Benjamin Franklin wrote more letters to his sister Jane than to anyone else. This historical nonfiction by Jill Lepore explores the literary remains of a woman who lived in one of the most turbulent times in America. With actual lives, the book examines Virginia Woolf's provocative treatise: If Shakespeare had had a sister, what would her life have been like?

Jenny Offill's novel is a rare treat -- lean and lyrical -- a peculiar portrait of a marriage, at once restrained and filled with raw, honest beauty.

Elizabeth Wein's novel is such a compelling read that you find yourself enduring situations so taut and subtle that you hold your breath paragraph after paragraph. A pilot and a spy in World War II, the story follows two young women on a mission in occupied France.

Karen Joy Fowler's wit is wild. I've lost track of the number of times I've read The Jane Austen Book Club. But this novel is another thing entirely. A story about family, memory, primates, sisters, jealousy, science. I'm not sure I have read a book more perfectly executed than this one. It's about story, yes, but so much more. It's about everything all at once.

This amazing book reminds me of Bel Canto with the strange juxtaposition of art and death, suffering and gossip. But Station Eleven is more devastating in scope, more terrifying and more hopeful. In its aftermath, I have never been as grateful for coffee and fruit in my life.

Pax is a story about trauma. And love, and family, and war, and the relationship between children and animals. And guilt. But more than anything, it's a story about trauma; and once I had finished Sara Pennypacker's novel, which is itself traumatic, I wanted to hand this book to everyone near and far and tell them the experience of this story is cathartic.

An absolutely stunning history of the United States. You know how you feel when you listen to Hamilton? Like you are seeing your country for the first time? Yeah, this book is like that.

Initially, Orlean's nonfiction takes us on a search for the arsonist of the Central Library fire in 1986. And then a history of libraries in Los Angeles. And finally an exploration of open spaces in our culture. It is written with so much love and curiosity that I frequently found myself in tears.

I clenched my jaw most of the time I was reading Room. Jack sends me. I trust him even when we’re rolled up in a rug being dead.

Inferno is the book the Modernists meant to write. Eileen Myles captures the actual experience of being alive.

Patchett’s prose is hard and tender and feels like love. The Magician’s Assistant is a book to savor.