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The best books of 2018

Our critics share suggestions in fiction, general nonfiction, sports, mystery, and graphic novels

Lead art by Veronica Grech

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Fiction

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  • Evening in Paradise

    By Lucia Berlin

    Here are more stories from the Elena Ferrante of short fiction, epochs of life that feel as if they arrive all in a moment in exquisite clarity.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for Evening in Paradise
  • Washington Black

    By Esi Edugyan

    Edugyan’s Giller Prize-winning novel rewrites what an antebellum novel can be by sending her eponymous hero — born a slave, then indentured to a scientist — on a journey of adventure, wonder, and friendship that begins with escape in a hot-air balloon.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for Washington Black
  • We All Loved Cowboys

    By Carol Bensimon

    This novel is every bit Brazil’s feminist “On the Road,” conjuring two former girlfriends, now expats, back home and on an epic road trip across South America’s biggest country, wind in their hair.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for We All Loved Cowboys
  • Largesse of the Sea Maiden

    By Denis Johnson

    Just before he died of liver cancer, Johnson completed this mournful and darkly comic collection of tales. They sing the body electric and play the tune of regret as his characters face one another’s mortality with shambolic grace.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for Largesse of the Sea Maiden
  • So Lucky

    By Nicola Griffith

    This swift, luminescent novel casts a shard of light onto the mind of a woman whose life is collapsing — her wife has left her and she’s diagnosed with MS. So why does she feel so lucky?

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for So Lucky
  • Everything Under

    By Daisy Johnson

    An extraordinary rewriting of the myth of Oedipus, this beautiful surreal novel spins a tale about a woman, now in her 30s but partly raised in foster care, searching for her missing mother and for answers the old woman may have about their past life on a houseboat and a monster called the Bonak.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for Everything Under
  • The Mars Room

    By Rachel Kushner

    This vivid and mesmerizing novel about a former stripper and single mom drawn into the Californian penal system on two consecutive life sentences has all the warmth and intensity of a future classic.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for The Mars Room
  • History of Violence

    By Édouard Louis

    A terrifying glimpse into the aftermath of sexual assault, this autobiographical novel retells the story of Louis’s experience with being raped, showing how from the moment he phoned the police, the account left his hands.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for History of Violence
  • The Great Believers

    By Rebecca Makkai

    Wound as tightly as a Swiss clock, this vivid sweeping novel unfolds in Chicago among a group of friends during the 1980s AIDS epidemic and in Paris today with a mom who hunts for her estranged daughter in this saga of art and friendship and loss.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for The Great Believers
  • Circe

    By Madeline Miller

    A follow-up to her best-selling “Song of Achilles,’’ Miller’s latest imagines the life of demigod Circe, banished by Zeus to an island alone, where she befriends mortals and hones her witchcraft. Then one day the wily Odysseus turns up on his way home.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for Circe
  • Convenience Store Woman

    By Sayaka Murata

    This hilarious little novel revolves around a woman who spent half her life behind the checkout counter and has been perfectly happy there — until a new employee is hired.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for Convenience Store Woman
  • There There

    By Tommy Orange

    A dozen characters converge on a fateful Oakland powwow in “There There,’’ a new kind of native novel, one that is urban and self-conscious, but also warm and so powerful it’s hard to believe this is a first book.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for There There
  • The Third Hotel

    By Laura van den Berg

    In this deeply stylish, psychological thriller by Cambridge writer van den Berg, a woman goes to Havana for a horror-movie conference where she is certain she sees her husband, who’d been killed weeks before in a hit-and-run incident. He appears to be wearing a linen suit she’s never seen before and acting as if nothing strange has happened.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for The Third Hotel
  • Armand V

    By Dag Solstad

    The tale of a cynical diplomat told in footnotes to an unwritten novel explodes into intimacy when the narrator’s son enlists to fight in the Middle East.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for Armand V
  • CoDex: 1962: A Trilogy

    By Sjón

    This modern-day saga in three novels revolving around the life of Josef Löwe blends genres and illustrates the way stories can bring the most fabulous dreams — and nightmares — to life in a work that feels like the “Tin Drum’’ of our time.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for CoDex: 1962: A Trilogy
  • The Perfect Nanny

    By Leila Slimani

    Slimani’s Prix Goncourt-winning American debut ​orbits a terrible crime — children killed by their nanny — revealing all the complex social and familial forces which bore down on, but could not explain, the crime.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for The Perfect Nanny
  • Flights

