This was the year of displaced persons.

The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer. The untold story of Hungarian Jews forced to flee as Europe’s tragedy unfolds, renders the unthinkable poetic.

Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin. The story of Eilis who leaves her small village in Ireland in the 1950′s for Brooklyn, where she learns to live away from the only home she’s ever known.

Last Night at the Lobster, by Stewart O’Nan. Manny, the manager of a Red Lobster, wishes his last shift would never end because after tonight, the restaurant will close its doors forever and he will be demoted to a position at a nearby Olive Garden.

These stories, fueled by hope and despair, where no one leaves of their own accord, are filled with longing for the people and places left behind. With each one, I felt the way a child feels when suddenly separated from his parents on the street–that first struggle with being disconnected, a rippling anxiety, and the hopeful glimpse of a familiar skirt, that isn’t your mother’s after all.

Martha Southgate, author of The Taste of Salt

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Ambitious and genre-breaking in an unexpected and surprising way, this novel’s acclaim is well-deserved. Egan swings for the fences and hits them.

Open City by Teju Cole. Another surprising, ambitious winner, this time from a debut novelist. An elegiac tone poem to post-9/11 New York City narrated by a fascinating, complex protagonist.

Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans. Like Egan, Evans has received great acclaim for her work. And like Cole, it’s her debut–in this case, a collection of short stories. Like Egan’s the acclaim is deserved; like Cole’s,it’s a book you shouldn’t miss.

Hillary Jordan, author of When She Woke

A Hundred and One Nights by Benjamin Buccholz. This debut novel about Afghanistan is a spike in the heart. To quote my own blurb for it: “Fearless and seductive. . . . A powerful testimony to the insanity of war and the undeniable demands of love.”

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. I’d follow Ann just about anywhere, including the muggy, buggy Amazon.

Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie. What a marvelous, joyful writer. “Do Not Go Gentle” has to be one of my favorite stories ever.

Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson was inventive, sharp, alarming, surprising, and occasionally heartbreaking. It was everything I love in a novel, plus art, plus bad parents, plus bad children. Read it in a day.

One of my students turned me on to David Gordon’s The Serialist, which features porn, savage violence, and grown men dressing like their mothers. While these are not the sorts of things I usually go for in a novel, The Serialist was surprising in the best ways – hyper funny and fun to read.

Jesse Browner’s Everything Happens Today was also a true pleasure – the story of a too-smart, too-sensitive Greenwich Village teenager who grapples with life, death, sex, and regret all in the course of a memorable day in which he keeps forgetting to walk the dog.

Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. The Amazon. A missing scientist. An  Anaconda about to swallow a boy. Patchett could write a grocery list and have me in a state of awe and this latest novel is absolutely enthralling.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. A thrillingly real look at a bonafide genius who could be as nasty and self-centered as he was brilliant about changing the world. Reading this, I had nightmares that Jobs was following me and yelling at me–but I’d read it again in a heartbeat.

Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson. A sympathetic portrait of a complicated, complex, and sometimes brutal man, Hendrickson’s bio shows the full beating heart of Hemingway.

Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies

Emily Alone by Stewart O’Nan, who became a new favorite. I went on to read several other novels by him including Wish You Were Here and Last Night at the Lobster.  A wonderfully detailed and absorbing portrayal of a old age and solitude.  It’s amazing how carefully and humbly and beautifully O’Nan casts his spell.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Eagan. I know this novel garnered a lot of praise and earned many awards, which I’d add, are well deserved! I felt mesmerized by these interlocking narratives and Eagan’s ability to capture so many different sensibilities.  I also felt as an older novelist that I was getting a glimpse of the styles, wild inventions, about the concerns of a new “postmodern” generation of novelists.

Room by Emma Donoghue. Hands down, this was my favorite novel of the year, and up there with other “permanent” favorites.  A haunting  novel  from the language and perspective of a five-year old—the voice slowly and quietly invaded my thinking so that even after I put the novel down, I was thinking about the world and hearing language in the style of young Jack —the last time I remember this happening  in such an absorbing way was with A Hundred Years of Solitude by García Marquez.

