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 101 - 120 of 302  There are a total of 302 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The fourth consort"
Star rating for The fourth consort
Description:
"Dalton Greaves is a hero. He's one of humankind's first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood. That's what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he's ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau's human sidekick Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this...
Book cover for "The free world"
Star rating for The free world
Description:
"A history of the thinkers, writers, and artists who shaped intellectual culture in Cold War Europe and America"--
Book cover for "Freedom ship"
Star rating for Freedom ship
Description:
"A definitive, sweeping account of the Underground Railroad's long-overlooked maritime origins, from a pre-eminent scholar of Atlantic history and the award-winning author of The Slave Ship As many as 100,000 enslaved people fled successfully from the horrors of bondage in the antebellum South, finding safe harbor along a network of passageways across North America now known as the Underground Railroad. Yet imagery of fugitives ushered clandestinely...
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 "Gabriel's moon"
Star rating for Gabriel's moon
Description:
"Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a fire that took his mother's life. Every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes of Europe in the grip of the Cold War. When he is offered the chance to interview Patrice Lumumba, newly elected president of the People's Republic of the Congo, he finds himself...
Book cover for "Gandolfini"
Star rating for Gandolfini
Description:
"More than a decade after his sudden passing, James Gandolfini still exerts a powerful pull on television and film enthusiasts around the world. His charismatic portrayal of complex, flawed, but always human men illuminated the contradictions in all of us, as well as our potential for grace, and the power of love and family. ... Bailey traces his rise from bit parts to character roles he enlivened with menace and vulnerability, to Tony Soprano, the...
Book cover for "Generations"
Star rating for Generations
Average Rating:
4 stars
Book cover for "Germany 1923"
Star rating for Germany 1923
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"As the great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography, written in exile, 'I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions.' He was referring to the situation in Germany in 1923. It was a 'year of lunacy,' defined by hyperinflation, a political system on the verge of collapse, and separatist movements that threatened Germany's territorial integrity....
Book cover for "Giant love"
Star rating for Giant love
Description:
"A book that explores the ... American novelist and playwright Edna Ferber--winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction--whose work was made into many Academy Award-winning movies. [It specifically examines] the writing of her controversial, international bestselling novel about Texas, and the making of George Stevens's Academy Award-winning epic film of the same name: Giant"--
Book cover for "Good company"
Star rating for Good company
Average Rating:
3.2 stars
Description:
"A warm, incisive new novel about the enduring bonds of marriage and friendship from Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, author of the instant New York Times bestseller The Nest"--
Book cover for "Good girls"
Star rating for Good girls
Average Rating:
4 stars
Book cover for "The grapes of wrath"
Star rating for The grapes of wrath
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Depicts the hardships and suffering endured by the Joads as they journey from Oklahoma to California during the Depression.
Book cover for "The Greatest Trade Ever"
Star rating for The Greatest Trade Ever
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something few others suspected—that the housing market and the value of subprime mortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall.  Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, and he knew little about real estate or how to wager against housing.  He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street. But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark....
Book cover for "The gunfighters"
Star rating for The gunfighters
Description:
"The Wild West gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there's much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per...
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 "Head cases"
Star rating for Head cases
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"Gardner Camden is a walking analytical brain with an affinity for riddles, puzzles, and codes. It makes him the perfect fit for the Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit of the FBI, a team of five brilliant but misfit agents tasked with solving cold cases. Gardner's smart, but he's all business--except for his seven-year-old daughter and occasional visits to his elderly mother, he prioritizes his work and justice over everything else, no matter the...
Book cover for "A heart of blood and ashes"
Star rating for A heart of blood and ashes
Author:
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
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 hidden history of coined words"
Star rating for The hidden history of coined words
Author:
Description:
"How do words get coined? That question is explored in Ralph Keyes's latest book, The Hidden History of Coined Words. Based on meticulous research, Keyes has determined that successful neologisms are as likely to be created by chance as by intention. A remarkable number of new words were coined whimsically, he's discovered, to taunt, even to prank. Knickers resulted from a hoax, big bang from an insult. Wisecracking produced software, crowdsource,...
Book cover for "Hidden Valley Road"
Star rating for Hidden Valley Road
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where [they had twelve chidlren] ... In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins, ... and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: ... by the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How...