    By Olga Tokarczuk

    Winner of the International Man Booker, this gorgeous novel is shaped like a wheel, at the center of which is a woman traveling. Out of her meditations shoot observations and dozens of ​loosely linked stories about the travails of various characters, which reflect on how the body wants to be in motion, but also how this movement wears us down.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for Flights
  • Last Stories

    By William Trevor

    These 10 jeweled tales of lives that are ordinary, if often compromised and full of guilt and loneliness, are the last we have from a master whose six decades of work make it clear Chekhov’s art could be practiced in the present day.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for Last Stories
  • The Order of the Day

    By Éric Vuillard

    In less than 150 pages, this winner of the 2017 Prix Goncourt scripts the awful behind-the-scenes march, with all its corporate and foreign complicity, from 1933 to Hitler’s rise to power in ways so closely-observed it feels lived.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for The Order of the Day
  • America Is not the Heart

    By Elaine Castillo

    This surging epic about three generations of Filipina women in the Bay Area conjures all the secret and not-so-secret wounds they carry into being Americans in a tale full of joy, anguish, and some of the best intimate scenes written in any genre all year.

    — John Freeman

    A book cover for America Is not the Heart

Nonfiction

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Mystery

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  • The Middleman

    By Olen Steinhauer

    Incorporating political and activist power plays, Machiavellian machinations, and the work of national security institutions, Steinhauer’s propulsive page-turner is a contemporary thriller set in a deeply riven America that kicks off with the disappearance of about 400 anti-capitalists.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Middleman
  • Safe Houses

    By Dan Fesperman

    This excellent, engaging espionage thriller opens kicks off ​in 1979 Berlin with the misadventures of Helen Abell, manager of the CIA’s local safe houses, then travels to 2014 America, where Abell’s daughter finds herself neck-deep in the tangled, integrity-laced mystery, which infused her murdered mom’s life

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Safe Houses
  • Shell Game

    By Sara Paretsky

    Two mysteries, one involving a friend’s nephew, the other involving V.I. Warshawski’s nieces, keep the Chicago PI on her toes as she bumps directly ​up against some of the darker elements — hard-line brutality, malicious bigotry, one-percenter arrogance — of our current social and political landscape.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Shell Game
  • Broken Ground

    By Val McDermid

    Stolen World War II loot, two vintage motorbikes, a surprise in the Scottish Highlands peat-bog landscape, and a handsome hunk named Hamish infiltrate the life of cold-case detective Karen Pirie in this zippy police procedural, which hits all the right notes, from mysteries galore to the ineluctable impact of basic kindness.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Broken Ground
  • The Widows of Malabar Hill

    By Sujata Massey

    In this cool and cunning mystery set in 1920s Bombay, a young Parsi lawyer, Perveen Mistry, lands her first case when one of her father’s Muslim clients dies, and Mistry is the only one who can speak directly with the purdah-observing, secluded widows who have mysteriously signed over their inheritances to charity.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Widows of Malabar Hill
  • November Road

    By Lou Berney

    In the days following JFK’s assassination, with the entire country reeling, a suburban mom from Oklahoma crosses paths with a New Orleans mobster, each on the run in this elegant, beautiful, and full-of-surprises road-trip thriller.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for November Road
  • Robicheaux

    By James Lee Burke

    The latest Dave Robicheaux novel, expertly wrought, finds the Iberia Parish, La., philosopher-detective tackling populist politicians and corrupt businessmen, hauling his buddy Clete Purcel out of debt, and confronting the possibility that, in a drunken moment, he — Dave — may have caused a man’s violent death.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Robicheaux
  • In a House of Lies

    By Ian Rankin

    Retired Edinburgh detective John Rebus stays busy by perfecting the craft of insinuating himself unofficially in ongoing police investigations, a nosiness which comes in handy for his cop-colleagues Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox when a body turns up in a car and revives an old case.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for In a House of Lies
  • The Witch Elm

    By Tana French

    French weaves her narrative mystery magic most expertly in this harrowing tale of a savvy, happy-go-lucky art-gallery publicist who, following a brutal beating during a break-in at his apartment, moves into his creaky ancestral home, a family seat with dark secrets tucked away in both house and garden.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Witch Elm
  • Don’t Let Go

    By Michel Bussi

    A nail biter of a manhunt across the spectacular terrain of the Indian Ocean island of Réunion drives this thriller after a tourist goes missing, triggering a police chase and exposing a cannily-constructed mystery with nods to both Agatha Christie and Harlan Coben.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Don’t Let Go
  • Transcription

    By Kate Atkinson

    Tapped to be a transcriber for MI5 in 1940, 18-year-old Juliet Armstrong is soon deeply immersed in an extensive web of espionage that incorporates false identities, undercover work, and a world steeped in intrigue — one whose hold on her will remain through decades.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Transcription
  • Give Me Your Hand