Jon Michaud, author of When Tito Loved Clara

Nothing I read this year gave me more pleasure than Steven Millhauser’s short story, “Getting Closer,” published in The New Yorker in January. As for books, my favorites in 2011 were the widely praised debut novels by Chad Harbach—The Art of Fielding—and Karen Russell—Swamplandia!. This year was also the centenary of Mervyn Peake’s birth, which the Overlook Press marked by releasing a gorgeous, illustrated edition of Peake’s peerless fantasy epic, The Gormenghast Trilogy. That was the book I most enjoyed rereading.

Robert Goolrick, author of A Reliable Wife

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield — If the words Garamond, Baskerville or Helvetica give you a thrill, this book tells you everything you’ve ever wanted to know about how and why type faces are what they are and how they got that way. Fascinating and odd.

Lives Other Than My Own by Emmanuel Carrere — A memoir-as-novel that explores the effect on two lovers of the endless aftershocks of a tsunami in Sri Lanka. A wise, kind and infinitely sad work about the ripples and quakes of the human heart.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey — This book doesn’t come out until February, but when it does, you’ll find a brilliant first novel that continues to enchant long after the snow has melted. If Willa Cather and Gabriel Garcia Marques had written a book together, this would be it.

Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here

The Ringer, by Jenny Shank: Please don’t judge this book by the cover. I happen to know that the author cried for two days when she saw it. As good as Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding is (and I wrote a blurb for it which started with the word “spectacular”), The Ringer may be even better. Like Harbach’s Fielding, baseball serves only as a framing device for this promising debut about such durable American themes as race, class, and family. Make no mistake though, Shank knows baseball like the sister of the major league ballplayer she is.

Zazen, by Vanessa Veselka: At turns hilarious, unsettling, and improbably sweet, Veselka’s debut is, above all, a highly engaging, and totally unique experience, which will have you re-reading passages and dog-earing pages. But best of all, in the end, Zazen is that rare novel which dares to be hopeful in the face of despair, and succeeds. Veselka has a shit-ton of voice, and you know within the first paragraph that you’re in for a ride. She could write about dog turds and I’d happily read it.

Damascus, by Joshua Mohr: The third novel from San Fransisco’s Joshua Mohr is his best to date. Mohr is the bard of the underbelly, and the Mission District is his playground. Part Harry Crews, part Charles Bukowski, and part Franz Kafka, Mohr will make you squirm, laugh, recognize, and take pause. Behind his wayward and dissolute characters, burns the clear-eyed moral vision of a very unique artist.

Robert Morgan, author of Boone

On China by Henry Kissinger. This is an extraordinary survey of Chinese history and culture from the beginnings to the present day. Part memoir, part meditation, part analysis and prediction, Kissinger’s magnum opus gives us a detailed and authoritative narrative of how China and the United States and the West reached the present state of their complex relations.

The Penguin Book of English Verse by Paul Keegan. Just when you thought there were no surprises to be found in the canon of English poetry along comes this selection to reveal new examples from both the famous and obscure. Poems are showcased more than the poets. Both refreshing and comprehensive.

Wildflowers & Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains & Piedmont by Timothy P. Spira. The photographs are stunning, the text vivid, learned, succinct and alive. Need I say more?

Richard Louv, author of The Nature Principle

Empire of the Summer Moon, by S.C. Gwynne. The truth about the West is always more amazing than the myth.

White Fang, by Jack London. Who tells a better nature story?

Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero, by Chris Matthews.  JFK was….elusive, but Matthews reminds us why, in 1969, when Americans were polled on who should be added to Mount Rushmore, they picked the 35th president.

Mark your calendars for our next Algonquin Book Club event on December 8, 2011, at 7:00 p.m. PST/10:00 p.m. EST! Garth Stein, best-selling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain, will interview Robert Goolrick, author of A Reliable Wife. You’ll be able to tune in to the live webcast, chat with other viewers, and even ask Robert Goolrick questions yourself. Join the conversation on Twitter with #AlgBookClub. Be sure to check out the Algonquin Book Club website for A Reliable Wife excerpt, an essay by Goolrick, and much more!

