It goes without saying that this is impossible to choose, but we took the top 10 from the stack of 50, then winnowed it down to 5:
1. Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped Box: It's horrible to be among the thousands to admit you're excited to read the work of the son of Stephen King, but we're guilty.
2. Lionel Shriver, The Post-Birthday World: Currently catching up with Double-Fault after brief break since We Need to Talk About Kevin; interesting to see how different she sounds in first- versus third-person.
3. Antoine Wilson, The Interloper: We have to admit we were suckered in by the cover, but that's the whole point of a cover, after all. Very fun author blog; he's currently fretting over Amazon statsand misreading Yates, which goes to show you what authors actually do all day.
4. Rick Moody, Right Livelihoods: Moody seems to have really fallen out of favor/off the radar lately, but we've always loved his shorter works–The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heavencomes to mind–and we hope this one lives up to it. Rightly, etc.
5. Christopher Buckley, Boomsday: We recently realized–and we're ashamed to admit–we have always stayed away from Christopher Buckley because of some latent association with William F. Buckley, Jr. We're sorry! And we want to see if he's America's answer to David Lodge.