    By Megan Abbott

    The petri-dish-intimate culture of a competitive science-research lab leads to dastardly doings in Abbott’s latest, in which two young women discover the far-reaching tentacles of terrible secrets whispered during teenage friendships when the pair are reunited as rival researchers years later.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Give Me Your Hand
  • Who Is Vera Kelly

    By Rosalie Knecht

    Masquerading under another name, Kelly is a CIA surveillance technician during the red-hot political scene of pre-coup 1966 Argentina in this cool, taut, spy-thriller interwoven with flashback chapters chronicling Vera’s challenging road to her adventurous adulthood.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Who Is Vera Kelly
  • The Killing Habit

    By Mark Billingham

    DIs Tom Thorne and Nicola Tanner join formidable — and welcome — forces once again in this double-helixed police procedural that includes a nasty, cat-hating serial killer and a creepy drug cartel dealing in the very scary Spice, a dangerous drug.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Killing Habit
  • Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit

    By Amy Stewart

    Feisty Constance Kopp, a deputy sheriff in 1916 Hackensack, N.J., has her justice-focused hands full with chasing thieves, helping a maltreated woman, and battling corrupt politicians who are revving up their toxic rhetoric during an election year.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit
  • The Wife

    By Alafair Burke

    Former single mom Angela Powell’s gilded existence as a wealthy wife and mother comes under serious fire after #MeToo allegations are made against her celebrity husband and an accuser goes missing in this domestic-suspense psychological thriller.

    — Daneet Steffens

    A book cover for The Wife

Graphic Novels

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  • Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home

    By Nora Krug

    Krug erases the boundaries between comics, scrapbooking, and collage as she endeavors to make sense of 20th-century history, the Holocaust, her German heritage, and her family’s place in it all.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home
  • Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection

    By Junji Ito

    Discomfiting short stories and a gripping Frankenstein novella from the master of Japanese horror comics.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection
  • Berlin

    By Jason Lutes

    More than 20 years in the making, this novelistic portrayal of workers and intellectuals in late Weimar Berlin is an uncompromising chef-d’oeuvre.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Berlin
  • Coyote Doggirl

    By Lisa Hanawalt

    A whimsical and occasionally snarky and violent western about a cowgirl named Doggirl and her horse called Red.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Coyote Doggirl
  • The Ghost Script

    By Jules Feiffer

    In the final volume of Feiffer’s Kill My Mother trilogy, liberals, commies, and opportunists negotiate the Hollywood blacklist.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for The Ghost Script
  • Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet

    By Julie Doucet

    This definitive volume celebrates the groundbreaking stories of a Canadian feminist who enjoyed a huge impact on alternative comics in the 1990s and early 2000s before turning to poetry, illustration, sculpture, and collage.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet
  • Home After Dark

    By David Small

    Simpler times, perhaps: “Home After Dark’’ offers the heartbreaking tale of a sensitive 13-year-old who is mistreated by a gang of malicious boys and abandoned by his family and friends in the straitlaced 1950s.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Home After Dark
  • Kafkaesque: Fourteen Stories

    By Peter Kuper

    Kuper’s lifelong fascination with Franz Kafka’s short fiction yields stark yet playful interpretations in the woodcut tradition of Kathë Kollwitz, Frans Masereel, and Lynd Ward.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Kafkaesque: Fourteen Stories
  • Monk!: Thelonious, Pannonica, and the Friendship Behind a Musical Revolution

    By Youssef Daoudi

    A deeply felt graphic biography of the composer and jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, with an emphasis on the musician’s close friendship with Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter (née Rothschild).

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Monk!: Thelonious, Pannonica, and the Friendship Behind a Musical Revolution
  • The New World: Comics From Mauretania

    By Chris Reynolds, selected and designed by Seth

    An overdue collection of cryptic sci-fi comics by a Welsh artist whose slightly chilly work remains largely unknown in the United States.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for The New World: Comics From Mauretania
  • One Dirty Tree

    By Noah Van Sciver

    A painful, moving memoir about the author’s troubled, mostly absent, parents, impoverished Mormon upbringing (the title comes from the nickname his siblings gave to the family homestead) and its impact on his creative work, family, and personal relationships.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for One Dirty Tree
  • Poochytown

    By Jim Woodring

    Pets, pig-men, sky-palaces, and landscape-altering steering wheels: trippy storytelling about an upright animal of undetermined species named Frank, rendered in luscious psychedelia from one of the all-time greats.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Poochytown
  • Sabrina

    By Nick Drnaso

    In this first graphic novel to be nominated for a Man Booker prize, Nick Drnaso relies on subdued grays and browns, and doughy figuration, to craft an unsettling narrative about depression, bureaucracy, conspiracy theories, and fake news that swirl around a woman’s brutal murder.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Sabrina
  • Why Art?

