Best Books of 2022

In a country governed by isolation, fear, and a tyrannical dictator, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer, but he decides to use his position to try to outwit his handler, undermine the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. Includes author's note.

"Eighteen-year-old Avery Grambs is weeks away from inheriting the multibillion-dollar Hawthorne fortune, but first she'll have to survive a dangerous game against an old enemy looking for vengeance"--

"Set in 1960s California, this blockbuster debut is the hilarious, idiosyncratic and uplifting story of a female scientist whose career is constantly derailed by the idea that a woman's place is in the home, only to find herself starring as the host of America's most beloved TV cooking show. Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it's the...

"From the number one bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, a deeply suspenseful and heartrending novel about the unbreakable love between a mother and child in a society consumed by fear Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard University's library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade,...

"A charmingly eccentric hotel maid discovers a guest murdered in his bed, turning her once orderly world upside down--and inspiring a motley crew of unexpected allies to band together to solve the mystery--in this utterly original debut. Molly Dunn is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and interprets people literally. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by. Since...

Tanzania, 1964. When Katie Barstow, A-list actress, and her new husband, David Hill, decide to bring their Hollywood friends to the Serengeti for their honeymoon, they envision giraffes gently eating leaves from the tall acacia trees, great swarms of wildebeests crossing the Mara River, and herds of zebra storming the sandy plains. Their glamorous guests--including Katie's best friend, Carmen Tedesco, and Terrance Dutton, the celebrated Black actor...

"The long-awaited new book from the best-selling and beloved author of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook-a collection of essential recipes for meals you'll want to prepare again and again. Deb Perelman is the author of two best-selling cookbooks, the OG of the culinary blogosphere, the homegrown brand with more than a million Instagram followers, the self-taught cook who obsessively tests her recipes until they're perfect. Here, in her third book, Perelman...

"The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. It's 2010. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, "Own...

"Amy and Brian's world was changed forever with his diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's. Forced to confront the daily frustrations and realities of the disease and its impact on their lives and marriage, Brian resolved not to let it dictate his life and instead asked himself: What makes life meaningful, and how do I want to live the rest of mine? His decision led them to learn about Dignitas and to fly to Zürich for a peaceful ending of Brian's...

"An astonishing collection about interconnectedness-between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves-from National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist Ada Limón"--