WSJ’s Top Book Recommendations-Cary Regional

Discover the best books of the year, handpicked by the editors of The Wall Street Journal. From thought-provoking nonfiction to engrossing fiction, our Top Book Recommendations offer a curated list of exceptional reads that will inform, inspire, and entertain. Featuring titles from acclaimed authors and emerging voices, our selection spans genres and subjects, ensuring there's something for every reader. Dive into the world of ideas, stories, and perspectives that will change the way you think, feel, and see the world.
 

Showing 1 - 16 of 16  There are a total of 305 valid entries on the list.

1. Bury your dead

Book cover for "Bury your dead"
Star rating for Bury your dead
Author:
Penny, Louise
Series:
Inspector Armand Gamache mysteries volume 6.
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
An obsessive historian's quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, ends in murder. Could a secret buried with Champlain for nearly 400 years be so dreadful that someone would kill to protect it? Although he is supposed to be on leave, Chief Inspector Gamache cannot walk away from a crime that threatens to ignite long-smoldering tensions between the English and the French. Meanwhile, he is receiving disquieting letters from...

2. Dark sacred night

Book cover for "Dark sacred night"
Star rating for Dark sacred night
Author:
Connelly, Michael, 1956-
Series:
Renee Ballard novels volume 2.
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eBook
Description:
Detective Renee Ballard is working the graveyard shift again, and returns to Hollywood Station in the early hours only to find that an older man has snuck in and is rifling through old file cabinets.The intruder is none other than legendary LAPD detective Harry Bosch, working a cold case that has gotten under his skin. Ballard kicks him out, but eventually Bosch persuades her to help and she relents. Bosch is investigating the death of fifteen-year-old...

3. El Dorado Drive: a novel

Book cover for "El Dorado Drive"
Star rating for El Dorado Drive
Author:
Abbott, Megan, 1971-
Formats:
Book, Large Print
Description:
"When Harper moves in with her sister Pam, she's surprised to find Pam doing so well financially after her messy divorce. After all, Pam's ex-husband wiped their bank accounts, even stole from their kids. But Pam managed to find her way back. Thanks to the Wheel. Twice a month, the women of the Wheel meet. New members bring cash to the party that is pooled together and then gifted to one lucky member. It's all about giving back. Lifting each other...

4. Fever beach

Book cover for "Fever beach"
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Author:
Hiaasen, Carl
Average Rating:
5 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"'The afternoon of September first, dishwater-gray and rainy, a man named Dale Figgo picked up a hitchhiker on Gus Grissom Boulevard in Tangelo Falls, Florida. The hitchhiker, who reminded Figgo of Danny DeVito, asked for a lift to the interstate. Figgo said he'd take him there after finishing an errand.' Thus begins Fever Beach, with an errand that leads-in pure Hiaasen-style-into the depths of Florida at its most Floridian: a sun-soaked bastion...

5. The grapes of wrath

Book cover for "The grapes of wrath"
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Author:
Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
Depicts the hardships and suffering endured by the Joads as they journey from Oklahoma to California during the Depression.

6. Heartwood: a novel

Book cover for "Heartwood"
Star rating for Heartwood
Author:
Gaige, Amity, 1972-
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie,...

7. How to know a person: the art of seeing others deeply and being seen

Book cover for "How to know a person"
Star rating for How to know a person
Author:
Brooks, David
Average Rating:
3.2 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print
Description:
"A how-to in becoming more understanding and considerate of others, and to find joy that comes from being seen."--

8. The hunter: a novel

Book cover for "The hunter"
Star rating for The hunter
Author:
French, Tana
Series:
Cal Hooper novels volume 2
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"It's a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die. Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He's found it, more or less: he's built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he's gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places....

9. Magpie murders

Book cover for "Magpie murders"
Star rating for Magpie murders
Author:
Horowitz, Anthony, 1955-
Series:
Magpie murders volume 1.
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eBook
Description:
When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan's traditional formula has proved hugely successful. Conway's latest tale has Atticus Pund investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing...

10. Marble Hall murders: a novel

Book cover for "Marble Hall murders"
Star rating for Marble Hall murders
Author:
Horowitz, Anthony, 1955-
Series:
Magpie murders volume 3.
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"Editor Susan Ryeland has left her Greek island, her hotel, and her Greek boyfriend Andreas in search of a new life back in England. Freelancing for a London publisher, she's given the last job she wants: working on an Atticus Pünd continuation novel called Pünd's Last Case. Worse still, she knows the new writer. Eliot Crace is the troubled grandson of legendary children's author Miriam Crace, who died twenty years ago. Eliot is convinced she...

11. Memorial days

Book cover for "Memorial days"
Star rating for Memorial days
Author:
Brooks, Geraldine
Average Rating:
2.7 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to peace."--

12. Nightshade

Book cover for "Nightshade"
Star rating for Nightshade
Author:
Connelly, Michael, 1956-
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Stilwell has been exiled to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor -- a Jane Doe identifiable at first only by a streak of purple dye...

13. Poverty, by America

Book cover for "Poverty, by America"
Star rating for Poverty, by America
Author:
Desmond, Matthew
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and...

14. The revolutionary: Samuel Adams

Book cover for "The revolutionary"
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Author:
Schiff, Stacy
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, "Samuel Adams was the man." With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history. Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd and eloquent man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution. He employed every tool available to rally a town,...

15. The villa

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Author:
Hawkins, Rachel, 1979-
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend. Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974 it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites...

16. The women's march: a novel of the 1913 woman suffrage procession

Book cover for "The women's march"
Star rating for The women's march
Author:
Chiaverini, Jennifer
Formats:
Book, Large Print
Description:
"An ... historical novel of the woman's suffrage movement inspired by three courageous women who bravely risked their lives and liberty in the fight to win the vote"--