    By Eleanor Davis

    Charming, sly, and thoroughly unpredictable, Davis’s stunning work of visual-verbal poetry bravely tackles one of life’s Big Questions.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Why Art?
  • Your Black Friend and Other Strangers

    By Ben Passmore

    Radical cartooning at its finest by an African-American anarchist from New Orleans who wields a warm line and wickedly, satiric sense of humor in this melange of story, essay, and indictment.

    — Kent Worcester

    A book cover for Your Black Friend and Other Strangers

Sports

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  • Arthur Ashe: A Life

    By Raymond Arsenault

    Finally a thorough and thoughtful biography of the committed activist and tennis champion. It’s the book this most admirable man deserves.

    — ​Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for Arthur Ashe: A Life
  • Tooth and Nail: The Making of a Female Fight Doctor

    By Linda Dahl

    This memoir chronicles the unlikely story of a female surgeon’s adventures in what has always been the ultimate man’s world. Dahl’s persistence in chasing a most peculiar dream is admirable.

    — ​Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for Tooth and Nail: The Making of a Female Fight Doctor
  • Hawk: I Did It My Way

    By Ken Harrelson with Jeff Snook

    Former major leaguer and sportscaster Harrelson (who had his best playing year in 1968 while in Boston) is a good storyteller, no matter that he’s the star of most of his stories. The book is worth reading just for the reminder of what an odd character Charlie Finley was when he owned the Kansas City Athletics, one of Harrelson’s past employers.

    — Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for Hawk: I Did It My Way
  • Unbeaten: Rocky Marciano’s Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World

    By Mike Stanton

    Stanton is a terrific writer, and Marciano’s life provides him with powerful and sometimes surprising tales to tell (the “perfection’’ in the subtitle refers to his ring career not his personal comportment), within the ring and beyond.

    — Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for Unbeaten: Rocky Marciano’s Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World
  • The Language of the Game: How To Understand Soccer

    By Laurent Dubois

    Don’t let the hopelessly pedestrian and pedantic title put you off. Dubois knows the game and lots of great stories about soccer’s history, tactics, and delights.

    — Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for The Language of the Game: How To Understand Soccer
  • One Goal: A Coach, a Team, and the Game That Brought a Divided Town Together

    By Amy Bass

    Lewiston, Maine, serves as a model for how a city can not only absorb an immigrant population but delight in the talents of that group’s young soccer players and celebrate their success. Amy ​Bass’s book transcends sports and provides encouragement ​in discouraging times.

    — Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for One Goal: A Coach, a Team, and the Game That Brought a Divided Town Together
  • The Last Pass: Cousy, Russell, the Celtics and What Matters in the End

    By Gary M. Pomerantz

    The Celtics of the Russell era were about winning titles, but the book is about the complicated relationship between the star center and the team’s legendary point guard, Bob Cousy. Cousy did more than most to fight the racism of his time, but he never stopped thinking about how he might have done more, especially to support his teammate in ’50s and ’60s Boston.

    — Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for The Last Pass: Cousy, Russell, the Celtics and What Matters in the End
  • Tiger Woods

    By Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian

    Did we need a complete retelling of the rise and fall of perhaps the greatest golfer of all time? If you think so, this is the book for you — especially if you regard Woods as a fine fellow after all.

    — Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for Tiger Woods
  • The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism

    By Howard Bryant

    Bryant’s book about the tradition of the black athlete-activist (and how they serve as barometers of American race relations) should be required reading for everybody who’s ever felt athletes should be happy to entertain us, get paid, and keep their mouths shut. Nah. It should be required reading for everybody.

    — Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
  • We Matter: Athletes and Activism

    By Etan Thomas

    Former NBA player Thomas interviews athletes, former athletes, family members of individuals slain by police officers, writers, and many others to present a sense of the challenge black citizens face in a land given to celebrating black stars and persecuting black citizens.

    — Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for We Matter: Athletes and Activism
  • The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created

    By Jane Leavy

    There are a number of people bound to inspire biographies as long as the trees hold out. Abe Lincoln and Muhammad Ali are among that number. Jane Leavy has demonstrated that Babe Ruth belongs on the list, too. Her take? That Ruth, who played during the first flowering of mass media, became the first modern sports star, complete with endorsement deals and an agent.

    — Bill Littlefield

    A book cover for The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created