Top biography books 2015

That's the hope of year-old Suzy, who retreats into herself as she attempts to prove that a jellyfish sting was responsible for her best friend drowning. It's a contemplative and deeply affecting novel about grief that speaks volumes through its heroine's silence. In a hard-hitting story of prejudice and triumph set in WWII England, Ada Smith and her younger brother flee London and their cruel mother as part of the evacuation of children to the British countryside.

Ada's self-consciousness about her clubfoot gives way to the discovery of an inner strength in an emotional and rewarding tale that isn't likely to be read through dry eyes. Given the deficit of fiction for young readers featuring transgender and gender-nonconforming characters, Gino's debut—about a year-old who knows she's a girl, although the world sees her as a boy—is both necessary and welcome.

Thanks to Gino's direct, compassionate writing, this is a story with the potential to open eyes, change hearts, and—given dire statistics about suicide and violence involving transgender youth—potentially save lives. In her debut collection, Alvar includes stories set in locales as diverse as Bahrain, Manila, and Tokyo, and in periods ranging from to the present.

Each story is as well crafted as a novel, exploring lines of class, race, gender, and history through elegant, incisive language. Guilt, grief, and rage are never very distant from each other in this acutely insightful novel about a year-old hockey player who blames himself for the death of a friend. Graff is unafraid to face Trent's darkest moods and emotions head-on, and she sensitively charts a course to a place of self-forgiveness, without minimizing the difficulty of that journey.

The thrill of a budding interest in roller derby meshes with the changing friendships and all-around uncertainties of adolescence in Jamieson's rousing graphic novel. It's a story that moves as quickly as the athletes at its center, and Jamieson's clean, bright illustrations are equally successful at capturing roller-derby action and her characters' emotional highs and lows.

Lai's second novel is a striking counterpoint to its National Book Award—winning predecessor: written in prose, in contrast to the free verse of Inside Out and Back Again, and presenting an American girl's trip from California to Vietnam, inverting the immigrant's journey of the previous book. Yet Mai's story stands firmly on its own as she opens herself to a heritage she never saw much reason to trouble herself with.

The unexpected friendship struck between a boy and the ghost of a girl his age is just the first step in a pay-it-forward chain of connections, actions, and revelations that has a great deal to say about bullying and the tragedies it can cause. Part supernatural mystery, part call-to-arms for empathy and kindness, Norriss's story is valuable on multiple levels.

A newborn child, a worried brother, a nest of wasps: Oppel uses these ingredients to construct what is easily one of the most terrifying books of the year, aided in no small way by Klassen's shadowy artwork. Yet, as unsettling a story as this is, it's also supremely rewarding, undergirded by a deep love of family—one that just happens to lead down a dangerous path.

Music, history, and several expertly intertwined story lines converge in Ryan's sweeping, multifaceted novel, which draws together a harmonica that carries a prophecy, the dangers of WWII Europe, several American children, and a love of music that crosses generations. Ambitiously imagined and superbly executed. In an age of leaked documents and whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, Sheinkin's expertly researched and recounted study of Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, and the overall turbulence of the Vietnam War years couldn't be better timed or more relevant for today's young readers.

Top biography books 2015

When a troubled boy named Jack becomes the latest foster child to join Joseph Brook's family, it's the start of a gracefully written and deeply painful story about second chances, families old and new, and the tragic inability to outrun one's past. This is Schmidt at his most heartbreaking. Selznick continues to push the boundaries of visual narrative, and his latest—a conclusion to the trilogy of sorts that began with The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck—is perhaps his most inventive and daring to date.

The story blends the nautical and the theatrical, spanning generations, as Selznick weaves a powerful story of finding family and creating art. Stead has a true talent for getting inside the adolescent mind, and here the Newbery Medalist thoughtfully and carefully examines the evolving friendships among a group of Manhattan seventh-graders, while throwing in just enough twists and uncertainties to keep readers on their toes.

These 15 stories feature an unlucky tryst at a California hotel, a disastrous wedding, Elvis lamps, a teen forced to write about magical realism in summer school, and an attempt to rescue a wayward bird. Through her drifting adults and their rootless offspring, Beattie demonstrates her impeccable craftsmanship, precise language, and knack for revealing psychological truths.

