horror story you never knew you needed. - Claire

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro has a penchant for writing spare, fable-like stories that exist somewhere between the realms of fantasy and social commentary. Fans of the ethereal Never Let Me Go will find plenty to love in The Buried Giant , the story of an elderly married couple traveling across a misty medieval landscape. As they work to clarify hazy memories of their son, a bigger picture of a forgotten war, and the devices used to repress memories of those lost, resurfaces. Suitably, Ishiguro uses the language of lore to tell Axel and Beatrice’s story, in a pleasant examination of the stories we tell ourselves to get by. Plus, there are dragons. - Maddie

Read our interview with Kazuo Ishiguro .

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Yanagihara’s sophomore novel, a sprawling misery opus, has received accolades and critical pans in near-equal measure. One thing’s for sure: this book is tough to ignore. The four friends at its heart -- Jude, a shy and tormented lawyer; Willem, a handsome actor; J.B., an ambitious but occasionally cruel artist; and Malcolm, a talented architect -- are barely out of college when we first meet them, living in crummy New York apartments and scrapping for their big breaks. The novel follows them as they seek success and happiness, while Jude begins to succumb to the trauma of a past he refuses to talk about. If you’re looking for realism, you won’t find it here; A Little Life turns a modern tragedy into a classical Greek one, with the heights and depths of human experience exaggerated to the extreme. Buried within are truths about grief most can relate to, if few can understand the actual horrors within Jude’s past. Immersive and often overwhelming, A Little Life asks the reader to imagine how painful and how far past recovery a single person’s life might be. - Claire

The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams

Nobody writes spare, funny domestic scenes quite like Joy Williams, whose tender short stories always seem to both uphold and critique human wants. The Visiting Privilege is a survey of both new and collected stories, the latter being knotty, comical thoughts from disenchanted female narrators, the former being pithy, journalistic musings. Each of her stories concerns itself with the strange and fluid subconscious; she expresses the joy of spending time with animals and children, and misanthropically mocks the literal language of quarreling adults. A much-needed anecdote to our hard facts-driven media habits, Williams does her best to say what can’t be said, to bring to life what can’t be analyzed. - Maddie

Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont

Not a word is wasted in Pierpont’s efficiently engineered debut, which follows a family hovering on the brink of possible dissolution in the wake of the husband’s infidelity. The book opens with the two children -- just old enough to more or less understand what they’re reading -- discovering a box of correspondence between their father and his mistress, intended for the eyes of their mother. As their mother tries, brittle and uncertain, to navigate the following weeks in the least damaging way possible for her children and the most survivable way for herself, their father, an artist, wallows in the disappointment of a failed gallery show and drifts further into his own narcissistic spiral. Brimming with human insight and told in clear, sure-footed prose, Among the Ten Thousand Things draws the reader into a granular examination of the profound power each choice made in a family can have over the unit as a whole. - Claire

A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball

What starts out as a playful thought experiment evolves into a meditation on grief, trauma and recovery in Jesse Ball’s stylishly wrought novel. The author of Silence Once Begun began his writing career as a poet, and plays close attention to the rhythm of words, and the power in what goes left unsaid. The same holds true in his dystopian novel, which begins with a dialogue between two characters, an examiner and a claimant. The claimant is relearning how to speak, and how to socialize, for reasons slowly revealed over the course of Ball’s strange, always engaging story. - Maddie

In the Country by Mia Alvar

Mia Alvar’s debut short story collection follows the everyday stories of Filipinos, whether Manila dwellers or immigrants in Saudi Arabia or New York City. As is often the risk with short story collections, some stories are stronger than others, and one, the title story, feels primed for a longer treatment, but they’re held together by Alvar’s incisive sensibility and fluid prose. In story after story, she calmly but firmly excavates the deep ties that bind us together, without shying away from the brutal flip side, the sometimes anguished obligation many of her characters bear throughout life. With certain sparkling, unmissable stories and a consistent talent shown throughout, Alvar’s first book marks her as a writer to watch. - Claire

The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch

Yuknavitch’s novel is a wild ride spinning through the personal and the political in such quick, equal measure that they begin to blur into one cohesive experience. In The Chronology of Water , she imbued memoir with elements of imagination; in The Small Backs of Children , she embellishes her fictional story with scenes from her own personal life. The novel centers on the subject of a prize-winning photo, a feat of photojournalism acknowledged in the same Western world that pays little mind to the girl’s violent everyday life in Eastern Europe. The image unites a cast of characters --most of them artists -- who resolve to do something about the girl’s tragic situation, rather than merely meditating on it. - Maddie

Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum

Although Hausfrau is a debut novel, it possesses the assurance of an established writer, perhaps because Essbaum is a poet. Her interest in the power of language suffuses a trite tale of ennui and infidelity with original beauty. American-born Anna Benz, the protagonist, lives in an affluent suburb of Zurich with her Swiss husband, Bruno, and their small children. After years, she’s still unfamiliar with the local language, and only able to escape her domestic life by taking lessons. Bored and self-destructive, she falls into a series of affairs, growing more and more detached from her family. In her own musings, and interstitial discussions with her therapist, she uses the inherent slippage of language to excuse and qualify her sins. As the novel draws to an unsettling close, it’s clear she’ll have to pay for this selfish bargaining, but how, exactly, will be shocking. - Claire

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

In a recent interview, Claire Vaye Watkins discussed her first novel, a dystopia written for readers who find the word “dystopia” a little hackneyed. “I wanted to write about characters who were themselves bored with that narrative,” she said, adding that apocalyptic stories are mostly about our own egotism. So, Luz Dunn, the central character of Gold Fame Citrus , is not a hero who saves humanity or a particularly empowered individual who wards off imposing forces of nature. She’s one of the most human characters to appear in fiction this year, and is as susceptible to flattery, selfishness and insecurity as the next person. Following her as she stumbles into motherhood, and, eventually, into a dangerous cult, makes what could’ve been a Hollywood-worthy thriller a powerful look at society’s pressure on the individual. - Maddie

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49 Fantastic Books From 49 Different Countries

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WSJ's Best Books of 2015

The top fiction and nonfiction of the year, as chosen by the wall street journal.

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Best Fiction

Have dinner with Herod , sell sweets in Istanbul , learn to speak techsperanto and witness how trauma becomes art .

Best Nonfiction

​Mourn for Lincoln , marvel at Elon Musk , be swept away on a horse , eat better and discover the true miracle of the soda can .

Best Mystery

The year's fascinating new acquaintances include Tom Cooper's Gulf Coast lowlifes , Sally Andrew's warm-hearted sleuth and John Renehan's battle-hardened hero .

Best Children's

Small readers can learn important lessons from a stuffed buffalo , while older children learn about the Siege of Leningrad —and the terrors of adolescence.

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Best of the best-of lists.

A compilation of books cited on multiple year-end lists in 2015.

Who Read What in 2015

The WSJ asked 50 friends —from Marco Rubio and Indra Nooyi to Doc Rivers—about their favorite books of 2015.

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A master list of the most-cited books on the best-of lists released in 2014.

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This is your customized reading list from The Wall Street Journal, sourced from the most-mentioned books on the best-of lists released so far this year.

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Best mystery books and thrillers of 2015

A BANQUET OF CONSEQUENCES

By Elizabeth George (Viking)

In her latest Inspector Lynley book, Elizabeth George presents a wildly dysfunctional family. At its center is the mother from hell, Caroline Goldacre, a pathological liar who has damaged both her sons, driven one husband away and made the incumbent miserable. Set in London and two English villages, the story begins as Caroline's troubled son Will kills himself; his girlfriend blames his domineering mother, who in turn blames the girlfriend. When someone is poisoned, the question is whether Caroline, who is clearly a monster, is also a murderer. Or, as she insists, was she the intended victim? George's mystery shines with great psychological depth, finely drawn characters and gorgeous portraits of the English countryside. — Patrick Anderson

By Sara Paretsky (Putnam)

V.I. Warshawski — the gritty P.I. who predates Lisbeth Salander and Stephanie Plum — returns in Sara Paretsky's superb new novel. This time, the weathered investigator gets pulled into a case involving a former boyfriend's mother who was convicted of beating his sister to death. As the plot — about crooked politicians and construction contracts — unfolds, V.I. finds herself nearly drowning in memories of her old Chicago neighborhood and missing the friends who didn't make it out. Over the series, V.I. has been growing progressively darker in mood, but throughout her bleakest times, work has always been her salvation. This new novel's uncompromising feminist message about aging for women is to ignore the pain and hang on to what gives you purpose and identity. — Maureen Corrigan

DARK CORNERS

By Ruth Rendell (Scribner)

In Ruth Rendell's final novel, all is placid for 23-year-old antihero Carl Martin — until he makes a mistake. His late father took a great many alternative medicines, among them diet pills that Carl, always looking for ways to make money, sells to a female friend. She takes some of the pills and dies. Though ruled accidental, her death makes the papers. Afterward, Carl is tormented by his snooping, hostile tenant, Dermot. The wear and tear on Carl's nerves is heavy. "This torment will go on for ever, for the rest of my life," he complains. How Carl copes with that torment is the central question of "Dark Corners," which Rendell, who died in May, narrates with seasoned expertise. — Dennis Drabelle

ROGUE LAWYER

By John Grisham (Doubleday)

Thirty novels into his nearly three-decade career, John Grisham still makes it look easy. In "Rogue Lawyer," he introduces a new character, a so-called street lawyer named Sebastian Rudd. Rudd has rubbed so many different people the wrong way — gang members, the police, other lawyers, his ex-wife — that he works out of a bulletproof van, packs a pistol and changes motel rooms every few nights when he is arguing his (always controversial) cases. His clients are those no one else wants: a teenager accused of double murder, a crime lord on death row. The cases are riveting, yet the biggest mystery of "Rogue Lawyer" is how Grisham can still devise all these distinctive characters, tricky legal predicaments and roguishly cheating ways to worm out of them.— Maureen Corrigan

By Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt (Henry Holt)

"The Whites" is a masterpiece, to stand with such earlier Price classics as "Clockers" and "Lush Life." Its initial focus is veteran New York Police Department detective Billy Graves, who confronts two life-defining challenges, but "The Whites" is also about his wife, father and children, and the four cops who are his closest friends. The story expands to include the criminals they confront, the mean streets they patrol and the realities of America in the 21st century. That's the vast landscape that Price takes us through with stylistic grace and pitiless honesty. — Patrick Anderson

The 10 Best Books of 2015

Notable fiction books of 2015

Notable nonfiction of 2015

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The best mystery books and thrillers of 2015

Best poetry collections of 2015

The best romance novels of 2015

The best science fiction and fantasy books of 2015

Book news 2015: Nostalgia, blockbusters and controversy

Best children’s books of 2015

Kwame Alexander picks his top five kids’ books

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Amazon Announces Best-Selling Books of 2015

The Girl on the Train  by Paula Hawkins is the best-selling book of 2015;  Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book Ten: Old School by Jeff Kinney tops the list for Kids & Teens books

The Most Wished For books are  The Girl on the Train  by Paula Hawkins and  The Nightingale  by Kristin Hannah; The Most Gifted book is  Go Set a Watchman  by Harper Lee

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 9, 2015-- (NASDAQ:AMZN)—Amazon today announced its best-selling books of 2015, along with the list of best-selling Kids & Teens books, the Most Gifted Books and the Most Wished For books—just in time for holiday gift-giving. The best-selling book of the year is Paula Hawkins’ addictive page-turner,  The Girl on the Train  followed by  Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian  by E.L. James.  Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book Ten: Old School,  by the perennial favorite Jeff Kinney, is the best-selling Kids & Teens book and  What Pet Should I Get?  by Dr. Seuss is number two. Harper Lee’s hotly anticipated second novel,  Go Set a Watchman,  was the Most Gifted Book of the year.  The Girl on the Train  by Paula Hawkins, was also the Most Wished For followed by Kristin Hannah’s  The Nightingale.  The best-selling book lists take into account first editions published in 2015 and reflect paid print and Kindle editions. To see the full top 100 lists of Amazon’s best-selling print and Kindle books of 2015, visit  www.amazon.com/bestsellingbooks2015 .

“What this list suggests is that Amazon customers like to be entertained—and scared! The creepy thriller  The Girl on the Train  is our best-selling book of the year, hands down, but  Silent Scream ,  14th Deadly Sin  and  Luckiest Girl Alive  are no slouches in the category, either,” said Sara Nelson, Editorial Director of Books and Kindle at Amazon.com. “It’s great to see  The Nightingale  perform so well; it suggests that readers continue to come back to novels about WWII, as long as they deliver stories of people and the difficult decisions that war makes them make. In addition to page-turning fiction there’s also engrossing nonfiction from top historians David McCullough and Erik Larson. The best-selling books of 2015 are full of great old fashioned storytelling. Truly, something for everyone.”

