BOOKS OF THE YEAR Part 3: chosen by our contributors

Here's the final part of our roundup and our chance to thank our reviewers for their generous contributions throughout the year. We couldn't do this without you! Thanks too to all our followers. We hope everyone's found something here - or maybe several titles - to add to your reading pile for 2026.

John Newman chooses something old and something new: My reconnection with the work of Rosemary Sutcliff continued this year and I was really thrilled to find a second hand hardback edition of Knight’s Fee complete with Charles Keeping illustrations. I f could not recall reading of how Randal, an abandoned kennel boy overcomes adversity to become a knight. Sutcliff brilliantly uses his rise to explore how the Saxon and Norman population find a common enemy in the French and those attempting to usurp the throne at the end of the eleventh century.

Sometimes picking up a proof copy can lead to a major reading experience. Such is the case with Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume. The story of how an antiquarian book dealer awakes continuously on the 18th November and how she attempts to adapt is told a day at a time. I'm now up to Volume 3 of a planned septology and I can’t stop recommending them.

John Newman is an independent booksellers at Newham Books. 

Penny Dolan chooses A Voice in the Night by Simon Mason, the fourth in his excellent ‘DI Wilkins’ crime series: Two murders, set in a rather unlovely Oxford: the stabbing of a security guard and a mysterious death-by-drowning of a retired academic.

DCS Wainwright, the ruthless new Superintendent at Thames Valley Police, wants both murders solved. She also wants one of two officers out of the service. Will it be handsome, black, college-educated DI Raymond Wilkins? Or his ‘past partner’: trailer-trash, trackie-bottomed, single-parent DI Ryan Wilkins, who must have ‘no responsibility’, yet somehow fixes on essential facts?

Though each Wilkins goes their own way in sorting out the mystery, they also face painful responsibilities in their own lives. A Voice in the Night, with its compelling heart, makes my Book of the Year 2025, though I must add that the three earlier DI Wilkins novels are worth reading first.

Mary Hoffman: My fiction-reading has involved a lot of re-reads. I discovered Elly Griffiths’ wonderful Ruth Galloway series of detective novels in June and have read all fifteen and am now re-reading them. The first is The Crossing Places and I heartily recommend them. The heroine is middle-aged, not slim and fashionable, but is a forensic archaeologist. Yet Ruth Galloway is not short of male admirers.

I’ve also been re-reading my way through my extensive Anne Tyler collection and am six books in so far. I got the latest Jackson Brodie novel by Kate Atkinson at Christmas last year – Murder at the Sign of the Rook (Doubleday), so of course I then had to re-read all the others. And I belong to a book group which also sometimes supplies titles I know already, including my own choice, The Leopard (Collins and Harvill Press) by Giuseppe Tommasi di Lampedusa, partly inspired by the recent Netflix series, which played fast and loose with the plot but was beautifully cast and filmed. It was first published in Italy in 1958 and the English translation two years later, both after the author’s death. I must have first read it in sixth form; anyway, I seem always to have known it and it remains one of my favourite books. 

Other favourite re-reads of the years have been Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, which I enjoyed much more second time round and Irène Nemirovsky’s Suite Française, which ditto. Our last book club title of the Year is Pip Williams’ The Dictionary of Lost Words and it is a corker.  It may be hard to write a page-turner about a (fictional) girl helping to compile the OED, but Williams has done it. Happy reading!

Mark Davies has also chosen The Dictionary of Lost Words: Set largely in Oxford, the novel is structured to track the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the life of the first-person character, Esme. As the daughter of one of the editors, Esme's awareness of the significance of words begins as a small child. As a adult, she is employed at the Dictionary, and determines to try to include 'lost' words of a more feminine derivation, having realised that the Dictionary was a male-dominated domain: the editors and compilers were men, the majority of cited sources were written by men, and most of the researchers were men. By retrieving otherwise ignored or mislaid words, and by talking to working class women, Esme collects the basis of her own small alternative 'Lost Words' dictionary. This feminist theme is interwoven with the simultaneous activities of the suffragette movement and the nursing of soldiers injured in the First World War, making the book both engaging, thought-provoking, and educational.