In what might be Vernon's funniest book yet, she presents a hilarious rodent-themed twist on "Sleeping Beauty. Utterly wonderful. Click here to see our best Middle Grade and Young Adult books. In a book that's both a timeless look at first love and a timely contemplation of identity, debut novelist Albertalli introduces a boy named Simon who embarks on an online relationship with an classmate—which one, he isn't sure—while working to understand what his attraction to men means for himself, his friends, and his family.

Almond's haunting contemporary reworking of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice embraces themes of love, friendship, and loss as he examines the intense relationship between friends Claire and Ella, which is thrown into tumult by the appearance of a strange musician on a beach in Northern England. Continuing to push boundaries and defy expectations with each new book, Anderson forays into nonfiction with an ambitious recounting of the Siege of Leningrad merged with a biography of composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

With its portrait of an uncompromising artist, spy-novel levels of intrigue, and thorough examination of WWII atrocities, it's a book to captivate a broad range of readers. Blending Depression Era history, aeronautics, music, and the machinations of the personified forces of Love and Death, Brockenbrough offers a star-crossed, cross-cultural romance between a jazz musician and an aviatrix.

The combination of painful real-world struggles and the novel's supernatural overlay is completely immersing. Brown pulls no punches in this visceral work of graphic nonfiction, which openly confronts—in both its text and harrowing artwork—the destruction that Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the city of New Orleans, as well as a governmental response plagued by problems of its own.

In a novel that carries all the hallmarks of Dessen's work, particularly her ability to capture the emotions and uncertainties of teenagers trying to understand their place in the world, she delivers an astute and engrossing portrait of a family left in disarray by a drunk-driving accident. Haunting, strange, and threaded with sharp wit, Headley's wild fantasy sweeps readers into a thrilling world of airships, flying whales, and shapeshifting bird creatures, as year-old Aza—terminally ill on Earth, yet peculiarly at home in the skies—tries to uncover who or what she is.

In a year that saw several strong portrayals of mental illness among teens, Niven's romance between Finch and Violet, both troubled by thoughts of suicide, is one of the most memorable, in its skillful entwining of heartbreak, tragedy, and the ability to persist. Readers crisscross the streets of a deliciously imagined modern-day Brooklyn, one rife with not just gentrifying forces but deadly supernatural ones.

Older's fearless heroine, Sierra Santiago, dazzles as she uncovers ancient, ancestral powers, ones she'll need to save the vibrant borough she calls home. Wildly funny but deadly serious, Beatty's satire looks at racism in modern America. After his Los Angeles neighborhood is erased from the map by gentrification, a black farmer named Me hatches a plan to restore it—one that involves reinstating slavery and segregation.

Beatty's caper is populated by outrageous caricatures, and its damning social critique carries the day. It's difficult to see this final Tiffany Aching novel as anything less than a gift from the late Pratchett, whose fantasies have enriched and inspired generations of readers. This last trip to Discworld doesn't disappoint, closing some doors while opening others, leaving readers of all ages with questions to ponder and possibilities to imagine.

Amid ongoing protests and conversations about police brutality and communities of color, Reynolds and Kiely's gripping novel—narrated alternately by a black teen beaten by a police officer and a white teen with connections to the same officer—is as unfortunately timely as it is intensely relevant. Through the disappearance of a young woman named Roza, Ruby spins an unpredictable, magic-tinged rural mystery, one that is reluctant to give up its secrets.

The author explores heady topics—truth, beauty, and power, among them—in this haunting and richly complex story. Newbery Medalist Schlitz's novel about year-old runaway Joan, who becomes a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Baltimore, sparkles. Shabazz, Malcolm X's daughter, and Magoon craft a visceral fictional account of the making of an activist, nailing both Malcolm's hardscrabble coming of age, which informed the man he became, and his engagement with racial topics that reverberate against present-day headlines.

In a provocative and personal exploration of mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, Shusterman thrusts readers into the mind of year-old Caden, whose narrative shifts hauntingly between life with his family and his journey aboard a ship venturing toward the deepest part of the Marianas Trench. Nimona is a character for the ages: a shapeshifting, wisecracking, take-no-prisoners spitfire, who wreaks havoc on the modern-meets-medieval land of Stevenson's graphic novel, while sparring with her sort-of ally, the disgraced Lord Blackheart.

