From career-defining epics to wild story collections, spring has a book for everyone.

Forty years in the making and clocking in at 880 pages, The American People, Vol. I is the first part of the magnum opus from award-winning playwright and author Larry Kramer. The book, which kicks off with 12 epigraphs, is an entire history of a nation. Readers encounter prehistoric monkeys, a revised presentation of the Lincoln assassination, and a plot to exterminate homosexuals as the AIDS virus begins to spread.

Though readers might not have been waiting quite so long for Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel, The Buried Giant, it’s been 10 years since his previous book, Never Let Me Go. This mythical novel is set in Arthurian England and takes the form of a quest story, but the heroes are no knights—they’re an elderly couple.

Kelly Link returns with the story collection Get in Trouble. The book is stuffed with her distinct brand of bizarre and wonderful details, including a superhero named Mann Man, who has the powers of Thomas Mann.

A new Toni Morrison book is always an event, and her latest novel, God Help the Child, is no exception. In this book, which PW starred, a mother learns about the damage adults do to children and the lasting effect this can have as they grow up.

Kate Atkinson follows up her die-and-redo epic, Life After Life, with A God in Ruins. This one centers on Life After Life protagonist Ursula Todd’s younger brother, Teddy, an RAF bomber pilot and would-be poet.

Reif Larsen, author of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, delivers I Am Radar, an ambitious globe-trotting epic about a man who gets involved with a shadowy group of puppeteers.

One of our most popular authors, Judy Blume, will publish her first adult work in 16 years. In the Unlikely Event uses real-life airplane crashes in Elizabeth, N.J., in the early 1950s as a backdrop.

Though 2015 has just begun, we already have a candidate for the year’s funniest book: Making Nice by Matt Sumell is a rambunctious novel-in-stories featuring the hotheaded Alby.

Bestseller Kristin Hannah takes on WWII in The Nightingale, a novel that spans half a century and centers on the secret lives of the residents of a small town in France.

And T. Geronimo Johnson, a PEN/Faulkner finalist for his debut novel Hold It ’Til It Hurts, offers his second novel, Welcome to Braggsville, a dark, cutting coming-of-age story set on the UC Berkeley campus.

PW’S Top 10: Literary Fiction

The American People, Vol. I: Search for My Heart. Larry Kramer. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Apr. 7

The Buried Giant. Kazuo Ishiguro. Knopf, Mar. 3

Get in Trouble. Kelly Link. Random, Feb. 3

God Help the Child. Toni Morrison. Knopf, Apr. 21

A God in Ruins. Kate Atkinson. Little, Brown, May 5

I Am Radar. Reif Larsen. Penguin Press, Feb. 24

In the Unlikely Event. Judy Blume. Knopf, June 2

Making Nice. Matt Sumell. Holt, Feb. 17

The Nightingale. Kristin Hannah. St. Martin’s, Feb. 3

Welcome to Braggsville. T. Geronimo Johnson. Morrow, Feb. 17

Literary Fiction Listings

Akashic

The Anger Meridian by Kaylie Jones (July 7, paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-61775-351-0). When Merryn Huntley learns that her wealthy husband has been killed in a car accident, along with a local waitress, Merryn’s instinct is to flee in order to protect her nine-year-old daughter. The safest place to go is her mother’s isolated home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Archipelago

(dist. by Random)

My Struggle, Book 4 by Karl Ove Knausgaard, trans. by Don Bartlett (Apr. 28, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-914671-17-6). In the fourth volume of the hit series, Karl Ove moves to a tiny fisherman’s village in the far north near the Arctic Circle to work as a schoolteacher.

Bellevue Literary

(dist. by Consortium)

American Meteor by Norman Lock (June 9, paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-934137-94-9). A scrappy Brooklyn orphan turned vengeful assassin narrates a visionary tale of the American West. PW’s starred review said the novel is “an old-fashioned yarn full of rich historical detail about hard-earned lessons and learning to do right.”

