Reading 2017: Fiction Recommendations (Most for Grown-Ups, Some for Kids)

A shout-out to the fiction that kept me sane this year. I am especially happy that four of 2017's best are by writers from Mississippi, my home state. They are

Always Happy Hour: Stories, by Mary Miller (Liveright, 2017)

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas (Balzer + Bray/HarperTeen, 2017). Young-adult novel.

Midnight Without a Moon, by Linda W. Jackson. Middle-grade novel. (Houghton Mifflin, 2017)

Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner, 2017)

 

These novels round out my list of favorites:

A Country Road, A Tree, by Jo Baker (Knopf, 2016)

The Idiot, by Elif Batuman (Penguin Putnam, 2017)

Imagine Me Gone, by Adam Haslett (Little Brown, 2016)

The Makioka Sisters, written by Junichiro Tanizaki and translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker (First serialized in Japan, 1943-1948. Seidensticker's translation was published by Knopf in 1957. I read the Vintage International/Penguin Random House edition from 1995.)

Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, by Patty Yumi Cottrell (McSweeney's, 2017. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Nancy Wu and produced by Blackstone Audiobooks.)

Photo: Street scene, Biloxi, Mississippi.