NCR members read: Fiction and memoir

It's no secret that our NCR Forward members have great taste, but they really proved it last fall when we asked them to tell us their favorite books across eight categories. Some 150 members responded, and the recommendations were too good to keep private. We'll be sharing the results in segments over the next few weeks. Below is a compilation of our community's most beloved titles in fiction and memoir. 

Titles recommended by multiple people are indicated by an asterisk.

Fiction that explores faith, meaning and moral choice

• Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Silence by Shūsaku Endō
• The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
• The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife by Anna Johnston
• Foster by Claire Keegan
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
• The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
• The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
• Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
• The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
• The Once and Future King by T.H. White
• The Shack* by William Paul Young

Literature, classics and the human condition

• The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis
• All the Light We Cannot See* by Anthony Doerr
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
• Code 6 by James Grippando
• The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
• The Women by Kristin Hannah
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The World According to Garp by John Irving
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
• To Kill a Mockingbird* by Harper Lee
• The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• The Source by James Michner
• The Crucible by Arthur Miller
• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
• Private Rome by James Patterson
• There Are Rivers in the Sky* by Elif Shafak
• Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Memoir, witness and lives lived with integrity

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• The Truth at the Heart of the Lie by James Carroll
• The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
• The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest by John Gerard
• A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins
• Our Hearts Are Restless by Richard Lischer
• Undoing the Knots by Maureen O'Connell
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• No Guilty Bystander by Frank Fromherz and Suzanne Sattler
• God in the House by Margaret Stack
• The Miracle Detective by Randall Sullivan
• We Are All Poets Here by Kathleen Tarr