Mark Davies is an Oxford local historian, public speaker and guide. His latest publications are A Jericho Scrapbook: Inside an Oxford Community Saved from Destruction and Jericho - a Celebration.

Jane Dalton: My pick is The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel. Ostensibly a warning of the devastation wreaked by ponzi schemes, this strange and haunting novel carries an undercurrent of a world in which women pay the price for men’s crimes and selfishness.

Chief among them is Vincent, who at school was straight-As pupil but whose talents go unrecognised. Without a career, she becomes a fake trophy wife to the "super-rich" Jonathan Alkaitis, while her half-brother Paul plagiarises her video work. He squanders his college education funded by his mother, whereas Vincent is haunted by the loss of her own beloved mother.

The many different shifts in time, perspective and tenses - present and past, including Paul justifying his actions to a therapist in later years - make for a read that’s as unsettling as offensive messages written on a hotel window - a key plot point.At the end, I had to return to the start to better relish the nuances and detail of the rich narrative in context.

Jane Dalton is a journalist for the Independent. Her first novel is currently out on submission to publishers. 

Leslie Wilson's choice is When I Was, by Miranda Miller. What struck me about this novel was the vulnerability of people trying to be adults, and somehow never managing it; the deeply insecure parents are imprisoned by their class and difficult background, trying to negotiate the world without enough tools to do so, at least not enough to fool other adults that they know what they're doing, and aren't we all like that at times? The four children are also struggling through their lives, particularly the youngest, an observant, sometimes truculent little girl who loves her parents in spite of their failings. The family relationships ring absolutely true.

There are passages of wonderful comedy, particularly the abortive excursion to Brighton in a hire car, which turns out a disaster, particularly for the car. There's  also deep and devastating sadness. Engaging, perceptive and compassionate, this is a novel that’s hard to put down.

Leslie Wilson’s latest novel is The War’s Not Over Yet.

Jane Rogers chooses Juice by Tim Winton: I love Winton’s work but I’d read enough utterly depressing cli-fi dystopias to feel reluctant about starting this. Juice is set in a lawless, scorched, barren Australia 200 years in the future – how could it not be grim? But Winton is a compelling writer. His narrator spins his tale to save his own life, at the hands of a lone killer who holds him, and the child he is trying to protect, captive. There are layers and layers of suspense, not just about the narrator but about his mother, wife, and child, and about the violent climate justice organisation both he and his captor have worked for (the chief targets are heirs to Big Oil). Winton is brilliant at raising complex moral issues; blame, revenge, honesty, and love. The astonishing humanity of the story makes it much much more than the recital of bleakness I was fearing. And his introduction of honourable AI in the final third of the novel raises questions which continue to haunt me.

Jane Rogers' latest publication is a short story collection, Fire-Ready.

Becky Jones: The book I loved most this year was The Wedding People by Alison Espach. It was the first book for a long time that hooked me on the very first page. Phoebe, a divorced academic, arrives at the Cornwall Inn to find she is the only guest who is not there for the elaborate week-long wedding of Lila and Gary. When the bride realises, she is furious – this depressed stranger could ruin her meticulously planned celebrations. As things pan out, however, Phoebe becomes important to her in ways neither of them could have imagined.

What I loved about this book was the writing – sometimes I find myself aware of the craft of writing which can sometimes detract from the enjoyment as a reader. But with this book, I could admire the writing whilst laughing and crying and being fully absorbed in the story. The premise was perfect – a week-long wedding in a hotel. It was a stage set for drama, full of surprises with wonderful, fully formed characters and sparkling, funny dialogue. But what I loved most was the way themes of loneliness, depression, grief and being different were treated with such humour. An uplifting read.

Becky Jones' first novel, Searching for Amy, was published this year.