The 2015 top 20 best-selling books overall are:

1.  The Girl on the Train  by Paula Hawkins

2.  Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian  by E.L. James

3.  Go Set a Watchman  by Harper Lee

4.  The Nightingale  by Kristin Hannah

5.  Memory Man  by David Baldacci

6.  Make Me: A Jack Reacher Novel  by Lee Child

7.  Rogue Lawyer  by John Grisham

8.  The Girl in the Spider’s Web: Millennium Series Book 4  by David Lagercrantz

9.  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania  by Erik Larson

10.  Silent Scream  by Angela Marsons

11.  14 th  Deadly Sin (Women’s Murder Club)  by James Patterson with Maxine Paetro

12.  Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book Ten: Old School by Jeff Kinney

13.  Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest and Coloring Book  by Johanna Basford

14.  The Wright Brothers  by David McCullough

15.  Adult Coloring Book: Stress Relieving Patterns  by Blue Star Coloring

16.  The Liar  by Nora Roberts

17.  Luckiest Girl Alive  by Jessica Knoll

18.  The Crossing  by Michael Connelly

19.  The Stranger  by Harlan Coben

20.  A Spool of Blue   Thread  by Anne Tyler

Fun facts about Amazon’s best-selling books of 2015:

• It’s the first time a coloring book has made the list, let alone two!
• Luckiest Girl Alive  by Jessica Knoll is the top debut
• The top two authors are British
• The top four authors are female; There are nine female authors on the list, eleven men
• The best-selling print book of 2015 was  Go Set a Watchman  by Harper Lee; the best-selling Kindle book was  The Girl on the Train  by Paula Hawkins

The top 20 best-selling Kids & Teens books overall are:

1.  Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book Ten: Old School by Jeff Kinney

2.  What Pet Should I Get?  by Dr. Seuss

3.  Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 1: The Sword of Summer  by Rick Riordan

4.  The Heir: Book Four of the Selection Series  by Kiera Cass

5.  The Isle of the Lost: A Descendants Novel  by Melissa de la Cruz

6.  Your Baby’s First Word Will be DADA  by Jimmy Fallon

7.  The Day the Crayons Came Home  by Drew Daywalt

8.  Diary of a Minecraft Zombie Book 1  by Herobrine Books

9.  Rush Revere and the Star-Spangled Banner  by Rush Limbaugh

10.  Library of Souls: The Third Novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children  by Ransom Riggs

11.  Queen of Shadows: A Throne of Glass Novel  by Sarah J. Maas

12.  The Red Queen  by Victoria Aveyard

13.  Firefight :  The Reckoners Book Two  by Brandon Sanderson

14.  Winter: The Lunar  Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

15.  The Crown of Ptolemy  by Rick Riordan

16.  Dork Diaries 9: Tales From a Not-So-Dorky Drama Queen  by Rachel Renée Russell

17.  The Fate of Ten: Lorien Legacies Book 6  by Pittacus Lore

18.  The Ruby Circle: A Bloodlines Novel  by Richelle Mead

19.  Theodore Boone: The Fugitive  by John Grisham

20. A  Court of Thorns and Roses  by Sarah J. Maas

Fun Facts about Amazon’s best-selling Kids & Teen Books of 2015:

• Three years in a row Jeff Kinney, Rick Riordan and Rush Limbaugh have been in the top 20 best-selling Kids & Teens list
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book Ten: Old School is the top selling print book and  The Heir  is the top selling Kindle book
• 17 of the 20 books are part of a series
• Two authors, Rick Riordan and Sarah J. Maas, each have two books on the list

To learn more about the best-selling books of the year, visit  www.amazon.com/bestsellingbooks2015 .

About Amazon

Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The company is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit  www.amazon.com/about .

View source version on businesswire.com:  http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151209005317/en/

Source: Amazon.com, Inc.

Amazon.com, Inc. Media Hotline: 206-266-7180 www.amazon.com/pr

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Best crime and thriller books of 2015

From Girl on the Train to Girl in the Spider’s Web – a look back on a year that lived up to the hype

• Vote: What was your favourite book of the year?
• Best of culture in 2015: see this year’s cultural highlights, chosen by the Guardian’s writers and critics

B ooks that arrive on a tide of chatter about vast advances, foreign sales and movie rights often don’t provide an internal narrative to match the external one. But, in a welcome plot twist this year, two talked-up debuts justified the hype.

Disproving the usual rule that thrillers with the word “girl” in the title are merely cynical attempts to catch the eye of Gillian Flynn fans, The Girl on the Train (Doubleday) by Paula Hawkins is an ideal solution for those seeking immersive distraction on a beach, plane or indeed train, from which the sozzled heroine may or may not have witnessed a murder in a house backing on to the tracks. And Renee Knight’s Disclaimer (Doubleday) is an inventive and troubling literary puzzle that begins, startlingly, with a woman being sent a novel that appears to fictionalise a secret part of her life story.

In this genre, a throat-grabbing opening is obligatory, but what follows often fails to maintain the grip. However, the Hitchcock ian premise of I Saw A Man (Faber) by Owen Sheers – in which someone finds their neighbour’s back door unexpectedly left open and goes inside – delivers a clever novel in which the healing after a bereavement leads to the infliction of more grief.

Ruth Rendell died in May , but October brought the posthumous publication of her 66th and final book, Dark Corners (Hutchinson), a dark comedy about an accidental killer, which includes suitably valedictory reflections on several of Baroness Rendell’s recurrent concerns, including guilt, London, literature and cats.

In Rendell’s absence, that manuscript was shepherded to publication by Val McDermid, who was on strong form herself in Splinter the Silence (Little, Brown), a case that takes co-investigators Jordan & Hill into an increasingly violent world. Belinda Bauer, another writer who follows in Rendell’s footsteps, confirmed her star status with The Shut Eye (Bantam), in which a grieving mother is contacted by a psychic who may be a psychopath.

Dark Corners may not be the last we hear of Rendell’s characters, given the tendency for crime narratives to be continued posthumously by other hands. If these transactions are to happen – and the practice raises considerable ethical and technical challenges – then it is hard to imagine a better ghostwriter than David Lagercrantz, whose The Girl in the Spider’s Web (MacLehose) convincingly extended the life of the late Stieg Larsson’s great character, Lisbeth Salander.

In an otherwise relatively quiet year for the Scandinavian powerhouse of suspense fiction – with market leader Jo Nesbø represented by the minor exercise, Midnight Sun (Harvill Secker) – the Nordic star was Dead Joker (Corvus). The latest exploration by ex‑politician Anne Holt of the political and journalistic underworlds of Oslo, it begins with the state prosecutor being suspected of killing his own wife.

Authors of successful franchises often become sick of revisiting the same protagonist each year: there are horror stories in publishing about the awful day when a top-selling writer of cop novels suddenly delivers a first-world-war bildungsroman. Two writers who have never tired of their main men are Ian Rankin, whose Even Dogs in the Wild (Orion) is his 20th full-length investigation for DI John Rebus, and Lee Child, who takes his Jack Reacher to the same number of tales in Make Me (Bantam). Both novelists have become expert technicians at the continuation of a signature brand.

Peter James showed that a diversion this year into ghost stories with The House on Cold Hill had not diverted energy from his consistently impressive sequence of DS Roy Grace policiers , the 11th of which, You Are Dead (Macmillan), confidently combines a cold case with a very hot one.

John Grisham, another super-seller who has taken occasional generic vacations in teenage, Christmas, and baseball books, returns triumphantly to his home base of legal thrillers in Rogue Lawyer (Hodder & Stoughton), introducing the fascinating character of a lawyer who lives in a van and represents only those whom no other attorney will defend.

The brilliantly versatile Laura Lippman combines the best elements of her standalone psychological novels with the greatest strengths of her series featuring journalist turned private eye Tess Monaghan in Hush Hush (Faber), a Monaghan mystery that probes the extremities of maternal love.

At the age of 85, America’s finest spy writer, Charles McCarry , proves impressively up-to-date with the methods and tensions of international espionage in The Mulberry Bush (Head of Zeus). This is a novel that has the CIA failing to spot a problem from the past – an agent who is, Hamlet-like, avenging his dead father – and seeing but having little idea how to deal with the present difficulty of Islamist jihad.

From the other end of a career, Attica Locke’s third novel, Pleasantville (Serpent’s Tail), is another superb example of her personalised genre of African-American-political-recent-historical thrillers, as a murderous mayoral race in Houston in 1996 exposes an attempt at social engineering in the 1940s. In a crowded field in which even stars follow traditions, Locke has the feel of a true original.

With Locke having the fix on racism and McCarry on terrorism, a third threat to the US – from the political, economic and social consequences of the long Mexican-American drug wars – is described in Don Winslow’s The Cartel (Heinemann). It features violence so frequent and visceral that it should probably be read in a bullet-proof vest.

Mark Lawson’s The Deaths is published by Picador. Browse all the books and save up to 30% at bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. 20p from each book you order until Christmas will be donated to the Guardian and Observer charity appeal 2015.

• Best books of 2015
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• Vote now: what was your favourite book of the year?
• Best culture 2015
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• Crime fiction
• 2015 in review
• Paula Hawkins

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Top 10 Everything of 2015

Top 10 nonfiction books, the witches , stacy schiff.

Best-selling biographer Stacy Schiff ( Cleopatra ; the Pulitzer-winning Vera ) aims her keen research skills at U.S. history in The Witches: Salem, 1692 . With her impressive attention to detail and atmosphere, she conjures an eerie vision of the 17th century. Don’t come expecting a satisfying solution to the juiciest mystery about the Salem witch trials of that year—like why on Earth they happened—but Schiff offers an exhaustive look at who, what, where and how. And if she can’t answer the why, it’s unlikely anyone ever will.

Between the World and Me , Ta-Nehisi Coates

In any other year, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s letter to his teenage son about being black in America—a nod to James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time —would have been a compelling piece of commentary. This year, it has been an urgent, essential phenomenon as the nation has struggled with police brutality, racial unrest and manifest inequity. Mortal danger is what black men live in, Coates writes, and their—his—existence is a fearful one. There is no tidy ending for the book, or for reality, but perhaps Coates felt some small piece of closure when he was able to dedicate his National Book Award to Prince Jones, his own friend who was killed by police in Maryland in 2000.

The Givenness of Things , Marilynne Robinson

Fiction readers have long admired the way characters in Robinson’s novels, like the Pulitzer-winning Gilead , are animated by a faith that is deeply considered yet never overbearing. In her new collection of essays, Robinson lifts the curtain on her own theological thinking. She engages with the great thinkers of the Protestant Reformation (Luther, of course, but also Shakespeare) while raising critical questions about the current state of Christianity in America, where the zeal of some believers leaves her concerned. But she’s hopeful, too. On topics ranging from servanthood to grace, she reminds us that practicing Protestantism, so commonplace in 21st-century America, began as a frighteningly, passionately radical act.

Destiny & Power , Jon Meacham

To the casual observer, George H. W. Bush appears one of our less memorable presidents–sandwiched between the glamorous Reagan and the charismatic Clinton, and then overshadowed by his two-termer son. But in Meacham’s telling, Bush’s lack of verve becomes his greatest asset. Drawing upon expansive access to Bush and his diaries, Meacham depicts Bush as a poignantly paradoxical figure. Bush, here, is imbued with the values of the Greatest Generation, and then elevated to the nation’s highest office at the moment those values lost their primacy. Through one man’s long journey through politics, we see America’s changing attitudes toward power and duty in the twentieth century.

Black Man in a White Coat , Damon Tweedy

One of Tweedy’s first memorable experiences at Duke Medical School had nothing to do with cadavers or practice patients. It was when his professor mistook him for a janitor, on hand in the classroom, apparently, to change a burnt-out lightbulb. Instead of making Tweedy angry, the slight filled him with anxiety, and a propulsive (but clearly incorrect) fear that he was not good enough to get where he goes: through Duke, to Yale Law School and eventually into practice as a psychiatrist. This clear-eyed memoir doesn’t just deal with Tweedy’s own experiences at the intersection of race and medicine—he takes on the backgrounds of his patients, too.

