

The 50 Best Books of 2019, According to Amazon

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amazon books best 2019

With 2019 just weeks away from saying its goodbyes, it was important to chronicle some of the best fiction and non-fiction we've read. Yes, it definitely felt like 2019 was in retrograde for the entirety of its 12 months, but the titles spotlighted here were little bright lights in a not-always-so-bright year. Below, we've chronicled the best 50 books of 2019, culled from Amazon's 100 best books of 2019.

From Margaret Atwood's timely (and terrifying) followup to The Handmaid's Tale, to a sweeping epic from Samantha Shannon perfect for Game of Thrones fans, to Taylor Jenkins Reid's fabulous ode to Fleetwood Mac, here are our 50 best books of the year.

1 of 50
'The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood
Nan A. Talese amazon.com
$16.99 (41% off)

It's no surprise that Margaret Atwood makes the list with The Testaments. Taking place 15 years after the ending of The Handmaid’s Tale, we follow three women (including Aunt Lydia) as they survive in the world created by the Republic of Gilead, which is facing its own trouble from within. 

More: Feel-Good Books to Read Any Time of Year

2 of 50
'The Nickel Boys: A Novel' by Colson Whitehead
Doubleday amazon.com
$11.34 (55% off)

Longlisted for the National Book Award, Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys follows two very different boys coming of age in the Jim Crow South. 

Both sentenced to time at the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory school, Elwood and Turner's differing philosophies causes tension in their friendship and their lives, and its rippling effects end up extending far beyond the horrors inside the academy walls. 

3 of 50
'Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me' by Adrienne Brodeur
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt amazon.com
$6.08 (77% off)

Wild Game is a mother-daughter memoir that feels both familiar and foreign in its contents. When Malabar embarks on an affair with her husband's best friend, she involves her daughter Adrienne in the indiscretion. 

Adrienne feels privileged to be her mother's confidant, but the affair's impact on her life reverberates in a more heartbreakingly profound way than she could have imagined.

4 of 50
'The Starless Sea: A Novel' by Erin Morgenstern
$16.08 (44% off)

After finding a mysterious book that contains a story from his own childhood, Zachary Ezra Rawlins embarks on a journey to find out how his life came to exist in its pages. What he discovers is a secret world in the underbelly of New York, a surprising love, and a purpose far greater than he could have imagined. 

5 of 50
'City of Girls: A Novel' by Elizabeth Gilbert
$13.98 (50% off)

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, took 2019 by storm with her latest novel, City of Girls. With the backdrop of glamorous, gritty, New York City during the 1940s, we follow Vivian Morris as she navigates her newfound freedom. 

Gilbert beautifully shows us the complex nature of joy and loss that comes from being a woman who chooses to traverse the road less traveled on her journey to adulthood.

6 of 50
'They Called Us Enemy' by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott
$11.79 (41% off)

Actor and activist George Takei writes a gripping memoir about his childhood that saw him imprisoned within American internment camps during World War II. 

His experience during that time shaped his understanding of what America looks like at its worst, and how who where we are today echoes eerily similar to his own childhood behind the wire fences. 

His memoir forces us to reckon with the question: Who gets to decide who's considered an American?

7 of 50
'The Silent Patient' by Alex Michaelides
Celadon Books amazon.com
$13.95 (48% off)

In a sea of psychological thrillers, Alex Michaelides' The Silent Patient offers a fresh take on age-old questions like: Why do people kill? How do we define madness? 

Told alternately between the past and present day, we follow therapist Theo Faber as he seeks to unravel his patient's inability (or unwillingness) to talk about the murder of which she's been found guilty. As she gains notoriety for her silence, Theo becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth, and some shocking truths are revealed to the reader.

8 of 50
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt amazon.com
$17.29 (38% off)

What happens when a therapist goes to therapy? Maybe You Should Talk To Someone is both humorous memoir and informative self-help, and follows therapist Lori Gottlieb as she finds herself in therapy after a devastating loss of her own. 

