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 261 - 280 of 302  There are a total of 302 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Strangers to ourselves"
Star rating for Strangers to ourselves
Author:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children's forgiveness after recovering...
Book cover for "Stronger"
Star rating for Stronger
Description:
An account of the history and science of muscle and weight training, from the Trojan War to modern-day research, highlighting how strength-building exercises can prevent and treat chronic diseases, improve quality of life, and challenge age-old biases against muscle.
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...
Book cover for "Super agers"
Star rating for Super agers
Description:
Dr. Topol offers "an evidence-based approach to longevity in a market drenched in snake oil. [He] doesn't promise a silver bullet to magically stop the aging process, he shows how preventing the development of killer chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, cancer, and neurodegeneration is completely changing what 'old age' can be. And we can start long before middle age--or long after. ... Breakthrough treatments have been developed from new...
Book cover for "Supremacy"
Star rating for Supremacy
Author:
Average Rating:
2 stars
Description:
"In November of 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was an AI chatbot called ChatGPT, and was unlike any app people had used before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. Behind the scenes, battles for control and prestige between the world's two leading AI firms, OpenAI and DeepMind, ... has remained elusive--until now. In Supremacy, Olson ... tells the ... story of the battle...
Book cover for "Swann's Way (Remembrance of Things Past, Volume One)"
Star rating for Swann's Way (Remembrance of Things Past, Volume One)
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Notes:
This book is placed at #2 out of 5 best books on classical music in fiction by the WSJ on June 22, 2025. Note: The book placed on #1 is The Dead by James Joyce which will need to be placed on Interlibrary Loan. See librarian to place this request. #5 of 5 for the Best Book on Classical Music in Fiction is Jean- Christophe by Romain Rolland. It is based very loosely on the life of Beethoven, from birth to death. If interested in this, this book will be an Interlibrary Loan Request. See librarian to make this request.
Book cover for "The sweet hereafter"
Star rating for The sweet hereafter
Notes:
Ranked #5 as the Best Book On Life In Small Towns in the WSJ on July 25-26th, 2025.
Description:
In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: when the worst thing happens, who do you blame?
Book cover for "A swim in a pond in the rain"
Star rating for A swim in a pond in the rain
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches...
Book cover for "Taking Midway"
Star rating for Taking Midway
Average Rating:
1 stars
Description:
"From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series--with more than twelve million copies sold--comes a fast-paced, dramatic account of the famous yet little understood battle that turned the tide of World War II"-- Provided by publisher.
Book cover for "Texas flood"
Star rating for Texas flood
Average Rating:
5 stars
Book cover for "Thaddeus Stevens"
Star rating for Thaddeus Stevens
Description:
A portrait of the nineteenth-century statesman includes discussions of Stevens's decades-long fight against slavery, key role in the Union war effort, and postwar legislation for American racial justice.

272. 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...
Book cover for "Thinking, fast and slow"
Star rating for Thinking, fast and slow
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
A psychologist draws on years of research to introduce his "machinery of the mind" model on human decision making to reveal the faults and capabilities of intuitive versus logical thinking. In this work the author, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making, has brought together his many years of research and thinking in one book. He explains...
Book cover for "The third rule of time travel"
Star rating for The third rule of time travel
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Scientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She's built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time-to any point in the traveler's lifetime-and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it's not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe. After Beth's husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella--their...
Book cover for "The thousand crimes of Ming Tsu"
Star rating for The thousand crimes of Ming Tsu
Author:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Fighting his way across the West to rescue his wife and exact revenge on the men who destroyed him, while settling old scores along the way, Ming Tsu is aided by a blind clairvoyant and a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers.
Book cover for "Three hours in Paris"
Star rating for Three hours in Paris
Series:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Three Hours in Paris is the story of Kate Rees, the young American markswoman who has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris on the dangerous business of trying to assassinate the Fuhrer. A country girl from rural Oregon-a grieving widow with no spy training but a vendetta and a lot of gumption-now has the state of the entire war in her hands. When the hit goes badly wrong, Kate is on the run for her life-all the time wrestling...
Book cover for "Time of the child"
Star rating for Time of the child
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"In December 1962, 12-year-old Jude Quinlan and his father take their cows to the Christmas fair in Faha, a small town where 'all commentators agreed: nothing happened here.' The town's reputation begins to change after Jude, waiting for his father to emerge from the pub, finds a baby at the back wall of the church. Jude brings the baby to the local physician, Jack Troy, whose grown daughter Ronnie names her Noelle. The Troys hide the baby to prevent...
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.
Book cover for "To rescue the constitution"
Star rating for To rescue the constitution
Author:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
A new biography of George Washington, centering on his return from retirement to lead the Constitutional Convention and secure the future of the United States.
Book cover for "Travels with George"
Star rating for Travels with George
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Does George Washington still matter? The ... author argues for his unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new President through the former colonies, now an unsure nation. A new first-person voice for Philbrick, weaving history and personal reflection into one narrative. When George Washington became president in 1798, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative...