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The 17 Best Books of the 2010s

The rollicking novels, tender memoirs, and engrossing mysteries that we'll keep on our shelves for the decade to come.

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As the 2010s draw to a close, we're taking a look at our favorite books of the last 10 years. From engrossing novels set in foreign lands, to tender memoirs, and can't-put-it-down thrillers, these are the books we'll keep on our shelves through the next decade.

The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch

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It was the stolen painting seen 'round the world. Donna Tartt's 2013 masterpiece—which divided critics but won the hearts of readers—was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (and was just turned into a less successful film adaptation.)  The hefty bildungsroman follows Theo from the fateful day when a bomb explodes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, killing his mother, to Amsterdam a decade later as he becomes tangled in the art underworld.  

The Luminaries

The Luminaries

The Luminaries

"Ambitious" is often used to describe this novel, but it barely covers the scope of what Catton accomplished. She won the Booker Prize for her remarkable, truly original work (and at 28, she was the youngest person to ever receive it). The 800-page mystery moves according to its characters' astrological signs, as well as the how the planets actually moved above 19th-century New Zealand. Set in Hokitika in 1866 during the gold rush, the book opens on a dark and stormy night when a weary traveler stumbles into town. He is introduced to a tangle of mysteries involving 12 men. As the book progresses, we get simultaneously further away from what happened and closer to it. 

A Little Life

A Little Life

A Little Life

After graduating from a New England college, four friends move to New York to make their way in the world. But this novel—a National Book Award finalist and bestseller—is so much more than the familiar "ensemble New York" narrative. It is at times wrenching and horrifying, and the things that happen to its characters are seemingly impossible, but the book is never anything less than fully human and compassionate. We'll never forget the story of Willem, Malcolm, Jude, and JB.

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Just Kids

Just Kids

Just Kids

Patti Smith's memoir is a love letter to a time, a city, and a person: to the late ’60s and ’70s in New York, and to Robert Mapplethorpe, Smith's onetime lover and longtime friend. She became one of the most celebrated musicians and writers of our time; he became an art world provocateur. But for a few years, they were "just kids." Her book captures the two icons in the moment before their fame, during the glamour and grit of the Hotel Chelsea days when they were just trying to make art. Lyrical, affecting, and somehow both precisely personal and universal, Smith's book is a gift.

Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo

George Saunder's inventive novel has an admittedly strange premise: a haunted President Lincoln visiting his 11-year-old son's grave, talking to ghosts, existing in this liminal space called the bardo, a Tibetan term for the Buddhist "intermediate state" between death and reincarnation, when the consciousness is not connected to a body. But this supernatural tale of familial love and loss simply took our breath away (and impressed critics: it won the Booker Prize).

Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians

This hit trilogy is the perfect summer read. We loved the juicy, outlandish story of the Young family, inspired by author Kevin Kwan's own family. When New Yorker Rachel Chu accompanies her gorgeous boyfriend Nick to a wedding in his childhood home of Singapore, she gets far more than she bargained for. Spiteful mothers, backstabbing socialites, and family secrets all collide in this fun, satirical novel. 

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My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One

My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One

My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One

If you haven't read the quartet of books about two friends growing up in post-war Naples (which is now a hit TV series) now is the perfect time to catch up. Book one begins in the 1950s and follows Lila and Elena from age 10 through their adolescence. The other books span nearly six decades of their friendship, and the entire series is a masterclass in sustaining a lifetime story. Ferrante is one of Italy's most beloved authors, and the world has fallen for her, too. 

A Visit from the Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad

No one could agree on whether this was a novel or a collection of short stories, but Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning book had everyone's attention in 2010. Over 13 chapters and nearly four decades, Egan tells the stories of Bennie, a washed up former punk rocker and record executive; Sasha, his young assistant; and everyone in their orbit. Crossing from New York to Italy to Kenya to San Francisco, we follow the characters as they sort out the messes of their lives.  There's a lot of self-destruction, but it's a wild, fun ride.