Praise for A Reliable Wife:

“A thrilling, juicy read . . . The writing is beautiful and the story is captivating. It’s a real page-turner.”—Today Show

“A killer debut novel . . . Suspenseful and erotic . . . [A] chillingly engrossing plot . . . Good to the riveting end.” —USA Today

“A buzz-worthy debut novel.”—Wall Street Journal

“A gothic tale of . . . smoldering desire. . . . The novel is deliciously wicked and tense, presented as a series of sepia tableaux, interrupted by flashes of bright red violence. . . . Once you’ve fallen into the miasma of A Reliable Wife, it’s intoxicating.”—The Washington Post

“Debut novelist Robert Goolrick has managed a minor miracle. In the kind of precise, literary prose that breathes life into his complicated characters, Goolrick, author of an acclaimed memoir, has also managed a rousing historical potboiler, an organic mystery rooted in the real social ills of turn-of-the-century America . . . A detailed exploration of love, despair, and the distance people can travel to reach each other that is as surprising, and as suspenseful, as any beach read.”—Boston Globe

“Suspenseful . . . jam-packed with delicious twists, turns and surprises from beginning to end . . . Not only a fabulous up-to-the last-minute page-turner about love, lust, lies, deception, heartbreak and resiliency but also a nicely written and elegantly descriptive story . . . Each character’s story is captivating and surprising. You won’t put this book down. It’s that delicious, up until the last page.”—Miami Herald

“[A] beautifully written, beautifully dark book. Goolrick is a superb writer who uses repetition to great effect . . . [The plot’s] twists and turns are a pleasure to navigate, the writing so mesmerizing it makes one wonder whether Goolrick practices; anyone who can turn a sentence fragment into poetry so well has to work at it.”—Chicago Sun-Times

About A Reliable Wife:

He placed a notice in a Chicago paper, an advertisement for “a reliable wife.” She responded, saying that she was “a simple, honest woman.” She was, of course, anything but honest, and the only simple thing about her was her single-minded determination to marry this man and then kill him, slowly and carefully, leaving her a wealthy widow, able to take care of the one she truly loved.

What Catherine Land did not realize was that the enigmatic and lonely Ralph Truitt had a plan of his own. And what neither anticipated was that they would fall so completely in love.

Filled with unforgettable characters, and shimmering with color and atmosphere, A Reliable Wife is an enthralling tale of love and madness, of longing and murder.

Welcome to the Algonquin Book Club! Each year we’ll be featuring four Algonquin Book Club selections at literary events held around the country and simultaneously webcast on our site. For each event, an Algonquin author will be interviewed by a notable writer. The line-up for 2011 includes:

3/21: Julia Alvarez (In the Time of the Butterflies) interviewed by Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I’m Dying

4/26: Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants) interviewed by Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help

8/18: Heidi Durrow (The Girl Who Fell from the Sky) interviewed by Terry McMillan, author of Getting to Happy

10/20: Robert Goolrick (A Reliable Wife) interviewed by Patricia Cornwell, author of Port Mortuary

And already scheduled for March 2012: Lauren Grodstein (A Friend of the Family) interviewed by Stephen King, author of Full Dark, No Stars

For our first event, on March 21, 7:00pm  EST, Algonquin author Julia Alvarez will be interviewed about her beloved classic, In the Time of the Butterflies, by the critically acclaimed author Edwidge Danticat. You can tune in to the live webcast here. And the best part? At the same time you can also chat with others who are tuned in to the webcast. And if you live in Miami, you can catch the event live at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

Have you already read In the Time of the Butterflies? We’d love to hear what you think. Or is this your first time being introduced to the book? If so, pick up a copy and read along with us!

Be sure to check out our Algonquin Book Club site, which currently features an original essay from Julia Alvarez about the novel, along with a description of the book, author bios for Julia and Edwidge Danticat, a reading group guide, book club tips and ideas, and wine and recipe pairings centered around the book–including some recipes from Julia herself, as well as some recipes that were favorites of the three Mirabal Sisters, the main characters portrayed in the book.

We’ll be giving away autographed copies of In the Time of the Butterflies and Algonquin Book Club tote bags over the next three weeks. To be entered to win them all you have to do is leave a comment on our Algonquin Book Club blog posts, or tweet about it on Twitter using #AlgBookClub, or tell us your thoughts in the Discussion section on our Facebook page.

And most importantly, if you have any questions for Julia Alvarez, post them in any of the aforementioned places and we’ll submit them to the moderator to potentially be asked at the live event.

Happy reading!

Thanks, USA Today, for writing about the Algonquin Book Club series, featuring Julia Alvarez (In the Time of the Butterflies) with Edwidge Danticat, Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants) with Kathryn Stockett, Heidi Durrow (The Girl Who Fell from the Sky) with Terry McMillan, Robert Goolrick (A Reliable Wife) with Patricia Cornwell, and Lauren Grodstein (A Friend of the Family) with Stephen King. For dates, times, and venues, click here.

