Best Books from 2018

Book Summary

When a Vietnam POW returns home, he carries new anger and impulsiveness. Determined to stand by her husband, his wife agrees with his plan to move his family to Alaska to live off the grid. Soon after arriving, the harsh reality of rural Alaska sets in for 13-year-old Leni and her mom.

For a while, things were better with her dad as they spent the fall season preparing for their first Alaskan winter, but she feared his more balanced self was only temporary.

Book Summary

Artist Celestial and young corporate executive Roy are newly married, and all signs point toward them having a happy, successful life. However, everything goes wrong one night in a hotel when someone accuses Roy of a crime that Celestial knows is impossible. 

Despite their protests, Roy is convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison. In the beginning, she holds strong to their love. After five years, Roy’s conviction is overturned and he returns to Atlanta, ready to pick up right where they left off. However, Celestial’s life has been moving forward while he was away, leaving everyone in a tough situation.

Book Summary

Eight months ago, Richard was receiving standing ovations around the world as a concert pianist. He was known for being a technically perfect player who also brought emotion to his pieces.

Now, he has been diagnosed with ALS, and his right arm is paralyzed. The loss of hand function also means the loss of his career, and it feels like a death.

Three years ago, Karina removed her wedding photo from the living room when she and Richard divorced. She isn’t thriving in her life without him, and puts the blame on him for her current status. But as Richard continues to deteriorate, Karina must step in to care for him. Can they reconcile their past before it’s too late?

Book Summary

Lexie hasn’t heard her sister Annie’s voice in years. Annie is an addict and, in turn, has become a thief and liar who constantly finds herself in trouble. When Annie calls Lexie at 2:00 AM, Lexie expects to hear the same stories as always, but this time, Lexie shares that she’s pregnant and believes she’s in premature labor. But if she goes to the hospital, she’ll lose custody of her baby.

Lexie can’t ignore Annie’s plea for help. She soon finds her own life falling apart as she tries to care for a fragile newborn while Annie is in court-ordered rehab. Lexie’s job and her boyfriend are both losing patience with the situation. How much can these sisters endure before they break?

Book Summary

Born with ocular albinism, Sam Hill is a young boy whose rare red eyes cause problems from the moment his mother enrolls him at the Our Lady of Mercy school. 

Labeled “Hell Boy,” he is bullied not only by his classmates but also given a hard time by the nun who is the principal at his elementary school. Eventually, Sam finds the new best friend he desperately needs in Ernie Cantwell, the only African American boy in his class, and years later in a fiercely individual girl named Mickie.

As an adult, Sam is a respected ophthalmologist moving through life with Ernie and Mickie still by his side. His world is about to be upturned when he’s unexpectedly reunited with the biggest schoolyard bully from his past.

Book Summary

Young Kya, who was left to fend for herself in the North Carolina marsh in the 1950s, will steal your heart from the beginning.

Locals know Kya as the “Marsh Girl.” She lives away from other humans and has only attended one day of school, but finds companions in nature all around her. While traditional school was not a good fit, she is always eager to learn. Eventually, she finds a friend who agrees to help her read.

The book has a split timeline between Kya’s formative years in the 1950s and an incident in 1969. A handsome boy from town is found dead, and the locals immediately suspect Kya.

Book Summary

Macy and her dad spend their weekends at a house in the charming town of Healdsburg, where they are able to escape their daily life in San Francisco. While it starts as a place to process their grief, they gain even more than they expected. The large family across the street, starting with son Elliot, quickly becomes more than just casual neighbors.

Elliot and Macy soon bond over their love of books and their favorite words. Over time, their teenage friendship grows into romance.

The book is told in a split timeline as you watch their relationship develop as teens, but then also see Macy eleven years later working on her pediatrics residency in San Francisco. She’s engaged to someone else when she unexpectedly runs into Elliot at a coffee shop.

Upon seeing him, her long-repressed emotions come rushing back. Something happened in the past to tear them apart, but their chemistry is as strong as ever. For a shot at a future, they’ll be forced to come to terms with both the past and the present.

Book Summary

As WWI rages in Europe, twenty-four-year-old Ruby Wagner, the jewel in a prominent Philadelphia family, prepares for her upcoming society wedding to a man her family chose for her.

