I loved this book so much. The story of Drosselmeier, the wood carver whose enchanted journey leads to the creation of the soldier brought to life in "The Nutcracker," is steeped in German fairy tale symbolism. Maguire's retelling is richly intricate, winding, and mesmerizing.

Jeff VanderMeer's Borne is an astonishingly beautiful book about relationships, survival, and attachment in a world racked by climate change and flooded with refugees. Set in a ruined, post-apocalyptic city which has been decimated by the "Company" and its biotech creations, it's one of the most moving and intensely human books I've read this year. It also includes a gigantic, lethal flying bear named Mord. As he demonstrated in his earlier work, VanderMeer is remarkable at crossing genre lines to create gorgeously literary speculative fiction, or surreally beautiful sci-fi.

America in 2017 is a traffic accident I can't tear my eyes from. Timothy Snyder offers short history lessons on how Americans have survived difficult times before, and suggests that with thoughtfulness and a moral compass we can survive them again. These examples give me a certain amount of hope that we can get through the current sundering of our democracy and social fabric, and that we can arrest the destruction of America's fundamental freedoms. On Tyranny is a small book that inspires big thoughts. Read it alone, read it at school, but above all: read it with your kids.

The City of Brass is an incredible debut. It features the sword fights, monsters, magic, forbidden romances, and betrayals that characterize all of the best fantasy novels, but these elements are set against the mythical city of Daevabad, populated entirely by Djinn. The politics in this book are more nuanced and relevant than most fantasy fare, and the world-building is fresh and enthralling. The City of Brass is the most exciting fantasy I've read in a very long time, and Chakraborty is single-handedly responsible for reigniting my love for the genre.

This book really touched me. It was so timely and relevant. The tools Mohsin uses to describe the plight of refugees around the world are, well, magical. I was mesmerized.

What I love most about this magnificent novel is the realistic way Fridlund places her young protagonist Linda's loneliness at the center of the story. Even though the plot contains very dramatic elements, the story's merit and complexity stem from its unswerving focus on Linda's interpretation of events, which is shaped by her limited adolescent viewpoint and troubled childhood. The result is a starkly beautiful novel that rings true, and is all the more marvelous and troubling for doing so.

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman is one of the best books I've ever read. It effortlessly contains characters of many colors, sizes, and sexualities. It is not a book that you read, but absorb.

Brilliantly creative and evocative, this original story about family, immigration, love, and deeply internalized emotions could easily be from any period of time, but feels particularly meaningful today.

Don't be put off by reading a book of diary entries. These have all the wry, insightful humor of Sedaris's essays, but in shorter snippets. It is fascinating to see the inspiration for the stories in his other books, and to watch him grow and change over 25 years.

Swallowing Mercury is an unsettling, sublime coming-of-age novel. It will transport you into its world; while I was reading it, I could almost feel the smoke and mist in the air and see the beauty and squalor of 1970s communist Poland. This is one of the loveliest books I've ever read.

This is a comic I return to again and again. The art on each page is imbued with a magical quality, and it's a pleasure to look at. I wish I could live in the world Keezy Young has crafted, which is full of supernatural, ghost-y characters, and settings bursting with petals. This comic is my happy place.

Believe Me is a riveting adventure into the hows, whys, and hilarious life of Eddie Izzard. While he relates the story of his success, Izzard, in his own beautiful way, also inspires anyone who reads this story to achieve their own dreams. Plus, in times like these, the relief of a good laugh is priceless!

I gobbled this novel. George's long-form debut is a frolicking, emotional romp unlike anything I've ever read. I don't even know why I'm attempting to blurb it — ya just gotta read it. So fun, so heartfelt, so original. So George.

The Tea Dragon Society is such a delightful story. You follow Greta, a blacksmith's apprentice, as she stumbles upon a lost tea dragon. After returning it to its rightful owner, she becomes enamored with the fantastical world of tea dragons. It's short and sweet, and I guarantee this book will leave you craving more.

Denfeld has the ability to tap the ocean of emotion inside her, and uses her spare, delicate prose with grace and surgical precision to deliver this stunning story. Addressing themes of home, child abuse, memory, survival, fear of intimacy, and the necessity of stories, The Child Finder is absolutely glorious.

Debut author Lesley Nneka Arimah shares 12 amazing short stories set in the US and Nigeria. Her fresh, wonderful, creative writing is packed with layers of complicated emotions and themes that will make you think.

