Special Collections
New York Times Best Sellers - Fiction
Description: Bookshare is pleased to offer the top 10 fiction books from the New York Times best seller list on a weekly basis. The collection is arranged by month covering the past two years. Books are added in as they become available. #adults
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Think Twice
by Harlan CobenA man presumed dead is suddenly wanted for murder in this thriller of secrets, lies, and dangerous conspiracies that threaten to cover up the truth. Three years ago, sports agent Myron Bolitar gave a eulogy at the funeral of his client, renowned basketball coach Greg Downing. Myron and Greg had history: initially as deeply personal rivals, and later as unexpected business associates. Myron made peace and moved on – until now, when two federal agents walked into his office, demanding to know where Greg Downing is. According to the agents, Greg is still alive—and has been placed at the scene of a double homicide, making him their main suspect. Shocked, Myron needs answers. Myron and Win, longtime friends and colleagues, set out to find the truth, but the more they discover about Greg, the more dangerous their world becomes. Secrets, lies, and a murderous conspiracy that stretches back into the past churn at the heart of Harlan Coben's blistering new novel.
This Could Be Us
by Kennedy RyanSoledad Barnes has her life all planned out. Because, of course, she does. She plans everything. She designs everything. She fixes everything. She’s a domestic goddess who's never met a party she couldn't host or a charge she couldn't lead. The one with all the answers and the perfect vinaigrette for that summer salad. But none of her varied talents can save her when catastrophe strikes, and the life she built with the man who was supposed to be her forever, goes poof in a cloud of betrayal and disillusion.
But there is no time to pout or sulk, or even grieve the life she lost. She's too busy keeping a roof over her daughters' heads and food on the table. And in the process of saving them all, Soledad rediscovers herself. From the ashes of a life burned to the ground, something bold and new can rise.
But then an unlikely man enters the picture—the forbidden one, the one she shouldn't want but can't seem to resist. She's lost it all before and refuses to repeat her mistakes. Can she trust him? Can she trust herself?
After all she's lost . . .and found . . .can she be brave enough to make room for what could be?
New York Times Bestseller
This Is a Love Story
by Jessica SofferAn intimate and lyrical celebration of great love, great art, and the sacrifices we make for both.
For fifty years, Abe and Jane have been coming to Central Park, as starry-eyed young lovers, as frustrated and exhausted parents, as artists watching their careers take flight. They came alone when they needed to get away from each other, and together when they had something important to discuss. The Park has been their witness for half a century of love. Until now.
Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew—their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives—and the parts they didn’t always want to know—the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood, and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs.
Told in various points of view, even in conversation with Central Park, these voices weave in and out to paint a portrait as complicated and essential as love itself. An homage to New York City, to romance, and even to loss, This Is a Love Story tenderly and suspensefully captures deep truths about life and marriage in radiant prose. It is about love that endures despite what life throws at us, or perhaps even because of it.
New York Times Bestseller
This Is Why We Lied
by Karin SlaughterOne toxic family.
Eight suspicious guests.
Everyone is guilty.
But who is a killer?
For GBI investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton, McAlpine Lodge seems like the ideal getaway to celebrate their honeymoon. Set on a gorgeous, off-the-grid mountaintop property, it’s the perfect place to unplug and reconnect. Until a bone-chilling scream cuts through the night.
A murderer in their midst
Mercy McAlpine, the manager of the Lodge, is dead. With a vicious storm raging and the one access road to the property washed out, the murderer must be someone on the mountain. But as Will and Sara investigate the McAlpine family and the other guests, they realize that everyone here is lying….Lying about their past. Lying to their family. Lying to themselves.
Who killed Mercy McAlpine?
It soon becomes clear that normal rules don’t apply at McAlpine Lodge, and Will and Sara are going to have to watch their step at every turn. Trapped on the resort, they must untangle a decades-old web of secrets to discover what happened to Mercy. And with the killer poised to strike again, the trip of a lifetime becomes a race against the clock…
New York Times Bestseller
This Summer Will Be Different
by Carley FortuneTHE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!A glorious and tantalizing new escape from #1 New York Times bestselling author Carley Fortune.This summer they&’ll keep their promise. This summer they won't give into temptation. This summer will be different.Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn&’t know he&’s her best friend&’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix&’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again.It&’s easier said than done.Each year, Lucy escapes to PEI for a big breath of coastal air, fresh oysters and crisp vinho verde with her best friend, Bridget. Every visit begins with a long walk on the beach, beneath soaring red cliffs and a golden sun. And every visit, Lucy promises herself she won&’t wind up in Felix&’s bed. Again.If Lucy can&’t help being drawn to Felix, at least she&’s always kept her heart out of it.When Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she&’s never been able to. But Felix&’s sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy&’s beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.
This Time Tomorrow
by Emma StraubWhat if you could take a vacation to your past? With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.
