Amazon’s “Best So Far”
Amazon’s Editors have selected their choices of the Best Books of The Year So Far.
The #1 Pick is Kate Atkinson’s acclaimed and NYT best selling novel, Life After Life, (Hachette/Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print), which is still showing heavy holds in many libraries and is also selected as a best audio title.
Among the top 20 is a YA title, Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin), which has been a continuing word-of-mouth success. The author’s next book, Fangirl, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin, 9/10/13) is a favorite on both adult and YA GalleyChat and 
has 24 “featured peer reviews” on Edelweiss. Macmillan’s Ali Fisher notes that they will have copies at ALA Annual, booth #2103. For those who aren’t able to nab a copy, it is available as a digital ARC on Edelweiss (if you aren’t already, request to be white-listed to get access).
Most of the other top 20 titles have already hit best seller lists. Two relative sleepers are:
Helene Wecker’s first novel, The Golem and the Jinni, received a 3.5 star review in USA Today that invited readers to “dive in and happily immerse yourself, forgetting the troubles of daily life for a while.” The Huffington Post called it “The Book We’re Talking About,” saying it shows similarities to The Night Circus, “a stirring, magical debut. Its intertwining of mythology and historical fiction is very engagingly written.”
The New York Times put the icing on the cake:
… this impressive first novel manages to combine the narrative magic of The Arabian Nights with the kind of emotional depth, philosophical seriousness and good, old-fashioned storytelling found in the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer.
It spent one week on the NYT Hardcover Fiction extended list at #30.
Schroder, Amity Gaige, (Hachette/Twelve)
A People Pick, this novel about a man who kidnaps his daughter, was also reviewed by the perceptive Ron Charles in theWashington Post, who said, “The entire book is a testimony, written in prison, by a divorced dad to his ex-wife. Equal parts plea, apology and defense, this enthralling letter rises up from a fog of narcissism that will cloud your vision and put you under his spell.”