David Breakell has chosen The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Hugh Aplin: Written in the era of Stalin's show trials, this political satire cum fantasy horror was finally published only when the author - and Stalin himself - were both long dead. In a surreal Moscow where most of the humane, moral characters are to be found in a mental institution, Bulgakov skewers Soviet society with prose which is, at turns, darkly comic and terrifying. For me, its most compelling aspect is the 'novel within a novel': the eponymous Master is struggling to complete his manuscript, a historical novel which reimagines a single day - the day of Christ's crucifixion - from the point of view of Pontius Pilate. In the hours after Christ's death, Pilate tries, unsuccessfully, to alleviate his sense of guilt. Sprinkled through the text of the main narrative, these chapters provide a brilliant counterpoint to its satirical message. But also perhaps hope for the Master and Margarita.

David Breakell's first novel is The Alchemist of Genoa - read a Q&A with David next Monday.

The choice of Alison Layland is Audrey Magee's The Colony: There’s something about islands, and I realised recently that I've visited quite a few in my reading this year, all of them as exciting and intriguing an experience as a real-life trip across the sea currents.

In The Colony, the inhabitants of a small island off the coast of Ireland are visited by an English artist and a French linguist, who battle one another for the soul of the island’s people and their language, to the bewilderment of the islanders themselves. In a microcosm of colonialism, their desires and actions have profound consequences. This is a beautifully written, engaging read with brilliant characterisation and dialogue, and so much between the lines.

Other excellent island-based novels I’ve read this year are: Little Great Island by Kate Woodworth; Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy; Muckle Flugga  by Michael Pedersen; Island by Jane Rogers. Maybe I’ve been drawn to island-set novels recently as my novel, After the Clearances, is largely set on the fictional island of Ynys Hudol, inspired by Bardsey off the north-west coast of Wales.

Alison Layland's latest publication is After the Clearances.

Nick Manns recommends Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes: In Rome, one Sunday in November 1950, Valeria Cossati walks into a tobacconist’s and asks the shopkeeper for cigarettes and a child’s exercise book. The shopkeeper says it’s forbidden to sell non-tobacco products on a Sunday. With sudden urgency (‘I need it’), Cossati persuades him to break the law, and with the notebook hidden beneath her coat, walks into the street, past a watching policeman.

‘I need it’ marks the point when de Céspedes’ character steps beyond the role of compliant housewife and selfless mother and speaks for herself. The ‘forbidden notebook’ – her diary of domestic events – becomes a document of resistance: reports from a strange country.

Written five years after the fall of Italian fascism; 18 months after the publication of The Second Sex, Valeria Cossati walks towards our own time. She says, ‘This is what I saw; this is what I worked out.’

Nick Manns has written four novels for young adults and is the founder-director of Dyslexia Lifeline.  

Paul Dowswell couldn't decide on just one, so chose three! Firstly, A Village in the Third Reich. Julia Boyd, who also wrote the fascinating Travellers in the Third Reich about tourism in Hitler’s Germany, excels in this captivating account of the Nazi-era lives of the people of Oberstdorf in the Bavarian Alps. Not a good bedtime read for anyone worried about the state of the world; It gave me nightmares.

Secondly, Long Island by Colm Toibin. I loved Brooklyn, both film and book, so was keen to catch up with Eilis Lacey, Tony Fiorello and Jim Farrell. We’re now in the 1970s and all is not well. Toibin writes so well about the longings and disappointments of his characters and leaves us on a cliff edge. I eagerly await the third instalment.

Lastly, Abbey Road. David Hepworth is a music journalist with a keen eye for the sort of ‘fancy that’ information my fellow music trainspotters love. He's also a successful publisher with a keen understanding of the £££ that oils the wheels of art. This book is a highly readable history of the famous London studio and, simultaneously, the history of recorded sound.