On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing.
When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it’s her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?
New York Times Bestseller
Three Days in June
by Anne TylerGail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.
But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.
Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers.
New York Times Bestseller
Three-Inch Teeth
by C. J. BoxWyoming game warden Joe Pickett faces two different kinds of rampaging beasts—one animal, one human—in this riveting new novel from #1 New York Times bestseller C.J. Box.A rogue grizzly bear has gone on a rampage—killing, among others, the potential fiancé of Joe&’s daughter. At the same time, Dallas Cates, who Joe helped lock up years ago, is released from prison with a special list tattooed on his skin. He wants revenge on the people who sent him away: the six people he blames for the deaths of his entire family and the loss of his reputation and property.Using the grizzly attacks as cover, Cates sets out to methodically check off his list. The problem is, both Nate Romanowski and Joe Pickett are on it.
Three Women Disappear
by James Patterson and Shan SerafinA man is murdered in his home. Sarah, his personal chef. Anna, his wife. Serena, his maid, all had access. Now all three women are missing.
Eyes are on Detective Sean Walsh, whose personal connection to the case is stronger than the leads to solve it. Neither the powerful bankroll behind the deceased, mob accountant Anthony Costello, nor Walsh's vengeful superior officer can budge the investigation. Yet as Walsh continues to dig, he uncovers even more reasons the women have to stay hidden -- from the law, and from each other.
A New York Times Bestseller
Throne of Secrets
by Kerri ManiscalcoTwo rivals torn apart by a dark memory reunite on a deadly hunt—and in an irresistibly twisted fairy tale—in the next steamy standalone fantasy romance from New York Times bestselling sensation Kerri Maniscalco. A wicked prince determined to save his kingdom. Gabriel Axton—infamous as the Prince of Gluttony, the self-proclaimed rake of rakes—has always lived for indulgence: in delicious food, in tantalizing women, and most of all, in the thrill of the hunt, where his love of danger can take over. But when his favorite adventure takes a deadly turn, he realizes something is very wrong in his demon court. With the clock ticking, he must turn to the only one who might uncover the truth: a journalist he has spent a decade avoiding…A reporter hell-bent on finding the truth. Adriana Saint Lucent has been on the hunt for years—if she could just report something damning enough about that no-good scoundrel Gabriel Axton, she knows others would finally see the demon as she does. But she never expected to turn up a rumor too terrifying to be believed: could the ice dragons to the north be growing restless? Drawn into the secrets of the Underworld, Adriana’s investigation leads her into the place she dreads most … Axton’s infamous court. A dangerous rivalry—and deliciously twisted fairy tale. To stop darkness from falling over their kingdom, Axton and Adriana will have to unite against an escalating danger. But with each holding tight to their own secrets, can they find the truth before it’s too late? And what will they do with an equally troubling rumor: that they might not actually hate one another, after all? New York Times Bestseller
Throne of the Fallen
by Kerri ManiscalcoINSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERKerri Maniscalco makes her adult debut with this New York Times bestselling sensation, a "hot" new standalone fantasy romance (Jennifer L. Armentrout) about a dark prince battling an impossible curse—and the artist who might be the only one who can set him free.Sinner. Villain. Wicked. The Prince of Envy has never claimed to be a saint. But when a cryptic note arrives, signaling the beginning of a deadly game, he knows it will take more than a hint of sin to win and save his falling demon court. Riddles, hexed objects, anonymous players, nothing will stand in his way, though none of his meticulous plans prepare him for her, the frustrating artist who ignites his sin like no other… Virtuous. Darling. Liar. The trouble with scoundrels and blackguards is that they haven&’t a modicum of honor, a fact Miss Camilla Antonius learns after one desperate mistake allows Waverly Green&’s most notorious rake to blackmail her. To avoid a ruinous scandal, Camilla is forced to enter a devil&’s bargain with Envy, little expecting his game will awaken her true nature . . . Together, Envy and Camilla must embark on a perilous journey through the Underworld—from glittering demon courts to the sultry vampire realm and beyond—while trying to avoid the most dangerous trap of all: falling in love.
A Time for Mercy
by John Grisham#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Jake Brigance is back! The hero of A Time to Kill, one of the most popular novels of our time, returns in a &“riveting&” (The New York Times) courtroom drama from &“the best thriller writer alive&” (Ken Follett).There is a time to kill and a time for justice. Now comes A Time for Mercy.Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Jake&’s fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line.Bursting with all the courthouse scheming, small-town intrigue, and stunning plot twists that have become the hallmarks of the master of the legal thriller, A Time for Mercy is a richly rewarding novel that is both timely and timeless, full of wit, drama, and—most of all—heart.Look for all of John Grisham&’s gripping Jake Brigance novels:A Time to KillSycamore RowA Time for Mercy
Time Is a Mother
by Ocean VuongThe highly anticipated collection of poems from the award-winning writer Ocean Vuong.