What results is an exploration not only of her immediate crisis, but the ways in which she is startlingly similar to her own patients, how impactful they are on her understanding of the world, and how even as a therapist, you always have more to learn. 

9 of 50
'Red at the Bone: A Novel' by Jacqueline Woodson
$11.99 (54% off)

In fewer than 200 pages, Jacqueline Woodson manages to have insightful conversations about race, class, desire, and identity — all weaved into a coming of age tale that speaks on relationships, legacy, and loss. 

Woodson is a master at playing with format, and her masterful movement through the past and present day in Red at the Bone is no exception. As we follow Melody in the present, we also learn of her mother's story in the past, and reckon with how the decisions of old inform our future, and how grown-up choices often have to be made before we're fully ready to do so. 

10 of 50
'The World That We Knew: A Novel' by Alice Hoffman
Simon & Schuster amazon.com
$7.50 (73% off)

When Lea is given away by her mother to be saved from the Nazis, her life becomes intertwined with Ettie and Ava — Ava being the golem Ettie created to protect her.

Longlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal, Alice Hoffman's The World That We Knew follows the three women across war-torn Europe of the 1940s and asks us to answer the question: What will you become when shaped by loss?

11 of 50
'The Water Dancer: A Novel' by Ta-Nehisi Coates
One World amazon.com
$13.58 (51% off)

Ta-Nehisi Coates' first foray into fiction yielded The Water Dancer, a haunting, devastating portrayal of America during slavery. With a power he's just beginning to understand, we follow Hiram Walker as he grapples with the horrifying nature of his birth, his burgeoning desire for freedom, and what it means to leave a legacy in a world that doesn't even allow you ownership of self.

Coates' The Water Dancer is both heartbreaking and healing, and offers catharsis for many.

12 of 50
'Ninth House' by Leigh Bardugo
Flatiron Books amazon.com
$14.85 (47% off)

Alex Stern finds herself an unlikely freshman at Yale University, recruited in order to spy on its secret societies. Both the rich and the powerful have passed through its bowels, but Alex finds herself biting off more than she can chew when she discovers their activities are even more sinister than she could have imagined.

Equal parts mystery, ghost story, and horror, Leigh Bardugo's adult debut Ninth House is not for the faint of heart. 

13 of 50
'Three Women' by Lisa Taddeo
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster amazon.com
$13.57 (50% off)

What does it mean to be be a sexual woman today? How have we changed, and in which ways are we still heartbreakingly the same, in how we view women's sexual agency and vulnerability? 

Lisa Taddeo follows this thread into the lives of three different women: Lisa, who begins an affair after her marriage loses its fire; Maggie, a woman who accuses her teacher of having a sexual relationship with her while in high school; and Sloane, a woman married to a man who likes watching her have sex with other partners.

14 of 50
'A Woman Is No Man: A Novel' by Etaf Rum
$18.16 (33% off)

 A Goodreads Choice Award finalist for best fiction and best debut, and Book of the Year Finalist for The Book of the Month Club,  Etaf Rum's debut novel A Woman is No Man follows three generations of Palestinian American women. While struggling to define themselves within the rigid rules of their Arab culture, they end up in the middle of unspeakable violence within their community.  

It is this event that takes them on a parallel journey to break free of the debilitating shame that often accompanies our silence in the face of brutality.

15 of 50
'The Night Tiger: A Novel' by Yangsze Choo
Flatiron Books amazon.com
$19.41 (28% off)

Ji Lin is an apprentice dressmaker by day, dancehall girl by night, trying to find her place in the world while helping her family make ends meet. Ren is an 11-year old servant out to fulfill his master's dying wish to find his lost finger and return it to be buried with his body.

As Ji Lin and Ren cross paths again and again, we are swept into a world of magic and superstition. Every sentence in Yangsze Choo's The Night Tiger is both necessary and beautifully rendered; the result is an ethereal story of love, loss, courage, and the threads that connect us. 

