Great reads

A tour de force, this saga is centered on the real-life attempted assassination of reggae legend Bob Marley in politically turbulent Kingston in 1976 and the little-known people who were involved with it. Told from different perspectives by an international cast of characters, infused with slick Jamaican patois and spanning decades, the novel is as challenging as it is transfixing, turning a moment in Jamaica’s modern history into an unflinching portrait of a people.

Not so much a sequel (to her brilliant “Life After Life”) as a dazzling overlay, Atkinson’s novel is the story of a man whose life spans the 20th century, told in time-bending bursts of lyrical prose.

This unusual coming-of-age memoir treads the line between social commentary and Young Adult literature through the pleasantly mordant voice of a youth being raised in 1980s Seattle by his drug-dealing single dad, who develops AIDS.

Who knew bumblebees were so important? Goulson, British environmental scientist and founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, travels far and wide, investigating why these crucial pollinators are in decline and how we can help their numbers increase.

Bird’s compelling novel explores heritage and identity through the intertwined stories, nearly 70 years apart, of two teen girls on the island of Okinawa, both impacted by war.

Doerr, who has made a name for himself with some of the most original short stories of our day, spreads his wings majestically in this novel (a National Book Awards finalist) about two young people — a blind French girl and a brilliant orphaned German boy — caught up separately, and for a brief shining moment together, in the horror of World War II.

In a setting reminiscent of the musical “Cabaret,” Cordelia, a dancer moonlighting as a smuggler; a louche-looking yet disciplined drag queen named Aristide; and a rogue spy named Cyril all wrestle with the rise to power of a Nazi-like political party.

In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. Nate Blakeslee’s informative book follows their successes and struggles, focusing especially on O-Six, the famous alpha female of the Lamar Pack, and Rick McIntyre, a ranger who studied her.

Woodson’s first book for adults in 20 years uses memory fragments that land with the concentrated power of poetry to tell the story of four girlfriends in 1970s Brooklyn and how their bonds unraveled.

The follow-up to Strout’s “My Name is Lucy Barton,” in these nine linked stories Strout, the author of “Olive Kitteridge” follows several characters whose lives are anchored in a small Illinois town.

The biohacked and hard-partying future Newitz extrapolates is full of submarine labs and designer hallucinogens. Which sounds like lighthearted fun — but then, by telling the novel’s robocentric story from viewpoints including those of two AIs, she brings into question the self’s origins.

Marred by a simplistic view of history and the timber industry, Proulx otherwise plays to her strengths, with colorful characters and graceful descriptions of the landscape in this woodsman’s version of manifest destiny.

Enormous, kaleidoscopic and exuberant, this huge Beethoven biography is a detailed portrait of the age as well as of the tormented man who gave us some of the world’s greatest music.

This slim book by journalist Coates, winner of this year’s National Book Award for nonfiction, is an autobiographical letter from an anguished father to his teen son about what it means for them to be African American in the “Black Lives Matter” era. Coates has crafted a furious yet poetic call to action, imploring all of us to speak more honestly about the roots of racism and the concept of race itself.

This Montana-based story, about a prison guard who returns to his hometown after decades away, is an intricate work that layers faith with broken promises, broken bones, and broken hearts. This is a story of people shaped irrevocably by place and circumstance.

True crime meets memoir in this smart and literate tale of a murderous con artist who befriends a curious young writer.

Chast’s graphic memoir about her battle to care for her quirky, stubborn parents as they face the end of life is funny, sad, informative, honest and brave, and represents another leap forward for the graphic canon.

To say this historical novel offers a behind-the-scenes look at the planning, building and promotion of the World Trade Center in New York doesn’t quite do it justice. It’s a stylish jigsaw puzzle of a book, ranging in tone from faux documentary to jaunty “Mad Men”-like melodrama.

There have been many biographies of Charlotte Brontë over the years, but Harman’s had this dyed-in-the-wool Brontë fan mesmerized: the details of life at Haworth are told with an almost cinematic vividness, and the excerpts from Brontë’s recently published letters add a moving intimacy.

