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 281 - 300 of 302  There are a total of 302 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The trouble with hating you"
Star rating for The trouble with hating you
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
Liya Thakkar is a successful biochemical engineer, takeout enthusiast, and happily single woman. The moment she realizes her parents' latest dinner party is a setup with the man they want her to marry, she's out the back door in a flash. Imagine her surprise when the same guy shows up at her office a week later -- the new lawyer hired to save her struggling company. What's not surprising: he's not too thrilled to see her either after that humiliating...
Book cover for "The two-parent privilege"
Star rating for The two-parent privilege
Description:
"The new economics of love and marriage-and who benefits. The realities of single parenting in the US have long carried a connotation of hardship-not just in finances, but in the wrenching day-to-day challenges of parenting without a net. As marriage rates in the US continue to drop, and as single-parent households become increasingly concentrated at the lower end of the income spectrum, it begs the question: what does all this mean for a country...
Book cover for "Undaunted"
Star rating for Undaunted
Description:
"An essential history of women in American journalism, showcasing the most renowned trailblazers since 1840."--
Book cover for "Valley of forgetting"
Star rating for Valley of forgetting
Description:
"The riveting account of a community from the remote mountains of Colombia whose rare and fatal genetic mutation is unlocking the secrets of Alzheimer's disease In the 1980s, a neurologist named Francisco Lopera traveled on horseback into the mountains seeking families with symptoms of dementia. For centuries, residents of certain villages near Medellín had suffered memory loss as they reached middle age, going on to die in their fifties. Lopera...
Book cover for "The vanished birds"
Star rating for The vanished birds
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. Her friends and lovers have aged past her, and all she has left is work. Alone and adrift, she lives for only the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky. A boy, broken by his past. The scarred child...
Book cover for "Vanishing world"
Star rating for Vanishing world
Description:
"From the author of the million-copy literary sensation Convenience Store Woman comes a surprising and highly imaginative story set in a version of Japan where sex between married couples has vanished and where all children are born by artificial insemination. Sayaka Murata has proven herself to be one of the most exciting chroniclers of the strangeness of society, x-raying our contemporary world to bizarre and troubling effect. Her depictions of...
Book cover for "A view from the stars"
Star rating for A view from the stars
Author:
Description:
A View from the Stars features a range of short works from the past three decades of New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu's prolific career, putting his nonfiction essays and short stories side-by-side for the first time.

288. The villa

Book cover for "The villa"
Star rating for The villa
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
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...
Book cover for "Waiting on the moon"
Star rating for Waiting on the moon
Description:
"From the legendary musical figure and former vocalist of the J. Geils Band, whose career spans more than six decades, a treasure trove of revealing vignettes, all told with gentle humor and heartrending poignancy. ... Told as a series of encounters with remarkable people over the course of a long and equally remarkable musical career, Waiting on the Moon provides a revealing glimpse of both iconic and lesser-known creative giants as they work--the...
Book cover for "The war for Gloria"
Star rating for The war for Gloria
Description:
"A searing, tender, haunting story about fathers and sons, sons and mothers, and a young boy's struggle to become a man. Corey Goltz is fifteen years old when his mother, Gloria, is diagnosed with ALS. Estranged from his father, and increasingly responsible for meeting both his mother's needs and his own, Corey is determined to be the hero Gloria needs--at any cost. But when his father Leonard re-enters the picture, Corey's beliefs--about honor and...
Book cover for "We own this city"
Star rating for We own this city
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Baltimore, 2015. Riots were erupting across the city as citizens demanded justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year old black man who had died while in police custody. At the same time, drug and violent crime were surging, and that year, Baltimore would reach its deadliest year in over two decades: 342 homicides in a city of six hundred thousand people. Under intense scrutiny--and a federal investigation over Gray's death--the Baltimore police...
Book cover for "What doesn't kill us makes us"
Star rating for What doesn't kill us makes us
Description:
"A deep examination of what happens after life-altering events, from car accidents to incarceration, and how we forge new identities when our lives are cleaved irrevocably into a before and after 'What doesn't kill us makes us stronger,' the saying goes. But does it really? Tracing the lives of six people who have experienced catastrophic, life-changing events, journalist Mike Mariani explores the nuances of what happens after one's life is cleaved...
Book cover for "When we were real"
Star rating for When we were real
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"From multiple award-winning author Daryl Gregory comes a madcap adventure following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through the mind-boggling glitches in their simulated world as they grapple with love, family, secrets, and the very nature of reality in a simulation"--
Book cover for "White king"
Star rating for White king
Series:
Description:
"Antonia Scott has an unusually gifted forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. She's the lynchpin of a top-secret project, Red Queen, created to work across borders and behind the scenes to solve the most devious and dangerous crimes, those that are beyond the skills of the regular police forces. But the Red Queen project is under attack on all fronts. Across Europe, its agents are murdering each...
Book cover for "Who owns this sentence?"
Star rating for Who owns this sentence?
Description:
"Copyright is everywhere. Your smartphone incorporates thousands of items of intellectual property. Someone owns the reproduction rights to photographs of your dining table. At this very moment, battles are raging over copyright in the output of artificial intelligence programs. Not only books but wallpaper, computer programs, pop songs, cartoon characters, snapshots, and cuddly toys are now deemed to be intellectual properties--making copyright a...
Book cover for "Wild thing"
Star rating for Wild thing
Description:
Paul Gauguin's legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings. Gauguin is chiefly known for his pictures that eschewed convention, to celebrate the beauty of an indigenous people and their culture. In this gorgeously illustrated, myth-busting work, Sue Prideaux reveals that while Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved. Self-taught, Gauguin...
Book cover for "Windswept"
Star rating for Windswept
Description:
"Annabel Abbs-Streets's Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women is a beautifully written meditation on connecting with the outdoors through the simple act of walking. In captivating and elegant prose, Abbs-Streets's follows in the footsteps of women who boldly reclaimed wild landscapes for themselves, including Georgia O'Keeffe in the empty plains of Texas and New Mexico, Nan Shepherd in the mountains of Scotland, Gwen John following the...
Book cover for "The Woman in Suite 11"
Star rating for The Woman in Suite 11
Author:
Series:
Lo Blacklock volume 2.
Book cover for "The woman in suite 11"
Star rating for The woman in suite 11
Author:
Series:
Lo Blacklock volume 2.
Description:
"When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel--owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann--arrives, it's like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago. The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo's ever dreamed...
Book cover for "The women's march"
Star rating for The women's march
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"--