Being Nixon , Evan Thomas

Richard M. Nixon is one of the most endlessly psychoanalyzed figures in recent history, so credit to Thomas for making an analysis of the life of the 37th President feel new and vital. Thomas covers Nixon’s painful childhood, his vexed relationship with Dwight Eisenhower and his wilderness years and his presidency (colored through Nixon’s own words from recently-released tapes) in a book that’s fairminded but not overly forgiving. The book’s approach can be summed up in its brief accounting of Nixon’s final years in a half-exile, half-public life. Being Nixon is not wistful, but it’s a picture of a human, rather than a cartoon villain.

The Brothers , Masha Gessen

This is the story of two of the most despised men in recent history: the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokar, who carried out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. They created one kind of chaos, but they came out of another: descended from Chechens deported by Stalin to Central Asia, the Tsarnaev family emigrated to the U.S. from Dagestan in 1994 and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There the brothers entered a demimonde rarely seen or written about, of young immigrants trying and failing to find a foothold, an identity, a career, even a stable address in a new country. A tremendous piece of tireless reporting, The Brothers doesn’t offer easy answers, but it fills in the missing context around an otherwise inexplicable act of grotesque violence.

Negroland , Margo Jefferson

Jefferson’s upbringing in 1950s Chicago was almost idyllic. Almost. Home life was cozy enough—her physician father and socialite mother were members of the city’s black bourgeoisie, and she and her sister were well fed, well cared for, pointedly well dressed. But the tensions of the time were inescapable, and with them came personal pressures that eventually sunk Jefferson into depression—yet one more thing she wasn’t “allowed” to have as a black woman. Jefferson uses the long poem format, alternating between poetry and prose, despair and triumph, to tell a story that is as compelling for the reader as it seems cathartic for her.

Barbarian Days , William Finnegan

How many ways can you describe a wave? You’ll never get tired of watching Finnegan do it. A staff writer at The New Yorker , he leads a counterlife as an obsessive surfer, traveling around the world, throwing his vulnerable, merely human body into line after line of waves in search of transient moments of grace. Finnegan grew up in California and Hawaii but searches out spots in Australia, Fiji, South Africa, Majorca, each of which is a tiny, fractally complex universe of clashing swells and currents and wind and underwater geography. “The close, painstaking study of a tiny patch of coast,” he writes, “every eddy and angle, even down to individual rocks, and in every combination of tide and wind and swell…is the basic occupation of surfers at their local break.” It’s an occupation that has never before been described with this tenderness and deftness.

H Is for Hawk , Helen Macdonald

This is a memoir by a woman who lost a parent and found a hawk. Macdonald, a scholar at Cambridge University, went to pieces after her father died, and in her mourning she did something unexpected: she purchased a goshawk. Macdonald was already an experienced handler of birds, but goshawks are large and wild and fierce even by hawk standards, and she’d never tried to tame one before. The war of wills that ensued may have made the goshawk (Macdonald names her Mabel) tamer, but it made Macdonald wilder too. It also proved strangely healing and redemptive, and she describes her avian adversary in language so breathtaking and immediate, you’d swear one was sitting on your shoulder.

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The 30 greatest book series of all time.

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British writer J.K. Rowling signs copies of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" for public school ... [+] children at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood on October 15, 2007.

From fantasy bodies of work to epic sagas, the vast world of literature contains classic books that have had a significant impact on popular culture, people, and places. Many of these books, which have become series, have captured the hearts and imaginations of readers of all ages worldwide and remain some of the most intriguing—and lucrative—pieces of literature ever to be published. This article compiles a list of the 30 greatest book series of all time, highlighting the plots and characters that have fascinated us, annoyed us, or made us thoroughly loathe them.

Top Book Series

This article covers a range of genres from fantasy to science fiction, and rankings are based on specific factors, including critical acclaim, commercial success, mass appeal, and cultural impact among readers of all ages over the years. From J.K. Rowling’s magical wizarding world to George R.R. Martin’s epic to C.S. Lewis’s magical musings, these series and their authors have earned reputations as the world’s literary elite.

30. The Expanse Series By James S.A. Corey

James S.A. Corey is the joint pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, and their The Expanse Series is a space opera body of work that sends readers to an otherworldly reality powered by escapism. In this futuristic reality, humanity is colonized by the solar system, giving rise to a complex web of conspiracy, political intrigue and the discovery of alien technology. The nine-book series, was originally published in 2011, and adapted into a hit TV show The Expanse, which adapted six out of the nine books in the series.

Who should read: Readers who are intrigued by epic space stories with complex characters, intricate plotting and high-stakes conflicts will be entertained by this series. It is available at Hachette Book Group .

29. The Southern Reach By Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer’s The Southern Reach Trilogy is set in the horrifying and surreal backdrop of Area X, an isolated location that has been isolated from the rest of civilization for years. The series follows a team of scientists and explorers as they venture into the heart of this mysterious territory. As they venture out deeper into Area X, they begin to experience strange physical transformations that challenge their understanding of reality and their own identities. There is no official television adaptation of The Southern Reach Trilogy, however, the first novel in the three-part series, Annihilation , was adapted into a film in 2018.

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Who should read: Readers who enjoy atmospheric and immersive storytelling, as well as those who appreciate horror will be drawn to this series. It is available at Macmillan Publishers .

28. Mistborn By Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy is proof that magic, intrigue and revolution can collide in ways that breathe life into stories. Sanderson tells the story of Vin, a young street thief with a troubled past, who discovers that she possesses rare and powerful allomantic abilities. As she makes her way through the rough and tumble streets of the Final Empire, she becomes involved in a rebellion against the tyrannical Lord Ruler that forces her to join forces with a group of skilled rebels to form a revolution. Sanderson’s apt storytelling in this series is an evergreen literary output that stays with readers long after they turn the final page.

Who should read: Fans of epic fantasy, heist stories and political intrigue will find much to love in Sanderson’s seasoned blend of magic and adventure. The Mistborn is series is currently available on the Macmillan Publishers website, and a feature film adaptation of the series is currently in the works.

27. The Red Rising Saga By Pierce Brown

These books, which eerily mirror real-life issues of discrimination and classism, is a gripping science fiction series that transports readers to a dystopian future where society is divided into color-coded castes, each with its own responsibilities and privileges. At the heart of the saga is the protagonist, Darrow, a young Red miner who embarks on a grueling journey of rebellion and redemption that will change the fate of humanity.

Who should read: This book is ideal for readers who are passionate about social justice and drawn to coming-of-age storylines. The series is available to readers on Penguin House . Brown published the series between 2014 and 2021, and the story unfolds across five novels, with a sixth installment in the works and available for pre-order.

26. Thursday Next Series By Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next Series is a body of work that readers have found delightfully quirky with an inventive collection of novels that transports readers to an alternate version of England. First published between 2001 and 2012, the series follows the adventures of a literary detective called Special Operative as she navigates a world where books are not just objects of leisure but important members of society, with serious consequences for tampering or altering them.

Who should read: This book is perfect for readers who are literature fans to the core. Fforde has plans to publish more books in this series but currently, the series contains seven books and is available on Penguin Books .

25. The Bartimaeus Trilogy By Jonathan Stroud

Writers like Jonathan Stroud are able to thrive in their careers as authors because their uncanny ability to intertwine multiple themes to create a richly layered narrative of intrigue, adventure and rebellion. His book The Bartimaeus Trilogy, which was released between 2003 and 2005, consists of four books and is set against the backdrop of an imaginative world ruled by powerful magicians. Stroud weaves together a body of work that explores complex themes of tyranny, corruption and the struggle for freedom. At the heart of the series is the witty and cunning Djinni Bartimaeus, whose sharp wit and quick tongue provide a refreshing perspective on the events around him. In 2019, Start Media optioned the film and television rights to the adult fantasy series, but there has been no word on the progress of the project.

Who should read: While the series is marketed as young adult fiction, its depth and sophistication make it a rewarding read for readers of all ages. The series is available on Random House .

24. The Kingkiller Chronicle By Patrick Rothfus

Fantasy series can often become boring after a while, with some readers losing interest after the first three books, but that is far from the case here. With The Kingkiller Chronicle, Patrick Rothus keeps readers’ eyes glued to the pages by employing some of the finest skills in an author’s arsenal. Kvothe, the primary character in the book, is a figure whose life story unfolds across the pages, revealing a tale of triumph and tragedy, love and loss, and the pursuit of knowledge and power. Rothus’ episodic storytelling comes alive through Kvothe, who recounts his life story to a scribe, making the series an immersive read. Although there have been attempts to adapt the series into a movie or TV show, there are reportedly some ongoing challenges with this.

Who should read: The Kingkiller Chronicle is an excellent read for a diverse range of audiences, including fans of episodic storytelling and fantasy. The first two books of the fantasy trilogy were published between 2007 and 2011, and the series is available on Penguin Random House .

23. Riyria Revelations By Michael J. Sullivan

Michael J. Sullivan’s Riyria Revelations is an epic series that complements fantasy literature with complex characters who draw in readers with their personal stories. The series follows two protagonists, Royce Melborn, a cunning thief with a checkered past, and Hadrian Blackwater, a talented swordsman, as they embark on a thrilling journey replete with intrigue, dark mystery and dangerous adversaries. The six-book series, published between 2011 and 2012, shows that Sullivan is a master of his craft who has the ability to bring the pages of a book to life with a diverse cast of characters ranging from noble knights to ruthless villains, each with complex personalities. Although the series does not have a TV adaptation, Audible has created dramatized adaptations of the series.

Who should read: Riyria Revelations is a good read for people who enjoy complex plots and complicated protagonists. The series is available on Hachette Book Group .

22. The Witcher Saga By Andrzej Sapkowski

Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher Saga is a series of fantasy novels that has intrigued audiences with a plot that takes readers down the road of a dark and politically turbulent world, filled with magic, monsters and moral ambiguity. Sapkowski introduces readers to Geralt of Rivia, a skilled monster hunter (known as a Witcher), as he navigates his intricate and thrilling world. With its origins in Polish folklore and mythology, The Witcher Saga is comprised of six books, and gained a loyal fanbase for its vivid characters, rich storytelling and exploration of complex themes. Netflix adapted Sapkowski’s work for the silver screen a few years ago, and it got mixed reviews by critics.

Who should read: The Witcher Saga is a perfect book for readers who enjoy reading about complex characters and analyzing political themes. The Witcher Saga was published by Hatchette Book Group .

21. The Belgariad By David Eddings

At the heart of David Eddings’ The Belgariad lies the intriguing story of Garion, a small-town farm boy whose ordinary life takes a significant turn after he discovers his true identity as the heir to a legendary lineage of sorcerers. The coming-of-age books show Garion embarking on a journey of self-discovery, guided by the enigmatic sorcerer Belgarath and accompanied by a colorful cast of companions. Through Garion, Eddings thrusts readers into a world of magic, ancient prophecies, dark conspiracies and epic battles against the forces of darkness. The series is comprised of five books which Eddings wrote over the course of two years.

Who should read: The Belgariad is perfect for young readers and those looking for heroic storylines. The series can be found on the Grim Oak website.

20. The Earthsea Cycle By Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Earthsea Cycle is a remarkable series of fantasy books set in the archipelago of Earthsea, a fictional world characterized by vast seas, endless islands and magic. Although Le Guin intended the series to be a short story, she ended up turning the body of work into a series after realizing that she had grown as a writer and had more to say to share with her readers. Celebrated for its richly imagined world, philosophical depth and exploration of timeless themes, Le Guin’s The Earthsea is undoubtely a fan favorite . In 2006, the book was adapted into a movie called Tales from Earthsea.

Who should read: While The Earthsea Cycle is suitable for readers of all ages, young adult readers, in particular, may appreciate the series’ coming-of-age themes, relatable characters and moral dilemmas. The Earthsea Cycle is available on Simon & Schuster .

19. Crazy Rich Asians By Kevin Kwan

Kevin Kwan’s over-the-top trilogy Crazy Rich Asians is a body of work that is brimming with larger-than-life characters and their opulent lifestyles. The New York Times bestseller tells the story of protagonist Rachel Chu, a New Yorker, who falls madly in love with Nicholas Young, who happens to come from an affluent Singaporean family. Rachel is unaware of this fortune until she and Nick take a trip that reveals a lot of unexpected plot twists. This kicks off an exciting foray into wealth, exuberance and everything in between. In 2018, the series was adapted into a movie.

Who should read: This book is recommended for readers who like a good plot twist. The series is available on Penguin Random House .

Henry Golding and his wife Liv Lo attend the Singapore premiere of "Crazy Rich Asians" on August 21, ... [+] 2018.