When her beloved older brother is killed in combat, Ruby follows her heart and answers the Army Signal Corps’ call for women telephone operators to help overseas. She becomes one of the trailblazing “Hello Girls” deployed to war-torn France.

Book Summary

When a tragic accident occurs immediately after becoming engaged, Margaret is stuck in a hospital bed trying to face her new reality. Her previously perfect life is changing in every way.

When Margaret is assigned the toughest physical therapist at the hospital, her nurse doesn’t think it will be a good match. Margaret understands when she realizes the other therapists are smiling and encouraging, and Ian is…not.

But can he still help her heal?

Book Summary

For most New Yorkers, Grand Central Terminal is a masterpiece of architectural design, but for Clara and Virginia, it represents something entirely different.

For Clara, in 1928, teaching at the Grand Central School of Art was the stepping stone to her future. In a time when there was public disdain for a “woman artist,” Clara is determined to succeed in her dream of creating cover art for Vogue. But she and her friends will soon be blindsided by the looming Great Depression that may destroy the entire art scene.

By 1974, Grand Central had declined to a dangerous place full of pickpockets and drug dealers, and it was at the center of a lawsuit that would decide if the terminal should be preserved or demolished. Virginia, who had recently taken a job in the Grand Central information booth, stumbles upon an abandoned art school within the terminal and discovers a striking watercolor that opens her eyes to the elegance beneath the decay. She sets out to find the artist and finds herself drawn into the battle to save Grand Central.

Book Summary

In 1985, Yale was the director of a Chicago art gallery on the verge of a career breakthrough. Yet all around him, the growing AIDS epidemic is stealing his friends, including Nico.

In Paris thirteen years later, Nico’s younger sister is finally coming to terms with the devastating way AIDS affected her life all those years before.

Book Summary

Harry has always loved trees, but he spends his days behind a computer as an analyst in a treeless US Forest Service office. After his wife dies suddenly and tragically, Harry can’t seem to move forward. One day, he decides to follow his wife’s advice – he quits his job and escapes to the remote woods of northeastern Pennsylvania to be with the trees.

There, he meets Oriana, a young girl who has suffered a significant loss of her own. She spends most of her time in the forest with her book in the treehouse her father bought for her. They bond over their love of the forest and the trees.

The octogenarian librarian in town gives Oriana a strange, handwritten book called The Grum’s Ledger. With this book as their guide, Oriana helps Harry believe in the magic, if only he’s willing to open his eyes and see it.

Book Summary

In the 1950s, Idlewild Hall was the place for girls deemed troublemakers – those who were too smart for their own good and unwanted. Rumors swirl through the small town that the boarding school is haunted. After four roommates bond over their whispered fears, one of them disappears.

Six decades later, in 2014, journalist Fiona Sheridan learns that an anonymous benefactor is restoring Idlewild Hall. She can’t stop thinking about the night twenty years earlier when her older sister was found dead in a field near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. Then, a shocking discovery during renovations links her sister’s death to secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past.

Book Summary

Irene gets a shocking late-night phone call that her husband has been found dead on the island of St. John, far from their suburban life. When she travels to St. John to figure out what happened to her husband, Irene discovers much more than she expected – including his entire double life. 

This is book #1 in a 3-book series, which means it ends without a fully satisfying ending, so you’ll want to keep reading. All three have been released, so you won’t have to wait for publishing, but we wanted to make sure you knew what you were in for!

Book Summary

In this memoir, Tara Westover shares the story of her upbringing in rural Idaho. Born to survivalist parents, she grew up stewing herbs for her midwife healer mother and worked in her father’s junkyard. Her father forbade doctors and hospitals, even when she and her brothers suffered serious injuries.

She was also kept from any formal education. Although she didn’t step foot in a classroom for the first time until the age of 17, Tara worked hard to educate herself in mathematics and grammar. She was ultimately able to gain admission to BYU, where she studied history and learned about major world events, like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement, for the first time. From there, she went on to opportunities at Harvard and Cambridge.

This coming-of-age memoir details how she struggled to lift herself up and dealt with the struggle between family loyalty and the grief that comes with severing those ties in search of something more.