Bloomsbury

The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein (June 2, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-63286-112-2). In this debut novel, two lives intersect 95 miles above the Arctic Circle in a Norwegian artists’ colony. Jonathan Safran Foer calls it as “lyrical as a poem, psychologically rich as a thriller.”

Coffee House

The Dig by Cynan Jones (Apr. 14, paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-56689-393-0). Cormac McCarthy meets Marilynne Robinson in this slow-motion collision of interlocking fates of a badger-baiter and a farmer struggling through lambing season. The story unfolds in a stark rural setting where man, animal, and land are at odds.

Dalkey Archive

(dist. by Columbia Univ.)

Collected Stories by John Barth (July 21, paper, $16.95, ISBN 978-1-62897-095-1). This collection of John Barth’s short fiction is brings together all of his previous collections, together with a few new stories.

Doubleday

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Mar. 10, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-385-53925-8). Following The People in the Trees (one of PW’s top 10 books of 2013) Yanagihara delivers an epic story about the relationships of four college friends in New York City and how they evolve over the decades.

Lucky Alan by Jonathan Lethem (Feb. 24, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-385-53981-4). Lethem’s third collection uncovers a father’s nervous breakdown at SeaWorld in “Pending Vegan”; a foundling child rescued from the woods during a blizzard in “Traveler Home”; a political prisoner in a hole in a Brooklyn street in “Procedure in Plain Air,” and more.

Dutton

Oh! You Pretty Things by Shanna Mahin (Apr. 14, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-525-95504-7). From a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow comes a charming and disarming tale of Los Angeles that navigates the fringes of celebrity excess from the other side of Sunset Boulevard.

Ecco

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman (Feb. 10, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-222709-6). In the aftermath of a devastating plague, a fearless young heroine embarks on a dangerous and surprising journey to save her world in this brilliantly inventive dystopian thriller. 50,000-copy announced first printing.

The Harder They Come by T.C. Boyle (Mar. 31, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-234937-8). The New York Times bestselling author makes his Ecco debut with a powerful, gripping novel that explores the roots of violence and antiauthoritarianism inherent in the American character. 100,000-copy announced first printing.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The American People, Vol. 1: Search for My Heart by Larry Kramer (Apr. 7, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-0-374-10439-9). Forty years in the making, Kramer’s massive novel sets forth his vision of his homeland. The first volume, which runs up to the 1950s, involves prehistoric monkeys who spread a peculiar virus and a Native American shaman whose sexual explorations mutate into occult visions.

Find Me by Laura van den Berg (Feb. 17, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-374-15471-4). Lorrie Moore meets Haruki Murakami in this debut novel about a sickness, beginning with memory loss and ending with death, that sweeps the country.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty (Mar. 3, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-374-26050-7). A biting satire about a young man’s isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court. PW’s starred review called the novel “wildly funny but deadly serious.”

Graywolf

I Refuse by Per Petterson, trans. by Don Bartlett (Apr. 7, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-1-55597-699-6). The first new novel in nearly five years by the international bestselling novelist (Out Stealing Horses) is a haunting and tender story of friendship between two boys whose bond is shaken after an incident on the ice, told from different perspectives and from different time periods.

Grove

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Apr. 7, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-8021-2345-9). The narrator of Nguyen’s debut novel, which PW starred, is a conflicted subversive and idealist working as a double agent in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Grove/Black Cat

Young Skins by Colin Barrett (Mar. 3, paper, $15, ISBN 978-0-8021-2332-9). Winner of the 2014 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, Barrett’s six dynamic short stories and one novella occupy the ghostly, melancholic spaces between boyhood and old age.

Harper

The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera (June 23, hardcover, $23.99, ISBN 978-0-06-235689-5). Set in Paris today, the novel follows four friends who run into each other in the Luxembourg Gardens, attend parties, and conduct a long-running exchange on sex, desire, history, art, even the meaning of human existence. 100,000-copy announced first printing.

