Paperback Fiction

by Richard Powers (Norton, ISBN: 9780393356687); Last week: 1; Weeks on List: * "National Book Award-winner Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of--and paean to--the natural world."

by Madeline Miller (Back Bay, ISBN: 9780316556323); Last week: 2; Weeks on List: 27 "Miller's masterful follow-up to The Song of Achilles is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world."

by Yaa Gyasi (Vintage, ISBN: 9781101971062); Last week: 7; Weeks on List: 35 "Gyasi's extraordinary novel illuminates slavery's troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed--and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation."

by Colson Whitehead (Anchor, ISBN: 9780345804341); Last week: 3; Weeks on List: 16 "Whitehead's masterful and haunting novel about two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida is the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction."

by Sally Rooney (Hogarth, ISBN: 9781984822185); Last week: 6; Weeks on List: 35 "Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship."

by William Kent Krueger (Atria, ISBN: 9781476749303); Last week: 4; Weeks on List: 20 "A magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression."

by Ben Lerner (Picador, ISBN: 9781250758002); Last week: 5; Weeks on List: 3 "Lerner's novel is a tender and expansive family drama set in the American Midwest at the turn of the 21st century."

by Madeline Miller (Ecco, ISBN: 9780062060624); Last week: 11; Weeks on List: 7 "Miller's monumental debut novel is an action-packed adventure and epic love story that brilliantly re-imagines Homer's enduring masterwork, The Iliad."

by Margaret Atwood (Anchor, ISBN: 9780525562627); Last week: 8; Weeks on List: 7 "Atwood's masterful sequel to her modern classic, The Handmaid's Tale."

by Frank Herbert (Ace, ISBN: 9780441013593); Last week: 9; Weeks on List: 6 "Herbert's classic masterpiece--a triumph of the imagination--is soon to be a major motion picture."