The editors of the New York Times Book Review have selected their Ten Best Books of the Year for 2008. Nine of the ten titles, which were selected from the list of 100 Notable Books of 2008, are from the The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group:

• Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser (Knopf)
• A Mercy by Toni Morrison (Knopf)
• Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf)
• The Forever War by Dexter Filkins (Knopf)
• Nothing To Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes (Knopf)
• This Republic Of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust (Knopf)
• The World Is What It Is by Patrick French (Knopf)
• Netherland by Joseph O'Neill (Pantheon)
• The Dark Side by Jane Mayer (Doubleday)

Peter Matthiessen has won the 2008 National Book Award in Fiction for Shadow Country (Modern Library), a great American epic of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century which The New York Times said is "...as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature."

Knopf author Maxine Hong Kingston was awarded the NBA's 2008 Medal for
Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which is presented in conjunction with the The National Book Awards by the Board of Directors of the Foundation. The recipient is a person who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work.

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust (Alfred A. Knopf) and The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer (Doubleday) were finalists this year in the Nonfiction category.

For the complete list of NBA winners and finalists click here.