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman (June 30, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-0-06-238867-4). An intelligent and entertaining debut novel draws comparison to The Crying of Lot 49, White Noise, and City of Glass; it is at once a missing-person mystery, an exorcism of modern culture, and a frightening vision of contemporary womanhood. 30,000-copy announced first printing.

Holt

Making Nice by Matt Sumell (Feb. 17, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-1-62779-093-2) follows the wild Alby, who gets in fights, mothers a baby bird, and lashes out at his sister. PW’s starred review said, “Sumell’s exceptional novel in stories unleashes one of the most comically arresting voices this side of Sam Lipsyte’s Homeland.”

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The Turner House by Angela Flournoy (Apr. 14, hardcover, $23, ISBN 978-0-544-30316-4). Flournoy’s powerful debut, which received a starred review from PW, centers on a crumbling house on Detroit’s East Side and the family that’s lived there for more than 50 years. 20,000-copy announced first printing.

Knopf

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (Mar., hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-307-27103-7) is set in Arthurian England and follows an elderly, ailing couple making a journey to their son’s village. 200,000-copy announced first printing.

Crow Fair by Thomas McGuane (Mar. 3, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-0-385-35019-8). McGuane’s third collection, which received a starred review from PW, features aging cowboys, middle-aged men resistant to growing up, and the women who plague and perplex them.

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison (Apr., hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-307-59417-4). In Morrison’s short, emotionally wrenching novel, her first since 2012’s Home, a mother learns about the damage adults do to children and the choices children make as they grow to suppress, express, or overcome their shame. 200,000-copy announced first printing.

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume (June 2, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-1-101-87504-9). Using a series of passenger airplane crashes in New Jersey in the early 1950s as a backdrop, Blume bring readers the lives of three generations of families, friends, and strangers who will be profoundly affected by these events, either directly or indirectly.

Little A

The Thing About Great White Sharks by Rebecca Adams Wright (Feb. 10, paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-4778-2107-7). These 15 literary stories range from speculative fiction and science fiction to everyday life, examining how we react to violence and love, and what it means to have compassion—whether after a war, in a shark infested world, during an alien invasion, or in a marriage.

Little, Brown

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson (May 5, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-316-17653-8). The follow-up to Atkinson’s bestseller Life After Life tells the story of Ursula Todd’s beloved younger brother, Teddy—would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband, and father—as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. 150,000-copy announced first printing.

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (Apr. 14, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-316-33837-0). Four brothers encounter a madman whose prophecy of violence threatens the core of their family in this exciting debut novel. 40,000-copy announced first printing.

McPherson & Co.

The Divine Punishment by Sergio Ramirez, trans. by Nick Caistor (May 6, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-1-62054-014-5) is based on the most celebrated criminal trial in Nicaraguan history following the murders in 1933 of three high society women by a Casanova named Oliverio Castaneda. Carlos Fuentes said of the novel, first published 25 years ago and just available in English, “Between the fullness of comedy and the imminence of tragedy, Sergio Ramirez has written the great novel of Central America.”

Milkweed

Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese (Apr. 14, hardcover, $24, ISBN 978-1-57131-115-3). When Franklin Starlight is called to visit his father, their complicated past evokes mixed emotions. On arriving, he finds Eldon on the edge of death, decimated from years of drinking. The two undertake a difficult journey into the mountainous backcountry, in search of a place for Eldon to die.

Morrow

Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson (Feb. 17, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-0-06-230212-0). From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of Hold It ’Til It Hurts comes a dark and socially provocative Southern-fried comedy about four liberal UC Berkeley students who stage a mock lynching during a Civil War re-enactment. 100,000-copy announced first printing.

New Directions

The Musical Brain by Cesar Aira, trans. by Chris Andrews (Mar. 3, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8112-2029-3). A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of microfiction, presents an exhilarating collection of characters, places, and ideas.