It's a colossally entertaining story that offers food for thought on everything from morality and heroism to the nature of good and evil. Blistering, sharp-edged dialogue helps make Tromly's debut one of the year's funniest YA novels, one that also delivers a cracking mystery. As New York City transplant Zoe and pushy loner Digby investigate a range of puzzles in their upstate New York town, their relationship sings as they lob zingers back and forth.

It's just about all one could hope for in a 21st-century teen sleuth story. If Amazon and Walmart controlled virtually every aspect of American life, the result might be something like what Woolston imagines in this deeply unsettling and powerful novel. Woolston draws from drones, technology dependence, media saturation, and corporate dominance to create a future America best visited only in the pages of a book.

Click here to see our best Young Adult and Picture books. Berlin is one of the best writers you've never read: her stories are like a mix of Grace Paley, Lorrie Moore, and Denis Johnson, but sport Berlin's own brand of droll, sharp prose. No-nonsense and totally magnetic, the women of this omnibus ensure that Berlin, once discovered, will be remembered.

This very short novel can be read in one sitting, but the questions it poses will linger long after. While sifting through his deceased mentor's personal papers, philosopher Critchley, the main character of this not-quite-nonfiction story, finds a chart predicting the deaths of assorted philosophers—among them Critchley himself. Daoud's novel reimagines Camus's The Stranger from the Arab perspective.

Told in a meandering bar monologue by Algerian Arab Harun, younger brother of the victim of the Frenchman Merusault, this story includes a failed affair, a ghostlike double, and, above all, beguiling ambiguity. The four Madigan siblings from Ireland's County Clare left home long ago. Eldest Dan has abandoned the priesthood for New York City's art community and second son Emmet is in Mali doing relief work, but the pull of their volatile mother Rosaleen bridges their past and present.

This vibrant family portrait is Enright at the top of her game. Flournoy's laudable debut novel begins as Viola Turner is about to lose her house on Detroit's East Side, in which she raised her 13 children. By focusing on three of Viola's children—eldest son Cha-Cha, policeman Troy, and gambling addict Lelah—Flournoy touches on the moral, emotional, marital, and psychological problems affecting the Turners.

And there's even a ghost thrown in for good measure. For the second straight year, we're including an installment of Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels in our top The series wraps up with The Story of the Lost Child , which finds protagonist Elena using biographical details from her fiery friend Lila's life in her own work. A much-anticipated entry and well worth the wait.

Herrera's slim novel, about a young woman's border crossing from Mexico into the U. Makina contacts elements of the criminal underworld to aid her in her transport, but she is also given a package to deliver along the way. Herrera's nightmarish imagery—the book opens with a sink hole swallowing a man, a car, and a dog—elevates this haunting story.

Millennials take stock of their surroundings with shrugs and resigned sighs in this debut collection, which is consistently funny, fresh, and lively thanks to Holmes's voice. In these stories, readers will find an underpants scheme, an extreme germophobe, and even a story from the perspective of a dog. Dread stalks every page in this clever, twisted debut novel, a reimagining of the real-life romance between John Hinckley Jr.

This is an unshakable plunge into madness. A wonderful old-fashioned yarn, Lock's historical reimagining follows Stephen Moran, an orphan from Brooklyn, to the Battle of Little Bighorn in , where he irrevocably alters history. Along the way, our hero loses an eye at the Battle of Five Forks, meets Walt Whitman, and is assigned as bugler for Lincoln's funeral train.

This surprising and charming novel is so perfectly imagined—Luiselli herself even makes an appearance—that it's impossible not to follow wherever it leads. This mischievously serious novel features a parachuting disaster, a pipe gushing oil into the ocean, and an anthropologist tasked with writing an elusive "Great Report" for his mysterious company.

McCarthy continues to probe the limits of storytelling. McCrea's debut is a historical novel told through the unforgettable voice of Lizzie Burns, the longtime lover of Frederick Engels. Pulled up from her working-class roots after she meets Engels, Lizzie is nonetheless excluded from upper-class society and haunted by her former flame as she struggles to find her purpose.

Learn more. Categories Fiction. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Historical Fiction. Science Fiction. Debut Goodreads Author. Young Adult Fiction. Books published between November 16, , and November 15, , will be eligible for the awards. We analyze statistics from the millions of books added, rated, and reviewed on Goodreads to nominate 15 books in each category.

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