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 - 11 of 11  There are a total of 302 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The café with no name"
Star rating for The café with no name
Description:
"Summer 1966. Robert Simon is in his early thirties and has a dream. Raised in a home for war orphans, Robert has nonetheless grown into a warm-hearted, hard-working, and determined man. When the former owners of the corner café in the Carmelite market square shutter the business, Robert sees that the chance to realize his dream has arrived. The place, dark and dilapidated, is in a poor neighborhood of the Austrian capital, but for some time now...
Book cover for "Choice"
Star rating for Choice
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 "Fresh water for flowers"
Star rating for Fresh water for flowers
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Her life is lived to the predictable rhythms of the often funny, always moving confidences that casual mourners, regular visitors, and sundry colleagues share with her. Violette's routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of Julien Seul--a police chief from out of town--who has come to scatter the ashes of his recently deceased mother on the gravesite of a complete...
Book cover for "How to know a person"
Star rating for How to know a person
Average Rating:
3.2 stars
Description:
"A how-to in becoming more understanding and considerate of others, and to find joy that comes from being seen."--
Book cover for "I'll come to you"
Star rating for I'll come to you
Description:
"A modern and classic story of family, I'll Come to You chronicles intersecting lives over the course of one year-1995-anchored by the anticipation and arrival of a child. With empathy, insight, and humor, Rebecca Kauffman explores overlapping narratives involving a couple whose struggle to become pregnant has both softened and hardened them, a woman whose husband of forty years has left her for reasons he's unwilling to share and the man who is now...
Book cover for "Lazarus man"
Star rating for Lazarus man
Description:
"In this electrifying novel, Richard Price, the author of Clockers and a writer on The Wire, shines a light in every corner of New York City"--
Book cover for "Parallel Lines"
Star rating for Parallel Lines
Description:
"It's the summer, and Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him grappling with his fragile grip on reality and his persistent hunger to connect with the biological mother who abandoned him as a child. His therapist, Martin, is facing challenges of his own, including his adopted daughter's tenuous relationship with her own biological mother--a predicament that makes Sebastian's struggle feel uncannily proximate to her own. Olivia...
Book cover for "Rejection"
Star rating for Rejection
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"... an electrifying novel-in-stories that follows a cast of intricately linked characters as their lives and relationships dramatically transform in the wake of rejection."--
Book cover for "The sun walks down"
Star rating for The sun walks down
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
In September 1883, the South Australian town of Fairly huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the whole town is intent on finding him. As they search the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly--newlyweds, landowners, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen--explore their own relationships...

11. Theft

Book cover for "Theft"
Star rating for Theft
Description:
"At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university in Dar es Salaam with a new swagger and sense of ambition. There he catches the eye of Fauzia, who sees in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. When the two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all, they little imagine how deeply their...