Amazon best books of the year

With more and this one's for the bookworms out there. Amazon has announced its best books of the year and here to tell us more about the top five picks. And I have the top five as Amazon senior editor Lindsay Powers. Lindsay, good morning. Good morning. I'm so excited to talk with you about these books that our team just cannot get enough of. We read thousands of books a year to surface the very best ones for busy readers across a lot of different categories, mystery, history, romance, sci-fi, and so on. But these are the very best. Creme de la creme. Let's start with the first one. So our first one is Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. And to say that we had high expectations for this book is like an understatement, right? The good news is she meets and exceeds them. So Min Jin Lee wrote Pachinko, which won the National Book Award, was adapted into this incredible streaming series. This is her latest one. And it is a story about education. It's about a family that sticks together against... All of the odds, unimaginable obstacles, and it's about the choices that we make in life and the chances. Is that we are given and that that we are denied and I will admit it gets a little soapy at times, which I am just mentioning because I don't want anyone to be intimidated by the length. We promise you will fly through it. You will not be able to just be so excited that you won't be able to stop talking about it with a book club or with your friends. It's a really great just book discussion kind of book. And it's okay to say soapy because that's my vibe. So some of us are here. We're here for it. Then you have Exit West, too. Yeah, so Exit Party is by Emily St. John Mandel. She writes these literary sci-fi books that appeal to all different kinds of readers. You know, her last one, Station Eleven, or one of her more recent ones, Station Eleven, was very popular, also adapted into a TV show. Exit Party takes place in near-future America between Paris and Los Angeles. I don't want to say too much. It's dystopian because I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say I was so obsessed with this story that I was like reading it on my Kindle app on my phone any minute that I could steal to just get a few more pages in. Ripped through it. It's a real puzzle box of a book. There's a lot of Easter eggs. So as soon as you finish the last page, you will want to just flip back to the the beginning again and start it again to just. Find everything that you missed. Oh, sounds like a real page turner. Then you have The Vanishing Family, which includes love, fate, and so many other universal themes. Right. The Vanishing Family is nonfiction that reads like fiction. And it centers around this impossible question, which is if you could take a simple medical test that would reveal your fate, would you? That is because the family that's featured in this book is afflicted by this rare form of dementia, which is determined by a single gene. And researchers are really eager to study them because figuring out what causes this gene could also lead to a cure or a treatment or a cure of this brain disease that impacts 55 million people. So on one hand, it's this completely engrossing medical mystery. But on the other hand, it is just this really absorbing tale of caregiving and the way that we show up for each other and a family. Hopefully, um, I. I mean, it's one of my personal favorite books of the year, too. I'm recommending it to everyone. Well, Lindsay, we have less than 60 seconds here. It's funny that Ken is one of the books because I received this as a gift two months ago. I have not started yet because I am a fan of Tahereh Jones and American Marriage, so I got to start it. But it's one of the picks. I'm so excited that you get to read it from scratch. This is a book about two friends who have been close since they were literally born. The sentences. I cried at the end. I wanted more time with them, and they each lost their mother, which has oscillated throughout their lives for different ways. It is just this incredible coming-of-age story, and we as readers are really lucky to be along for the journey. Finally, Fruit Fly. Fruit Fly is just a page-turning story of obsession between a woman who was at one point a best-selling writer, hasn't been able to write, when you realize why, you will gasp, and a young man who... Kind of this risky behavior, drugs, and they kind of, their story circles around each other in this cat and mouse game. It's a true fighting satire with an ending that will give you the chills. It's a real thriller. All right, Lindsay, thank you so much for the top five picks of 2026. All good reads for this cozy season, for sure. We appreciate your time and your recommendations. Thank you. Jacqueline. All right, Marissa, well, if you don't feel like slaving away,