16 of 50
'Daisy Jones & The Six: A Novel' by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Ballantine Books amazon.com
$16.18 (40% off)

Inspired by the rise and demise of bands like Fleetwood Mac and The Civil Wars, Taylor Jenkins Reid crafted Daisy Jones and the Six as a love story to that era.

Chronicling the formation and eventual abrupt end to fictional band The Six, Daisy Jones and The Six is written in an interview-style format, giving us an inside look at the salacious drama of its band members, straight from those who lived it. 

17 of 50
'Grand Union: Stories' by Zadie Smith
$11.95 (56% off)

Zadie Smith is one of the most established, lauded, black writers of our time. Her first short story collection further cements her status, seamlessly blending 11 previously unpublished stories with some of her more well-known (and best loved) works.

On the surface, Grand Union seems to follow no particular theme except that of Zadie's unmistakable voice and her penchant for revealing and reveling in beliefs we feel viscerally but often do not vocalize. 

But dive a little deeper into its tales — ranging from delightedly dystopian to acutely realistic — and you can clearly see themes of time, place, displacement, and legacies that are simultaneously being shaped by past, present, and future events.

18 of 50
'Cari Mora: A Novel' by Thomas Harris
$11.78 (59% off)

Thomas Harris is a master at his craft. Silence of the Lambs was an intoxicating, frightening study into the mind of a psychopath. The action-packed novel Cari Mora gives us the same visceral fear as we follow Cari Mora, an immigrant whose Temporary Protected Status forces her into seedy, ruthless places.

This heist thriller goes from the pristine sands of Miami Beach to the bowels of its underbelly, grappling with the question: What must you become in order to survive the monsters you face?

19 of 50
'Miracle Creek: A Novel' by Angie Kim
$12.39 (54% off)

Take a domestic thriller wrapped up in a sci-fi novel packaged in a literary tale of family and sacrifice, and you have the gripping beauty that is Miracle Creek, Angie Kim's story of a special treatment center that promised healing and instead left two people dead.

Miracle Creek unfolds like a courtroom drama, but still manages to have timely conversations around community, immigration, prejudice, and the far-reaching effects of secrets and lies.

20 of 50
'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel' by Olga Tokarczuk
$16.39 (39% off)

The people of Janina’s village know she’s a recluse. Her time studying astrology and her penchant for animals make them think she might be crazy to boot. As her neighbors start to turn up dead, and suspicions begin rising, Janina inserts herself into the investigation; after all, she knows exactly who the killer is.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, this funny, provocative thriller from Olga Tokarczuk asks, "Who gets to be sane?" And "What is sanity, really?"

21 of 50
'She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement' by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
$14.86 (47% off)

In 2017, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey started an investigation that would reverberate throughout the U.S. When their story was published on Oct. 5, accusations against Harvey Weinstein were brought to light, and women all over came forward with their own stories of sexual harassment and abuse.

The #MeToo movement, started over a decade ago by Tarana Burke, was reignited in the wake of new allegations in Hollywood, and the next year saw the downfall of many men in an industry that was often lauded for its progressiveness. But how much has changed, really?

She Said follows Kantor’s and Twohey’s journey after their story broke, exposes new information from hidden sources, and spotlights the inspiring and courageous women who came forward and spoke up — not only for themselves, but for all the women before and after them.  

22 of 50
'The Winter of the Witch' by Katherine Arden
$16.80 (40% off)

In this final installment of the Winternight Trilogy, we find Arden's Moscow buckling under disaster, and our heroine Vasya abandoned and alone. With the fate of the world upon her, she must uncover her truths and her gifts in order to save the magical world she loves so much and fulfill her destiny.

The Winter of the Witch is a superbly done fantasy, and Katherine Arden does this New York Times best-seller series proud with its stunning conclusion. 

23 of 50
'Olive, Again: A Novel' by Elizabeth Strout
$13.64 (49% off)

Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive, Again follows ordinary Olive as she seeks to learn more about the lives of those around her in her small town of Crosby, Maine. 