To me, Helprin doesn't so much write as seduce. His exquisite prose creates worlds and characters that are immediate and overwhelmingly romantic. I loved this story of a profoundly good man struggling with the wounds of his past to create, against all odds, a future for his family. And Paris! Ah Paris! Never has the city been so perfectly rendered.

Boasting a virus that causes its host to literally explode in order to spread, apps that can be hacked to change a person's DNA, and a large corporation that wants control of those apps to ensure "purity" — even at the expense of those who live only by nonapproved apps — This Mortal Coil is a fast-paced book with excellent character-building and a very plausible (and frightening) view of genetic science. Well worth the read!

One of my favorite story collections ever. It pretty much caters to everything I like: short short stories, funny-as-hell descriptions of people, dazzling sentences, dark humor, unashamed sex, and an attitude that doesn't really give a fuck. These stories have velocity to spare and plunge you into these characters' weird and uncomfortable worlds. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes to laugh, and especially to fans of Sam Lipsyte.

Hunger is the heartbreaking story of one woman's body — a body that is too large, a body that is too brown, a body that is too female. It is the story of a body that is invisible while also being all too visible. It is the story of a body that takes up too much space and yet does not exist. Gay's story is difficult. It is complex. And it stayed with me for weeks after I finished reading it. I cannot recommend this one enough.

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me is a deeply raw memoir of Alexie's complicated relationship with his mother — a woman he both revered and had disdain for, a woman for whom he felt both pride and shame. In his signature style, Alexie delivers stories of immeasurable pain cut with hilarious candor, conveyed in both essays and poems. He shows us that we can learn just as much about ourselves as those we grieve for.

Ottessa Moshfegh is incomparable! Homesick for Another World is a collection of stories that are so weird, so darkly hilarious, and so poignant, I found myself veering wildly between the characters' vivid emotions. They are all damaged people who cling to the things that destroy them, wallow in the ugliness around them, and view their lives with a sort of detached amusement. Moshfegh's genius lies in her ability to write about such grubby, base subjects in a way that's beautiful — poetic even. Her stories are the gutter and the stars.

In many respects, 2017 was a depressing year, which gave me a little pause in selecting Moshfegh's collection of bleak short stories as my book of the year. If you're looking for an uplifting bit of escapism to forget the morning headlines, stay far away from Moshfegh's work. The stories are depraved, the characters invariably lonely, and the entire vibe is just greasy. All that being said, Homesick for Another World is just too exceptional not to snag my top spot.

Seventeen-year-old Nadia's world is turned upside down when her mother commits suicide and she finds out she is pregnant with the pastor's son's child. The plot is engaging and honest, but the aspect of The Mothers that stuck with me long after I finished it was Bennett's expression of the minds and hearts of an intergenerational community of women who are all asking the same questions, finding the same comforts, and experiencing the same losses. This is a stunning debut novel. I recommend it to everyone.

There's a lot that's stunning about this collection. Whether McBride is digging through the wreckage of American history and our stubborn refusal to reckon with race and class, or examining mankind's cruelty and avarice through the perspective of sentient zoo animals, these stories sparkle with grace and empathy, celebration and sorrow. Each one of these pieces is firmly grounded in character and setting, but that doesn't stop the author from showing off his incredible range. I read a lot of books about America's sins and our inability to confront them this year, but this one just might be the most powerful.

Monstress, Volume 2 continues a yarn woven from mythic threads picked from both the East and West, giving way to something that somehow feels both fresh and ancient. It's a miraculous gut punch, seamlessly synthesizing horror and beauty in illustrations that brim with both breathtaking violence and the most tender humanity. The huge cast of women populating the matriarchy of the Monstress series are the kind who shatter their archetypes on the rocks, the type of women who contain multitudes. The story of a furious girl with a monster inside her moves forward with or without you. Why not come along?

I cracked this book open as my flight to Boston took off, and finished it 5 hours later. I didn't even look up for my little bag of pretzels — Li Jing's journey is just that compelling. Celeste Lim's well-crafted magical realism takes the reader right into Song Dynasty China — from impoverished farming communities to wealthy households in the big city — and adds talking animals and shape-shifting spirits to help Li Jing find happiness in a society that doesn't value girls. Though intense at times, this charming novel reads like a classic folktale. A must-read for fans of Grace Lin!