18. Goosebumps By R. L. Stine

R.L. Stine revolutionized the world of fiction for young readers when he released the Goosebumps series . The spine-tingling saga was first released in 1992 with the release of Welcome to Dead House , Stine’s ominous invitation into a world lurking with darkness and mystery. Since the initial release, Stine has continued to publish a steady stream of new additions to the series, ensuring that the Goosebumps franchise remains as vibrant, evergreen and unsettling as ever. What makes Stine’s creation a timeless body of work is that it gives his audience a literary playground with which to explore the darker corners of their imaginations. Each tale is carefully crafted to deliver a powerful blend of suspense, mystery and spine-tingling horror, and all 240 books in the series have served their purpose. The series has inspired the 2015 American horror comedy film Goosebumps .

Who should read: This series is an especially good fit for young readers who enjoy the thrill of a good scare. It is available for purchase on Simon & Schuster .

17. The Dresden Files By Jim Butcher

Spanning an impressive 17 books (and counting) and written over the course of more than two decades, Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files is a spellbinding narrative collection with elements of noir mystery, supernatural intrigue and pulse-pounding action. The New York Times bestselling series has attracted readers because of its layered approach to the art of storytelling. At the heart of the series is Harry Dresden, a wizard and private investigator who operates in the shadows of modern-day Chicago. Butcher’s vivid prose comes alive through Dresden, who gives readers a vicarious insight into life in the windy metropolis, while navigating the gritty streets of the city and facing off vengeful vampires and malevolent creatures.

Who should read: Anyone who is intrigued by dark mystery and adventure would find this book fascinating. The 17-part series can be purchased on Penguin Random House .

16. Percy Jackson & the Olympians By Rick Riordan

Rick Riordan introduced readers to the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series with the 2005 debut of the series titled The Lightning Thief . The series underscores the modern-day world of demigods and Greek mythology through the perspective of Percy Jackson, a spirited teenager who discovers that he is the son of Poseidon, the sea god. Although the series centers on Greek mythology, Riordan weaves in elements like adventure, humor, and fantasy to give readers with a diverse palate a wide range of material. Riordan published five of the books in this series over the course of four years and all of the books have remained culturally appealing to young readers over the years. In 2023, Disney+ adapted the body of work into a TV series.

Who should read: This series is recommended for readers who are intrigued by greek mythology, thrillers and adventure. This series is available on Penguin Random House .

15. The Hardy Boys By Franklin W. Dixon (Pseudonym)

Since its first release in 1927, The Hardy Boys series has continued to captivate readers with over 190 thrilling installments, making it one of the longest-running and most beloved mystery series in literary history. Set in the fictional town of Bayport, the Hardy Boys series chronicles the daring adventures of two curious, intellectually sharp brothers, Frank and Joe Hardy. The two have a keen knack for solving mysteries that stump even the most seasoned adult detectives by confronting danger, outwitting cunning adversaries and upholding justice in each action-packed tale. The Hardy Boys series is a body of work that has spanned nearly a century, but has managed to maintain its popularity across generations. This has led to numerous adaptations for television, with the most recent offering being Hulu’s 2020 spin on the series.

Who should read: Fans of detective and mystery books would find this series appealing. The books can be purchased on Simon & Schuster ’s website.

14. The Foundation Series By Isaac Asimov

Published between 1951 and 1993, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is a cornerstone for classic science fiction. Set against the backdrop of a universe inhabited by countless worlds and civilizations, the story serves as the perfect opportunity for Asimov to bring the main characters to life as they explore political intrigue, scientific speculation, and philosophical inquiry with depth and complexity. The series follows a group of exiles who have taken it upon themselves to save humanity from the throes of the Galactic Empire. At the core of the story is Hari Seldon, whose uncanny theories of psychohistory allow him to predict the future with precision, foreseeing the inevitable collapse of the Galactic Empire and the onset of a dark age that will last thousands of years. The science fiction series has been adapted for television and is available on Apple TV Plus.

Who should read: This is a perfect book for readers who are curious about science fiction’s potential to explore complex ideas and intricate plots. The Foundation Series can be purchased on The Penguin Random House website.

13. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy By Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series is a comedic science fiction saga that follows the misadventures of Arthur Dent, his protagonist, who is swept off Earth just before its destruction and embarks on a journey through the cosmos with his eccentric alien friend, Ford Prefect. What sets Adams’ franchise apart is his unique concoction of irreverent humor and thought-provoking philosophical themes. At its core, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is more than just a series of zany escapades—it is a humorous journey of self-discovery and enlightenment. The series has since been adapted to various other formats. In 1981, BBC adapted the television show in the United Kingdom for TV.

Who should read: Readers who enjoy philosophy with a healthy dose of laughter will like the five-book series, which can be purchased on the Penguin Random House website.

12. His Dark Materials By Philip Pullman

In his book His Dark Materials , Philip Pullman leans into multiple genres and themes, including fantasy, adventure and philosophical inquiry to set a parallel universe in motion. In this series, the souls of humans manifest themselves as sentient animal companions, which Pullman refers to as daemons. Through his masterful ability to create characters that challenge and entertain the reader, Pullman brings Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, his two spirited protagonists, to life as they embark on a journey of self-discovery and rebellion against oppressive forces. Pullman blurs the lines between dark adventure and philosophical depth, which is appealing to readers of all ages. He wrote the series between 1995 and 2000, and in 2019, BBC One and HBO premiered the fantasy drama series His Dark Materials based on this series.

Who should read: Fans of thought-provoking fantasy seeking more than just escapism will find His Dark Materials to be a rewarding and enriching experience. The four-book series can be purchased on the Scholastic website.

Jack Thorne, Jane Tranter, Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson and Lin-Manuel Miranda of "His Dark Materials" ... [+] speak onstage during the HBO Summer TCA Panels on July 24, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California.

11. The Dark Tower By Stephen King

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series is arguably his magnum opus. The body of work defies categorization, blending elements of fantasy, science fiction and horror into a seamless blend. As usual, King leans into his powerful storytelling abilities by introducing readers to Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger and a lone figure on a quest to reach the enigmatic Dark Tower — a mythical figure that holds the key to saving a world that is quickly becoming distinct. The book highlights Roland’s journey as it leads him to confront his inner demons and make sacrifices to reach his ultimate goal. The series spans eight novels, and as he always does, King finds a way to sweep readers into the fictional world of his characters in the most memorable and remarkable ways. In 2017, the series was adapted into a movie called The Dark Tower , featuring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey.

Who should read: Lovers of fiction, fantasy and adventure will find this book fascinating and entertaining. It can be purchased on the Simon & Schuster website.

10. Wheel of Time By Robert Jordan

Drawing from deep mythology and diverse cultures and traditions, The Wheel of Time series draws readers in with its epic scope and timeless themes of destiny, sacrifice and the nature of power. Robert Jordan’s body of work is not just a saga that ushers readers into its thick plot throughout fourteen volumes, it also immerses readers in a world where the forces of Light and Shadow collide in a power struggle for the fate of existence itself. At the core of the story is Rand al’Thor, a young man from a modest background who discovers he is the Dragon Reborn, a prophesied champion destined to confront the Dark One and change the course of the Wheel of Time. The series is reportedly being adapted into a movie trilogy that is in the works.

Who should read: This book is perfect for anyone who enjoys long reads and is committed to following the plot of a story, no matter how extended it is, to see it through to the end. The book can be found on Macmillan .

9. Discworld By Terry Pratchett

In Discworld , Terry Pratchett’s boundless whimsical imagination takes flight within the confines of a flat, disc-shaped world perched on the backs of four colossal elephants standing atop a giant turtle. In this fantastical world, magical wizards, mischievous dragons and eccentric characters bring the pages to life, inviting readers to embark on a journey that is a vivid exploration of both the absurd and the fantastical. Over the course of 32 years, the English author crafted 41 books, each brimming with its unique sense of sharp wit, satirical humor and idiosyncratic social commentary. Since its release, the series has garnered a loyal fanbase and critical acclaim for its unparalleled imagination and insightful exploration of societal norms. Although there have been some attempts to turn Discworld into a film adaptation, none has truly been successful.

Who should read: This book is a good fit for readers who are intrigued by fantasy and good humor. The book can be found on the Harper Collins website.

Author Sir Terry Pratchett leaves hand imprints and his signature in concrete while fans of his ... [+] "Discworld" novels look on at Kingwell Rise, Wincanton, England.

8. A Song of Ice and Fire By George R.R. Martin

George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is a powerful epic with unexpected plot twists and turns. The story is set in the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos, where noble houses vie for power and the threat of supernatural forces is ever looming. Through the series, Martin invites readers into a world where power is a double-edged sword, and loyalty can be a deadly flaw. Martin first published the first book in the series in 1996, and while five books have been released to date, he is reportedly working on the sixth novel, The Winds of Winter. His seventh novel in the series, A Dream of Spring, is allegedly also in the works. Thanks to its adaptation into the hit HBO television series Game of Thrones, Martin’s brain child has also become a TV fan-favorite.

Who should read: Lovers of fiction, fantasy and mystery would be happy with this book. Currently, it is available on Penguin Random House .

7. Outlander By Diana Gabaldon

Diana Gabaldon’s nine-book series Outlander is a treasure trove of creative mastery, time travel and apt storytelling. The historical romantic novels follow the story of British nurse Claire Randall, who time travels to 18th-century Scotland and finds love and adventure with the enigmatic Jamie Fraser. The encounter changes the course of Claire’s life and opens up her world to endless possibilities beyond anything she could have imagined. Gabaldon first published the first book in the nine-part series in 1991, and there are reports that she will publish a 10th sometime in the future. In 2014, the book series was adapted into a seven-season historical drama television series that premiered on Starz.

Who should read: This is a perfect book for readers who enjoy vivid imagery and are fans of complex characters. The series can be purchased on Simon & Schuster ’s website.

6. Fifty Shades By E. L. James

Cult classic Fifty Shades is an erotic six-book series by British author E. L. James that took the world by storm when he released the series, and fans soon fell in love with its provocative storyline and steamy romance. The series follows the intense relationship between literature student Anastasia Steele and mysterious billionaire Christian Grey as they navigate the complex nature of their relationship and the power dynamic within it. Set against the backdrop of Seattle, Washington, the Fifty Shades series explores themes of dominance and submission, boldly pushing the boundaries of what is accepted in conventional romance literature . In 2015, the books were adapted into an erotic romantic film series, which brought in a box office worldwide profit of $569.7 million against a budget of $40 million.

Who should read: Readers who are comfortable with intense character dynamics and are comfortable with explicit content will find Fifty Shades an engaging and provocative read. The series is available on Penguin Random House .

5. The Hunger Games By Suzanne Collins

In modern-day cult classic The Hunger Games , Suzanne Collins creates a dystopian trilogy that follows the main character, Katniss Everdeen, as she navigates the brutal Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death, and becomes a symbol of strength, courage and rebellion against the oppressive Capitol. As Katniss navigates the arena and all of the things that come with it, she is not only in survival mode, she transforms into a source of strength and hope for the oppressed districts, embodying the qualities of strength, courage and defiance in the face of tyranny. Collins plays into themes that rely on justice in the face of blatant injustice and advocacy for the oppressed when no one else will speak up for them. Collins’ body of work was adapted into the wildly popular The Hunger Games film series, featuring Jennifer Lawrence, who brought Katniss to life on the silver screen.

Who should read: This book is a perfect fit for fans of dystopian fiction, action-packed thrillers and strong female protagonists. The series is available for purchase on the Scholastic website.

Jennifer Lawrence attends the Spanish premiere of the film "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" on ... [+] November 13, 2013 in Madrid.

4. Twilight Saga By Stephenie Meyer

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga is arguably one of the best fantasy storylines in modern history. The story unfolds in the small, rainy town of Forks, Washington, where Bella Swan, a reserved and introspective teenager, relocates to live with her father. There, she encounters the enigmatic Edward Cullen, a vampire with a compelling allure and a dangerous secret. As their forbidden romance blossoms, Bella becomes entangled in a world of immortal beings, werewolves and ageless supernatural conflicts. The book broaches several genres, inviting readers to explore several themes and sub themes, including romance, fantasy, suspense and horror. The book series inspired the mega-successful adaptation, The Twilight Saga , which spun five films and has grossed a staggering $5.28 billion worldwide.

Who should read: Fans of paranormal romance and supernatural drama will find themselves captivated by the Twilight Saga ’s storyline. This series is available through the series’ official publisher, Hachette Book Group .