Book Summary

At the beginning of this novel, the main character, Alice, is only 9 years old and is sent away from her seaside home to live with her estranged grandmother, June, on a flower farm. Over the years, she learns both the language of flowers and about all the women her grandmother has taken in over the years to help them heal from abusive situations. 

However, Alice eventually realizes that she has her own unhealed wounds and flees the flower farm. She ends up in the remote, beautiful central desert of Australia. She thinks she has found peace until her new love, Dylan, is much different than she expected.

Book Summary

Set in the early 19th century, 11-year-old Wash is a slave on a Barbados sugar plantation. When he’s selected as a manservant for his master’s brothers, he’s terrified but soon realizes that Christopher Wilde is actually an abolitionist. He’s also an explorer and inventor, exposing Wash to many wonders that are more incredible than anything in his imagination.

When a bounty is placed on Wash after a murder, Christopher flees with him, and their adventures continue worldwide. A story of both betrayal and redemption, Washington Black was named one of the best books of 2018 by the New York Times Book Review and countless other publications.

Book Summary

Marisol grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother, Elisa. The story alternates between these two family members from different generations.

In 1958 Havana, Elisa is the daughter of a sugar baron and a member of Cuba’s high society. Her family’s position largely shields her from the growing political unrest until she embarks on a forbidden affair.

Six decades later, in 2017, Elisa’s granddaughter Marisol arrives in Havana for the first time to fulfill her grandmother’s dying wish of having her ashes spread in her birth country. Marisol tries to reconcile the contrast of Cuba’s timeless beauty with its political climate, all while uncovering the story of her grandmother’s past.

Book Summary

When Circe is born, she is neither powerful like her father nor alluring like her mother. She must turn to mortals for companionship, which leads to the discovery that she does have a power – witchcraft.

Zeus becomes threatened by Circe and banishes her to an island where she is able to practice her skills and tame wild beasts. She also crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

Even with her abilities, it’s dangerous for a woman who stands alone and unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods.

Book Summary

Stella is a math wiz who uses her skills to help companies predict consumer behavior. She also has Asperger’s and knows that it impacts some of her own behavior. For example, French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish.

To overcome her repulsive reaction to kissing, Stella decides she needs lots of practice and that an expert should be called in to do the job. Michael is an escort and just the man for the job. Before long, Stella learns to appreciate kissing…and so much more.

Book Summary

As April wanders the street one night, the last thing she expects to encounter is a new statue that looks like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor. So she does what any 23-year-old would do. She names him Carl and has her friend upload a video of her with the statue to his YouTube channel. 

When she wakes up the following day, her life is suddenly a viral video. Beyond that, her Carl is no longer the only one. Statues have appeared around the globe, and everyone wants to talk to her about them. She’s left trying to figure out what the Carls are and what they want. 

Book Summary

This present-day novel follows 12 different characters from Native communities as they travel to California for the Big Oakland Powwow. All have their own struggles, and through their stories, you’ll gain tremendous insight into the often difficult life of an urban Native American.

From a 14-year-old traveling to perform a traditional dance for the first time to a newly sober woman trying to reconnect with her family, each story eventually interconnects in unexpected ways. 

Book Summary

This book is set during the Depression, an era of breadlines, bank runs, and impossible choices. Struggling reporter Ellis comes across a scrawled front porch sign reading “2 children for sale.” The sign evokes memories from his own past, and he snaps a photo for himself.

His friend and secretary, Lillian, spots the photo in the darkroom and believes they should learn more about the family’s story. Lillian and Ellis set out to right a wrongdoing and mend a fractured family in this book, which was inspired by a real photo that shocked the nation.

Book Summary

This historical fiction novel is set in Branchville, South Carolina, in 1924—shortly after the Boll Weevil Infestation that devastated southern cotton fields. It tells the story of motherhood and womanhood, centering around three women at a crossroads: Gertrude, Retta, and Annie.

Gertrude, a mother of four, must make a difficult decision to save her daughters. Retta, a first-generation freed slave, comes to Gertrude’s aid. Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude a job.

Despite having seemingly nothing in common, these three women unite to stand up to injustices long plaguing the small town. This book is a timeless story about the power of family, community, and the ferocity of motherhood.