Buerge’s groundbreaking biography is a labor of love and a window into the early life of our town. But first and foremost it’s the story of Chief Seattle, a true leader and an exceedingly prescient man.

Ricks, an expert on the military (“The Generals”) charts the path of two famous Brits, one a prime minister, the other a journalist and novelist, showing how their different responses to the cataclysm of World War II were fired by a common principle: tell the truth when it matters, even when it hurts.

A secret society of robots originating in prehistoric China hunts down a woman versed in the art of small-scale mechanics. Wilson’s artificial-intelligence expertise makes his imaginative plot creepily plausible.

Patchett’s semi-autobiographical novel of two families who are torn apart by an adulterous affair and spend the rest of their lives recovering is clear-eyed, funny and ultimately hopeful.

Vestal’s gripping coming-of-age and bursting-out-of-Mormonism novel is set in rural 1970s Idaho. His young protagonists, inspired by daredevil Evel Knievel, launch a risky, fast-paced flight of their own for freedom, in an arcing trajectory toward self-discovery. It’s a wild and rewarding ride.

Nimura has written a superb and riveting history, the true story of three Japanese girls who were sent to America in the 1870s to be educated. She includes the fascinating context of their samurai origins, their journey by steamboat from nearly feudal Japan to San Francisco and beyond, their immersion in the Gilded Age and Christian life in America — and then their return to Japan, a shift in culture that is impossible to overdramatize.

Burrough provides a fascinating look at an almost forgotten era of homegrown terrorism, when “revolutionary violence” was waged by left-wing radicals in a wildly naive effort to lead the “oppressed” American working class to revolt.

There have been so many World War II books that it’s getting difficult to find a new angle to grab readers’ attention. Hansen does: the story of the German leaders, military and civilian, who surrendered against Hitler’s orders — why they did it, how, and what happened to them.

This masterpiece of nonfiction narrative reporting tells two stories. The first chronicles the epidemic of addiction to OxyContin and other prescription opiates in Americans. The second — how a Mexican drug distribution network turned those same addicts into heroin users. Nary a word is wasted in Quinones’ telling, and the cumulative effect is devastating

Combining a deep knowledge of social history with an eye for scintillating detail, Krist walks us through the birth of New Orleans’ famed red-light district, Storyville, mixing prostitutes with pols, reprobates with reformers and, in the process, shining a light on America’s enduring capacity for hypocrisy.

The author of “Call Me By Your Name” does it again with this tale of a man whose body has “two agendas”: an appreciation of women and an irresistible attraction to men.

This novel tells the story of Wyatt and Sadie Earp from beginning to end, not stopping at the famous gunfight and its aftermath but following the couple to the end of their lives, inevitably shaped by that 1881 blaze of gunfire in Tombstone, Arizona Territory.

This riveting, beautifully composed novel, set in 1933 and based on the lives of Margaret Mead and her first and second husbands, features adventurous fieldwork in the Territory of New Guinea, a bitter love triangle and the strangeness of humanity’s cultures and customs.

This absorbing, intimate account of a modern marriage moves back and forth in time and perspective, as it explores the coupling of two complex, seemingly charmed people.

The second novel in King’s proposed “Bill Hodges” trilogy is a fast-paced detective story involving the unpublished works of a respected, famous (and dead) author and a duffel bag full of cash. It closes with a single word that leaves readers clamoring for the finale.

This debut novel gives a realistic ground view of the war in Iraq and chronicles the difficulties of veterans’ re-entry into civilian society. Pitre served in Iraq twice and left the Marines in 2010 as a captain.

Smart, beautiful, strong young woman hits the big city, triumphs and falters, and finally, gratefully accepts the good in life; Hornby, a ridiculously gifted British novelist, uses his trademark unpretentious style to mold this familiar plot into a fresh, flavorful, moving, and hilarious love letterto early ’60s popular entertainment, London style.