3. The Chronicles of Narnia By C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia is a classic series of seven fantasy novels, each with a self-contained story that contributes to the overarching narrative of Narnia’s philosophy and mythology. Through this series, Lewis guides readers on a mystical journey that begins with an enchanted wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and culminates in the final book, The Last Battle . In the series, Lewis explores themes of moral goodness, courage, sacrifice and redemption. The book has had a significant impact on readers of all ages, and some have even said that it carries themes that are arguably biblical. The classic was written between 1949 and 1954 and three out of the seven books in the series were adapted for the big screen, where they grossed $1.5 billion.

Who should read: Chronicles of Narnia is perfect for people who love philosophy and religion. The book’s timeless charm and captivating storytelling will enchant children and adults alike. Fans of fantasy, adventure and Christian allegory will also find a lot to appreciate in Lewis’s imaginative world. This series is available on Harper Collins .

A complete seven-book boxed set of C.S. Lewis' classic "Chronicles of Narnia" series.

2. The Lord of the Rings By J.R.R. Tolkien

Set in the fictional world of Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy, The Lord of the Rings , has amassed a cult-like following for its intricate storytelling, complex characters and mass appeal. Tolkien’s masterpiece follows the quest to destroy the One Ring and defeat the Dark Lord Sauron, while leaning into universal feel-good themes like heroism, triumph over evil, and friendship. The series includes four books and is one of the most critical pieces of literature in the fantasy genre. Although Tolkien wrote the books between 1937 and 1949, it continues to be a a widely celebrated classic, even in the 21st century. To date, the body of work has sold over 150 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 40 languages. Because of its commercial success, it was adapted into six movies , collectively grossing over $2.9 billion worldwide.

Who should read: This series is perfect for intellectually curious readers who are interested in fantasy and complex characters. Harper Collins currently offers the series on its website.

1. Harry Potter Series By J.K. Rowling

Inarguably one of the most beloved book series of all time, J.K. Rowling struck gold with her multi-billion-dollar Harry Potter franchise. The series follows the journey of a young wizard, Harry Potter, who attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and battles the evil wizard Voldemort. Rowling’s vivid depiction of the complex characters in the story and the forces that shape their worlds, against the ultimate battle of good against evil, forms the backbone of the storyline. The series consists of seven books, published over a decade, from 1997 through 2007.

With over 600 million copies sold worldwide, the Harry Potter series has become a literary phenomenon, and has been translated into numerous languages, inspiring a generation of readers and an equally lucrative film franchise.

Who should read: Readers of all ages enjoy magical adventures and stories about timeless themes of friendship and courage in the face of adversity. To purchase the Harry Potter series, visit Scholastic .

What Are The Best Fantasy Book Series?

Robert Jordan kicked off The Wheel of Time series with his first release of The Eye of the World in 1990. This epic saga follows the journey of Rand al'Thor as he battles against the forces of the Dark One to save the world from destruction. Another fan-favorite is A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, which debuted with A Game of Thrones in 1996. Set in Westeros, the series is celebrated for its complex characters and epic battles for power.

What Are The Best Sci-Fi Book Series?

Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games is a standout series that changed the trajectory of Science Fiction in the 21st century when it was published in 2008. Set in a dystopian future where children are forced to fight to the death in televised competitions, the series follows the story of Katniss Everdeen as she boldly navigates a revolution against the Capitol. Many literature critics have affirmed that The Hunger Games is a modern science fiction classic.

What Are The Best Romance Book Series? 

Set in the small town of Forks, Washington, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight is considered one of the most powerful romance stories of all time, and it follows the romance between Bella Swan, a teenage girl, and Edward Cullen, a vampire. Although their love is taboo, the story makes for an intriguing read and explores complex themes of love, sacrifice, and the supernatural as Bella and Edward navigate the challenges of their forbidden romance. 

Bottom Line

Some of the most best-selling book series of all time have gripping storylines that showcase epic fantasies, fascinating thrillers and feature multi-faceted characters that have left their imprint on literature.

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9 Must-Read Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books Releasing in April 2024

Add these to your wish-list for spring..

If you’re looking for something new to read this spring, these brand-new and upcoming sci-fi and fantasy books offer many amazing worlds to delve into. While many prominent authors have novels being published this month—like Ann Leckie, Leigh Bardugo, and Edward Ashton—several new novelists are also debuting with some excellent SFF books to consider.

For sci-fi fans, we've found novels exploring dystopian worlds, rogue AI, generation ships, and imaginative parallel universes. And, for anyone looking for that next fantasy adventure, we've tracked down novels that traverse unknown ocean depths, Chinese mythology, and 16th-century Spain. In summary, we've tried to include something for every reader in this month's sci-fi and fantasy book roundup. Which ones are you looking forward to reading? Here are the best sci-fi fantasy books to consider in April 2024.

Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton

Much like Ashton’s first novel— Mickey7 , which has a film adaptation releasing in 2025 — Mal Goes to War is a dark sci-fi comedy that places a sardonic narrator in a dangerous future setting. While similar in tone, the two have very different settings. Mal is an independent AI living in infospace watching serial dramas while a war rages between the augmented Federals and the ‘pure’ Humanists. Mal fully intends to ignore the war and the humans scurrying outside infospace.

Unfortunately, the war finds him. When the Humanists cut off infospace, Mal is left adrift. He finds a new host in a deceased augmented human. For some reason, the young child he discovers beside the dead human seems somewhat disturbed by his animation of the corpse’s body. On his journey to find a new home, he befriends several humans, making him realize that he does care about what happens in the war. If you enjoyed Mickey7 and The Murderbot Diaries , you will likely enjoy Ashton’s latest. It’s brilliantly narrated on audio if you’re an audiobook listener.

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

Bardugo is a queen of engrossing page-turners regardless of length. Her newest novel is no exception. This dark and steamy standalone historical fantasy is set in 16th-century Spain during the height of the Inquisition. Luzia is a Jewish scullion who can do small acts of magic by singing Ladino refrains. She keeps both her magic and her heritage a secret, knowing that if anyone discovered either, she would be turned over to the Inquisition.

When her mistress catches her doing a small act of magic, she forces Luzia to perform magic tricks at dinner parties. Secretly, Luzia enjoys the attention and craves more. A wealthy and ambitious nobleman soon discovers her and wants her to compete to be the king’s magical champion. In his employ is the mysterious and sinister Guillén Santangel, a cursed immortal who makes Luzia feel like she’s flying. Bardugo’s latest is a lovely and magical ode to marginalized and diaspora cultures during the Spanish Inquisition.

Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes

Barnes’ debut novel, Dead Silence , was a nail-biting space horror, and her second space horror, Ghost Station , is, dare I say, even better than her first. Dr. Ophelia Bray is a psychologist better known for her ridiculously wealthy family than her work. She has tried to separate herself as much as possible from her problematic family, but their legacy seems to follow her wherever she goes.

She specializes in treating people with ERS—a space-based mental health condition that often leads to violence, both self-inflicted and towards other crew members. After a crew member dies, she joins a deep-space mission to explore an abandoned planet. The crew immediately begins harassing Ophelia, but she’s determined to do her job well. On the planet, however, everything goes wrong. This nuanced, character-driven space horror with intense plotting is a fantastic addition to the genre, and could be perfect for fans of Dead Space, Alien, or Event Horizon.

Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction by Ann Leckie

Ann Leckie is well-known to SFF readers for her award-winning Imperial Radch series. This is her first short story collection, though many of these stories have been previously published in short story markets. It’s divided into three sections.

The first section occurs in primarily unspecified worlds, the second in the Imperial Radch universe, and the third in the same world as her standalone fantasy novel, The Raven Tower . It’s an imaginative and often experimentative collection with coming-of-age stories for a lonely spawn, dinosaurs fleeing meteors by escaping into space, espionage and extreme religious piety in Radch, schemes between gods, and so much more. Often, science fiction authors excel at short stories, and Leckie is no exception.

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar

Samatar taps into her experience as a professor in this thought-provoking dystopian novella deeply entrenched in university academic politics and carceral control. Set on a mining spaceship that’s part of a fleet of generation ships, it rotates between two characters.

The boy is one of the Chained who lives as a captive deep below the ship. He’s haunted by dreams of drowned people and makes art depicting his inner thoughts and dreams. A prophet speaks to him of the practice, a sort of philosophical meditation, and the boy tries to follow it by devoting himself to his art.

While the other is a woman, a professor of older knowledge working on a paper about play among children who wear blue bracelets around their ankles, like her, that can be controlled by the elite. She initiates a scholarship to allow one of the Chained to attend the university, and the boy is chosen as its recipient. This is a unique and sometimes opaque read, at turns disturbing and profound. Samatar deftly manages to pack a lot into only a slim page count.

A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall

Cathrall’s debut is a lovely epistolary cozy fantasy for fans of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries and Legends & Lattes . In a world mostly covered by water, people live on small islands where scholars study the sea. E., who has OCD, lives in the only underwater house—the Deep Houseëwhich her eccentric (and deceased) scholar mother designed.

After a strange marine animal appears outside the house, she writes to Scholar Henerey, a renowned marine naturalist, in hopes he can shed light on the nature of the animal. The two start a delightful exchange of letters, eventually leading to deeper feelings. Soon, E. becomes riveted by a new mystery, a strange structure that suddenly appears outside her home. The frame story happens one year after these events. E.’s younger sister, Scholar Sophy, is mourning E.’s presumed death and begins a correspondence with Henerey’s brother, Navigator Vyerin. They begin a project of exchanging letters, diaries, and other written materials to explain the year E. and Henerey spent in correspondence. It’s a delicious slow-burn fantasy and the first book in a series.

Song of the Six Realms by Judy I. Lin

YA fantasy readers will adore this beautifully written standalone based on Chinese mythology. After being accused of treason, Xue’s family was put to death, and their name was eradicated. An orphan, her uncle raised her before turning her over to the House of Flowing Water, where she’s learned to entertain and perfected her musical skill at the qin.

She’s an unparalleled musician, and after her first public performance, a stranger asks for a private audience with her. He offers to become her patron, and she accepts, hoping to earn her freedom. He turns out to be the Duke of Dreams, and his derelict mansion hides secrets that could put Xue’s life at risk.

Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho

This entertaining found-family sci-fi is like K-drama meets The Expanse . Korea’s military space force, the Alliance, dominates the galaxy. Ocean Yoon is a down-on-her-luck pilot aboard the Ohneulis. She and the crew are currently attending a gala in Seoul, but Ocean skips the gala to instead go shopping with Teo, the son of a wealthy Korean family.

Meanwhile, Haven replaces a crew member aboard the Ohneulis and becomes their medic, though the crew distrusts him for being part of a religious community called the Death’s Hand. Cho rotates between these three perspectives as the ragtag crew navigates adventures, politics, and romance. It ends on a cliffhanger, so hopefully, book two will be released soon!

In Universes by Emet North

North’s debut novel is an inventive, mind-bending literary science fiction that delves into mental health, queerness, Judaism, love, and more as it explores parallel universes. Raffi is an assistant in a NASA lab studying dark matter and feels wildly out of their depth.

They struggle to make meaningful connections as they grapple with depression, but the one bright spot in their life is Britt, a sculptor who grew up in the same town as Raffi. Each chapter imagines a different universe with Raffi and Britt, each universe growing more and more chaotic and surreal as the novel progresses. Despite the wildness of each chapter, this slim novel is a wonderfully immersive and vivid read.

Margaret Kingsbury is a freelance writer, editor, and all-around book nerd based in Nashville, TN. Her pieces on books and reading have appeared in Book Riot, BuzzFeed News, School Library Journal, StarTrek.com, Parents, and more. Follow her on Instagram @BabyLibrarians and Twitter and Bluesky @AReaderlyMom.

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The 50 best Hollywood books of all time

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It’s been said that Hollywood is more an idea than a place, and no task punctuates the notion quite like asking people to choose the best Hollywood book of all time: “What do you mean,” they inevitably ask, “by ‘Hollywood’?”

The list that follows, compiled from a survey of experts in the worlds of publishing and entertainment and written by regular contributors to The Times’ film and books coverage, answers that question more astutely than I ever could. In fiction and non-, across genres and decades, these 50 titles compare Hollywood to an assembly line, a criminal enterprise, a high-seas expedition and much, much more — a penchant for shape-shifting that might explain its hold on the cultural imagination.

Yet any entity that can simultaneously be described as an industry, a society, even a style, is liable to collect more detractors than it would had it remained simply a real estate development, and if there’s a through-line in the great Hollywood books it is the conviction that creating magic must come at a cost. Sometimes comic, more often tragic, they chronicle disappointments, humiliations, botch-jobs and flops of every conceivable variety, personal and professional, creative and economic, individual and institutional; even the more rose-colored perspectives still make it seem as if producing a single movie, much less a good one, qualifies as a miracle.