Paul Dowswell's latest title is Aliens: the Chequered History of Britain's Wartime Refugees

From our own Adèle Geras: Andrew Michael Hurley’s Saltwash is a book that lingers in your mind long after you finish reading it. It’s not as frightening as some of his others (try Starveacre for the most terrifying last paragraph I’ve read in years) but it does have what Hurley has always excelled at: an atmosphere that settles around you as you read like drizzle in an out of season seaside town. This is exactly what Saltwash is. I’m very partial to such settings. A man goes to meet a friend in the oddest seaside hotel you’ve ever visited. The friend isn’t there at first but turns up later. There’s a big party on that night, as it happens, and many strange guests are ready to attend. I shan’t say another word! Merry Christmas to all WR readers.

Adele Geras' latest novel, under the pseudonym Hope Adams, is Dangerous Women.

Linda Sargent's choice is What you are looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts: a Japanese bestseller and it’s easy to see why. The story unfolds as we follow the interlinking lives of five characters from a range of ages and backgrounds, but all are at some kind of turning point in their life. They arrive at a community centre/library and are directed to the librarian Sayuri Komachi, who has an uncanny, almost magical, gift for deep empathy and she directs them to seemingly unlikely books that turn out to be exactly what they need. All the while she makes tiny felt gifts and all five of the characters in this story are given one, which is also significant in their progress too. I especially liked Masao’s crab which ends up on his daughter’s bag and is a pathway to their greater connection too. It is a book about community, connection, listening and kindness. Perfect for these somewhat overwhelming times in the world and emphasising the necessary treasure provided by libraries and librarians. I loved it.

Linda Sargent's most recent publication is Tosh's Island.

Jon Appleton chooses The Light of Day by Christopher Stephens and Louise Radnofsky, a compelling addition to the canon of queer British history.

Roger Butler was the first British man to publicly admit his homosexuality, lighting a touchpaper at a time (1960) when society condemned ‘inversion’, before sexual acts between consenting men were legalised. Christopher Stephens was a young Oxford student who became the older man’s friend and was gifted, upon Roger’s death, an episodic letter which revealed not only the unrequited longing Roger had for him (about which he knew) but the man’s extraordinary life as a private citizen turned activist during the early years of gay liberation. Extracts are interspersed with Christopher’s reflections on the friendship, on his own story, on the tricky matter of offering the right levels of affection and admiration to those we revere – not just in their lifetime but after they’ve died. It’s a compelling mix and part of the reason it’s my book of the year is that just a few streets away from where Christopher visited Roger in East Oxford, I made visits to my own friend and hero, writer Jan Mark, and since her death I have grappled with many of the questions Christopher confronts.

Jon Appleton is editor of the gab, which celebrates 20th century children’s literature: lettersfromrobin.com/the-gab

And finally ... a great note to finish on, with good advice for all of us! Venkatesh Swamy recommends Slow Down and Be Here Now, by Laura Brand, illustrated by Freya Hartas. These are times where the normal is rush, rush, rush. One keeps lurching from crisis to crisis and leaps from opportunity to perceived opportunity. For many, life has become one merry-go-round with no stop button. There have been days when I feel that I have been shot out of a cannon. Here’s a book for those moments. 

Slow Down and Be Here Now is a book that immediately needs to be introduced into children’s lives (maybe adults too). As are other titles in the Slow Down series. Written by Laura Brand and illustrated by Freya Hartas, it starts off with a simple tip - Be Here Now! 

Each of the short 46 chapters is fascinating and some of my favourites are: Watch a Duck Coat its Feathers, See a Grasshopper Jump, Watch a Family of Hermit Crabs Move House. And if I get the time, I will do just that. 

The book’s premise? When it is almost impossible to find joy, feel peace or follow curiosity, there are ways you can look after yourself, calm your body and mind, and being immersed in nature is just one of them. All you need do to see them is slow down.

Venkatesh Swami is the proprietor, with Swati Roy, of Eureka! Bookstore in New Delhi.

We'll be back to normal next week. Follow us for a great reading recommendation every Monday!

Guest review by David Breakell: PRECIPICE by Robert Harris

 

"Historical fiction is not just a passport to the past. It can also give us a new perspective on our contemporary world: some things don’t really change."