Christgau is the self-described dean of American rock critics, and his memoir is a love letter both to a basically lost profession, and a lost era when rock ’n’ roll truly shifted culture.

In 1746 a young Englishman steps off the boat and into the bucolic village of Manhattan with a bill for 1,000 pounds sterling, payable to the bearer.

This fast-paced novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist delivers as much rich plot development as it does a thought-provoking meditation on race and history that is pertinent to understanding today’s brand of discrimination and hate crimes.

In her stunning, award-winning memoir, British writer Macdonald recounts how she emerged from a deep grief-based depression by acquiring and training a goshawk: the writing sings on every page and the twining of narrative strands (natural history, heavy emotional weather, love for a wild animal) is masterfully done.

Before Nov. 8, Vance’s account of his family’s stop-and-start mobility out of Appalachia was the memoir of the year. At the dawn of the Age of Trump, it’s essential.

This group biography of six larger-than-life characters, including writers Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn and photographer Robert Capa, helped me understand the complicated strands of a conflict that served as a staging ground for World War II.

Haslett (“Union Atlantic”) moves with penetrating wit between the points of view of a father, mother, daughter and two sons as he traces a family’s legacy of mental illness. Love, concern and unexpected comedy prove as central to his tale as exasperation and dread, making this a novel that’s stayed in my mind like no other has this year.

This gorgeously written novel, funny and full of heart, follows several characters in the life of Reyna, a tattooed single mom with a rambunctious son, a boyfriend in Rikers and a wise aunt who has seen it all.

Not as spectacular as recent eruptions in Iceland but with far greater repercussions, Laki is the most devastating eruption you’ve never heard of. Husband and wife team Witze and Kanipe use primary source documents and on-the-ground reporting to tell an amazing story about this world changing volcano explosion in 1783.

Heartbreaking stories of injustice at the hands of the U.S. criminal-justice system from McArthur “Genius Grant” recipient Bryan Stevenson, who has devoted his career to representing the most hopeless prisoners, sentenced to death or life without possibility of parole.

A powerful and disturbing story of pure evil. After oil was discovered on their reservation, the Osage Indians in Oklahoma became rich, and then they began to be killed off — their wealth stolen and their mineral rights transferred out of the tribe.

The author’s retracing of the Marquis de Lafayette’s long-forgotten devotion and aid to the colonists of our country-to-be brings its readers to guffaws in some places and “awwwws” in others.

A fictional account of a real 18th-century French maritime expedition exploring the Pacific Ocean before meeting its doom. Sly writing and startlingly different points of view make this a shape-shifting revelation of a book.

Simply one of the best nature history books I have read in years, “Landmarks” is a stunning paean to the beauty of language, the craft of writing and the power of nature. It is truly a book that will force you to rethink your relationship to the world around you.

The late Seattle storyteller Ivan Doig’s final novel, “Last Bus to Wisdom,” is a tender coming-of-age tale recounted by a precocious 11-year-old. It ranges boisterously across the American West while deftly exploring the vastness and vulnerability of the human heart.

Kathleen Alcalá, Junot Diaz and all the anthology’s contributors write in a variety of traditions: the magic realism for which Latin America’s famous, certainly — but when you read this book, be prepared to become estranged from the ordinary in many different ways.

In her third memoir, Fuller’s prose is as lyrical and electric as ever. Telling the story of the making and undoing of her 19-year marriage, the book also reaches back into the history of Fuller’s eccentric, half-mad and fully maddening family. It is a charming, anxious and touching work.

Ford brings back his hallmark character, sportswriter-turned-retired-real-estate-agent Frank Bascombe, for a fourth book. This quartet of stories, set in Frank’s twilight years, cuts to the heart of what it means to age in America.

In her third book detailing the life and times of the fictional Rev. John Ames, Robinson turns to his wife, Lila, a drifter who found refuge and respect in the preacher’s home. The novel portrays the psychological damage done by an unsettled childhood and artfully recalls a New Testament parable spotlighting the importance of compassion in the Christian repertoire.

Filled with precise, poetical and sparse language, the essays in this unusual natural-history book reveal not just the life of trees but how they connect us to the greater world around us.

A playful but nonetheless stellar book, this sendup of British literary culture is by (at) turns an exploration of fragile creative temperaments and a comedy of bookish ill manners — shot through with St. Aubyn’s usual linguistic virtuosity.

Monsters and rogue sheriffs take turns terrorizing African American protagonists in this reprise of 1950s racism; Seattle author Ruff’s accounts of haunted houses, carnivorous beaches, and cheap, conniving wizards are sharply humorous, authentically voiced, and weird enough for any fan of the pulp fiction they spring from.

This book, masquerading as a travel memoir by a famous rock star, is really a fluid, dreamlike meditation on loss, art, mortality and the sacred by a poet with a very sharp pen.

This book tells the story of trees, and the megafires that consume more than 100,000 acres; before 2005, they averaged one a year. Since then, the annual number has increased to almost 10.

A novel as fast-moving and slippery as the element, “Mercury” uses an obsession about a horse as the catalyst for a probing study of family bonds, friendship, loyalty, duty and the shady difference between right and wrong.

This history of a tumultuous period in one of the world’s most fascinating cities uses a sumptuous hotel full of spies, fallen nobles and government operatives as home base for describing Turkey’s sometimes-rocky journey into the modern era.

Sakamoto blends meticulous research with radiant storytelling to relate one family’s harrowing experiences during World War II, both in America and near ground zero in Hiroshima, Japan.

Dramatic and suspenseful, this political nonfiction work, which deals with the 1947 partition of British India, delves deeply into the political and ideological rivalry between the leaders of the Hindu and Muslim factions, thereby providing a basis for understanding the subcontinental schism.

Stossel is much more than an anxious guy who wrote a self-help title. He’s a dogged researcher who uses a profoundly troubling personal malady as a starting point to teach and encourage others. His highly entertaining way of telling the story — without soppy sentiment or any grinding of axes — is terrific, as is his refusal to take a hard line on this or that flavor-of-the-month treatment for anxiety.

Well-known for his classic novel “The Milagro Beanfield War,” he’s lived most of his life near Taos, an activist who raised kids, wrote books, fished the Rio Grande and photographed his cherished high desert for decades.

In a future New York City flooded under 50 feet of water, investment bankers motorboat through city squares and develop housing projects based on the emergent properties of eelgrass.

The life of an aging ex-army captain is changed when he agrees to escort an orphan girl across Texas in this fictional recounting of what happened to pioneer children who were captured by Indians and later returned to their former lives. Jiles, a poet turned novelist, is an exquisite writer.

A collection of fiction for our fractured times from a modern master — funny, profound and redemptive. Williams’ God believes in reincarnation because “it explains so much,” and wants to compete in a demolition derby.

An Appalachian Trail thru-hiker explores his fascination for established paths — why they form, evolve and persist or fade — by traveling from Botswana to Borneo and beyond for answers.

A deep dive into the world of — and an appreciative “attaboy” for —this truly busy mammal, tracing its history from flourishing to nearly extinct to triumphant, tree-chomping return.

Maraniss’ well-written and researched book well remembers the city of Detroit in the early 1960s as a place where factories hummed, Motown rocked and the present gave little warning that Detroit would become a “city of decay.”

The veteran British biographer does a brilliant job of telling the story behind the late-blooming novelist’s career, and how Fitzgerald’s comprehensive research and hard-won life experiences made their way — sometimes candidly, sometimes obliquely, always comically — into her novels (including “The Blue Flower,” “Human Voices” and the Booker Prize-winning “Offshore”).

This compassionate biography chronicles the challenges, privations and private hurts of the author of the “Little House on the Prairie” books.

