One of Amazon.com's best books of 2014, Phil Klay's "Redeployment," is also the year's winner of the National Book Award for fiction. The short story collection is unflinching in its look at the realities of war and its effects on those fighting at the front lines. Klay, a Marine Corps vet who served as a public affairs officer in Iraq's Anbar Province in 2007, zeroes in on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and "manages to wring some sense out of the nonsensical — resulting in an extraordinary, if unnerving, literary feat," Entertainment Weekly observed. Here are 19 other titles at the top of Amazon's best books of the year list: 
Celeste Ng has crafted a winner with her debut novel, "Everything I Never Told You." Amazon has picked the literary thriller, which follows the disappearance of a young Chinese-American woman in small-town Ohio circa 1977, as the best book of 2014. "If we know this story, we haven't seen it yet in American fiction," The New York Times Book Review praised this summer. "Not until now." 
Fans of Anthony Doerr won't be surprised to see that his World War II-era novel, "All the Light We Cannot See," is at No. 2 on Amazon's best books of the year list. "All the Light" tells the story of a blind French girl and a young German orphan, and how their paths eventually intertwine. On top of receiving plenty of praise from critics, "All the Light We Cannot See" is also a finalist for the National Book Award. 
Hampton Sides' "In the Kingdom of Ice" takes us back to the 19th century's "Arctic Fever," when New York Herald owner James Gordon Bennett financed an expedition to the North Pole that included a crew of 32 men and a leader in an officer named George Washington DeLong. But when disaster struck two years into the trip, the crew found themselves stranded and fighting for their lives. To the Los Angeles Times, Sides' capturing of this tale "is a masterful work of history and storytelling." 
After the events in Ferguson, Missouri, Grantland's Kevin Nguyen could "hardly think of a book that feels more necessary, relevant and urgent" than Jeff Hobbs' "The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace." Within those pages, Hobbs recounts the life of an African-American man named Robert Peace, who grew up amid the crime of Newark, New Jersey, in the '80s with a father in prison and a mother making less than $15,000 a year. Peace's academic success led him to study molecular biochemistry at Yale, but what occurs after his graduation is heartbreaking. Along with the all-too-short life of Michael Brown, Peace's story serves as an incredible "(reminder) of the systemic problems that continue to claim the lives of young black men," Nguyen wrote. 
Maestro of the written word Stephen King also makes an appearance in Amazon's top 10 best books of 2014. His novel "Revival" explores themes of fanaticism and addiction as it tells a juicy story about a boy growing up in a 1960s small town taken over by a charismatic preacher and his wife. As that boy grows older and finds his own form of religion in music, he crosses paths with that preacher once again -- and what follows is a conclusion that has one critic calling "Revival" "the horror master at his best." 
The question of what really happened to Michael Rockefeller when he traveled to New Guinea in 1961 could just as easily have inspired a novel thanks to the enduring legends about Rockefeller's disappearance. For author Carl Hoffman, "it's a mystery that's possessed me for years," as he explains in a trailer for his nonfiction book "Savage Harvest," which aims to uncover the reason Rockefeller vanished with his body never to be found. According to Hoffman, he's "found documentation" and "personal witnesses" that finally tell the full story. "This is one of the great mysteries of the 20th century," Hoffman says, "and I believe I've solved it." 
With her novel "The Book of Unknown Americans," Cristina Henriquez hoped to "tell stories people don't usually hear." To do so, she centered her work of fiction on two families living in Newark, Delaware -- one Mexican, and the other Panamanian -- in addition to threading the voices of other immigrants throughout. While the plot of "Unknown Americans" centers on the developing relationship of two teens from these families, it's also a story about home, and how we define it. As one review put it, "Unknown Americans" is "a novel that can both make you think and break your heart." 
From "What Alice Forgot" to "The Husband's Secret," Liane Moriarty knows how to weave a tale that many (and we mean many) will want to read. It's no different with her latest release, "Big Little Lies," which takes its time digging into the dirty secrets of three seemingly together kindergarten moms. How scandalous does this story get? Let's just say the plot centers on an event at the main trio's primary school that ended with the murder of a parent. Critics have fallen for it, and so has Hollywood: Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon are working on spinning this into a movie. 
Emily St. John Mandel's "Station Eleven" is the third National Book Award finalist to crop up in the top 25 of Amazon's best of the year list. It's not hard to see why: Mandel's "Station Eleven" is eerily timely, as it imagines a world after a deadly virus eliminates all but 1% of the population through the eyes of a nomadic troupe of actors who roam about performing Shakespeare for survivors. But incidentally, this isn't a story about surviving a pandemic as much as it's about the belief that, "in spite of everything, people will remain good at heart, and that when they start building a new world they will want what was best about the old," said The New York Times. 
The idea of distilling an artist as grand as writer John Updike into a singularly notable biography sounds like an impossibility, but it wasn't for Adam Begley. With "Updike," Begley "performed a kind of double alchemy," the Boston Globe said in a review, "capturing the sublime magic by which Updike turned his own life into art and rendering the life with such depth and sympathy that when the reader closes the book, Updike lingers in the mind like a character from a novel." 
"Effortless," "seductive" and "unputdownable" -- those are just a few of the words used to describe Sarah Waters' novel "The Paying Guests," set in London in 1922. The story centers on an upper-class, 20-something young woman named Frances, who, along with her mother, is forced to take in boarders from the "clerk class" in order to maintain their stately home. But when those boarders arrive in the form of an insurance clerk and his shapely young wife, Frances' world gets turned upside down. "This might all sound very prim and proper," said USA Today, "but ... it's volcanically sexy, sizzingly smart, plenty bloody and just plain irresistible." 