This book oozes talent. The complex and melancholy story about a young girl who gets swept up in a mystery that could tear her family apart pulled on my heartstrings and has stuck with me since the beginning of this year. Ferris's art is impeccable, bold, and impressed me with every turn of the page, and even more so after reading her backstory. I cried multiple times and haven't stopped talking about it with my coworkers all year (sorry everyone.) This is one of my top 5 favorite books ever.

This prophetic debut novel from Omar El Akkad has haunted me since I read it in April. American War paints a bleak future in which the North and South are warring for a second time in US history, this time over fossil fuel use in the year 2074. In this sharply written book, El Akkad explores asymmetric warfare, climate change, rebellion, extrajudicial torture, refugees, and the ethics of unmanned drones raining death and destruction on innocent civilians. I cannot recommend it highly enough. A must-read vision of warfare and ethics in the coming century.

If you're still holding onto the value of batting averages, RBI, saves, and pitcher's wins, read Smart Baseball to see how misleading those statistics are. If you've already been convinced that fielding percentage is an extremely flawed stat and want to know more about FIP, WAR, and UZR in easy-to-understand terms, read Smart Baseball. Keith Law breaks down the old numbers and sheds light on the new ones in an addictive read for any baseball fan. This book opened my mind to new ways of thinking about baseball, and I haven't watched the game the same way since.

Danielle Davis's debut has everything you could ever want in a middle grade read: embracing your creativity, being an understanding friend, communication and handling your emotions healthily, and feeling lost but finding your home. There's a wide-ranging cast of eccentric characters too, and it brims with both humor and heart — a total package reminiscent of the great Kate DiCamillo.

Wow, was I nervous before I started this, worrying it wouldn't be as good as its predecessors. Luckily, I loved it just as much, if not more, than the His Dark Materials series. Returning to Lyra's world was like coming home again, and I enjoyed every minute of it. This book has it all — wonderful characters and world-building, clever, smart writing, incisive (and relevant) political commentary, perfect pacing and mood development… I never wanted it to end. Now the only question is: How in the world will I manage to wait for the next book in the series?

A rich, sweeping novel that moves through history, from World War I and World War II, into the fall of the Soviet Union, and up to the present day. Woven into the story is a hauntingly beautiful, anonymous piano sonata that has been broken up into three parts. With complex characters and seamless, multilayered writing, The Prague Sonata reaches deep into the human heart.

As darkly humorous as it is moving, as much about grief over loss of culture and community as it is about grief over the loss of a parent, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me is a searing confessional and eulogy all in one, that for all of Alexie's openness about the memoir genre's inherent dishonesty feels like the most honest memoir — indeed one of the most honest books — I've ever read.

I've followed Michael Twitty on social media for quite a while, so I couldn't wait to read his book. What a fresh, unique, and fascinating look at both the rich culinary history of African American cooking traditions in the South and Twitty's family's history. This is a very worthy addition to my Southern food book collection.

All the feels. Yes, this was hard to read, and will be a hard read for anyone who has experienced even the smallest bit of anxiety or OCD. However, it's also a healing and reflective book. The story is all life, all truth, and all yearning to find meaning. John Green, thank you for sharing this part of yourself. You’ve done it again.

I was ready to have my heart broken by Rene Denfeld's The Child Finder. What I didn't expect was that by the end of the story, I felt joy and healing. A simple but remarkable telling of a world close to all of us.

Samantha Hunt's collection is full of transformations: women becoming mothers, people becoming ghosts, and women becoming deer. Like the title suggests, the stories are dark and give off a feeling like the corners of your room are closing in. While definitely unsettling, the collection is wholly consuming, witchy, and transformative. As I was reading about the changes these women go through, I felt myself becoming something not necessarily darker, but new. Read this with the overhead light turned off and your salt lamp turned on.

2017 seemed to possess an element of crazy nearly every day. This beautifully written and illustrated picture book, with its simple and life-affirming message, could not have come at a better time.

This book came out early in 2017, but even after everything else I read this year, it remains my favorite. Autumn is my favorite season — it brings a change to the world as we see it, and this novel does the same. It is warm, reflective, and hopeful despite circumstance. It is a beautifully rendered representation of a season in words. It is a masterpiece.

