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2008

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

Powells.com Staff Pick
Leaping back and forth between the Dominican Republic and New Jersey, pouring across pages in a "combustible mix of slang and lyricism" (quoth Booklist), Oscar Wao bridges several generations and distinct cultures with exhilarating doses of Caribbean history and old-fashioned pulse-pounding drama. Politics, corruption, romance, fantasy, faith, despair — the novel, as Diaz explained in a Powells.com interview, contains multitudes. Recommended by Dave, Powells.com (read more)

2007

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Powells.com Staff Pick
Being one of the few who didn't care for No Country for Old Men, I couldn't wait to read The Road. It is a spare, fierce novel, more a return to the writing in Outer Dark. It drew me in immediately; I didn't want to put it down, and kept reading until I finished it. It's an unsettling post-apocalyptic tale of a father and son making their way in an uncertain time without much use for conversation, just action and reaction. I didn't want a bleak, inhumane end for these two fragile souls, and McCarthy did leave a thread of hope. The Road is definitely the best book I have read in the last year or two. Recommended by Brodie, Powells.com (read more)

2006

March by Geraldine Brooks

Powells.com Staff Pick
In her follow-up to Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks has taken historical fiction to another dimension altogether. Using America's Civil War as her frame, she plants a famous (but deeply mysterious) literary figure at its center: Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's classic, Little Women. The result is a wholly original novel, a rich re-imagining of the nation's political and literary foundations, and arguably Brooks's finest work to date. Dave, Powells.com (read more)

2005

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Powells.com Staff Pick
A story about faith, love, history and growing old, this book is poignant and lovely. It is a long letter from a father who thinks he is soon to die, to his seven-year-old son. Robinson's command of language, her deep understanding of humanity, and her own religious study come together in this outstanding novel. It was worth the twenty-year wait. Beth, Powells.com (read more)

2004

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Review
"With hard-won wisdom and hugely effective understatement, Mr. Jones explores the unsettling, contradiction-prone world of a Virginia slaveholder who happens to be black." Janet Maslin, The New York Times (read more)

2003

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Review
"With a sure yet light-handed touch, Eugenides skillfully bends our notions of gender as we realize, along with Cal, that although he has been raised as a girl, he is more comfortable as a boy." Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist (read more)

2002

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Powells.com Staff Pick
In lieu of the driving narrative voice of Straight Man, Empire Falls delves into a large cast of strong characters who will live on in the reader's mind long after the novel proper has ended. Russo's sprawling Pulitzer Prize winner impresses on many levels — it's a large-scale epic that doesn't gloss over its characters' most intimate longings, and Russo does a terrific job of balancing a large, diverse cast — but what astonishes me the most is how quickly it ends; the narrative plunges ahead at a breakneck pace. Ultimately it's heartbreaking and stirring, and the reader will remember Empire Falls as vividly as if they'd personally visited the town itself. Recommended byBolton, Powells.com (read more)