We chose the best Hollywood books of all time. What’s on your list?

But that, I suspect, is why we keep coming back, self-flagellants before the altar of motion pictures. This place, this idea, demands of its adherents what religion does any pilgrim — devotion, sacrifice, faith that all will be worth it in the end — and supplies in turn the same benefits — ritual, community, comfort. You simply have to take it on trust: If watching movies is heaven, and living without them is hell, then Hollywood is the purgatory in between. — Matt Brennan

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Movies (and Other Things)

(Shea Serrano, 2019)

There’s a nonchalant freshness to the way former journalist and author Serrano writes about the variety of subjects that interest him, whether basketball or movies. His entertaining and insightful musings on the latter form the uniquely titled chapters here: Each of them aims to provide answers to one of Serrano’s specific inquiries related to popular flicks. The approachable tone, and the selection of films discussed, removes any sense of snobbery that some readers may associate with film criticism. Serrano doesn’t purport to be an expert but rather a movie fan, one with a talent for crafting engaging prose, sharing his most galaxy-brained thoughts on the kind of movies one has seen more times than they can count. — Carlos Aguilar

Myra Breckinridge

(Gore Vidal, 1968)

Vidal’s 1968 tale of a trans woman exacting her revenge on a Hollywood studio is campy and profane, its exclamatory prose giddy to provoke. Written in a haste that contrasted Vidal’s more considered historical fiction, “Myra” reads like Vidal was in a mad dash to work through his own sexuality. (“A very subtle psychological self-portrait,” was Christopher Isherwood’s cheeky assessment.) But its heedless vigor is part of its enduring charm, sending up the egos and power plays (both financial and sexual) that drive the movie business. The book is probably best known for a dismal 1970 adaptation starring Raquel Welch and John Huston that remains bolted to lists of the worst-ever movies. But the novel itself remains a potent Tinseltown satire. — Mark Athitakis

The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood

(Sam Wasson, 2020)

No one has been more haunted by the fateful final line of Roman Polanski’s most accomplished work, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” than Wasson. To dissect a seminal work in American cinema, the author dived deep into the minds and lives of the key players that came together for this picture about corruption in 1930s Los Angeles to become what it is. These include star Jack Nicholson, Paramount executive Robert Evans, screenwriter Robert Towne and the controversial Polanski himself. As he maps the creation of “Chinatown” in astounding detail, Wasson simultaneously eulogizes the bygone era when Hollywood studios were interested in filmmaking with an idiosyncratic voice. — C A

(Bruce Wagner, 2012)

Don’t look for someone to like in this blistering, X-rated takedown of Hollywood strivers. Not the pregnant teen who’s been exploited by her Nan Goldin-like mother since childhood or her porn-obsessed boyfriend. Not the paparazzo who strives for underage crotch-shots or the young cancer survivor who spells it with a K, hoping to get the attention of the Kardashians. Published in 2012, the text leaps, runs on, includes emoticons and ignores punctuation, just like DMs and text messages. In this massive, manic book full of explicit sex and characters with equally naked ambition, Wagner holds a mirror up to the underside of Hollywood. It may be a disturbing vision, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. — Carolyn Kellogg

Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11

(Evelyn Alsultany, 2012)

At the heart of this erudite academic monograph is a counterintuitive claim: following the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the rise of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims was met with an equally high incidence of sympathetic portrayals of those populations in the U.S. media. That’s not to say there weren’t horribly damaging depictions of Middle Eastern terrorists rooted in offensive racial stereotypes — many concocted in the service of offering up an “evil cultural Other” that anchored much of the rhetoric around the so-called War on Terror. But Alsultany’s study keenly avoids endorsement of neat categories like “good” and “bad” representation, aiming instead to complicate how it is that media images on either side of that divide can fuel meanings that end up justifying policies of exclusion and inequality. — Manuel Betancourt

The Deer Park

(Norman Mailer, 1955)

Though set in Palm Springs, “The Deer Park” is the most insightful, unsparing look at the machineries of Hollywood I know of — Mailer’s underrated masterpiece.

— HOWARD RODMAN, novelist, screenwriter, former president of the Writers Guild of America West and current vice president, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles

(Mark Rozzo, 2022)

Hopper is the bold-faced name, but Hayward is the heart of this intimate story of a marriage that tied together the L.A. art and music scenes, Golden Era Hollywood and the emerging indie film movement. Hayward’s parents were so Old Hollywood that she and Hopper were regularly invited to David O. Selznick’s house; Hopper would, after their split, make “Easy Rider.” Before things fall apart, they hang with the Ferus Gallery and help Andy Warhol have his first L.A. art show; act and model and start a family; and play host to a glittering parade of soon-to-be-famous musicians and actors. Hayward is still with us and opened the door to tell the story of the time her bohemian, chaotic Hollywood home played host to a seismic shift in three art forms at once. — C K

Stay Tuned: An Inside Look at the Making of Prime-Time Television

(Richard Levinson and William Link, 1981)

Levinson and Link are hardly household names among today’s TV heads, but they deserve to be. As the creators of “Columbo” and “Murder, She Wrote,” and a library full of trailblazing TV movies (including “Crisis at Central High” and “That Certain Summer”), they combined razor-sharp storytelling instincts with an acute social consciousness at a time when television was still widely derided as “the idiot box” (or worse). They also wrote this shrewdly intelligent assessment of their work and their chosen field, a good two decades before the dawn of prestige cable and the widespread acceptance that the small screen is where the really good storytelling happens. The book’s title intentionally predicts great things on the horizon in the early ‘80s, when Levinson and Link wrote the book. They’re also low-key quite funny, as when they point out that the producer of any dramatic series might also indulge in some rewriting “if he’s a writer (or thinks he’s a writer).” — Chris Vognar

Making the White Man’s Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies

(Angela Aleiss, 2005)

A rigorous study of how anti-Native racism and misrepresentation has pervaded Hollywood filmmaking, from D.W. Griffith shorts to “The Searchers,” “Stagecoach” to “Dances With Wolves,” one-note savages to white saviors. But Aleiss, who watched dozens of features and shorts for this influential book, also demonstrates that there were plenty of affirming stories about Native Americans in the pre-western era — “the Indian as a noble hero actually preceded the cowboy star,” she notes. But such stories were frozen out in favor of cowboys-and-Indians yarns, and shifting audiences throughout the 20th century influenced what kinds of Native American narratives were elevated and suppressed. Aleiss spotlights the industry groups and directors who’ve worked to address stereotypes about “half-breeds” and conversation narratives but also demonstrates why it’s often been a losing battle. — M A

(Kennedy Ryan, 2021)

“Reel” is a gorgeous romance novel about Broadway and Hollywood. Through Ryan’s masterful storytelling, readers are transported into a world where passion, ambition and the pursuit of one’s dreams collide, leaving the characters to make difficult choices about love, family and the future.

— LEAH KOCH, co-owner of Culver City’s the Ripped Bodice, the first independent bookstore in the United States devoted to the celebration of romance novels

Raising Kane

(Pauline Kael, 1971)

Did Orson Welles get too much glory for “Citizen Kane”? Absolutely, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael insists in this novella-length fire-starter about the making of the greatest movie of all time. (We can save that skirmish for another day.) As Charles Foster Kane, a sendup of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, Welles embodied the image of a vainglorious Great Man. But Welles’ success, according to Kael, meant he also needed to be taken down a peg. > GO TO STORY

Why Kael’s fight over ‘Citizen Kane’ still matters

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Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films

(Donald Bogle, 1973)

Donald Bogle’s “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks” is considered the standard text on Black characters in American movies. But when the book was first published, in 1973, it was just about the only text on the subject. This might be hard to imagine today, when books about the intersection of race and cinema flow forth on a regular basis (among the strongest in recent years are Will Haygood’s “Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World” and Robin R. Means Coleman’s “The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema From Fodder to Oscar”). Such abundance was unthinkable when Bogle, then a young journalist who had worked as a story editor for Otto Preminger, began his odyssey into the industry’s appallingly racist history. Bogle’s book was practically the birth of the field. > GO TO STORY

The book that shaped Black Hollywood history

Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman

(Alan Rickman, 2022)

Today, the late British actor might best be known for playing stern wizard Severus Snape in the “Harry Potter” film franchise. But in a career spanning nearly four decades, he amassed a wide-ranging collection of on-screen personas. What these diaries reveal, however, is that perhaps the Rickman behind the scenes was the most compelling character. The compilation of forthright entries opens a window into his most intimate moments with friends and loved ones, as well as memorable professional experiences. The self-portrait that text pieces together is that of a multifaceted person and artist with a singular perspective on his craft and on quotidian life. — C A

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma

(Claire Dederer, 2023)

Perhaps the most exhilarating thing about this book is not the subject matter — can we consume art after learning how monstrous the artist is? — but how Dederer puts her thinking about it down on the page. She considers all the angles on Roman Polanski, the film director who pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor in 1977 and has been accused of other incidents of sexual assault — who also himself suffered extraordinary trauma and has (significantly to Dederer, once a film critic) made great movies. She is more forgiving than you might think, which allows her fascinating book to invite engagement. In addition to filmmakers, she looks at writers, musicians and actors and also female monsters (bad mothers). Winner of the L.A. Times’ 2023 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose , this book is a remarkable artistic inquiry. — C K

Memo From David O. Selznick

(David O. Selznick, selected and edited by Rudy Behlmer, 1972)

If you want to learn about how to produce, this is an incredibly fun way to do it.

— DAVID MADDEN, head of global entertainment for Wattpad WEBTOON Studios and former executive at Fox, AMC Networks and Berlanti Television

Valley of the Dolls

(Jacqueline Susann, 1966)

Susann was no great shakes as a model and actor. But when she turned to a typewriter, the entertainment world quivered. “Valley of the Dolls” hit Hollywood like a mile-wide powder puff — everyone paged through her bestseller looking for fingerprints. Could its ruthless and needy singer Neely O’Hara be inspired by Judy Garland? Was Jennifer, the doomed blond, based on Carole Landis or Marilyn Monroe? Was anyone in the industry sober? Like the characters she channeled, Susann was a pill-popper roiling with frustrated ambition, a never-was starlet who’d been close enough to the action to hear the good gossip. (The novel’s interconnected affairs remind us that show business was, and is, a very small clique.) Her witty and tireless self-promotion became the modern template of a celebrity author. Responding to rumors that the book’s tyrannical Broadway star was based on her former friend Ethel Merman, Susann quipped, “We didn’t speak before the book came out. Let’s just say that now we’re not speaking louder.” — Amy Nicholson

From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies

(Molly Haskell, 1974)

At the time of its publication, Haskell writes in her introduction to the third edition of “From Reverence to Rape,” she “wanted to show how women had in fact been better served by the notoriously tyrannical studio system than they were in the newer, freer, hipper Hollywood of the (then) present. This has since become a truism, but in 1974 it was heresy.” More than any single point she draws about women’s place in the American cinema, though, whether via her discussion of “the woman’s film,” her decade-by-decade history or her comparison to European patterns, it’s Haskell’s refusal to hew to received wisdom that has sustained the book’s relevance for 50 years. Evincing no patience for pat readings or political agendas, Haskell effortlessly underscores the notion that the meaning of movies can’t be plotted on a chart, and no matter where the critical consensus at a given moment lies, her chewing over films from “His Girl Friday” to “Carnal Knowledge” — whether they go down easy or get stuck in her craw — remains timeless. — Brennan

Hollywood Babylon

(Kenneth Anger, 1965)

Given the number of inaccuracies, falsehoods and all around debunked stories found in “Hollywood Babylon ,” you’d be forgiven for thinking this salacious collection of scandals has no merit. Then again, the brainchild of one of the most avant-garde queer filmmakers of the 20th century is less interested in facts about show business than in revealing the lurid underbelly that’s long cemented it. Originally published in France in 1959, the book first arrived in the U.S. in 1965, but it was the image-heavy edition printed a decade later that ignited the controversy that follows it to this day. Riddled with off-color anecdotes tackling everything from incest to suicide and featuring marquee stars from the ’20s and ’30s including Fatty Arbuckle, Lupe Velez and Clara Bow, it more than lives up to how the New York Times described it: a “306‐page box of poisoned bonbons.” — Betancourt

The Jaws Log

(Carl Gottlieb, 1975)

