Top 5 Books of 2022 (So Far)

Whether you want to understand or escape the current moment, our top 5 favorite releases of the year have you covered

At Entertainment News World we’ve made it to another great season in international books. Whether you read like the wind this winter or fell short of your goals, spring is a time of rebirth, meaning that it's a new season, a new you, and a whole new slate of releases to devour. Whether you’re looking to understand our current moment through rigorous nonfiction or escape it through otherworldly plots, 2022’s early crop of new titles offer something for readers of every persuasion. Our favorite books of the year so far run the gamut of genres, from epic fantasy to literary fiction, and tackle a constellation of subjects. If you want to read about spaceships, talking pigs, or supervillains, you’ve come to the right place.

A warning: Not all of these books have hit shelves yet, so if you see something you like, pre-order it now as a gift to your future self. When it shows up in your mailbox, you’ll be thanking Past You—and diving between the covers in no time. And check back here throughout the year— ENW will be updating our list as 2022 rolls on.

1. Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel

Sea of Tranquility, Mandel’s sensational sixth novel, offers immense pleasures of puzzle box plotting and high-flying imagination. As devoted readers have come to expect from her fiction, the novel braids together a rich ensemble of characters, revealing the surprising linkages between their disparate lives. In 1912, a high-society exile is spooked by an out-of-body experience in the Canadian wilderness; in 2203, a novelist endures the agonies and ecstasies of “the last book tour on Earth” while longing for her home in a lunar colony; in 2401, a shiftless thirty-something becomes enmeshed with the secretive Time Institute. Linking them all is one mysterious shared experience: an overlapping moment, disjointed from linear time, that calls into question the very nature of our reality. Masterfully plotted and deeply moving, this visionary novel folds back on itself like a hall of mirrors to explore just what connects us to one another, and how many extraordinary contingencies bring us to each ordinary day of our lives. Read an exclusive interview with Mandel here at Esquire.

2. The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan

One of our great American storytellers returns with a rare literary sequel of the very rarest quality. The Candy House enlarges A Visit From the Goon Squad not just by revisiting its memorable characters, but by doubling down on its formal conceits, with many chapters written in texts and emails. In this alternate reality, the world has been forever changed by Own Your Unconsciousness, a popular platform where memories are stored in the cloud and accessible to any user. As Egan hopscotches through the interconnected stories of shared memories, she asks powerful questions about the innate human need for connection, and the price of surrendering our privacy. Of the many novels that have sought to make sense of the social media age, The Candy House is the finest yet.

3. The Immortal King Rao, by Vauhini Vara

Why should television get to have all the fun with Big Tech? In this thrilling story about capitalism, consciousness, and the ties that bind, Vara brings the ethical questions of our time to speculative fiction. In a not-so-distant future, Athena Rao stands accused of murdering her father, the legendary tech mogul King Rao. To prove her innocence to the Board of Corporations, who run the planet, she’ll have to make use of The Harmonica, a device King implanted in her brain to provide access to all of his memories. Athena’s defense takes the story back to her father’s traumatic childhood in India, all the way through to his meteoric rise and eventual downfall. Vara’s warped world of techno-capitalism run amok is vividly imagined, but it’s the novel’s beating heart that will win you over. “What if we could gather up our stories and hold on to them for safekeeping?” Vara asks. “Wouldn’t that be our best shot at proving to the universe that, once upon a time, we were here?”

4. Scoundrel, by Sarah Weinman

One of our finest true crime writers returns with the chilling story of Edgar Smith, a convicted murderer freed from Death Row by virtue of his connections with various powerful people, including National Review founder William F. Buckley. Smith’s deceptions set him free and catapulted him to literary fame, but ultimately, he nearly took another innocent woman’s life, leaving blood on the hands of Buckley and his other champions. Exhaustively reported and compassionately told, Scoundrel shows how the justice system is easily manipulated, and how it often fails vulnerable women. Like The Real Lolita before it, Scoundrel proves once again that Weinman is a modern master of the genre.

5. The Invisible Kingdom, by Meghan O'Rourke

“I got sick the way Hemingway says you go broke: ‘gradually and then suddenly,’” O’Rourke writes in The Invisible Kingdom, describing the beginning of her decades-long struggle with chronic autoimmune disease. In the late nineties, O’Rourke began suffering symptoms ranging from rashes to crushing fatigue; when she sought treatment, she became an unwilling citizen of a shadow world, where chronic illness sufferers are dismissed by doctors and alienated from their lives. In this elegant fusion of memoir, reporting, and cultural history, O’Rourke traces the development of modern Western medicine and takes aim at its limitations, advocating for a community-centric healthcare model that treats patients as people, not parts. At once a rigorous work of scholarship and a radical act of empathy, The Invisible Kingdom has the power to move mountains.

Sourced from a syndicated feed, this story is written and edited as per ENW editing guidelines.