How else do we return to ourselves but to fold The page so it points to the good part.
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America.
At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.
New York Times Bestseller
To Die For
by David BaldacciFrom a #1 New York Times bestselling author, the 6:20 Man returns, this time sent to the Pacific Northwest to aid in a complicated FBI case—and he&’s about to come face-to-face with his nemesis, the girl on the train. Travis Devine has become a pro at accomplishing any mission he's given. But this time it&’s not his skills that send him to Seattle to aid the FBI in escorting orphaned, twelve-year-old Betsy Odom to a meeting with her uncle, who&’s under federal investigation. Instead, he&’s hoping to lay low and keep off the radar of an enemy–the girl on the train. But as Devine gets to know Betsy, questions begin to arise around the death of her parents. Devine digs for answers, and what he finds points to a conspiracy bigger than he could&’ve ever imagined. It might finally be time for Devine and the girl on the train to come face-to-face. Devine is going to find out the difference between his friends and his enemies–and in some cases, they might well be both.
Tom Clancy
by Don BentleyJack Ryan, Jr. is the one man who can prevent a second Korean War in the latest thrilling entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.
When the leader of North Korea is catastrophically injured, his incapacitation inadvertently triggers a “dead-man’s switch,” activating an army of sleeper agents in South Korea and precipitating a struggle for succession. Jack Ryan, Jr. is in Seoul to interview a potential addition to the Campus. But his benign trip takes a deadly turn when a wave of violence perpetrated by North Korean operatives grips South Korea’s capital.
A mysterious voice from North Korea offers Jack a way to stop the peninsula’s rush to war, but her price may be more than he can afford to pay.
New York Times Bestseller
Tom Clancy Firing Point
by Mike MadenJack Ryan, Jr. is out to avenge the murder of an old friend, but the vein of evil he's tapped into may run too deep for him to handle in the latest electric entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.
While on vacation in Barcelona, Jack Ryan, Jr. is surprised to run into an old friend at a small café. A first, Renee Moore seems surprised to see Jack, but then she just seems irritated and distracted. After making plans to meet later, Jack leaves, only to miss the opportunity to ever speak to Renee again, as the café is destroyed minutes later by a suicide bomber. A desperate Jack plunges back into the ruins to save his friend, but it's too late. As she dies in his arms, she utters one word, "Sammler."
When the police show up they are initially suspicious of Jack until they are called off by a member of the Spanish Intelligence Service. This mysterious sequence of events sends the young Campus operative on an unrelenting search to find out the reason behind Renee's death. Along the way, he discovers that his old friend had secrets of her own—and some of them may have gotten her killed.
Jack has never backed down from a challenge, but some prey may be too big for one man.
A New York Times Bestseller
Tom Clancy Flash Point
by Don BentleyIf there&’s one thing Jack Ryan, Jr&’s father taught him, it&’s that freedom isn&’t free, but nothing can prepare Jack for the price he must pay in the latest electrifying entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.Jack Ryan Jr. is in a world of trouble. When a benign surveillance operation takes a deadly turn, Jack finds himself locked in a struggle with an unseen enemy bent on destroying the Campus. The chase leads Jack to the South China Sea where a midair collision between aircraft from rival nations threatens to serve as a flash point for the entire region. As Jack frantically tries to put the pieces of the conspiracy together, the Campus is hit with a crippling attack. When the dust settles, Jack is one of the few operators still standing and the Campus&’s de facto leader. But the fight is just beginning. As tensions escalate, Jack&’s mysterious adversary executes a brilliant campaign to paralyze the American government even as China inches closer to invading Taiwan. With the odds stacked against him and no help in sight, Jack and his shattered team must stop the world&’s two remaining super powers from stumbling into war even as the noose around the Campus grows ever tighter.Every operation has a cost.This time the bill might just be too much to pay.
Tom Clancy Red Winter
by Marc CameronIn this previously untold adventure, a young Jack Ryan goes behind the Iron Curtain to seek the truth about a potential Soviet defector in the most shocking entry in Tom Clancy's #1 New York Times bestselling series.
1985A top secret F117 aircraft crashes into the Nevada desert. The Nighthawk is the most advanced fighting machine in the world and the Soviets will do anything to get their hands on its secrets.
In East Berlin, a mysterious figure contacts the CIA with an incredible offer—invaluable details of his government’s espionage plans in return for asylum.
It’s an offer they can’t pass up…if it’s genuine, but the risks are too great to blindly stumble into a deal. With the East German secret police closing in, someone will have to go to behind the Berlin Wall to investigate the potential defector. It’s a job Deputy Director James Greer can only trust to one man—Jack Ryan.
