Kirkus Best Fiction of 2019

Best Science Fiction and Fantasy

• The Kingdom of Copper, S.A. Chakraborty (Harper Voyager)
• How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, K. Eason (DAW)
• Early Riser, Jasper Fforde (Viking)
• A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World, C.A. Fletcher (Orbit)
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James (Riverhead)
• Steel Crow Saga, Paul Krueger (Del Rey)
• The Ruin of Kings, Jenn Lyons (Tor)
• Middlegame, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
• Blood of an Exile , Brian Naslund (Tor)
• Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, Neal Stephenson (William Morrow)
• The Iron Dragon’s Mother, Michael Swanwick (Tor)
• The Lesson, Cadwell Turnbull (Blackstone)
• Wanderers, Chuck Wendig (Del Rey)

Best Romance Novels

• Nightchaser, Amanda Bouchet (Sourcebooks Casablanca)
• Forever Wolf, Maria Vale (Sourcebooks Casablanca)

Best Historical Fiction

• Murmur, Will Eaves (Bellevue)
• Inland, Téa Obreht (Random House)
• The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell (Hogarth)

Best Debut Fiction

• The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell (Hogarth)
• Bangkok Wakes to Rain, Pitchaya Sudbanthad (Riverhead)
• Oval, Elvia Wilk (Soft Skull)

Best Short Fiction

• Exhalation, Ted Chiang (Knopf)
• Full Throttle, Joe Hill (William Morrow)
• Orange World and Other Stories, Karen Russell (Knopf)
• The World Doesn’t Require You, Rion Amilcar Scott (Liveright)

Best Fiction in Translation

• The Promise, Silvina Ocampo, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine & Jessica Powell (City Lights)
• The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (Pantheon)
• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead)
• The Fox and Dr. Shimamura, Christine Wunnicke, translated by Philip Boehm (New Directions)

For more information, including complete lists, see the Kirkus website.