Here are ten books from 2006 that won't fail you. Learn more about each by reading the linked review!
1. Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon's first novel in ten years is a weighty and humorous 1,000 pages that cuts across numerous settings and scores of characters, defying classification.
2. Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes delivers a fictional retelling of a true story in which the lives of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji are surprisingly woven together.
3. Ava Gardner: Love Is Nothing by Lee Server
Lee Server paints a comprehensive picture of Ava Gardner in this exhaustively researched biography.
4. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for 13-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982.
5. Everyman by Philip Roth
Philip Roth turns his attention to one man's confrontation with mortality.
6. The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
Inspired by Sigmund Freud's only visit to America, The Interpretation of Murder is an intricate tale of murder and the mind's most dangerous mysteries.
7. Lisey's Story by Stephen King
Stephen King is back with what is perhaps his most original novel in years - the tale of Lisey, the widow of legendary horror novelist Scott Landon,whose horrifying childhood and secret world became the source of all his literary magic.
8. Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski
Mark Danielewski's experimental novel, Only Revolutions surrounds a 200 year road journey taken by two teenage lovers, Hailey and Sam. It is narrated by each of these characters, and readers are instructed to flip the book over every 8 pages to switch viewpoints.
9. Terrorist by John Updike
John Updike's twenty-second novel tells of eighteen-year-old Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, the son of an Irish-American mother and an Egyptian father who disappeared when he was three, and his devotion to Allah and the words of the Holy Qur'an, as expounded to him by a local mosque's imam.
10. Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain was a huge success - a National Book Award winner that was made into a blockbuster movie. In Thirteen Moons, an historical fiction set in the mid-19th century, protagonist Will Cooper recalls his adventures amidst the Cherokee at a Smoky Mountain trading post.