Americanah

Americanah

Americanah

As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze have their whole lives ahead of them. When Ifemelu has the opportunity to attend college in the United States, she and Obinze must separate. He eventually moves to London to pursue his own future. When they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria 15 years later, they must face the past and their own feelings. This book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, MacArthur Genius and author of We Should All Be Feminists, beautifully tells a story of loss, migration, and identity. But at its core, it's a universal love story that moved readers and critics alike.

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All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel

This beautiful novel weaves together the story of two disparate lives during World War II: that of a blind French girl and a genius German boy. More than another war novel, Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer Prize winner is a heartbreaking, lyrical examination of the human condition and of people at their best, or worst.

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead's magnificent novel won all the awards: it took home the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and was selected for Oprah's Book Club. The metaphor of the Underground Railroad is made literal here: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the earth. The protagonist is Cora, a slave on a Georgia cotton plantation who flees north, with a slave catcher hot on her trail. 

Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me

Inspired by James Baldwin's 1963 book The Fire Next Time, Ta-Nehisi Coates' letter to his teenage son was one of the most affecting books of the decade. Taking us from his childhood in Baltimore, to the birth of his son, to the publicized deaths of black men and women at the hands of police, his personal and political account is essential reading.

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The Flamethrowers

The Flamethrowers

The Flamethrowers

This firecracker of a novel follows Reno (her nickname—she's from Nevada) during the turbulent mid 1970s. Reno is fascinated with all things fast. Like so many before her, she moves to New York, and soon falls in with Sandro Valera, an artist whose family owns a motorcycle company in Italy. As their lives collide, she's taken on the wildest ride of her life. We couldn't get enough of Kushner's provocative prose and the way she describes the thrills and pitfalls of youth.

Negroland

Negroland

Negroland

Margo Jefferson's memoir is part personal recollection, part social history of upper-class society in black America. The Pulitzer Prize–winning theater and literary critic was born in 1947 into a well-t0-do Chicago family, and grew up around other wealthy black families striving to assimilate. She writes with clear-eyed precision about hard work, self-doubt, entitlement, and class guilt. It is a fascinating reflection on the intersection of race, gender, privilege, and the shortcomings of social progress.

Fates and Furies

Fates and Furies

Fates and Furies

Lauren Groff's novel had everyone talking in the fall of 2015. Even President Obama said it was his favorite book of the year. While it draws comparisons to Gone Girl for its dual portrayals of a dark marriage, Fates and Furies earned praise for its strong literary underpinning, with elements of revenge, retribution, and good fortune. In the first half, we hear from the husband, Lotto, the golden child of a wealthy family; in the second, we glimpse life through the eyes of his secretive, troubled wife, Mathilde. Ancient Greek tragedy never felt more modern than in this powerhouse of a marriage novel.

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A Gentleman in Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow

If you have to spend your life under house arrest, passing the time in a luxury hotel is the way to do it. In 1922, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is ordered by a Bolshevik tribunal to live out his days in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol, right across from the Kremlin. The Count is witness to several decades of turbulent Russian history, but it’s the personal aspects of his hotel living that resonated with us: how maids and waiters became friends, and certain guests forever changed him. This idiosyncratic novel wonderfully captures a forgotten world, one we’d like to inhabit for a while (but maybe not a lifetime).

French Exit

French Exit

French Exit

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We couldn't get enough of this tragicomic novel about a rich Upper East Side widow and her adult son who abscond to Paris, leaving behind their social and financial woes (they also pack up the cat, Small Frank). Wealth, despair, and a wild cast of characters? #verytandc

Headshot of Liz Cantrell
Liz Cantrell
Assistant to the Editor in Chief

Liz Cantrell is the assistant to the Editor in Chief of Town & Country, covering arts and culture, and has previously written for Esquire.

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