Amazon book editors announce the 100 best books of the year, selecting titles in more than two dozen categories from Literary Fiction to Mysteries and Thrillers to Children’s books
Amazon.com today announced its selections for the Best Books of 2015, naming Lauren Groff’s dazzling Fates and Furies as the Best Book of the Year. Amazon’s team of editors reads hundreds of thousands of pages, choosing the best books of every month and then, finally, the best books of 2015. Beloved by customers, this annual feature includes the Top 100 Books of the Year, as well as Top 20 lists in over two-dozen categories, from Children’s & Young Adult to Literary Fiction to curated lists from celebrities. To see all of the Best Books of 2015 and buy the print or Kindle editions, visit:www.amazon.com/bestbooks2015
“Fates and Furies, our #1 pick of 2015, is a novel about a marriage from two different points of view, but it’s no linear ‘he said, she said,’” notedSara Nelson, Editorial Director of Books and Kindle at Amazon.com. “Groff’s language is electric and her ingenious plotting is fascinating and unlike anything I’ve read in years. Our editors adored it.”
The top picks in the Children’s categories are Waiting (Picture Books), Circus Mirandus (Middle Grade – ages 9-12) and An Ember in the Ashes (Young Adult). Topping the list in other popular categories are My Kitchen Year (Cookbooks), Girl on the Train (Mystery), The Bourbon Kings (Romance), and Between the World & Me (Biography/Memoir).
Celebrity top picks include: Walter Issacson’s Steve Jobs, chosen by Shaquille O’Neal, and Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project,selected by Drew Barrymore. Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts is one of Jeff Kinney’s favorite reads of 2015.
Here’s a look at the Top 10 editors’ picks for the year:
| 1. |
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff: An unusual, fascinating and intricate look at how two people can be married for years and still know so little about each other. |
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| 2. |
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates: A fiercely intelligent book about race in America, told by a father to his teen aged son. |
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| 3. |
Becoming Nicole by Amy Ellis Nutt: The inspiring true story of how one transgendered child began to change the world. |
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| 4. |
An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir: Addictive and harrowing, this Young Adult novel is about political power, crippling deceit, and, ultimately, hope. |
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| 5. |
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah: Two French sisters cope very differently with WWII in this compulsively readable novel. |
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| 6. |
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough: This is classic McCullough: a complete, erudite and engagingly human story about the early days of aviation and the all-American boys who pioneered it. |
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| 7. |
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald: A brilliant memoir about the unusual, personal way one woman dealt with the loss of her father. |
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| 8. |
Purity by Jonathan Franzen: A big fat novel about disaffected youth, the Internet and journalism. Oh, and love and family, too. |
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| 9. |
Hold Still by Sally Mann: In her memoir, the award-winning and controversial photographer Sally Mann uses words to create pictures of her life. |
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| 10. |
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins: A wildly popular thriller about all the bad things that can happen when you step into other people’s lives. |
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Some fun facts about this year’s list:
- Entertainers who have penned books in the Top 100: 4
- Debut authors in the Top 100: 22
- Debut authors in the Top 20: 6
- Number of books with animals in the title in the Top 100: 8
- Number of memoirs in the Top 100: 24
- Longest/Shortest book in the Top 100: Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me