In his latest work, surgeon and New Yorker staff writer Atul Gawande explores not what it would take to extend our lives, but what would give us better, more comfortable deaths. Through an examination of end-of-life care, including hospice and assisted living, Gawande probes for solutions that would ensure we all live life to the fullest, right up until the very end. Obviously, this is a difficult and sensitive topic, and the Chicago Tribune was frank in its review when it said that "'Being Mortal' is not an easy read." But, the review continued, "it is essential." 
Pick up a book by David Mitchell and you know you're in for a story so rich you could get lost in it. With "The Bone Clocks," Mitchell goes back to a format fans will recognize from "Cloud Atlas," as he unfurls the life of an English teen named Holly Sykes through six interconnected stories that span decades and places in the blink of an eye. The story isn't perfect, but it is absorbing, The Atlantic said in its review. "For all its time- and continent-hopping, 'The Bone Clocks' affords its readers the singular gift of reading -- the wish to stay put and to be nowhere else but here." 
Denis Johnson's "The Laughing Monsters" may have landed late in the year -- it was just released on November 4 -- but to Amazon, this fictional journey through Africa through the eyes of a pair of swindlers named Roland Nair and Michael Adriko is delicious enough to stand up as one of the best of 2014. The website's Neal Thompson calls "Monsters" a "slim, fiery, full-speed-ahead novel," and credits Johnson with creating "two of the more memorable characters I've read this year" in Nair and Adriko. 
Lily King drew inspiration from the life of the legendary Margaret Mead to conjure this story about three anthropologists who stumble upon one another out in the field in the 1930s. The trio -- two of them part of a married couple and one of them operating solo -- discover more than they bargained for when they begin to study a new tribe and a love triangle emerges. For Salon's Laura Miller, "Euphoria" is a "story that begs to be consumed in one or two luxurious binges." 
Following up on the success of his 2012 novel, "The Dog Stars," Peter Heller is back with a new engrossing novel. With "The Painter," Heller describes an artist who tries to outrun his past -- which includes the time he shot a man in a bar -- only to discover that the past always catches up with us. The New York Times felt "The Painter" had some "gangly awkwardness" to its prose, but added that it's easy to see past that to the story's "pure heart." 
Whether the subject is meteor showers, snake facts or overthinking a Valentine's Day gift, there is precious little that Randall Munroe's "xkcd" webcomic can't wittily illustrate. With "What If?" Munroe's insight and skill moves to the page as he tackles new questions with his trademark sense of humor. The result, says Amazon's Jon Foro, is "the rare combination of edifying and fun." 
E. Lockhart's "We Were Liars" not only made it into the top 20 of Amazon's best books of the year, but it's also the sole young adult title to do so. At the center of this tale is a wealthy teen named Cadence Sinclair Easton, who suffers a mysterious accident while vacationing on her family's private island near Cape Cod. From there, Cadence spends the next two years trying to recall what exactly happened that summer, creating a heartbeat of suspense throughout the novel. "Plot-wise, this novel relies upon an explosive surprise ending," the Los Angeles Times said in a review. "But philosophically it's a classic story of decaying aristocracy and the way that privilege can often hamstring more than help." 
To examine the effect technology has on the brain, journalist Matt Richtel goes back to the 2006 "texting-while-driving" car crash that killed two rocket scientists. Throughout "A Deadly Wandering," Richtel balances the story of Reggie Shaw, the college student whose texting and driving led to two deaths, a police investigation and his prosecution, with research that aims to answer what technology is doing to our bodies and our culture.
- Jacqueline Woodson won the National Book Award for the memoir "Brown Girl Dreaming"
- After she accepted the award, "Lemony Snicket" author Daniel Handler shared a story
- Handler said he told Woodson to write about a black girl who is allergic to watermelon
- Handler later apologized for the joke, which many denounced as "racist" and inappropriate
(CNN) -- Jacqueline Woodson's big win at the National Book Awards on Wednesday was briefly eclipsed by a racially charged joke.
After Woodson accepted an award for her memoir "Brown Girl Dreaming," host Daniel Handler shared an anecdote he learned over the summer: that Woodson, who is black, is allergic to watermelon.
"Just let that sink in your mind," said Handler, who writes popular children's books under the pen name Lemony Snicket.
Daniel Handler hosts the 2014 National Book Awards
The non sequitur elicited a few laughs and uncomfortable titters from the audience. Handler went on to say that he advised Woodson to write a book that featured a black girl with a watermelon allergy. Watermelon is historically evoked as a favorite food among black people in racist jokes, and it's considered by many to be an offensive reference.
Handler said that Woodson, who won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, told him he should write the book instead.
"I'm only writing a book about a black girl who is allergic to watermelon if I get a blurb from you, Cornell West, Toni Morrison, and Barack Obama saying this guy's OK," Handler said, with a laugh.
After a clip from the awards ceremony was posed on C-SPAN, viewers and some prominent writers quickly took to Twitter to denounce Handler's comments as racist and a distraction from Woodson's accomplishment.
Handler responded with several apologetic tweets, including: "My remarks on Wednesday night at #NBAwards were monstrously inappropriate and yes, racist."
Handler also pledged to donate $10,000 to the We Need Diverse Books campaign and match others' donations for 24 hours up to $100,000.
Woodson's post-ceremony social media posts have expressed her happiness about the award and have not mentioned Handler's joke. The author did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.
Other 2014 National Book Award winners included:
Fiction: Phil Klay, "Redeployment"Nonfiction: Evan Osnos, "Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China"Poetry: Louise Gluck, "Faithful and Virtuous Night"
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