Franzen’s fifth novel finds parallels between Internet invasiveness and totalitarianism as it takes on toxic marriages, WikiLeaks-style whistle-blowing and more. Result: an antsy, globe-hopping existential screwball comedy.

The story of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, whose rock-ribbed belief in the rightness of his cause and his talent for taking risks kept the Confederate cause alive. Gwynne’s talent for spinning a vivid narrative from historical research sets this story alight.

The president you were embarrassed to admit voting for emerges in this biography as a man of rare integrity and vision, a man who for a moment was perfectly in sync with the national temperament — and then disastrously out.

Jamison investigates the life of Robert Lowell, considered by many to be America’s finest poet, and his struggles with manic depression.

This dual biography tells the extraordinary story of Mary Wollstonecraft, English pioneer for women’s rights, and that of her daughter Mary Shelley, who ran away with the married poet Percy Shelley, was shunned by English society and then wrote “Frankenstein.” Gordon interweaves the story of two extraordinary women with skill and sympathy.

This novel by Stephenson, a Seattle-based speculative fiction author, had me thinking hard for weeks. The premise — something makes the moon blow up, creating an asteroid rain that will eventually kill everyone on Earth. Earth’s leaders have two years to figure out how to preserve the human race. Stephenson has thought out every angle— psychological, political, environmental, and has an expert’s grasp of the science involved

Jackson, author of the horror classics “The Lottery” and “The Haunting of Hill House,” showed an astonishing range, publishing eerie fables of scapegoating and loneliness as well as domestic humor, all while caring for four children and an intellectually detached husband. This biography examines her divided soul and is an elegy for a talent snuffed out too soon.

Fifty-six-year-old Kevin Pace's secretive work on his latest canvas triggers memories of two destructive episodes from his past: an affair he had with a young French woman 10 years earlier and a crazy jaunt he and his best friend made to El Salvador in 1979 when the country was on the verge of civil war.

Smiley puts her prodigious talent for characterization, her eye for detail and her knowledge of Iowa farm life to work in this story of a farm family, from the end of World War I to the 1950s. Best part — it’s the first in a trilogy.

Like the best-selling “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell,” Zen Cho’s novel sparkles with Jane Austen-ish wit and thrilling clashes between feuding magicians. But she adds a biracial governess, a Malaysian witch and a British noble’s emancipated African ward to the mix, which ups this debut novel’s fun quotient as well as its diversity.

Charming pseudo-psychics, fraudulent government agents and hidebound crime families confuse one another mightily as they battle for supremacy during two fateful 20th-century summers.

More than just another “dystopian future” novel, Mandel’s darkly lyrical tale begins with an actor collapsing onstage, then follows a handful of characters both forward and backward in time to give us an appreciation of art, love and the triumph of the human spirit.

Smith’s latest is a sprawling, rewarding study of the friendship arc of two biracial, working-class London girls with a shared love of dance.

The book offers 25 marvelous pieces chosen from North American periodicals. Topics include black holes, the shifting sands of Assateague Island, Santa Ana winds, raising chickens without antibiotics, the Cloud Appreciation Society and much more.

A gleeful mash-up of the fictional playgrounds inhabited by Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan and other pulp-fiction figures, Ward’s debut novel leaps tall literary assumptions in a single bound.

This moving story about the havoc wrought by the War on Drugs in the country of Mexico is brutal, bloody and horrifying, as well as inspirational in its story of people who resist the cartels’ takeover. By the end of it you will get Winslow’s point — America is complicit in the carnage.

This biography of the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” demonstrates that perseverance against oppression is an ongoing effort that continues from one generation to the next. Howe’s life story provides lessons about a national history that has never been less than complex.

Describing this wryly death-obsessive novel as “fiction” is a bit misleading. Figures from McCartney’s life — including his husband, performance artist Tim Miller — turn up in it and newspaper accounts of murders pepper its pages.

This detailed account of the United States’ 19th-century wars against Native Americans provides historical background for the passions aroused today over the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock.

