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 - 8 of 8  There are a total of 302 valid entries on the list.
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 failed promise"
Star rating for The failed promise
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"The absorbing narrative of Frederick Douglass's heated struggle with President Andrew Johnson reveals a new perspective on Reconstruction's demise. When Andrew Johnson rose to the presidency after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, African Americans were optimistic that Johnson would pursue aggressive federal policies for Black equality. Just a year earlier, Johnson had cast himself as a 'Moses' for the Black community. Frederick Douglass, the country's...
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 "The limits"
Star rating for The limits
Description:
"A novel set in French Polynesia and New York City about three characters--a fifteen-year-old girl toggling between her mother, a marine biologist studying coral reefs on an island off the coast of Tahiti, and her father, a surgeon in Manhattan--who undergo massive transformation over the course of a single year"--
Book cover for "The man who lived underground"
Star rating for The man who lived underground
Description:
"Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up by the police after a brutal double murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from custody and flees into the city's sewer system. Includes his companion essay, "Memories of My Grandmother""--
Book cover for "Slaveroad"
Star rating for Slaveroad
Description:
"John Edgar Wideman's "slaveroad" is a palimpsest of physical, social, and psychological terrain, the great expanse to which he writes in this groundbreaking work that unsettles the boundaries of memoir, history, and fiction. The slaveroad begins with the Atlantic Ocean, across which enslaved Africans were carried, but the term comes to encompass the journeys and experiences of Black Americans since then and the many insidious ways that slavery separates,...
Book cover for "Slavery by another name"
Star rating for Slavery by another name
Average Rating:
5 stars
Book cover for "To kill a mockingbird"
Star rating for To kill a mockingbird
Author:
Series:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Notes:
Ranked #4 for the Best Book On Life In Small Towns in the WSJ on July 25-26, 2025.
Description:
"Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee exploreswith rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice--but the weight of history will only tolerate so much."--Provided by publisher.