Love Hotel by Jane Unrue (Feb. 10, paperback, $15.95, ISBN 978-0-8112-2270-9). Working on behalf of a cunning and mysterious couple, a woman embarks on a haunting search for a stranger (a child? somebody’s lover? a ghost?) and undertakes a perplexing, dangerous, deeply layered, and apparently timeless journey originating on a secluded country estate and leading deep into the erotic center of a transient location in the city.

New Press

The Queen’s Caprice by Jean Echenoz, trans. by Linda Coverdale (Apr. 7, hardcover, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-62097-065-2). The title story of this collection explores a tiny corner of the French countryside; “Nelson” offers a brilliant miniaturist portrait of the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar; other stories visit the forests of England; the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris; Tampa Bay, Fla.; and the interior of a submarine.

New York Review Books

A Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg, trans. by Jenny McPhee, intro. by Peg Boyers (June 9, paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-59017-838-6). One of the most famous European postwar novels, A Family Lexicon is a mesmerizing hybrid of memoir and novel and the author’s most lauded work.

The Prank: The Best of Young Chekhov by Anton Chekhov, trans. by Maria Bloshteyn (May 19, paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-59017-836-2). In 1880, Anton Chekhov set out to edit and publish what he considered his best work. The collection was censored and never appeared as originally conceived—until now. The Prank is the first appearance of this collection in any language and includes two stories never published in English.

Norton

Night at the Fiestas by Kristin Valdez Quade (Mar., hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-0-393-24298-0). Winner of a “5 Under 35” award, Quade sets her debut collection of stories in northern New Mexico, a place shaped by love, loss, and violence.

Open Letter

The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov, trans. by Angela Rodel (Apr. 14, paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-940953-09-0). Shortlisted for prizes around the world, Gospodinov’s thrilling novel is about physics, myths, and the power of stories.

Other Press

The Travels of Daniel Ascher by Déborah Lévy-Bertherat, trans. by Adriana Hunter (May 26, hardcover, $22.95, ISBN 978-1-59051-707-9). A sensation in France, this novel is a story about literary deceptions, family secrets, and a thrilling quest for the truth. As the authorship of a popular book series is questioned, the story explores the true nature of fiction: is it a refuge, a lie, or a stand-in for mourning? 15,000-copy announced first printing.

Pantheon

The Captive Condition by Kevin P. Keating (July 7, hardcover, $24, ISBN 978-0-8041-6928-8). An idyllic Midwestern college town turns out to be a nexus of horror in this emotionally and psychologically complex, chilling and deliciously dark tale.

Emma: A Modern Retelling by Alexander McCall Smith (Apr. 7, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-0-8041-9795-3). The bestselling author of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series gives us his take on Jane Austen with this modern-day Emma.

The Familiar: One Rainy Day in May by Mark Z. Danielewski (May 12, paper, $25, ISBN 978-0-375-71494-8). In the latest from the author of House of Leaves, a 12-year-old girl sets out to get a dog, only to find a different kind of creature that will alter her life and threaten the world we think we know and the future we take for granted.

Pegasus

(dist. by Norton)

The Listener by Rachel Basch (Mar. 15, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-60598-688-3) is a wise and witty novel about the challenges to identity that arise in both adolescence and middle age—and of the college freshman and school psychologist who may have the power to save each other.

Penguin Press

I Am Radar by Reif Larsen (Feb. 24, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-59420-616-0). In this kaleidoscopic novel, which PW starred, a love-struck radio operator discovers a secret society offering mind-bending performance art in war zones around the world.

The Shadow of the Crescent Moon by Fatima Bhutto (Mar. 24, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1-59420-560-6). Long-listed for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, this lyrical novel is set over the course of one morning in a small town in Pakistan.

Picador

The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock (July 7, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-250-06664-0). A gripping debut novel of the space race explores the inner life of a national hero—and asks what it means to be courageous in the face of unthinkable loss.

Pushkin

The Librarian by Mikhail Elizarov, trans. by Andrew Bromfield (Feb. 10, paper, $18.95, ISBN 978-1-78227-027-0). If Ryu Murakami had written War and Peace, it might look like Elizarov’s novel about Gromov, an obscure and long forgotten propaganda author of the Soviet era, and the supernatural effects his books have on readers.

