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 - 20 of 27  There are a total of 302 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The 22 murders of Madison May"
Star rating for The 22 murders of Madison May
Description:
"From the critically acclaimed author of Jennifer Government and Lexicon comes mind-bending speculative psychological suspense about a serial killer pursuing his victim across time and space, and the woman who is determined to stop him, even if it upends her own reality"--
Book cover for "All her little secrets"
Star rating for All her little secrets
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Everyone has something to hide...Ellice Littlejohn seemingly has it all: an Ivy League law degree, a well-paying job as a corporate attorney in midtown Atlanta, great friends, and a "for fun" relationship with a rich, charming executive, who just happens to be her white boss. But everything changes one cold January morning when Ellice arrives in the executive suite and finds him dead with a gunshot to his head. And then she walks away like nothing...
Book cover for "Badlands"
Star rating for Badlands
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"In the New Mexico badlands, the skeleton of a woman is found-and the case is assigned to FBI Agent Corrie Swanson. The victim walked into the desert, shedding clothes as she went, and died in agony of heatstroke and thirst. Two rare artifacts are found clutched in her bony hands-lightning stones used by the ancient Chaco people to summon the gods. Is it suicide or... sacrifice? Agent Swanson brings in archaeologist Nora Kelly to investigate. When...
Book cover for "Blood grove"
Star rating for Blood grove
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
After being approached by a shell-shocked Vietnam War veteran who claims to have gotten into a fight protecting a white woman from a black man, Easy embarks on an investigation that takes him from mountaintops to the desert, through South Central and into sex clubs and the homes of the fabulously wealthy, facing hippies, the mob, and old friends perhaps more dangerous than anyone else.
Book cover for "The bramble and the rose"
Star rating for The bramble and the rose
Author:
Series:
Description:
"A headless stranger is found in the woods of Wild Thyme, a small town in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. All signs point to a man-killing bear, and Officer Henry Farrell would just as soon leave this hunt to the Game Commission. But doubts arise when he discovers the victim was a retired investigator. What drew the investigator to sleepy Wild Thyme? Before Henry can find answers, his own nephew disappears into the hills. Then an old flame...
Book cover for "Dark music"
Star rating for Dark music
Series:
Rekke volume 1.
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Summer 2003: A soccer referee -- an immigrant from war-torn Afghanistan -- is found dead after a youth match in a Stockholm suburb. The father of one of the players, who had threatened the ref, is quickly arrested, but he protests his innocence. The police decide to consult Professor Hans Rekke, a world-renowned authority on interrogation and prisoner confessions. Things do not proceed as planned as Rekke challenges the team's assumptions and demolishes...
Book cover for "Don't let him in"
Star rating for Don't let him in
Author:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Nina Swann is intrigued when she received a condolence card from Nick Radcliffe, an old friend of her late husband, who is looking to connect after her husband's unexpected death. Nick is a man of substance and good taste. He has a smile that could melt the coldest heart and a knack for putting others at ease. But to Nina's adult daughter, Ash, Nick seems too slick, too polished, too good to be true. Without telling her mother, Ash begins digging...
Book cover for "The doorman"
Star rating for The doorman
Description:
"Chicky Diaz is everyone's favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York's cultural elite. Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth has the perfect-looking everything, all except her husband, whom she'd quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where all the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is iron-clad, and Emily can't bring herself...
Book cover for "The drowned"
Star rating for The drowned
Series:
Quirke mysteries volume 10.
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. Knowing he shouldn't approach but unable to hold back, he soon finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person case, as a husband claims his wife may have thrown herself into the sea. Called in from Dublin to investigate is Detective Inspector Strafford, who soon turns to his old ally--the flawed but brilliant pathologist Quirke--a man he is linked to in increasingly...
Book cover for "El Dorado Drive"
Star rating for El Dorado Drive
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...
Book cover for "Fever beach"
Star rating for Fever beach
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...
Book cover for "Harlem shuffle"
Star rating for Harlem shuffle
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"'Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked' ... To his customers and neighbors on 125th Street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably-priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from...
Book cover for "Heartwood"
Star rating for Heartwood
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
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,...
Book cover for "The impossible thing"
Star rating for The impossible thing
Average Rating:
2 stars
Description:
"From the exceptionally original mind of Booker Prize-longlisted author Belinda Bauer, a sweeping tale of obsession, greed, ambition, and a crime that has remained unsolved for a hundred years. 1926. On the cliffs of Yorkshire, men are lowered on ropes to steal the eggs of the sea birds who nest there. The most beautiful are sold for large sums. A small girl-penniless and neglected by her family-retrieves one such treasure. Its discovery will forever...
Book cover for "Lock every door"
Star rating for Lock every door
Author:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"A young woman whose new job apartment sitting in one of New York's oldest and most glamorous buildings may cost more than it pays. No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen's new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan's most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain...
Book cover for "Missionaries"
Star rating for Missionaries
Author:
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"Neither Mason, a U.S. Army Special Forces medic, nor Lisette, a foreign correspondent, has emerged from America's long post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan unscathed. Yet war also exerts a terrible draw that neither can shake--the noble calling, the camaraderie, the life-and-death stakes. Where else in the world can such a person go? All roads lead to Colombia, where the US, with its patented fusion of intelligence dominance and quick-striking...
Book cover for "Nightshade"
Star rating for Nightshade
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
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...
Book cover for "Our last resort"
Star rating for Our last resort
Description:
"... a reunion between estranged siblings is interrupted when a woman is found murdered at their luxury vacation resort, dredging up memories from a shared childhood they've tried to keep buried in the past. Frida and Gabriel arrive seeking a fresh start at the stunning Ara Hotel in the secluded desert of Escalante, Utah. Once so close they were able to finish each other's sentences, they've grown apart in recent years after a sudden, unspeakable...

19. Pariah

Book cover for "Pariah"
Star rating for Pariah
Description:
"Hal Knight is a famous, if deeply polarizing, figure in Hollywood and on Capitol Hill. After a disastrous #MeToo encounter, Knight resigns from his seat, quits social media, and disappears to a Caribbean island. Upon his arrival, however, he is approached by a group of mysterious strangers, whom he discovers are CIA agents hoping to penetrate Bolrovia-a hostile, eastern European country. They want his help in doing so. Bolrovia's oligarch, Nikolai...
Book cover for "The quiet tenant"
Star rating for The quiet tenant
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"A psychological thriller about trauma, power, and survival, which follows a young woman who has been captured and confined by a serial killer--who is a father, widower, former Marine, and lineman for the local electric company--as he hides the true nature of his double life from his daughter, neighbors, and the local bartender who could be his next victim, unless his captive manages to stop him."--