New York Times correspondent Sengupta’s new offering, a beautifully written memoir and sociopolitical study, chronicles not only the many challenges that confront India’s young people, but also how they attempt to push past their karma or destiny and rewrite it.

Gessen, a Russian-born journalist now living in the U.S., tells the story of the brutal repression of democracy and the snuffing of human rights in Russia since perestroika.

This in-depth examination of genes and genetics, by the oncologist-turned-author of “The Emperor of All Maladies,” is many things — a natural, social and medical history, as well as a predictor of humanity’s future once the ability to manipulate genes is fully accomplished. A challenging, scary and necessary book.

The Bellingham author brings her vast historical-novel experience to bear in a riveting saga of two women doctors in an 1890s New York City teeming with immigrants, orphans, vast wealth, oppression, romance and optimism — and there’s even an autobiographical twist.

Sourcing the planet for environment-saving projects, and showing the wondrous minds behind them, Ackerman brings hard science to bear on hope.

This episodic tale of the prelude to the Gunfight at the OK Corral distills McMurtry’s career-long meditations on the fading Western frontier into a brief, laconic and almost impressionistic story — less meaty than the author’s previous novels, but no less captivating.

Seattle writer Oliva makes an impressive debut with her first novel, in which a young woman competes in what appears to be a grim and realistic reality-TV show. As the story unfolds, we don’t know what is “real” and what is a very well-executed television program. Oliva is one to watch.

Set in a Massachusetts tourist town, the book examines the battered state of the American psyche in the interim between the shock of 9/11 and the crash of 2008.

Set in the socially turbulent early 1900s in New York, this magical tale combines history, mystery, romance and the theme of survival. Coralie, the only child of an obsessive, sinister and domineering scientist, must escape her father’s clutches to unite with her lover, a lone young photographer, estranged from his immigrant father.

Winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize, this novel is an unflinching journey through the unimaginable cruelty on the Burma Death Railway, that traverses the fragile boundary between beauty and suffering, memory and oblivion.

Studies took Williams to Japan, Finland and Utah, among other places. She learned that getting outdoors provides many underappreciated benefits. Calming, it reduces anxiety and depression, blood pressure, heart rate and the stress hormone cortisol.

“The Night Ocean” concerns an elusive chapter in the life of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, involving his friendship with a gay male teenage fan. Revelation becomes hoax and suicide becomes “pseuicide” in an ever-exploding series of narrative curveballs.

Highly annoying, to the point where I almost wanted to smack the self-satisfied author, this book nonetheless made me think harderthan anything else I’ve read this year about how America could do better for its people in the realms of education, health care, workplace possibilities and … well, attitude.

Although it feels a bit like an overstuffed mattress, this first-person account retracing the route of the pioneers via covered wagon is so exuberant that you forgive the lumps and enjoy the ride.

This transcendent novel about the Huron native people in 17th-century French Canada and the arrival of a Jesuit missionary priest, has an epic feel, both for its profound spirituality and shocking violence.

No other book I read this year gripped me quite like this one. It’s a historical novel (set just after World War I, in a London where too many men never came home), a passionate love story and a meticulous thriller — and Waters lets us revel in every whisper, every creak of a floorboard, every hopeless gaze.

As the whip-smart so-called “hicks” of William Gibson’s latest novel pursue a murder investigation, this novel confronts us with cat-eyed Goths wearing animated tattoos, pocket hospitals replacing increasingly ineffective antibiotics, and the question of which split-off version of the road before us is real: the one in which a presidential assassination leads to global catastrophe, or the one in which wealth and tech imported from the future save us from our worst selves.

This incisive and witty memoir, by the man who long ago set the gold standard for modern espionage novelists, is a glittering treasure chest of great stories — about the making of le Carré’s books as well as his own extraordinary career as a British spy at the height of the Cold War.

Examining this book’s blurbs and cover art, you may wonder exactly what kind of speculative fiction it is. The robot by the side of the little black girl on the front spells science fiction, but chapters featuring a goddess who drains her worshippers of their hearts’ blood sounds more like horror.