Ryan is a former Marine and a brilliant CIA analyst who’s been the architect of some of the CIA’s biggest coups but this time he’s in enemy territory with a professional assassin on his tail. Can he get the right answers before the Cold War turns into a Red Winter?
New York Times Bestseller
Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon
by Marc CameronA missing Chinese scientist, unexplained noises emanating from under the Arctic ice, and a possible mole in American intelligence are just some of the problems that plague President Jack Ryan in the latest entry in Tom Clancy's #1 New York Times bestselling series.Aboard an icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean a sonar operator hears an unusual noise coming from the ocean floor. She can't isolate it and chalks the event up to an anomaly in a newly installed system. Meanwhile, operatives with the Chinese Ministry of State Security are dealing with their own mystery--the disappearance of brilliant but eccentric scientist, Liu Wangshu. They're desperate to keep his crucial knowledge of aerospace and naval technology out of their rivals' hands. Finding Liu is too great an opportunity for any intelligence service to pass up, but there's one more problem. A high-level Chinese mole, codenamed Surveyor, has managed to infiltrate American Intelligence. President Jack Ryan has only one choice: send John Clark and his Campus team deep into China to find an old graduate student of the professor's who may hold the key to his whereabouts. It's a dangerous gamble, but with John Clark holding the cards, Jack Ryan is all in.
Tom Clancy Shadow State
by M.P. WoodwardSurviving a helicopter crash in the Vietnamese Highlands is only the start of the challenges facing Jack Ryan, Jr., in the latest propulsive thriller of this #1 New York Times bestselling series.The vibrant economy of the new Vietnam is a shiny lure for Western capital. Companies are racing to uncover ideal opportunities. Not wanting to be left behind, Hendley Associates has sent their best analyst, Jack Ryan, Jr., to mine for investment gold. And he may have found some in a rare earth mining company—GeoTech. But a trip with a Hendley colleague to the Highlands to observe the company&’s operations takes a treacherous turn when their helicopter is shot down. Some things haven&’t changed, and Vietnam is still the plaything of powerful neighbors. The Chinese are determined to keep Jack from finding the truth about what exactly is being processed at the isolated factory. Now Jack is in a race for his life. He&’s got to stay one step ahead of a pack of killers while supporting his wounded friend. He&’ll get no help from the government, because in the jungle, it&’s the shadow state that rules.
Tom Clancy Target Acquired
by Don BentleyJack Ryan, Jr., will do anything for a friend, but this favor will be paid for in blood in the latest electric entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.
Jack Ryan, Jr. would do anything for Ding Chavez. That's why Jack is currently sitting in an open-air market in Israel, helping a CIA team with a simple job. The man running the mission, Peter Beltz, is an old friend from Ding's Army days. Ding hadn't seen his friend since Peter's transfer to the CIA eighteen months prior, and intended to use the assignment to reconnect.
Unfortunately, Ding had to cancel at the last minute and asked Jack to take his place. It's a cushy assignment--a trip to Israel in exchange for a couple hours of easy work, but Jack could use the downtime after his last operation. Jack is here merely as an observer, but when he hastens to help a woman and her young son, he finds himself the target of trained killers.
Alone and outgunned, Jack will have to use all his skills to protect the life of the child.
A New York Times Bestseller
Tom Lake
by Ann Patchett#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICKIn this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.“Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —The GuardianIn the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
by Gabrielle ZevinNEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Sam and Sadie—two college friends, often in love, but never lovers—become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have read before. "Delightful and absorbing." —The New York Times • "Utterly brilliant." —John Green One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, TIME, GoodReads, Oprah Daily From the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn&’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won&’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin&’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.
Too Late
by Colleen HooverThe instant #1 New York Times and USA Today bestseller, a story about a woman caught in a dangerous web of obsessive love, trying to find a way out before it&’s too late… this new, updated edition is a &“barn-burner&” (New York Post) and Colleen Hoover&’s darkest romantic thriller since Verity. Sloan will go through hell and back for those she loves. And she does so, every single day. Caught up with the alluring Asa Jackson, a notorious drug trafficker, Sloan has finally found a lifeline to cling to, even if it&’s meant compromising her morals. She was in dire straits trying to pay for her brother&’s care until she met Asa. But as Sloan became emotionally and economically reliant on him, he in turn developed a disturbing obsession with her—one that becomes increasingly dangerous every day. When undercover DEA agent Carter enters the picture, Sloan&’s surprised to feel an immediate attraction between them, despite knowing that if Asa finds out, he will kill him. And Asa has always been a step ahead of everyone in his life, including Sloan. No one has ever gotten in his way. No one except Carter. Together, Sloan and Carter must find a way out before it&’s too late…
To Paradise
by Hanya YanagiharaFrom the author of the classic A LITTLE LIFE, a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.
In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means.
In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.
These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist.
What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness. TO PARADISE is a fin de siecle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love—partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens—and the pain that ensues when we cannot.