In high school I was obsessed with the music of the '60s and '70s and the big collections of Rolling Stone interviews. This book reveals the man behind the magazine, and provides all of the juicy gossip and wild anecdotes my heart desires. Although Jann Wenner's behavior was almost grotesquely appalling on a regular basis, it's inarguable that the magazine he helped to create changed how we look at and talk about music and culture.

When Deming Guo is young, his undocumented Chinese immigrant mother leaves for work and never returns. Deming is adopted by a white family and renamed Daniel, and grows up to be a troubled young man. As he tries to find his place in the world, we learn more about his personal journey and his mother's journey. The Leavers is a powerful story about family and an eye-opening look at the American immigrant experience. I was so moved by this book. It is beautifully written, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful.

This stunning poetry collection is full of deep feeling, vulnerability, and wisdom. I simply cannot stop rereading it. A poet with an intelligent, accessible voice, Dimitrov explores themes of love and loss, reminding us of the transformative power of verse. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has never read poetry, to poetry fanatics, and to everyone in-between.

This book is beautiful and disquieting and I tried — I really tried — to savor it, but instead I devoured it in one sitting like a fool. Denfeld has a gift, and it's more than a way with words. It's an ability to root beauty out of dark recesses. To explore moral reprehensibility with compassion. To make the reader cringe and marvel in equal measure, and consume in hours a book they'd intended to ration out over days. It makes her books tricky to recommend — "Just trust me! You'll love it!" — but I do so wholeheartedly and happily and all the time.

Denfeld's masterful weaving of this beautiful tale moved me deeply, enveloped me in its arms and didn't let me go. Madison Culver won my heart!

Irby is adept at making sad things funny; she writes from the heart (and sometimes the gut). This year, whenever someone asked me for a recommendation, Irby was the first person to pop into my head. Some years you need to dive into the long story, the big book. But this year I was drawn to short form. Reading We Are Never Meeting in Real Life felt like having a really great conversation with my best friend, peppered with belly laughs and tears.

Surprisingly as comforting as it is haunting, the mystery of the story builds in layers, defying your expectations without quite toying with them. Definitely my main gift book of the year.

Nina LaCour's We Are Okay breaks the heart and then gently repairs it. Admittedly, I was drawn to this book because of its cover. What I discovered was a tender and authentic illustration of the human condition during love, loss, and loneliness — how grief dictates altruism, how the heart distorts rationality and logic. So absorbing, so artfully crafted, my words won't do it justice.

This is one of the most spellbinding books I've ever read. The writing is so perfectly beautiful that despite wanting to race to the end, I forced myself to slow down so I wouldn't trip and miss a single word. Like A Little Life and All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, My Absolute Darling is one of those books that makes you hungry for more, even as it rips your guts out.

This is a book about miracles. It is also a book about family, and music, and owls, and roses, and radios, and box trucks, and the importance of facing your inner darkness to find out who you are. The saints of the Soria family, the pilgrims who seek them out, and the 1960s Colorado Desert where the story unfolds are all unforgettable characters, and the hopeful warmth at the heart of this beautifully written novel will stick with you long after you've read the final page.

This is not only my number one book for this year, but one of my top five favorite books of all time. I think what I loved most about this book was that it portrayed anxiety and OCD without romanticizing them. John Green also placed more importance on the friendship featured in this novel than on the romantic interest, which I always appreciate.

This novel will hook you in and pull you along through a spellbinding, heartbreaking journey into modern-day, impoverished Mississippi. The story follows Jojo, a young multiracial boy growing up primarily with his grandparents due to his mother's addiction problems and his father's jail sentence. It explores the bonds of family, the weight of history, and includes a touch of magical realism that will hang heavy on your heart after finishing.

For anyone restless in their own skin, Kai Cheng Thom's poetry bandages wounds with grace and candor. The perfect read for the raw and weary.

Himself is a cross between a Tim Burton movie and an Agatha Christie story. It's dark, hilarious, and keeps you guessing. A ghostly murder mystery typically isn't on the top of my list, but Kidd is so original and dreamy, all the while keeping the emotional plot from derailing; this book is a universal gem.

Insomniac City is a compelling rumination on love, loss, and community. New to New York City, Hayes presents his encounters with fellow New Yorkers in an astonishing series of essays, vignettes, and beautiful photographs. The book centers on Hayes's relationship with the luminous genius Oliver Sacks. Despite Sacks's diagnosis and decline from cancer, their love story is of the kind too rarely depicted between gay men: deep, mature, and ultimately joyous.