Gottlieb witnessed firsthand the complications that surfaced during the production of “Jaws,” the first summer blockbuster. A friend of the young Steven Spielberg, who was only 28 when he directed the imposing shark story based on Peter Benchley’s novel, Gottlieb first came on board to act in a small role and to work on improving the screenplay. But he ultimately chronicled the young director’s feat as it was unfolding. The meticulously told account provides insight into the problem-solving approach of Spielberg and his collaborators when faced with a myriad of crises. In doing so, the journal illustrates the titanic collective effort making a movie entails and the uncertainty about how the end result will turn out, even when you have the future wunderkind of cinema at the helm. — C A

You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again

(Julia Phillips, 1991)

To see Julia Phillips become the first female producer to win a best picture Oscar is to get a glimpse of the charisma and wit that made her so welcome in Hollywood, in boardrooms and on sets, until she wasn’t. At the 1974 Academy Awards, a streaker had interrupted David Niven introducing presenter Elizabeth Taylor, who stumbled over her lines, then announced “The Sting” as the winner. Phillips took the stage with her (not yet ex-) husband, Michael, and their co-producer Tony Bill. Phillips, with a touch of New York accent, said, “You can imagine what a trip this is for a Jewish girl from Great Neck. Tonight I get to win an Academy Award and meet Elizabeth Taylor all in the same moment.” Off-screen, Taylor guffaws. > GO TO STORY

Hollywood’s bravest memoir wasn’t written by a movie star

L.A. Confidential

(James Ellroy, 1990)

Ellroy’s cynical noir takes such a dark view of Los Angeles that the city is practically a black hole. The gravitational force is, of course, Hollywood and its insatiable need for sex, drugs, money and power (and criminals willing to supply them). Ellroy named names — Mickey Cohen, Johnny Stompanato — and barely disguised others, such as his entertainment tycoon Raymond Dieterling, who wants to build a theme park for his character Moochie Mouse. Most damningly, though, Ellroy describes a Los Angeles Police Department that functions like a movie studio. Here, every officer’s career hinges on their ability to put on a performance. The cops script phony hearings, stash props on perps, rehearse their threatening zingers, stage massacres that make them look like heroes and dress up for flashy narcotics busts in blue blazers that bring out their eyes. To Ellroy, the LAPD doesn’t want to protect and serve — it just wants applause. — A N

The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies

(Vito Russo, 1981)

First published in 1981, “The Celluloid Closet” was the culmination of decades’ worth of work by film historian and LGBTQ activist Russo. Initially designed as a live lecture with clips from classic films that showed queer-coded characters, cruel homophobic stereotypes and everything in between, Russo’s ambitious tome chronicled the many ways Hollywood had depicted gays and lesbians on the big screen. With sections such as “Who’s a Sissy? Homosexuality According to Tinseltown” and “Struggle: Fear and Loathing in Gay Hollywood,” Russo’s encyclopedic study was a groundbreaking intervention into discussions of visibility and representation that are nowadays shepherded by the likes of GLAAD, the very organization Russo founded. The influential nonfiction book would go on to be reissued in 1987 with more contemporary additions and in 1996 was adapted into a Peabody Award-winning documentary by the same name, narrated by Lily Tomlin. — Betancourt

Lulu in Hollywood

(Louise Brooks, 1982)

Brooks was best known for G.W. Pabst’s 1929 drama “Pandora’s Box,” in which her Lulu, a ferocious flapper with a pageboy haircut, seduced and abandoned all men who dared stand in her path. But she was also an astute observer of show business customs and personalities, and, as it turned out, a very good writer. This collection of personal essays covers subjects ranging from her time working with director William “Wild Bill” Wellman on “Beggars of Life” to her friendship with Humphrey Bogart, of whom she writes: “Humphrey Bogart spent the last twenty-one years of his life laboriously converting the established character of a middle-aged man from that of a conventional, well-bred theater actor named Humphrey to one that complemented his film roles — a rebellious tough known as Bogey.” Brooks was very wise to the ways of image; she also deftly transcended her own. — C V

The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film

(Michael Ondaatje, 2002)

One of the editors on bona fide classics such as Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and “The Conversation,” three-time Oscar-winner Murch holds a well of hard-earned knowledge about the mechanics of visual storytelling. A portion of that narrative wisdom is contained within the pages of this collection of rich exchanges with lauded novelist Ondaatje. (The pair met during the making of Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient,” a film adapted from Ondaatje’s book and edited by Murch.) The intellectual wealth of these chats goes beyond film editing — an often-misunderstood craft that is absolutely essential to how we perceive cinema — and extends to the overall history of the medium in the last third of the 20th century. — C A

Money: A Suicide Note

(Martin Amis, 1984)

In the late 1970s, Amis wrote the screenplay for an unremarkable science-fiction film, “Saturn 3.” On the evidence of this savage industry satire, the experience was souring, dehumanizing and debauching. John Self, the novel’s narrator, is a hard-drinking director traveling between New York and London to steer a film titled “Good Money,” and his observations are rich with fine-grain detail about the celebrities and agents essential to the movie business. But it’s as much a story about the movie business’ relentless damage to the psyche, as John is sunk in porn and prostitutes and drink, swallowed up not just by his success but his lust for it. “The artists in my story are bull artists, con artists, drink artists,” Amis told an interviewer about “Money.” But not good artists, morally or cinematically. — M A

Third Girl From the Left

(Martha Southgate, 2005)

Hollywood always seemed a mythical place where average folks could make the wildest of their dreams come true. But once you’ve been around a while, you come to see the tarnish on Tinseltown’s tinsel. The Black women in “Third Girl From the Left” want to be movie stars or movie makers, but they arrive in a Hollywood that’s not ready to love them back. A family story that gets its shine from the lure of movie magic and our shared fantasy about the healing powers of stardom, Southgate’s novel never shies away from the hard truths of dream-chasing, yet still believes “in the power of movies and the people in them to change a life.”

— LAURA WARRELL, author of “Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm”

Beautiful Ruins

(Jess Walter, 2012)

“I’ve been simultaneously drawn to and repelled from Hollywood for years,” Walter told The Times in 2012 . Both sentiments feed into this novel, which begins when a beautiful actor, banished from the set of “Cleopatra” where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are indulging in gorgeous excess, lands at a small hotel on the Italian coast. The hotelier is smitten. Jump ahead five decades to reality television in Hollywood, where the assistant to an on-his-way-down producer has to listen to terrible pitches. The novel jumps around temporally and includes an unfinished manuscript and an awful memoir, but these disparate threads tie together in a delightful resolution. “Hollywood is like a giant mirror, I think,” Walter said, “and I used it that way in the book, reflecting characters back to themselves.” — C K

Eve’s Hollywood

(Eve Babitz, 1974)

Few have loved this city as ferociously as Babitz, a brilliant chronicler of Hollywood’s fantasies, foibles and beautiful freaks. Babitz, who died in 2021 , grew up here knowing everyone. Her godfather was famed composer Igor Stravinsky; her high-school gym locker was next to that of a girl who later joined the Manson Family. Babitz’s gleefully debaucherous memoir captures her teen years as a glamour-mad adventuress pinballing around a town full of kooks. At once skeptical and star-struck, she writes passionately about celebrity, superficiality and excess and justifies her decision to graduate early in just two words: Marlon Brando. Celebrities adored Babitz right back, but luckily for us, she chose to be an author, not an actor. “I never had the necessary ability to suspend my own disbelief,” she shrugs. Besides, Babitz knew the juiciest drama plays out off-screen. — A N

The Big Sleep

(Raymond Chandler, 1939)

To Chandler, one of the godfathers of the hard-boiled crime novel, Hollywood generally came down to blackmail and sleaze. (To be fair, to Chandler, much of the world came down to blackmail and sleaze). “The Big Sleep,” the first of Chandler’s seven Philip Marlowe novels, finds the private dick investigating a pornography ring in a story that finds murders and double-crosses piling up at a dizzying rate. An honorable old man hires Marlowe to extricate his younger daughter from a series of blackmailers; meanwhile, the detective falls for his client’s older daughter. Gleefully homophobic and brutal, adapted into an indelible 1946 Howard Hawks movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the novel set the stage for “The Little Sister” (1949), in which Marlowe investigates a blackmail scheme targeting a Hollywood starlet. By then Chandler had done time as a screenwriter and didn’t care for the industry; he got his revenge on the page. — C V

West of Eden: An American Place

(Jean Stein, 2016)

The title of Stein’s oral history of the muddled, murky origins of Los Angeles as we know it gestures at an off-kilter narrative of biblical proportions. Here is Hollywood laid bare as a fabled “American Place” that’s not so much an Edenic garden as something darker and dirtier, though not for that any less sinful. Stein focuses on families and individuals who forged this West Coast city into what it is today. Oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny, movie mogul Jack Warner, actor Jennifer Jones, heiress Jane Garland and MCA founder Jules C. Stein (the author’s father) anchor startling as-told tales about a city built on ruthless individuals whose bloodied legacies live on still. The Times best summed up its appeal : “It’s like being at an insider’s cocktail party where the most delicious gossip about the rich and powerful is being dished by smart people.” — Betancourt

(Percival Everett, 2001)

“When I grew up, there were three black people on TV, and they were all porters,” author Everett once groaned. His exasperation with stereotypes fuels this flashpoint novel about a Black academic named Monk who invents an ex-felon persona to sell books. “Erasure” is aimed at literary gatekeepers, but Everett takes a shot at Hollywood, too, with his inclusion of a bearish, cigar-smoking movie producer who barges into the story alongside a giggling silicone blond. (The bore jokes that he should have met Monk at Popeye’s Fried Chicken.) When filmmaker Cord Jefferson reworked “Erasure” into his Oscar-winning screenplay, “American Fiction,” he updated the producer character into a vapid dweeb who thinks he’s speaking woke. The tweak emphasized the baby steps the industry has made since 2001 — and the miles left to go. Now who’s going to film “James,” Everett’s bold new adaptation of “Huckleberry Finn”? — AN

(John Gregory Dunne, 1969)

Dunne was dumbfounded when Twentieth Century Fox head Richard Zanuck gave him full access to cover the studio over the course of a year that included production of movies including “Dr. Dolittle,” “Planet of the Apes” and “The Boston Strangler.” But he knew just what to do with the gift. Sitting in on marketing and production meetings, hanging out in the commissary, watching dailies, Dunne captured the small moments that add up to a big picture of ego run amok in a sort of hinge era for the industry, when audiences were getting younger and edgier and studios still weren’t sure how to respond (see “Dr. Dolittle.” Or better yet, don’t). Here’s Zanuck, watching “Apes” footage, responding to criticism in the room that a blood transfusion is depicted incorrectly: “What the hell. Maybe that’s how an ape does it.” Indeed. As Dunne writes in his foreword, “If I got the access, I knew I had the book.” — C V

Final Cut: Art, Money and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate, the Film That Sunk United Artists

(Steven Bach, 1985)

When Steven Bach’s “Final Cut” appeared in 1985, it was mainly sold as Hollywood dish. Bach, the former head of production at United Artists, had delivered the inside story of “Heaven’s Gate,” a 1980 epic western by Michael Cimino that was budgeted at about $11.5 million, wound up costing around four times that, and prompted the hobbled studio’s sale to MGM. Here at last were the details of Cimino’s outsize ego and UA’s futile attempts to restrain it. > GO TO STORY

The story of flop ‘Heaven’s Gate’ is a cautionary tale

The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960

(David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, 1985)

When renowned scholar Bordwell died earlier this year at 76, current and former film students the world over shared images of his introductory textbook “Film Art,” whose changing cover illustration helped distinguish one generation of cinephiles from another as surely as the release of “The Graduate” or “sex, lies, and videotape.” But for my money, his most indispensable contribution to our understanding of the medium, co-written with Thompson and Staiger, is this magisterial survey, illustrated with frames from “King Kong” (1933), “The Magnificent Ambersons” (1942) and “Carmen Jones” (1954), among countless others. In it, the authors not only explain the rise of the studio system, trace the emergence of sound and color, and explore the evolution of film exhibition from cramped nickelodeons to imposing movie palaces. They also argue, convincingly and definitively, that the political economy of Hollywood moviemaking is inextricable from the style and content of Hollywood movies — and thereby reveal the scaffolding underneath the greatest meeting of art and business the world has ever known. — Brennan

The Devil’s Candy

(Julie Salamon, 1991)

First subtitled “The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood,” this book is an inside look at the making of a single film, based on Tom Wolfe’s bestselling novel. The step-by-step chronicle, however, has proved more enduring than the original text; later editions are subtitled “The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco.” Salamon, a Wall Street Journal film critic, had been looking for a director who would allow her full access to the making of a film, and Brian De Palma suggested “Bonfire,” no constraints. She gets a kaleidoscopic view of the filmmaking process, speaking to the second-unit director, editor, producers, stars, people standing on set. Nobody wanted to make a flop. But what started out as a satire of ’80s greed and extravagance, with a budget that swelled to nearly $50 million, became a cautionary tale instead. Salamon’s narrative is clear-eyed and delicious. — C K

Postcards From the Edge

(Carrie Fisher, 1987)

“Maybe I shouldn’t have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares?” There is no more quotable novel about Hollywood than Carrie Fisher’s roman à clef, “Postcards From the Edge.” Fisher’s sentences bristle with caustic, self-effacing humor. Outside of her forays into that galaxy far, far away, that brand of sharp deadpan comedy is perhaps what the former Princess Leia would become best known for. And in her debut novel , the actress-turned-writer makes great use of her enviable way with words. > GO TO STORY

Carrie Fisher debut novel ‘Postcards From the Edge’

What Makes Sammy Run?

