Sarah Crichton Books 2019—The Final Year
Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring
by Richard Gergel
Published January 2019
“A monumental achievement”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
“Remarkable….engrossing….[a]riveting legal history”—Pulitzer Prize-winner David W. Blight, The New York Times Book Review
The Peakcock Feast
by Lisa Gornick
Published February 2019
“[A] wonderfully complex, many-stranded novel . . . The Peacock Feast is marvelously rich in character, event and locale . . . A thoroughly rewarding novel and, though not terribly long, a truly mighty one.”—Katherine A. Powers, Newsday
What We Did
by Christobel Kent
Published March 2019
Shortlisted for the Golden Dagger 2019
An “engrossing psychological thriller….an atmospheric tale of macabre multitasking…[with] a twisting and complex plot…”—Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post
Miracle Creek
by Angie Kim
Published April 2019
National Bestseller and A Best Book of the Year
Time; The Washington Post; Amazon; Kirkus Reviews;
Hudson Booksellers; Chicago Public Library; BookPage;
CrimeReads; Goodreads; Library Journal
“[A] mesmerizing debut . . . [Angie Kim] shows an enormous amount of empathy for her characters, infusing them with such intense humanity that I sat weeping for them in an airplane middle seat, between two strangers, for several minutes after I finished the book. With clear, assured prose and penetrating emotional intelligence, she takes us deep into their inner lives . . . The plotting is deliberate and detailed and marvelously done.” —Steph Cha, Los Angeles Times
Mother is a Verb: An Unconventional History
by Sarah Knott
Published April 2019
“Simply put, the book is a joy to read, borne of raw curiosity and intelligence, nurtured into the world to fill a gap in understanding” --Robin Romm, The New York Times Book Review
Dawson’s Fall
by Roxana Robinson
Published May 2019
“Covering so much ground…the book has an epic sweep. But it’s also grounded…The action ramps up in the final section of the book, which plays like a thriller…Here Robinson has pieced together a century-old true crime, a murder in which all the witnesses are long dead. Using far-flung sources and excruciating care, she creates the map; her novelist’s skills render it in 3-D. Few Americans may have an ancestry as acutely divergent across the Mason-Dixon Line as Robinson has, but the legacy of slavery and the Civil War is still being felt by our nation. ‘Dawson’s Fall’ is a richly envisioned attempt to reconcile with that troubled history.” – Carolyn Kellogg, The Washington Post
The Electric Hotel
by Dominic Smith
Published June 2019
“An irresistible and dizzying international tale of early cinema. [Smith] is a writer of elegance, rich imagination and propulsive plotting.”—The Washington Post
“Radiant . . . a vital and highly entertaining work about the act of creation, and about what it means to pick up and move on after you’ve lost everything.”—The New York Times
Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life
by Darcey Steinke
Published June 2019
“I hope that Steinke’s book, which I consumed hungrily, will encourage a wave of work by and about women undergoing what is, quite literally, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Steinke makes the case that the inexorable slide away from fertility is a rebirth of agency, and her book is the fruit of the very creativity it describes.” —Sarah Manguso, The New Yorker
The Grammarians
by Cathleen Schine
Published September 2019
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
An Amazon Best Book of 2019
Front page review of The New York Times Book Review
“Captivating… In short, it’s about everything and nothing, written with the tender precision and clarity of a painting by Vermeer, had that 17th-century Dutchman portrayed scenes of middle-class Jewish life in mid- to late 20th-century New York.” —Ann Levin, AP
“Brilliantly funny….beautiful, wistful, wry….sparkling…”—Alan Hollinghurst, The New York Review of Books
The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America’s Coasts
by Gilbert M. Gaul
Published September 2019
“Carefully-researched and eye-opening…astonishing…” —Arlie Russell Hochschild, The New York Times Book Review
Erosion: Essays of Undoing
by Terry Tempest Williams
Published October 2019
“….[H]aunting, powerful and brave…”—Diane Ackerman, The New York Times Book Review
“Beautiful…stunning and heartbreaking….a hybrid of Annie Dillard’s A Writer’s Life and Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking. [Williams has an] incredible ability to describe the tininess of human beings in relation to the majesty of human nature.” --Elisabeth Egan, The New York Times Book Review podcast
Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge
by Sheila Weller
Published November 2019
“Mesmerizing….riveting”—Leigh Haber, O, the Oprah Magazine
“This in-depth, insightful, and profoundly sympathetic biography …is a worthy tribute to a strong, intelligent woman, and readers will appreciate Weller’s honest portrayal and thoughtful analysis.”—-starred review, Booklist