What ensues is a story of both hilarity and heart, and one in which we find ourselves drawn to Olive as if she's one of our own, and end up experiencing profound moments of clarity and understanding about ourselves in the normalcy of her everyday.

24 of 50
'Recursion' by Blake Crouch
Crown amazon.com
$13.59 (50% off)

What is reality, if not memory? Blake Crouch's Recursion is a mind-boggling thriller that takes on that exact question. People think what's happening is the result of a burgeoning epidemic, an airborne pathogen that causes people to remember whole lives that never happened and eventually kill themselves because it. 

As detective Barry Sutton and neuroscientist Helena Smith try to get to the bottom of this phenomena, we find the truth to be more shocking — a discovery that could ruin not just individual lives, but the very existence of the universe.

25 of 50
'The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna: A Novel' by Juliet Grames
$12.89 (54% off)

Stella has lived with death her entire life. Perfectly normal moments have become deadly, and she learns to be tough and unyielding the face of danger. This allows her to protect her more fragile younger sister. But as Stella and Tina come of age in America during the beginnings of WWII, they must find their place in a foreign, hostile world.

In the present, Stella and Tina are at odds, a rift so wide that no one has been able to repair it. As a family member seeks to understand the nature of their relationship, Stella and Tina must come to terms with the repercussions of abuse, inherited trauma, and the uniquely alienating combination of immigration and womanhood.

26 of 50
'How to Be an Antiracist' by Ibram X. Kendi
$13.69 (49% off)

National Book Award Winner Ibram X. Kendi takes on a question that is deceptively simple in its format, but extremely complex in its answer: How do we be antiracist? 

Moving seamlessly between history, law, ethics, and science, and using his own personal story as the grounding force, we are taken on a journey of discovery and awakening, and are given clear directives into what antiracism truly is. 

This is essential reading for those who are ready to move beyond awareness of racism and into the hard work of creating a society that actively pushes against it.

27 of 50
'Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive' by Stephanie Land
Hachette Books amazon.com
$15.52 (43% off)

Stephanie's unexpected pregnancy upended her carefully wrought plans; with a child on the way, her dreams had to come second to their survival. Becoming a maid to America's upper-middle class, Stephanie Land writes about her experiences below the poverty line and her interactions with those she worked for with heart, grit, and unflinching honesty.

Land sheds light on an existence that is often ignored, and gives a voice to many of those who remain voiceless because of their "nameless, faceless" existences as those who work as maids.

28 of 50
'The Secrets We Kept: A Novel' by Lara Prescott
$15.43 (43% off)

A Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, The Secrets We Kept is a sweeping tale about two secretaries-turned-spies against the backdrop of the Cold War. Sally Forrester and Irina are tasked with smuggling Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one will publish it. 

Equal parts love story and historical thriller, we're transported to a world that reminds us that sometimes the greatest resistance and the greatest change happens through art. 

29 of 50
'The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness' by Susannah Calahan
Grand Central Publishing amazon.com
$14.69 (48% off)

What is insanity, really? Doctors have struggled to answer that question for centuries, and even with the progress made in modern psychology, we're still no closer to finding definitive answers.

This is no more true than for Susannah Cahalan, whose own misdiagnosis (chronicled in Brain on Fire) compels her to find an answer, and leads her to the groundbreaking study by David Rosenhan. 

In 1973, Rosenhan, along with seven other mentally healthy people, went undercover into asylums to test the legitimacy of psychiatry labels. As Cahalan delves further into both the beginnings and the aftermath of his study in this work of nonfiction, her stunning research shows that nothing is ever exactly as it seems.

30 of 50
'Girl, Woman, Other' by Bernardine Evaristo
$11.55 (32% off)

Winner of the Booker Prize, Girl, Woman, Other, is a modern story about what it means to be black and British today. This multiperspective novel featured 12 central characters who live vastly different lives that intersect in aspects of their shared identity: race, class, gender expression, and sexuality. 

Bernardine Evaristo is masterful at centering marginalized voices, and our invitation into black womanhood in all its complexity is an experience that feels both perfectly normal and profound.

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