David Breakell, formerly a lawyer in the City of London and now a writer of historical fiction, reviews the latest novel from a titan of the genre, Robert Harris. Earlier this year, David published The Alchemist of Genoa, a novel set in the late 16th century, earlier this year. He is currently working on the sequel. Find out more from his website. 

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” L P Hartley’s famous opening line is about memory, the loss of innocence, moral decline. But it could be seen as an explanation for the allure of historical novels, a brand motto even. One writer with a much-stamped passport to that undiscovered country is Robert Harris. His novels cover the broadest sweep of history, from pre-imperial Rome to the present-day Vatican, from feudal England to fin-de-siècle Paris, all without a hint of jet lag.

This time, Harris takes on the much-visited summer of 1914 and finds something new to say. His microscope focuses on a few square yards of Political London and an odd-couple romance between the married 62-year-old Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, and the young, unmarried, Venetia Stanley.

The affair, mostly conducted by letter and occasionally in the back of the PM’s limousine, proceeds decorously as befits the times, but is nevertheless shocking. Not only in terms of Asquith’s cavalier attitude to sharing state and military secrets with his lover, but also his sense of priorities considering what was in his ministerial red box at the time. These are the PM’s actual letters that Harris quotes from the archive – he recreates Venetia’s letters to the PM, because Asquith burnt them after resigning – and there are hundreds of them. Often, Asquith wrote to her three times a day. How on earth did he find the time?

Harris is a seasoned political observer so the context – Asquith scribbling his gushing love notes in Cabinet just as Churchill is explaining the details of the Gallipoli campaign or arguing with Kitchener – is expertly handled.

Equal prominence is given to Venetia’s side of the story. She is the daughter of an aristocratic, landed family but her perspective is thoroughly modern. We can admire her spirit but wonder at her judgment. Eventually, she realises that the affair must end and engineers it by fairly drastic means. If there is a doubt in this reader’s mind about Harris’ version of Venetia, it relates to her keeping the whole thing secret for so long, even from her closest family. Not so much the affair itself, but the state secrets she has become privy to. These feel like an intolerable burden, especially when her brothers and brothers-in-law are called up to serve and Venetia knows more – through Asquith’s indiscretions – about the military campaigns in which they’re participating than almost anyone in the country. Despite that, she shares none of this knowledge, resolutely protecting Asquith’s reputation.

To raise the stakes, Harris writes a parallel story. Detective Sergeant Paul Deemer, a Scotland Yard policeman seconded to the embryonic MI5, is on the hunt for German spies. Deemer is a bachelor whose modest background makes him an outsider in the officer-class security service. Half-way through the book, the two stories collide when Deemer starts to suspect that Asquith and Venetia are exchanging more than endearments. Deemer’s pursuit of them - pure detective work – propels the story at pace and, as importantly, gives us a moral character who points up the somewhat naïve antics of the PM. I was occasionally reminded of J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls with its similar period milieu and its eyebrows raised at the self-indulgence of the privileged classes. But Deemer is no avenging angel like Inspector Goole. He passes no judgment, other than a legal one, on Asquith’s indiscretions and even feels uneasy about steaming open the lovers’ correspondence.

The world we left behind in 1914 is skilfully evoked. London, with its twelve postal services a day, a city where Downing Street is an unguarded backwater and a Prime Minister can walk into a large bookshop and not be recognised. But historical fiction is not just a passport to the past. It can also give us a new perspective on our contemporary world: in a novel where leaders are too powerful to prosecute, where the security services collude with media mag
nates, where politicians are playing footsie under the table – or just golf – while presiding over the fate of the world, it reminds us that some things don’t really change.

Precipice is published by Penguin.

See also David's review of Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

David's novel The Alchemist of Genoa is published by Dower House Books - look out for a Q&A early next year. 

Guest review by David Breakell: DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK by Kate Atkinson

 

"Only a writer of Atkinson's skill could pull this off without straining credibility to breaking point."