We’ll have many more great pairings in 2012, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, please join us for our first Algonquin Book Club selection: In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez. We’ll be hosting the live webcast of Edwidge Danticat interviewing Julia Alvarez on March 21, 7:00pm, at the amazing Books & Books in Miami. In the weeks leading up to the live event, you can join the conversation with others via Facebook, Twitter, and our blog. To sweeten the pot, each week we’ll be giving away Algonquin Book Club tote bags, Advance Review Copies, new books hot off the press, and other swag.

Questions? Comments? We’d love to hear your feedback! Email michael(at)algonquin(dot)com.

We were absolutely thrilled that Flyleaf recently hosted an Algonquin Book Club evening with special guest Heidi Durrow, author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, her debut novel now out in paperback.

Heidi Durrow

The room was packed to the gills, with audience members noshing on cheese and sipping on winter beer. Algonquin’s Marketing Director Craig Popelars started off the night as only he could, with an inspiring ode to book clubs written to the tune of Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice Baby.”

Craig Popelars

Heidi Durrow, winner of Barbara Kingsolver’s prestigious Bellwether Prize, dazzled the audience with her dramatic reading and then had a lively Q&A with the audience.

The audience at Flyleaf

Afterward, Algonkians Chuck Adams, Kathy Pories, Ina Stern, and Michael Taeckens took to the stage and discussed various titles that are perfect for book clubs, including Hillary Jordan’s Mudbound, Lauren Grodstein’s A Friend of the Family, Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife, Jonathan Evison’s West of Here, Caroline Leavitt’s Pictures of You, Joseph Skibell’s A Blessing on the Moon, Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle, and Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants. They also discussed the particulars of the Algonquin Book Club, a new program that will be launching later this month with beautifully designed catalogs and a brand new website (more details to come, so stay posted!).

Kathy Pories, Chuck Adams, Ina Stern, and Michael Taeckens

The evening concluded with more partaking of wine and cheese, tons of audience members lining up to have Heidi sign their books (Flyleaf sold out of every copy!), and people loading up on Algonquin titles and other offerings, thinking about their future book club reads.

Heidi Durrow autographing her book

People waiting to get their books signed by Heidi

Thank you for a great evening, Heidi and Flyleaf!

–Megan Fishmann, Publicist

How long have you been at O: The Oprah Magazine? Oprah and you are totally best buds now, right?
I started in September ’09, so it’s been a little over a year. Oprah and I are [she holds up two fingers, not too close together] like THIS.

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I really admire how you transformed Publishers Weekly. Can you tell us about your tenure there? What do you feel you added to the magazine?
I was at PW for four years and loved every minute of it. It was the first time I’d been in a position to work on a whole magazine, to reshape it, re-”brand” it, etc. I added Signature Reviews to the Review section, I wrote a weekly column that I’m told was widely read and discussed, and I did a lot of traveling to Europe and Asia and the Middle East to attend book fairs and try to make PW more global. I think I succeeded in making this quiet little magazine talked about, important again.

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You also wrote for the Daily Beast, and before PW you were at the New York Post covering the publishing beat, and then before that you were at Glamour. Where else have you worked?
I can’t seem to hold a job! I’ve worked at many, many magazines — SELF, Glamour, 7 Days — and newspapers and Web sites.  I think I really “broke through” as a book business editor at the now defunct Inside.com, which led pretty directly to my job at the New York Post, my column at the New York Observer, and PW.

How did you get into books journalism?
Just fell into it, really. I read a lot and knew a lot of magazine editors, so I began pitching myself as a reviewer to supplement my work as a freelance writing generalist.

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You’re the author of So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading. Did you really read all of those books or did you use CliffsNotes for some of them?
Hey!  I spent many sleepless nights reading those books, and I have the circles under my eyes to prove it.

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Are you worried about the future of book review coverage?
Yes. And no. I think traditional book review coverage is under siege — from blogs and websites, etc. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I do think the trend is away from what we used to call “lit-crit” and toward a much more practical “Do I want to buy this book to read on vacation” form of reviewing. Personally, I think anything that gets people talking about books is great, so I tend to be optimistic about the burst of the web.