Poet and critic Andrew Durbin's first novel takes you on a journey through superstorms and rising tides, underground nightclubs and drunken hookups, artists' colonies and Californian cults. We may never have that recipe again, but we can certainly join Durbin on this peculiarly queer search for connection. MacArthur Park is a liquid book that continually surprises, arouses, confounds, and delights.

You and a Bike and a Road is a deceptively simple bike travelogue through the desert southwest, with moving reflections on family, immigration, and the fragility of life. Davis's beautifully sketched illustrations made me want to pick up a pencil and hit the road.

You'll never read a book about sex, drugs, conflict, and out-of-control youth that is so utterly delightful. Bunkie Spills spans just two days in the life of 17-year-old Bunkie and his wayward friends, and through the boozing, the heroin, the stealing of Big Pete's van, Bunkie stumbles and tumbles toward his very particular coming-of-age. Writer Bradley K. Rosen is an expert storyteller, a poetic and often hilarious wordsmith, and his narrator Bunkie is a clown philosopher, a bumbling wise man, and a soul you can't help but fall in love with.

This is Philip Pullman in top form, telling a story that holds the reader spellbound. The Book of Dust is very definitely an English fantasy. It reminds me strongly of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising, only with more bite. The characters are satisfyingly drawn, the plot sufficiently tense, and the conclusion does not disappoint. I was happily swept along by the inexorable current of Pullman's narrative.

The City of Brass is by far the best book I read this year. Nahri is a gifted con artist living in 18th-century Cairo. She accidentally summons a warrior djinn and discovers that her nascent magical abilities are the legacy of her ancient, bloodthirsty family. This is a highly unique, completely magical story that had me hooked from the start. I can't believe this is a debut novel!

No quarter is given in Moshfegh's derelict America, an amorphous sprawl inhabited by drain-circling agnostics and jaundiced creeps, forming a fetid sort of reflecting pool for our current national predicament. It sure ain't pretty but Homesick for Another World already feels like a classic of despondent, grayscale skepticism.

The Glass Eye was a surprise. Instead of being a simple story about a daughter who loses her father, it takes on a life on its own. Vanasco's grief isn't simple. Instead, you're left sitting there with tears in your eyes and a sob in your throat, because you realize just how much her father's death affected her, even when the subject switches to her mental illness or relationships with her mother and others. Read this book. It will change you.

This is a beautiful book, and the collection of recipes is just the right size. It contains a wonderful variety from near and far without being overwhelming. The recipes are easy to follow, and you can mix and match the soup and bread pairings to create your own favorite combinations. I'll definitely be returning to this book again and again.

Once again we follow along on Mia Corvere's vengeance-dealing quest to bring murder and mayhem to those who had her family killed. It took me longer than normal to read this book, because I kept putting it down for fear that the author was about to kill characters I didn't want to see dead (he has a way of doing that). Start with Nevernight so that the craziness in this book makes sense — it is so worth it. The ending of this book... Just agh! Curse you, Kristoff!

Sometimes the sexual predator in your midst isn't the obviously entitled alpha male but the "sensitive" beta who acts like he's on your side because he actually believes it himself. The only problem is when you fail to recognize as much, you must be blamed and punished. Nails the toxic masculinity of 2017.

This is a devastating work. [Lukao] is the fourth in an interconnected series by native Chamorro poet Perez about his homeland, the unincorporated US territory of Guam (Guahån). Its focus is on processions and the ceremonial passage of time — creation, birth, and marriage, destruction, extinction, and militarization. Perez is a powerful voice of indigenous Pacific Island resistance.

I still cannot believe that this is a debut title. It's that good. Every person should read this — they may not get it, but it is worth trying. This book encompasses a lovely, wrenching mix of phenomenal prose, intriguing science fiction premises, and a basis in reality that gets to your core.

I was taken aback by this near-perfect story collection. The opening piece, "Black-Eyed Women," features a narrator haunted by the spirit of her dead brother who was killed as they escaped to America, and that sets the tone for the rest of the book — these are ghostly tales with characters who perceive the past more vividly than the present. And yet their stories, their journeys through time and place, deserve to be told. The Refugees is a quiet yet assured collection that gives dignity to a displaced population.