White, an adored University of Washington history professor who migrated to Stanford, brilliantly synthesizes hundreds of sources, from history to journalism to the novels of the day, to tell the story of a tortured era of American history with remarkable parallels to our own.

In his new novel, Rachman, author of the mordantly funny “The Imperfectionists,” introduces readers to the singular Tooly Zylberberg, a woman who, while trying to make sense of her enigmatic, globe-trotting past, discovers both betrayal and a criminal act of love.

A sequel to children’s classic “The Wind in the Willows” as enchanting as the original, this feminist take on Toad, Water Rat, et al., introduces us to Beryl, a “young lady mole” who’s also a novelist, and her best friend, Rabbit.

Kolbert’s account of the burgeoning mass extinctions on Earth, from frogs to bats to coral reefs, was the scariest book I read this year.

Richly observant, unsparing yet empathetic, this collected short fiction by Gardam, one of Britain’s great late-blooming writers, is a treasure to savor — one story at a time, or on a reading binge.

In this audacious debut novel, the unnamed narrator is a double agent for the fallen South Vietnamese regime and the communist victors, and his depiction of the Vietnam War and its aftermath in America reads like a frenzied, feverish dream.

A group of middle-aged men gather each year at the same hotel to re-create one of the most gruesome football plays in American football history — the 1985 play in which New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor sacked Washington quarterback Joe Theismann, breaking Theismann’s leg in several places and ending his career. This National Book Award finalist in fiction is anthropological in its study of how American males interact, drop-dead hilarious and a wistful look at the things that bind us.

San Juan Island conservation biologist Hanson explores the easily-overlooked but fascinating key to much of life on Earth, from coffee beans and the nut in Almond Joys to ancient grasses and sticky burdock seeds, which inspired Velcro.

Whitehead’s novel, winner of this year’s National Book Award for fiction, brilliantly re-imagines the fabled network of escape routes for runaway slaves in the American South as an actual, subterranean rail system, in a moving tale of brutal oppression and the quest for freedom.

A thoughtfully conceived novel that is part war epic, part love story and part odyssey turned inside out, in which the wife sets off on a quest far from home while the battle-scarred husband tends to the flickering fire in his cave. Combining these his-and-her stories of mettle, juxtaposing constancy with adaptive flux, what emerges is a metaphorical alloy of survival.

Violence hangs over McCann’s collection of short stories, each eloquent and haunting. The title story (taking up more than half the book), about an old man’s final day, echoes Joyce, but finds its own wondrously meandering stream of consciousness.

In this extraordinary work of imagination, O’Connor re-creates the tormented relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, his slave and common-law wife, using every literary form going — Hemings’ imagined diary, magical realism, actual excerpts from writings of Jefferson’s former slaves, and the voice of the dispassionate historian. A brilliant, unsettling book about power and its abuse.

Like some Scheherazade-in-reverse, the narrator of “Transit” — Cusk’s sequel to her brilliant “Outline” — coaxes life stories from anyone and everyone she meets. In the process, she casts an oblique light on her own cool personality.

This wildly audacious alternate history pits a black lawyer and her semi-feral stepbrother against a paranoid U.S. government defending its ex-movie-star president, who was maimed during a foiled assassination attempt.

History at its most compelling: Philbrick tells the fascinating story of Washington’s long struggleto win the Revolutionary War, of the fractious young Republic and of Benedict Arnold’s surprisingly central role in it all.

Hope and possibility triumph in this near-future science-fiction novel of anarchist networks and 3D printers.

From data collected all over the world by high-technology tracking devices, the authors reveal animals’ fascinating journeys, what we can learn from them and how this information aids conservation.

This is a beautifully written account of the author's year with one red oak in the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts. She studied the tree, its surroundings and animals who call it home and also climbed into the canopy where the panorama opened perspectives on the land’s history.