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How about e-books–do they signal the end of the world? Or at least the end of physical books?
I think there will always be physical books — and e-books. I think certain kinds of books are best read in e-form: books like travel books, cookbooks, “pulp” novels, romances. Books that you consume rather than lose yourself in are more likely to be e-books. Sometimes I say that e-books are the mass-market of this generation.

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Who are some of the famous people you’ve met and/or interviewed over the years?
Well, I don’t know. Famous to me and famous to the rest of the world are two different sets of people. I once said in an interview that I was more interested in what went on in Sonny Mehta’s head than George Clooney’s. I meant that. That said, I have met too many great writers to mention — I don’t want to leave anybody out! I have never met my idol, Philip Roth, though — so if anybody has his phone number, can you pass it to me?

Your favorite BEA parties?
Yours, of course. (Note: Party for Tab Hunter Confidential, June 2006. Among the many hundreds of people in attendance were Tab’s close friend, Joyce DeWitt–otherwise known as Janet Wood on Three’s Company–much to the delight of many of us who grew up with the show; and James Ellroy, who regaled everyone with tales that were hilarious and sordid in equal measure.)

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Favorite books you’ve read recently (w/in last year or so):
A Reliable Wife, Cutting for Stone, The True Memoirs of Little K, Unbroken, A Visit from the Goon Squad

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You’re going to be stranded on a desert island: You can choose two people from the publishing industry to take with you. Who are they? (No Algonquin people can join you, unfortunately–we’ll all be stranded on a cruise ship.)
If I can’t take Chuck Adams (Algonquin’s executive editor), I’m not going.

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How many times have your friends/extended family members asked if you could get them on the Oprah Show?
Only a few. How many have wanted me to get their books on the show . . . well, that’s a different story.

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Umm, I have this book for you, and I think Oprah would really love it. May I get her cell phone number from you?
As Jackie Onassis reportedly said to her onetime boyfriend, the journalist Pete Hamill, when he suggested she allow him to write a profile of her: “Gimme a break!”

–Michael Taeckens, Online and Paperback Marketing Director

The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern

The July 3rd issue of The New York Times Book Review gave a full page rave for The Frozen Rabbi:

“Tradition is too modest a word for the extraordinary story behind the icebound rabbi’s journey, across several countries and a century of time … The adventure, recounted by Stern with manic virtuosity, starts in a small Polish village, where Rabbi Eliezer is so blissed out during a pond-side meditation that he doesn’t notice a storm lifting the waters around him. In one of the effortless liberties the master fabulist Stern takes with reality, the rabbi survives underwater until winter comes and he’s encased in ice. This all happens before page 7, testament to how rapidly this book chews through plot, characters, decades and continents. The voracious pace lets Stern spill a hundred years of vivid Jewish history onto the page. But it doesn’t keep him from revealing, with depth and subtlety, the yearning and agony of all the characters who are lucky (or unlucky) enough to have their fates lashed to that of the frozen rabbi … Stern’s intimacy with Jewish mysticism does not seem to come from Internet research. He writes with piercing zeal about religious concepts that are, by their very definition, impossible to describe—impossible, perhaps, even to understand … Yet Stern brings the esoteric ideas handily to life and lodges them, often hilariously, in the unlikely body of Bernie Karp, holy teenager of Memphis … Along with the difficult questions of just what is lost when assimilation is gained, Stern also raises the hope that even the most unwitting among us cannot fully escape the passions of our ancestors.”

Read the rest of Ben Marcus’s review HERE.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

No surprise, but this best-selling novel clocked in at #4 on the Most Wanted list of “The Year’s Page-Turners.” Check out the other “Most Wanted” books, as well as TV shows, films, albums, and magazines HERE.

The Book-of-the-Month First Fiction Award is granted annually by the Book-of-the-Month Club editorial board to recognize an outstanding first work of fiction in the English language. The First Fiction Award represents the high standard of fictional writing in English, published in the U.S., that Book-of-the-Month wishes to honor in new writers.Congratulations, Robert Goolrick!

A Reliable Wife is still on the NY Times Paperback Bestseller list, this week at #5!

Visit the website for A Reliable Wife to read an excerpt, download discussion questions, and watch a video interview with Robert Goolrick.

Thanks to Phyllis Lerner, Scottsdale, AZ, for the use of her photos.

Click here to read the first chapter online, read (and hear) an interview with Robert Goolrick, and find discussion questions for your book group.