(Budd Schulberg, 1941)

Much of the Hollywood that Schulberg imagined in this 1941 classic doesn’t exist anymore — gone are the studio structure and the contract screenwriters, not to mention much of the casual bigotry. But amoral striving? Talentless hacks somehow reaching the top of the heap? That stuff is deathless, and in Sammy Glick, Schulberg invented one of the most enduring craven strivers in American literature. Starting as a copy boy at a New York paper, Glick connives, plagiarizes, seduces and schemes his way into Hollywood from writer to producer to studio head. (That’s not a spoiler: It’s clear from the start that Schulberg will have his antihero fail upward to extremes.) The book is narrated by Al, a humbler colleague bemusedly observing Glick’s rise, and the frisson between the two underscores the inherent tension in moviemaking: How cruel people can be for the sake of making something that captures our hearts. — M A

The Kid Stays in the Picture

(Robert Evans, 1994)

When Evans’ autobiography was adapted into a film in 2002, the cover for the book’s movie tie-in edition advertised what had drawn readers to this Hollywood tell-all: “Success. Scandal. Sex. Tragedy. Infamy,” its cover read. “And that’s just the first chapter …” Such a titillating promise was warranted. Evans’ life and career was rife with the kind of juicy anecdotes that make such memoirs endlessly enjoyable reads, and his is unparalleled in that regard. It tracks his rise from radio star hand-plucked into movie screen stardom by Norma Shearer through his later days running Paramount Pictures , shepherding the studio through pics such as “The Odd Couple,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Godfather.” But Evans’ natural raconteur instincts are even better suited to depicting his cocaine benders, explaining his implication in “The Cotton Club Murders” case and detailing how he found his way back on top in a town that loves a good comeback story. — Betancourt

The Pat Hobby Stories

(F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1940-41)

These 17 short stories, originally published by Esquire and later collected in a 1962 book, chronicle the misadventures of a failing, flailing screenwriter, a role that Fitzgerald, whose downward spiral accelerated when he went west to write for the pictures, knew all too well. Vain, often drunk, desperate to get a leg up, the title character weaves in and out of humiliating scenarios, scraping by with a sense of self-inflation to match his appetite for self-destruction. “The Last Tycoon,” Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel based on the life of producer Irving Thalberg, was the author’s Hollywood tragedy; the Hobby stories are the comedy, and they remain side-splittingly funny. As a screenwriter, Hobby was once heralded as “a good man for structure,” which seems appropriate; these stories bend in all the right places. To modern eyes, in their depiction of zigzagging pettiness, they feel like progenitors of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in 1940, before the last of the Hobby stories were published. — C V

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War

(Mark Harris, 2014)

None of Harris’ three books would be out of place on this list. “Pictures at a Revolution” is a fascinating portrait of the highs and lows of an industry in tumult, and “Mike Nichols: A Life” is an unputdownable biography of one of modern Hollywood’s most perceptive filmmakers. But it’s to “Five Came Back” that I continue to turn in something like awe: Across five filmmakers and nearly a decade, through archival research and careful criticism, the author manages to construct an accessible yet never-less-than-rigorous history of Hollywood at war — a subject that has not received the same attention in mainstream film writing as the Hollywood Renaissance or the rise of the franchise blockbuster. Perhaps most thrilling, Harris’ approach allows us to see the effect John Ford, George Stevens, John Huston, William Wyler and Frank Capra had on the American war effort as well as the effect it had on them. You’ll never look at any of their filmographies the same way again. — Brennan

Making Movies

(Sidney Lumet, 1995)

Wise, plainspoken and infused with disarming humility, the late Lumet’s book is like a master class with a teacher you want to hang out with all the time. “We really do know what we’re doing,” he writes. “It only looks like we don’t.” Lumet certainly did, and with directorial credits including “12 Angry Men,” “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Network,” he made it look easy. Guiding the reader through the various elements of filmmaking, from writing and shooting to acting and editing, Lumet is far more compassionate than vindictive. “They’re annoying, publicists, but their lives are hell.” “I love actors. I love them because they’re brave.” But this is no catalog of platitudes. “Making Movies” is stocked with usable advice and examples, the time he didn’t think Paul Newman was quite drilling into his character in “The Verdict,” sent him home for the weekend and got the Newman magic on Monday. “Paul is a shy man,” Lumet writes. “And a wonderful actor. And a race car driver. And gorgeous.” — C V

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood

(Peter Biskind, 1998)

Reassuringly, the two golden ages of American film each arrived in the wake of utter chaos. The roughly simultaneous advent of talking pictures and the Great Depression ushered in the glories of the 1930s; decades later, the collapse of both the Hollywood studio system and American optimism in Vietnam helped soften the ground for such 1970s classics as “Chinatown,” “The Godfather Part II” and “The Conversation.” > GO TO STORY

An addictively readable history of the Hollywood Renaissance

Interior Chinatown

(Charles Yu, 2020)

Starring Generic Asian Man: The background players take central stage in this hilarious Hollywood novel, winner of the 2020 National Book Award. Our hero, often seen on the edges of a “Law & Order”-type television show, wants more. He lives in a crummy apartment building above a Chinese restaurant, where people from across Asia get lumped together, their individuality shown to us but not the world. Informed by his experience as a second-generation Taiwanese American, Yu skewers shallow racism and toys with cultural tropes. Told in the form of a screenplay — Yu was a writer on “Westworld” — “Interior Chinatown” is a love story, a coming-of-age story, a satire and literary accomplishment. The phrase “Interior Chinatown” is, yes, screenplay shorthand for a scene’s setting, but it also reflects the interior narrative only a novel can explore. — C K

(Lillian Ross, 1952)

The book is usually better than the movie. That’s certainly the case with Stephen Crane’s hallucinatory 1895 Civil War novel, “The Red Badge of Courage,” the source of a 1951 film version that flopped thanks in part to studio meddling. But sometimes the book about the adaptation is better than either. Ross’ 1952 book on the making of “Badge,” originally written for the New Yorker, is a classic of fly-on-the-wall reportage, following director John Huston, MGM studio heads and the film’s cast and crew from conception to shooting to post-release excuse-making. Ross can be meticulous almost to the point of fustiness; she seemingly got hold of every internal memo and expense sheet. But there are few better books about the soup-to-nuts creation of a film, and it’s a brilliant profile of Huston, who’s trying to both gladhand the execs and keep them at arm’s length. — MA

(Michael Tolkin, 1988)

A postcard arrives at Griffin Mill’s office one day: “You said you’d get back to me. I’m still waiting.” The young Hollywood exec, ambitious to a fault as he climbs his way to the top, wavers over telling anyone about what soon becomes a series of death threats from, of all things, an aggrieved writer. Making savvy use of that thriller conceit, Tolkin’s wildly entertaining first novel offers a front-row seat to the self-absorption that characterizes those who would (and do) become mythmakers in Tinseltown. As Mill goes to increasingly deranged lengths to identify who is behind those ominous missives — all while making sure his position at the studio isn’t eclipsed by any newcomers, power lunches taking precedence over anything else — Tolkin paints a scathing portrait of a city of dealers and players who’d do anything to win. Yes, even murder. — MB

Adventures in the Screen Trade

(William Goldman, 1983)

Best remembered now for “The Princess Bride” — he wrote both the novel and the screenplay — Goldman was previously best known for his Oscar-winning screenplay for “All the President’s Men,” the indelible story of two journalists chasing the truth behind Watergate. Before that, though, he was the guy who created “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” a box-office smash, a buddy film western with an entirely unexpected ending. How on earth did the same person write all those classic films and more (“Misery,” “Harper,” “Marathon Man”)? Imagine sitting down at a bar next to him and getting a chance to ask. This book is that conversational — chatty, filled with vivid anecdotes, revealing industry secrets. Part self-effacing memoir, part how-to for writing screenplays, and a window into how the levers of power worked in Hollywood, this book is a stone-cold classic. — CK

(Elmore Leonard, 1990)

Suave loan shark Ernesto “Chili” Palmer is our guide through this amusing crime saga set in the underbelly of the seemingly glamorous world of Hollywood moviemaking. Tasked with collecting the cash that Los Angeles-based producer Harry Zimm owes a Las Vegas casino, Chili quickly becomes entangled in backdoor deals to finance prospective film productions. As increasingly dangerous parties become tangentially involved, Chili and Zimm risk losing more than just their big-screen aspirations. Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1995 big-screen adaptation of the tome starred John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo and Danny DeVito and became a critical and financial success. In 2017, a TV series also based on Leonard’s novel premiered on Epix (now MGM+). — CA

Hitchcock/Truffaut

(François Truffaut, 1967)

In a quarter-century or so of elementary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate schooling, no course cemented itself as firmly in my mind as USC professor Drew Casper’s exhaustive seminar on Alfred Hitchcock — thanks to the master of suspense himself, Casper’s lively lectures and this book. “Hitchcock/Truffaut” is the inimitable, and today inconceivable, product of a 50-hour interview in which the French filmmaker and critic pressed the idol of the Cahiers du Cinéma set “to reveal all his secrets.” The result exemplifies the politique des auteurs , or auteur theory, as thoroughly as any manifesto, but “Hitchcock” isn’t useful merely for its interest in the director’s “minor” works, or for the insights Truffaut draws out that no other interlocutor ever did. It is, above all, detailed proof that art, though subject to the forces of chance and the shifting winds of culture, is ultimately about choices. This star, this shot, this cut, this color: From such decisions the great masterpieces of Hollywood cinema are made. — Brennan

The Day of the Locust

(Nathanael West, 1939)

In West’s scabrous novel, Hollywood is a freak show fated to end in apocalypse, inhabited by deluded hangers-on convinced of their importance and unwilling to confront their mediocrity (West originally titled his book “The Cheated”). Yale-trained artist Tod Hackett, toiling as a studio scene designer, doesn’t just see the fire coming; he’s hard at work predicting and depicting it in a painting called “The Burning of Los Angeles.” But most of the characters have already seen their dreams burn down: Faye Greener, a beautiful but talentless actor; her father, an old vaudevillian reduced to peddling silver polish; and a host of other eccentrics and grotesques. For West, whose own screenwriting career was getting started when he died in a car crash in 1940, Hollywood was where the American Dream went to die. — CV

Play It As It Lays

(Joan Didion, 1970)

Maria Wyeth came to Hollywood for the same reason as the rest of us: to escape from someplace else. When we meet her in “Play It As It Lays,” though, the actor’s hometown of Silver Wells, since swallowed by a missile range in the Nevada desert, has regained a certain appeal, “the restorative power of desolation.” After all, her parents are dead, her marriage is disintegrating, her child is institutionalized, her career is in free fall. Only her father’s advice to her, that life itself is a crap game , has held up over time. “Everything goes,” she laments. “I am working very hard at not thinking about how everything goes.” > GO TO STORY

What Joan Didion’s broken Hollywood can teach us about our own

Matt Brennan is a Los Angeles Times’ deputy editor for entertainment and arts. Born in the Boston area, educated at USC and an adoptive New Orleanian for nearly 10 years, he returned to Los Angeles in 2019 as the newsroom’s television editor. He previously served as TV editor at Paste Magazine, and his writing has also appeared in Indiewire, Slate, Deadspin and numerous other publications.

Kay Scanlon is an art director at the Los Angeles Times. She works on the Sunday Calendar and Weekend sections and has led projects such as the annual 101 Best Restaurants guide. Prior to joining The Times in 2021, she art-directed MovieMaker magazine and contributed award-winning design at the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News and Newsday. Scanlon graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in English and is certified in graphic design from Otis College of Art and Design. Her work has been recognized by the Society for News Design, Society of Publication Designers and the California News Publishers Assn.

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