David Breakell, formerly a practising lawyer in the City of London, writes historical fiction. His novel The Alchemist of Genoa was published in March this year - find out more on his website.

Great fictional detectives have dysfunctional personal lives. Or at least that's how it seems: Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Inspector Laidlaw - just add your favourites to the list. And Kate Atkinson's sardonic ex-cop turned private eye, Jackson Brodie, is a great detective. Not 'great' for his brilliant deductive reasoning or his observational powers, or even that he (usually) gets his man, if not the girl. Rather that his humanity, fallibility, dark humour - and the sheer train wreck of his life - grab our minds and hearts and never let go.

If you've read any of Atkinson’s novels, then you won't need much arm-twisting to read this one, the sixth to feature Jackson Brodie. Just as there are spy fiction writers and then there's John Le Carre so, in this reviewer's mind at least, there are crime writers and then there's Kate Atkinson.

Jackson Brodie trails his personal history like a long-life shopping bag and he's instrumental in unravelling the truth behind the crimes, but he's not a permanent presence in the novel. DC Reggie Chase, the rookie police detective last seen in “Big Sky”, is given equal billing this time. Reggie is a warm-hearted young woman who’s clever - but not always wise - beyond her years.

It seems that Atkinson has decided to have fun with this latest novel in the series. She places her focus on the other main characters. And what a menagerie they make: the battleaxe - or just plain batty - dowager marchioness and her graceless offspring; the solitary vicar who has lost his only child, then his faith and now his voice; and the young army officer, invalided out with only one leg and yet to find an alternative purpose in life.

Written like that, it might not sound as if humour was the intention. But Atkinson sets these characters against a background straight out of Agatha Christie: a crumbling stately home, a missing Old Master or two, a killer on the run, a snowstorm in which three of the main characters get separately stranded, and the unloved novels of a whodunit writer, whose creaking plots mirror the real-life crimes.

Atkinson ramps up the comedy by pitching her real-life characters against pretend ones, a troupe of might-have-been actors who are contracted to perform in a Murder Mystery evening at the stately home. No-one, except perhaps Jackson, seems able to separate the stage villains from the real ones. The action hurtles at an ever-increasing pace towards near-farce and the bodies, dead or just acting, mount up.

The Christie parody is of course intentional: only a writer of Atkinson's skill could pull this off without straining credibility to breaking point. In the meantime, her trademark one-liners propel the reader along. Talking to the heirs of a deceased old lady who describe her death as 'peaceful', Jackson muses, "He had seen a lot of dead people, and he wouldn't call them peaceful. He would call them dead." When it comes to the Pet Service at the local parish church, Lady Milton "made a point of not taking her own dogs. It might have given them ideas."

Atkinson also has the uncanny ability to take an everyday observation and turn it on its head. Contemplating the gravestones in his churchyard, the vicar reflects that plague victims "had never tasted coffee. Or tea for that matter. Or potatoes. The list of deprivations in the Middle Ages was a long one." The invalided soldier with his too-stiff-upper-lip parents believes that "if you spent too long trying to look on the bright side, you became dazzled and couldn't see anything properly.”

So, how does this compare with other Jackson Brodie novels? Much as I enjoyed it, I doubt it will rank with her very best. Admittedly, "When Will There Be Good News?" was a pretty hard act to follow, with one of the most jaw-dropping opening chapters I've ever read. The book had the power to make you both laugh and cry, many times. The bereft vicar apart, this latest novel is weighted more towards comedy: and indeed, I laughed, but I would have liked more of the emotional tug of its predecessors…

In the same way as Graham Greene described some of his own oeuvre, “Death at the Sign of the Rook” could perhaps be classed as an 'entertainment' rather than a novel. But I'll take a Kate Atkinson 'entertainment' over someone else's magnum opus, any day.

Death at the Sign of the Rook is published by Penguin.

David Breakell's The Alchemist of Genoa is published by Dower House Books.

See also: Nicola Morgan's review of Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins.