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Fiction
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
The year’s most anticipated book (until Obama’s memoir) – and certainly its biggest – saw time running out for Thomas Cromwell as Mantel brought her Tudor trilogy to an elegiac and resonant conclusion.
Autobiography
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
Arguably the most anticipated book of the year. The first volume
of the former President’s memoir of his time in office follows Obama from his early political activism through to the 2008 US election.
Food
Hungry by Grace Dent
You would expect a memoir from the food writer Grace Dent to be both funny and acute on food, and Hungry hits the spot on both counts. It is also, however, a deeply moving account of her father’s slow slide into dementia.
Memoir
Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour
Gilmour’s unforgettable memoir is both a beautiful piece of nature writing about caring for a magpie and a brutally honest account of his difficult relationship with his late father, the poet Heathcote Williams.
Music
Believe in Magic by Robin Turner
With a foreword from the Manic Street Preachers’ Nicky Wire and contributions from everyone from Don Letts to Beth Orton, this detailed, beautifully put-together look back over 30 years of the ground-breaking Heavenly Records is one for the music fan in your life.
Essays
Between the Covers by Jilly Cooper
What better gift to give for Christmas than this wonderfully irreverent collection of the great Jilly Cooper’s columns from the 60s?
Autobiography
Walking with Ghosts by Gabriel Byrne
Probably the most honest celebrity autobiography published this year, and certainly one of the best written, as the actor looks back over his early life, career and troubled relationship with the Catholic Church.
Motherhood
My Wild and Sleepless Nights by Clover Stroud
One for everyone who has ever wondered if they are failing at motherhood, as Stroud offers up a wonderfully frank, often very funny account of bringing up five children with very different needs.
Fiction
The House by Tom Watson & Imogen Robertson
The former MP’s fast-paced debut, written with the help of experienced crime writer Robertson, is a clever and satisfying tale of backstabbing and betrayal as the events of one summer threaten to derail political careers on both sides of the House.
Fiction
The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett
One of the most engaging books of the year follows the fates of twin sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes, who become estranged when Stella decides to pass for white in segregated 50s America.
Fiction
Summerwater by Sarah Moss
No other author is quite like Moss, whose sparse, slim novels pack more into 200 pages than others manage with three times the words. This latest, set over a wet weekend on a holiday camp in Scotland, is a devastating look at snobbery, prejudice and the hatred of the other.
Nature
The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes
Hayes’s unusual and thought-provoking book, filled with his beautiful illustrations, is both a radical manifesto calling for freedom of movement throughout the UK and a guide to where to trespass and how.
Film
The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood by Sam Wasson
Wasson’s sprightly account of the making of Roman Polanski’s masterpiece slips down as easily as the smoothest of Scotches at the end of a long, hard day’s filming.
Fantasy
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke’s new novel is a beguiling study of isolation and exile. It follows the title character as he explores the strange House in which he lives. To say more would be to ruin one of the year’s more unusual reading experiences.
Fiction
Cat Step by Alison Irvine
Irvine’s clever second novel looks at motherhood and offers no easy answers. The premise is simple: Liz, newly arrived in a small Scottish town, leaves her young daughter in the car for a few minutes. From that small choice spirals a seemingly unstoppable chain of events…
Fiction
The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually by Helen Cullen
Cullen’s quietly devastating second novel is both a family saga and a careful exploration of the reality of living with mental health issues. It begins with a much-adored mother walking out on her husband and four children one cold Christmas morning.
Crime
The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton
How do you follow a book that mixed time travel and Agatha Christie? The answer, according to the inventive Turton, is with this rewarding historical crime novel set on a trade ship that is also about demons, magic, hidden lives and the dangers of trusting too swiftly.
Crime
Murder at the Castle by MB Shaw
Trapeze, £8.99, out on 10 December
Likeable portrait painter and accidental detective Iris Grey returns in this tightly plotted tale covering the fall-out after two corpses are found
on a Highland estate.
Music
Sweet Dreams: The Story of the New Romantics by Dylan Jones
Jones, editor of GQ, was a young style reporter when the New Romantics had their heyday, and it shows. This is a comprehensive oral history about the dandies, posers and risk-takers who made up the scene.
Debut
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Taylor’s assured debut was rightly shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. A sharply witty tale of race, prejudice and identity, it follows a young, gay, black postdoctoral student as he negotiates the pitfalls of American university life.
Debut
Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez
One of the year’s most memorable debuts, this coming-of-age story about a young, gay Jehovah’s Witness struggling to find his place in the world is hard-hitting and lingers long after the final page.
Fiction
The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig
Craig’s ninth novel is one of her best. A clever take on Beauty and the Beast and Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, it is also an astute commentary on life in Cornwall and the widening gap between the city rich and rural poor.
Sport
Klopp: My Liverpool Romance by Anthony Quinn
Quinn’s slim but satisfying profile of the Liverpool manager is saved from hagiography by the author’s wit and the deft way he weaves his own experiences alongside the account of Klopp’s achievements.
Fiction
V for Victory by Lissa Evans
Few writers are as funny as Evans, and this conclusion of a loosely linked trilogy is among her finest. Set in late 1944, it follows liar-turned-landlady Vee and her charming amoral ward Noel, as they navigate everything from American GIs to Noel’s growing pains.
Crime
The Butcher of Berner Street by Alex Reeve
Reeve’s series set among the crime-ridden streets of Victorian London is one of the most inventive series out there, thanks to its engaging hero, the young transgender man Leo Stanhope. In this third novel Leo, now working as a journalist, is caught up in an increasingly dangerous investigation.
Food
In the Kitchen by Various authors
Featuring Ella Risbridger on kitchens, Ruby Tandoh on learning about sweetness and the wonderful Rachel Roddy on cookers, this lovely collection of elegant essays is perfect to dip in and out of.
Fiction
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
The winner of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. O’Farrell is
on fine form with this meditation on grief, love and loss that takes the death of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet as its focus point.
Biography
House of Glass by Hadley Freeman
Journalist Freeman’s account of her family’s difficult history is both a wonderful piece of research and a necessary timely book about the Jewish experience, both in the 20th century and today.
Crime
The Searcher by Tana French
Crime fiction’s undisputed queen returns with this atmospheric stand-alone, which follows retired Chicago cop Cal as he builds a new life for himself on Ireland’s remote west coast, only to get caught up in a case of the kind he is desperately trying to avoid.
Autobiography
To the End of the World by Rupert Everett
Everett has long been the celebrity world’s most witty commentator, and this third autobiography, focusing on ageing and his attempts to get his long-planned film about Oscar Wilde made, is no exception. Pacy, funny and gloriously self-aware.
Crime
The Silver Collar by Antonia Hodgson
Hodgson’s rollicking Tom Hawkins novels are among the best crime series out there thanks to her irrepressible hero and his equally likeable partner, Kitty. This fourth book is a dark and addictive story of slavery and long-hidden secrets in which the often-harrowing central story is lightened by some great set pieces and acerbic one-liners.
Short Stories
Love in Colour by Bolu Babalola
Bursting with ideas and energy, this debut collection puts a modern and exciting spin on the old myths we thought we knew so well.
Crime
Murder on Mustique by Anne Glenconner
Best known for her memoir of her time as Princess Margaret’s lady-in-waiting, Glenconner sticks to what she knows with a crime story set on the island paradise of Mustique featuring a detective heroine remarkably similar to the author. Like slipping into a bath after a long, cold day.
Debut
How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang
The year’s best debut follows Chinese siblings Lucy and Sam on a harrowing journey across the haunted landscape of the American Wild West in a story of colonialism, Empire and “otherdom”.
Social History
A Tomb with a View by Peter Ross
One of the non-fiction books of the year, Scottish journalist Ross’s meander around graveyards raises profound questions about the way in which we mourn.
Nature
The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn
Winn follows up the acclaimed The Salt Path, with this enthralling account of what happened next. Delving deeper into her relationship with husband Moth, she also looks at the rural childhood that shaped her.
Fiction
Olive by Emma Gannon
Gannon’s witty debut was my favourite look at millennial love published this year. In part, that is because of her often-spiky heroine but it is also because she crafts a believable world filled with astute observations on how it feels to find your friends apparently leaving you behind.
Essays
Girl: Essays on Black Womanhood. Edited by Kenya Hunt
The talented Hunt, who sprinkles her astute social commentary throughout, has put together an A-star list of contributors including author Candice Carty-Williams in this smart, sharp look at what it means to be a black woman.
Debut
The Six Tales of Christmas by Anne-Marie Ryan
Anyone longing for a really good Christmas tale should head to Ryan’s sparkling debut about a failing bookshop and the plan hatched to keep it afloat. Comfort reading of the highest order.
History
The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale
Summerscale returns with a fascinating account of a supposed poltergeist visitation in suburban pre-war Britain, which treats the subject seriously while examining why people were drawn to Alma Fielding’s tale.
Memoir
Diamonds at the Lost and Found by Sarah Aspinall
Aspinall’s account of growing up with her wayward mother Audrey manages to inspire and entertain despite not pulling its punches. You finish the final page thinking we could all be “more Audrey”.
Fantasy
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Imagine a Hogwarts where death is the primary lesson and you get something of the flavour of Novak’s deeply satisfying new fantasy. Heroine El’s main problem is that her special power is the ability to summon forces of evil. Frankly she’d rather keep her head down, stay alive and possibly graduate…
Fiction
Mr Wilder & Me by Jonathan Coe
The prolific Coe’s latest is an engaging exploration of the fleeting nature of fame, which focuses on a young woman’s chance meeting with the great film director Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot).
Fantasy
The Thief on the Winged Horse by Kate Mascarenhas
Mascarenhas’s lushly inventive second novel is an addictive fantasy with a smart feminist twist. On an island in Oxford, the reclusive Kendrick clan makes dolls imbued with magic. All is calm until a dangerous stranger arrives…
Crime
A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin
As Rankin nears the end of his long-running series, his novels have taken on an elegiac quality, main detective John Rebus battling with his health and the ghosts of the past. This latest novel is no exception, a slow-burning story of buried sins and broken family ties that grips from the start.
Novella
The Dead of Winter by SJ Parris
Parris dives back into the past of her popular lead character Giordano Bruno with three atmospheric novellas covering his early sleuthing career.
Fantasy
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
In Moreno-Garcia’s 50s-set Gothic horror, socialite Noemi is caught in a nightmare while visiting her unhappily married cousin. There are echoes of Mary Stewart and Daphne du Maurier, but Moreno-Garcia has plenty of satisfying twists of her own.
ReIssue
Death Goes on Skis by Nancy Spain
Once celebrated for her wit and style, journalist Nancy Spain has sadly dropped out of public consciousness. Virago’s reissue of her sparkling 40s and 50s crime capers should change that. First up: this Alpine tale of murder and mayhem.
Essays
OK, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea by Patrick Freyne
One of the year’s funniest books, this collection of essays from Irish journalist Freyne is witty, wise and worth returning to again and again.
Fantasy
Mordew by Alex Pheby
The year’s most memorable fantasy novel evokes shades of Michael Moorcock and Mervyn Peake while adding an addictive weirdness of its own. God is dead and the mud-splattered city of Mordew is ruled over by the Master. When a seemingly insignificant boy catches the Master’s eye, the stage is a set for a battle for the souls, hearts and minds of Mordew.
