Award
Winning
Books of
2016
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead
AF/Whitehead
National Book Award 2016
Chronicles the daring survival story of a cotton plantation slave in
Georgia, who, after suffering at the hands of both her owners and
fellow slaves, races through the Underground Railroad with a relentless slave-catcher close behind.
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen
AF/Nguyen
2016 Pulitzer Prize Winner
Follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life in 1975 Los Angeles.
Swing Time
Zadie Smith
AF/Smith
BookPage Best of 2016 #2 // Library Reads Favorites 2016 // New
York Times Notable Books
Smith’s unnamed narrator, a mixed-race child lives in one of London’s many
low-end housing units. She meets Tracey and the two are bonded over the
shared experience of being poor and “brown” in a class that is predominantly
white. As the two stumble towards womanhood, the differences become
more stark and divisive, and their friendship is fractured by Tracey’s final, unforgivable act.
Commonwealth
Ann Patchett
AF/Patchett
Library Reads Favorites of the Favorites // BookPage: Best of 2016 //
New York Times Notable Books
The Cousins and the Keatings are two California families forever intertwined and permanently
shattered by infidelity. Bert Cousins leaves his wife for Beverly Keating, leaving her to raise four
children on her own. Beverly, with two children of her own, leaves her husband for Bert. The six
children involved are forced to forge a childhood bond based on the combined disappointment
in their parents. As adults, they find their families’ stories revealed in a way they couldn’t possibly expect.
My Name is Lucy Barton
Elizabeth Strout
AF/Strout
Library Reads Favorites of the Favorites // BookPage: Best of 2016 //
New York Times Notable Books
Set in the mid-1980s, Lucy Barton, hospitalized for nine weeks, is surprised when her
estranged mother shows up at her bedside. Her mother talks of local gossip, but underneath the banalities, Lucy senses the love that cannot be expressed. This is the
story that Lucy must write about, the one story that has shaped her entire life. A
beautiful lyrical story of a mother and daughter and the love they share.
The Mothers
Brit Bennett
AF/Bennett
Library Reads Favorites 2016 // BookPage: Best of 2016 //
BookList Editor’s Choice - Best Fiction Books 2016
Meet Nadia, whose mother committed suicide when Nadia was 17; Luke, the pastor's son she fell in
love with as he healed from a devastating injury; and motherless Aubrey, who is damaged in less
obvious ways. Set in Southern California and narrated by the elder church women of their black
community, the novel provides the perspectives of both these wiser, cooler heads as well
as the firsthand, painful experiences of Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey. Betrayal, loss, casual racism,
and the long-term consequences of difficult decisions follow the three throughout the 17 years ths
novel encompasses.
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
616.99424/KAL
New York Times Notable Book of 2016 // BookPage: Best of 2016 //
GoodReads Choice Award : Memoir & Autobiograophy
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul
Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor making a living treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. Just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined
evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student
into a young neurosurgeon at Stanford, guiding patients toward a deeper understanding of death and illness, and finally into a patient and a new father to a baby girl, confronting his own mortality.
Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi
AF/ Gyasi
Oprah’s Top 10 // BookPage: Best of 2016 //
New York Times Notable Book 2016 // Time’s Top 10 Novels of 2016
Homegoing opens in 18th-century West Africa and introduces two half-sisters whose fates could not be
more different. There's Effia, who becomes the mistress of a British slave-trader, and Esi, who survives the
Middle Passage only to live out her days in bondage on an American plantation. In the centuries that follow, Effia's family experiences the destructive legacies of British imperialism and warfare between the Fante and Asante people, while Esi's descendants live through the Civil War, the Great Migration, the Harlem
Renaissance, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Moonglow
Michael Chabon
AF/ Chabon
Carnegie Medal Finalist // New York Times Notable Book 2016 // Time’s Top 10 Novels of 2016
A grandson sits by his dying grandfather’s bedside as his grandfather slowly reveals the light and
shadows of a marriage and of a family that kept secrets as a way of life. He learns of his grandmother’s life growing up during World War II; her coming to America and living with a man who
kept to himself, even lying to her about his short time in prison. Chabon’s signature style includes
carefully observed characters that are both new and familiar and shimmering prose that reflects
and refracts light much as moonlight does.
Lilac Girls
Martha Hall Kelly
AF/ Kelly
Library Reads Favorites of the Favorites // Library Journal Best Historical Fiction
This is story of the Ravensbruck Rabbits: seventy-four women prisoners in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Using alternating first-person narratives, the characters relate their experiences from
1939 through 1959. Drawing upon a decade of research, Hall reconstructs what life was like in Ravensbruck. More than a war story, this is a tale of how the strength of women’s bonds can carry
them through even the most difficult situations.
Truly Madly Guilty
Liane Moriarty
AF/ Moriarty
GoodReads Choice Award Winner: Fiction // LibraryReads Favorites of the Favorites
A typical afternoon barbecue among friends becomes something much bigger when one pivotal moment
of inattention leads to repercussions for all in attendance. In trademark Moriarty style, the story flashes
back and forth between the day of the barbecue and two months later, slowly revealing the events of the
day and its consequences, creating a delicious momentum for the reader as the tension builds and the
pieces fall into place.
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Bryn Greenwood
AF/ Greenwood
GoodReads Choice Award Runner Up // Kirkus Prize Nominee
As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer
to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old
Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the
starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing causes an accident.
After witnessing his motorcycle wreck, she forms an unusual friendship with one of her father's thugs,
Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold. By the time Wavy is a teenager, her relationship with
Kellen is the only tender thing in a brutal world of addicts and debauchery. When tragedy rips Wavy's
family apart, a well-meaning aunt steps in, and what is beautiful to Wavy looks ugly under the scrutiny
of the outside world.
The Girls
Emma Cline
AF/ Cline
BookPage: Best of 2016 // Finalist GoodReads Choice Award// Publisher’s Weekly Best
Fiction Books 2016
Mesmerized by a band of girls in the park she perceives as enjoying a life of free and
careless abandon, 1960s teen Evie Boyd becomes obsessed with gaining acceptance
into their circle, only to find herself drawn into a cult and seduced by its charismatic
leader.
The Nest
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
AF/ Sweeney
Library Reads Favorites of the Favorites // BookPage Best of 2016
If you think your family is dysfunctional, move over, because here come the Plumbs. Suddenly
faced with the dismantling of the nest egg they’ve counted on to solve their financial
woes, the four Plumb siblings have to grow up, and fast. But though they all do some terrible
things in the name of ambition, there’s something lovable about the Plumbs. You can’t fail to be
moved by the beating heart of this novel, which seems to say that family, for good or ill, unites
us all.
A Great Reckoning
Louise Penny
AF/ Penny
BookPage: Best of 2016 // LibraryReads Favorites of the Favorites // Kirkus Reviews Best Book //
Publishers Weekly Best Books - Mystery/Thriller
An old map leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec Armand Gamache to
places even he is afraid to go, and he finds four young cadets in the Sûreté academy, and a dead
professor with a copy of the old map. One of the cadets Amelia Choquet a protégée of the murdered professor, guarded and angry. The focus of the investigation soon turns to Gamache himself
and his mysterious relationship with Amelia, and his possible involvement in the crime.
Poplar Creek Public Library
1405 S. Park Avenue
Streamwood, IL 60107
www.poplarcreeklibrary.org
Reader’s Advisory: (630) 483—4925
Excerpts taken from NoveList, Goodreads, or Amazon