Year-End Lists

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 50 Best Books of 2015

[see also 2021]

Fiction

• Ancillary Mercy
  Ann Leckie
• Brush Back
  Sara Paretsky
• Did You Ever Have a Family
  Bill Clegg
• Eyes

  Novellas and Stories
  William H. Gass
• Fates and Furies
  Lauren Groff
• Finale

  A Novel of the Reagan Years
  Thomas Mallon
• The First Bad Man
  Miranda July
• Fortune Smiles

  Stories
  Adam Johnson
• Girl Waits with Gun
  Amy Stewart
• God Help the Child
  Toni Morrison
• A God in Ruins
  Kate Atkinson
• Golden Age
  Jane Smiley
• A History of Loneliness
  John Boyne
• In the Unlikely Event
  Judy Blume
• Inside the O’Briens
  Lisa Genova
• A Little Life
  Hanya Yanagihara
• Marry, Kiss, Kill
  Anne Flett-Giordano
• Our Souls at Night
  Kent Haruf
• Purity
  Jonathan Franzen
• The Secret Chord
  Geraldine Brooks
• Shanghai Redemption
  Qiu Xiaolong
• A Spool of Blue Thread
  Anne Tyler
• The State We’re In

  Maine Stories
  Ann Beattie
• Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
  Salman Rushdie
• The Whites
  Richard Price (as Harry Brandt)

Nonfiction

• Anonymous Soldiers

  The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947
  Bruce Hoffman
• The Art of Memoir
  Mary Karr
• Black Man in a White Coat

  A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine
  Damon Tweedy
• Between the World and Me
  Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Children of the Stone

  The Power of Music in a Hard Land
  Sandy Tolan
• Custer’s Trials

  A Life on the Frontier of a New America
  T.J. Stiles
• Dead Wake

  The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
  Erik Larson
• Destiny and Power

  The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
  Jon Meacham
• Dreamland

  The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
  Sam Quinones
• F.B. Eyes

  How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature
  William J. Maxwell
• The Ferguson Report

  Department of Justice Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department
  United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division
• The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot

  The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom
  Blaine Harden
• H Is for Hawk
  Helen Macdonald
• Katrina

  After the Flood
  Gary Rivlin
• Lesser Beasts

  A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig
  Mark Essig
• My Life on the Road
  Gloria Steinem
• On the Move

  A Life
  Oliver Sacks
• Once in a Great City

  A Detroit Story
  David Maraniss
• The Oregon Trail

  A New American Journey
  Rinker Buck
• Our Kids

  The American Dream in Crisis
  Robert D. Putnam
• Pitch by Pitch

  My View of One Unforgettable Game
  Bob Gibson and Lonnie Wheeler
• The Unsubstantial Air

  American Fliers in the First World War
  Samuel Hynes
• Washington’s Revolution

  The Making of America’s First Leader
  Robert Middlekauff
• Winter Is Coming

  Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped
  Garry Kasparov
• Young Eliot

  From St. Louis to "The Waste Land"
  Robert Crawford