Putnam

My Sunshine Away by M.O. Walsh (Feb. 10, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-399-16952-6). Walsh’s debut unfolds in a Baton Rouge neighborhood best known for cookouts on sweltering summer afternoons, cauldrons of spicy crawfish, and passionate football fandom. But in the summer of 1989, 15-year-old Lindy Simpson—free spirit, track star, and belle of the block—is raped late one evening near her home.

Random House

Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont (July 7, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-8129-9522-0). A debut novel about the breakup of a family over one summer reveals piercing, unforgettable understanding of the bonds of family life, how brittle they can be, and how resilient.

Get in Trouble by Kelly Link (Feb. 3, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-8041-7968-3). The first new collection in almost a decade from an original writer hailed by Michael Chabon as “the most darkly playful voice in American fiction.”

Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum (Mar. 17, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-8129-9753-8). A wife and mother’s life looks perfect from the outside, but she is falling apart inside in this debut novel about marriage, sex, fidelity, morality, and most especially, self. PW’s starred review called the novel “masterly.”

Random/Spiegel & Grau

At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen (Mar. 31, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-385-52323-3) returns to the kind of storytelling Gruen excelled at in Water for Elephants. It’s a historical time frame in an unusual setting with a moving love story: think Scottish Downton Abbey.

Riverhead

Funny Girl by Nick Hornby (Feb. 3, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-1-59420-541-5). From the bestselling author of High Fidelity, About a Boy, and A Long Way Down comes a novel set in 1960s London.

Scribner

The Children’s Crusade by Ann Packer (Apr. 7, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-4767-1045-7). The New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier explores the secrets and desires, the remnant wounds and saving graces of one California family over the course of five decades.

Simon & Schuster

Soil by Jamie Kornegay (Mar. 10, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-4767-5081-1) is a darkly comic debut novel by an independent bookseller about an idealistic young farmer who moves his family to a Mississippi flood basin, suffers financial ruin, and becomes increasingly paranoid that he’s being framed for murder.

Soho

Burning Down George Orwell’s House by Andrew Ervin (May 5, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1-61695-494-9). Set partly in Chicago, but mostly on the remote Scottish Isle of Jura, Andrew Ervin’s debut is a darkly comic tale of advertising, truth, single malt, Scottish hospitality-or lack thereof, and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. There’s also a werewolf. Maybe.

Sourcebooks Landmark

The Orphan Sky by Ella Leya (Feb. 3, paper, $14.99, ISBN 978-1-4022-9865-3). A semiautobiographical debut by an Azerbaijani-American is set at the crossroads of Asia and Europe under the red flag of communism in the late 1970s, revealing the ancient soul of 20th-century Azerbaijan as a young pianist searches for her identity and freedom.

St. Martin’s

A Fireproof Home for the Bride by Amy Scheibe (Mar. 10, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-250-04967-4). The coming-of-age story of 18-year-old Emmy Nelson, who’s swept up in a family secret when she attempts to step outside of her parents’ strict world and strike out on her own.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (Feb. 3, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-312-57722-3). The New York Times bestselling author offers an epic novel of love and war, from the 1940s to the present day, and the secret lives of those who live in a small French town.

Two Dollar Radio

(dist. by Consortium)

The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell (Mar. 17, paperback, $16.99, ISBN 978-1-937512-27-9). Wandering a post-pandemic world where she is strangely immune to a succession of killer diseases, Inez Fardo is hired to provide genetic material to a wealthy, grief-stricken mother. When complications arise, Inez is left responsible for a baby girl.

Univ. of Chicago

Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere by Georges Perec, trans. by David Bellos (Apr. 6, hardcover, $20, ISBN 978-0-226-05425-4). Georges Perec’s first novel, long thought lost and never before published, reveals the puckish, playful writer at the outset of his career, already interested in themes and ideas (art, forgery, murder) that preoccupied him throughout his career.