This time of year, we get a queasy feeling as we grasp everything we have yet to accomplish. Well, scratch one chore off the list: Here are the books that made our year. The BookWag team reviewed a zillion great titles and cheered as our

Bethanne Patrick

launched a Substack podcast (listen to her author interviews and be scintillated). Now, on to our picks: There was heated debate at HQ about these titles, but this selection of great reads should brighten your holiday.

Yours Ever,

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

This newsletter is devoted to freedom of expression, and nobody—and we mean nobody—has risked more for it than Rushdie. His account of the horrific knife attack he suffered on August 12, 2022, was searing, heartfelt, and profoundly moving. Knife didn’t just revisit an attempted murder, it was a mediation on love, loss, and the enduring power of literature.—Osmania Merchant

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Akbar’s sweet, funny, life-affirming tale of an Iranian American addict and poet marooned in the Midwest charmed us (and more than a few others). This debut novel blended Persian literature and American road novels, unpacking the complicated nature of identity in a restless country of immigrants. We were awed by its ambition.—Amir Farschi

Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst

Hollinghurst burnished a stellar reputation with the saga of Dave Win, a half-Burmese sent to an elite boarding school, who survives such horrors, embraces his sexuality, finds his way as an actor, and discovers real love. The author’s seventh novel was a lyrical chronicle of a small but worthy life.—James Carter

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

The sophomore novel from the author of Fleischman is in Trouble traced the pebble-in-the-pond ramifications of a single traumatic incident: The 1980 kidnapping of a Long Island businessman. Based on real events, the story exposed the vulnerabilities of the family at its heart, revealing dark truths beneath a Jewish suburban idyll. It also established Brodesser-Akner as a major American novelist.—Brenda Patimkin

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

A very smart spy yarn, Creation Lake follows Sadie (one of many aliases) an American operative who infiltrates a radical commune in rural France. An antihero who knows how to seduce and manipulate her marks, she meets her match in the group’s charismatic leader. The result turned an engrossing espionage caper into an exploration of moral compromise.—Charmian Ross

James by Percival Everett

Everett’s reinvention of Huckleberry Finn—or rather, his celebration of the character Jim—bowled over the critics, roared to the top of bestseller lists, and already is set to become a movie. All the love was deserved. In Everett’s hands, an immortal trip down the Mississippi becomes an even more sweeping adventure, with a shrewd, courageous, and funny American hero at its heart.—Jo Harper

Long Island by Colm Tóibín

The return of engaging Eilis Lacey, the heroine of Tóibín’s Brooklyn, was a thing to celebrate. We revisit her in midlife, settled in suburbia in the 1970s. A family scandal prompts her to return to Ireland for the first time in decades, where she reckons with her choices. From there, the twists were cinematic.—Mary Hooligan

A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry