January’s Top Picks in Fiction

Blue, by Danielle Steel
Ginny Carter has everything—a rising career, a handsome anchorman husband, and a beautiful life in Beverly Hills with their young son—until, just two days before Christmas, a tragedy tears it all apart. She throws herself into human rights work around the world, but may find her truest purpose in Blue, a street kid she forms a tentative, stop-start connection with. Steel’s latest is a heartbreaking exploration of how much the human spirit can take, and how resilient love can be.

My Name Is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout
This slender novel from Pulitzer Prize winner Strout (Olive Kitteridge) unfolds in part through bedside conversations between Lucy Barton, convalescing in a Manhattan hospital bed, and her long-estranged mother, arrived unexpectedly from their Illinois hometown. The harsh, lonely circumstances of Lucy’s upbringing are revealed, as well as that of her own present day as a wife and mother, alongside the larger canvas of life in 1980s New York. This is a tenderly told, seemingly straightforward story that runs deep.

The Swans of Fifth Avenue, by Melanie Benjamin
In this lush period novel set amid the ladies’ luncheons and art deco rooms of 1950s Manhattan, the “Swans” of the title—real-life socialite Babe Paley and her ilk—are extravagantly rich women, wanting for nothing but true connection. Writer Truman Capote, charming, unthreatening, and brilliant, becomes one of Paley’s closest companions and confidantes, until a hideous public betrayal destroys their friendship, and his social standing, forever.

Warriors of the Storm (Last Kingdom Series #9) (Saxon Tales Series), by Bernard Cornwell
Cornwell’s epic Saxon Tales series tells of the becoming of England, in a violent and lawless time when bands of warriors fought to claim lands for their rulers. King Alfred’s son and daughter have a fragile hold over the hotly contested regions of East Anglia, Mercia, and Wessex, with the help of powerful warrior Uhtred. But can he keep control with threats mounting against them from all sides?

The Guest Room, by Chris Bohjalian
A bachelor party goes horribly awry, with long-reaching circumstances, in a new page-turner from the author of Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands. Young wife Kristin Chapman allows her husband, Richard, to host his brother’s bachelor party in their Westchester home, heading to Manhattan for the night. What ensues is a pulp nightmare, as the party’s “strippers” turn out to be sex slaves who murder their pimps, following Richard’s near indiscretion with one of them. Their home becomes a crime scene, Richard’s marriage and career are on the line, and that’s just the start of how bad things are going to get.

Dictator (Cicero Series #3), by Robert Harris
In the final installment of Harris’s Cicero trilogy, the great orator has fallen far from his role as Rome’s most powerful voice. He’s in exile for political resistance to the trio controlling the city, including Julius Caesar. But when political infighting and civil war allow Caesar to declare himself dicator, Cicero rise again—but may be unable to restore his beloved home to its former glory.

The Things We Keep, by Sally Hepworth
Anna and Luke, both victims of early onset dementia, find each other in their darkest hour: at assisted living facility Rosalind House, where they are the youngest residents. Anna’s still reeling from the diagnosis that took away her work, her marriage, and her freedom, but unexpected love with Luke offers a ray of hope. Suddenly single mother Eve, facing her own fresh hardships, is a new housekeeper at Rosalind, where she meets the pair and becomes a player in their redemptive story.

Coconut Cowboy (Serge Storms Series #19), by Tim Dorsey
Hard-living mayhem magnet and criminal Serge Storms is taking his show on the road in the 19th outing of Dorsey’s hilarious series. He and disaster-prone buddy Coleman head out on their choppers to storm Florida’s panhandle, Easy Rider–style, meeting with the usual corruption, crime, and colorful cast of characters, including a ribs-loving politician and a painfully inept bank robber.

The Expatriates, by Janice Y. K. Lee
In an expat community in Hong Kong, three American women’s lives intersect against a backdrop of displacement, loss, and isolation. Margaret is a family woman struggling after a tragedy, Mercy a postgrad trying to move on after her part in Margaret’s loss, and Hilary a wife and would-be mother questioning the future of her marriage. Lee depicts grief in its many forms, while providing a fascinating view of the disorientation of choosing life in a new country.

The Man without a Shadow, by Joyce Carol Oates
A neuroscientist and her patient fall embark on an affair in a book that asks fascinating questions inspired by both their work together and their illicit relationship. Margot Sharpe has become famous for her decades-long work with Elihu Hoopes, an amnesiac whose black-box brain offers strange new frontiers for neurological research. His memory is so destroyed he can’t build new memories of or with Margot from one session to the next, but she nevertheless falls in love with him. Eli is trapped in his past, while Margot, a graduate student at the start of the book, marches on toward her own unknown future.