For its sharp, vivid portrait of contemporary America, The Submission (Picador, $15) would have been my pick for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Amy Waldman opens with an elite jury voting on New York’s 9/11 memorial—and then imagines the fallout if the winning designer were a Muslim. The news spirals outward and exposes fault lines, engulfing politicians, bloggers, reporters, lawyers, Muslim activists, and the victims’ families. We meet a firefighter’s relatives, a community of illegal Bangladeshi workers, and the enigmatic artist himself: Mohammad “Mo” Khan, an architectural prodigy and the son of secular Indian immigrants from Virginia. Waldman’s prose crackles. She is ruthless on the methods of the media, poignant on the responsibility of art, and her flawed, humane characters ignite every page.