The best novel I read in the past year was probably Good Night, Irene, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Luis’s novel is based on the real story of the so-called “Donut Dollies,” women who worked for the American Red Cross in the Second World War, driving trucks that served fresh donuts and coffee to American GIs on the front lines in Europe. This novel keeps building and building, and just when you think it can't get any more suspenseful, it doubles the drama again, and again. Luis Alberto Urrea might be the most generous, kind-hearted writer I know, and good thing, too—it takes a big heart to tell a story this harrowing, and this inspiring.

Number three is perhaps my favorite novel of the 21st century, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Set in the period right after the death of Abraham Lincoln’s son, Willie, it gives us a fantastical glimpse of the place that lies between this world and the next one. This is set against the all-too-real portrait of Lincoln’s grief and mourning during a time of national crisis. The audiobook is a tour de force; the book itself consists of scores of different voices, historians both real and imagined, as well as the voices of the many dead entombed in the graveyard where Willie Lincoln is buried. The producers of the audiobook cast many voices, famous and familiar, to give these characters voice, and you’ll hear Don Cheadle, Lena Dunham, Bill Hader, Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon, Ben Stiller, and David Sedaris, among others. It’s an amazing, strange book. It contains one scene, when young Willie finally comes to understand what is now allowed him in the afterlife, that was so beautiful it brought actual tears to my eyes.

Number four belongs to my dear friend Jodi Picoult, with whom I wrote the novel Mad Honey during the pandemic, and which peaked at number three on the New York Times bestsellers list in 2023. Today, I want to celebrate her book Nineteen Minutes, not only because it does all the things Jodi’s books do best—taking an issue in the news and making it personal, making it real through the gift of story—but also because, incredibly, this book is now the most-banned book in America. Yes, it’s about a school shooting—but surely anyone who reads this book will understand that it’s a book meant to decrease the risk of violence in this country, and to do that through the remarkable gift that Jodi has for storytelling. This book should be required reading, or in this case, listening.

Finally, I’ll give a shout-out to Nathan Hill’s novel Wellness, which is the most harrowing and moving of love stories. It’s a hard look at the world we live in, and what everything from social media to the passage of time does to our hearts. It asks us how well we know the people we’re married to; it asks us how well we know ourselves. It’s darkly funny, it’s wise beyond all measure. I think that’s my favorite place to explore, as a writer—that fine line between what’s funny and what’s deeply sad, or scary, sometimes all in the same moment. It’s definitely a place I’m trying to explore in my new memoir, Cleavage, and I hope you’ll find cause for both tears and joy as you listen to that book on Audible.