Thank you to all 96 people who participated in my Readers' Choice survey. This year Kristin Hannah's The Women came in first, followed by Lisa Barr's The Goddess of Warsaw. Several of last year's winners appear again on this year's list, including Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead (last year - 2nd place; this year - 3rd place), Joyce Maynard's The Bird Hotel (last year - first place; this year, tied for third). Marjan Kamali's The Lion Women of Tehran came in fourth place, and also tied for third were Anne Berest's The Postcard (my personal favorite read of 2023), and Esther Goldenberg's The Scrolls of Deborah.
I was thrilled to see several books that we heard about at Literary Modiin as runners-up, including Sasha Vasilyuk's Your Presence is Mandatory, Maya Arad's The Hebrew Teacher, and Joan Leegant's Displaced Persons. Other runners-up included Sarah Goodman Confino's Behind Every Good Man, James McBride's The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (last year's 5th place), Alison Espach's The Wedding People, Amanda Peter's The Berry Pickers, Bonnie Garmus' Lessons in Chemistry (third year on the list, after coming in first place in 2022 and a runner-up last year), Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water (last year's third place winner), and Percival Everett's James.
See below for all the honorable mentions - I'll call out Ayelet Tsabari's Songs for the Brokenhearted, which came out in the fall - as I think this will end up on quite a few people's picks for 2025. (Register for the March 2025 Lit Modiin event with Ayelet).
There are quite a few winners, runners-up, and honorable mentions I haven't read yet, and I'm looking forward to putting these on my TBR pile in 2025.
Winners
1st place: The Women, Kristin Hannah
2nd place: The Goddess of Warsaw, Lisa Barr (Stay tuned for details of an upcoming Literary Modiin with Lisa)
3rd place: Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver
4th place: The Lion Women of Tehran, Marjan Kamali
5th place (tie): The Postcard, Anne Berest*; The Scrolls of Deborah, Esther Goldenberg; The Bird Hotel, Joyce Maynard (See my post about Anne Berest at the Jerusalem Writers' Festival).
Runners-up:
Your Presence is Mandatory, Sasha Vasilyuk (watch Sasha at Literary Modiin)
Displaced Persons, Joan Leegant (watch Joan at Literary Modiin - or sign up for her March 2025 event)
The Hebrew Teacher, Maya Arad (contact me to see the recording of Maya's Literary Modiin event)
The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese
Behind Every Good Man, Â Sarah Goodman Confino
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride
The Wedding People, Alison Espach
The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peter
Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
James, Percival Everett
Honorable Mentions:
A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
A Pigeon and a Boy, Meir Shalev
Absolutely and Forever, Rose Tremain
All Fours, Miranda July
All The Colors of the Dark, Chris Whitaker
American Dirt, Jeanine Cummins
American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld
At the Edge of the Orchard, Tracy Chevalier
Don’t Forget to Write, Sara Goodman Confino
Exodus, Leon Uris
Fresh Water for Flowers, Valerie Perrin
Go as a River, Shelley Read
Here One Moment, Liane Moriarty
How the Light Gets In, Joyce Maynard
Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting, Clare Pooley
Leaving Eastern Parkway, Matthew Daub
Living with Our Dead, Delphine Horvilleur
Long Island, Coim Toibin
North Woods, Daniel Mason
People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt
Sandwich, Catherine Newman
Songs for the Brokenhearted, Ayelet Tsabari (Register for the March 2025 Lit Modiin event with Ayelet)
Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Stout
The Amen Effect, Sharon Brous
The Bee Sting, Paul Murray
The God of the Woods, Liz Moore
The Little Liar, Mitch Albom
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, Marianne Cronin
The Overstory, Richard Powers
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid
There are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak
This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub
To the End of the Land, David Grossman
Tom Lake, Ann Patchett
Trust, Hernan Diaz
We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman
Wellness, Nathan Hill
When Angels Left the Old Country, Sascha Lamb
Here's me, fangirling one of our winners, Anne Berest, author of The Postcard.