When we came to the end of 2022, it was both fun and difficult to look back and evaluate the whole year and make my list for our readers. After careful consideration, here are my top ten books that I enjoyed reading this year.

Her Hidden Genius by Marie Benedict – Tells the story of Rosalind Franklin, who, despite an environment of harassment and bullying in the late 1940s and 1950s, worked in a stringent, scientific manner ad became one of the first scientists to map the structure of DNA.

The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee – Presenting revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, drawing on his own experience as a researcher, doctor and prolific reader, explores medicine and our radical new ability to manipulate cells.

The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham – The #1 New York Times best-selling author sets the stage for his most gripping thriller yet as he returns to Mississippi where his page-turning twists and turns lead to a stunning conclusion.

The Net Beneath Us by Carol Dunbar – A timely story of one woman persevering in the natural world. In the wake of her husband’s logging accident, Elsa, while caring for their two small children in an unfinished house in the woods of rural Wisconsin, forges her own relationship with the land and learns to accept help from the people and places she least expects.

The Ways We Hide : A sweeping World War II tale of an illusionist whose recruitment by British intelligence sets her on a perilous, heartrending path. Inspired by stunning true accounts, The Ways We Hide is a gripping story of love and loss, the wars we fight—on the battlefields and within ourselves—and the courage found in unexpected places.

Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner – Presents a story of post-war London, a century-old bookstore and three women determined to find their way in a fast-changing world.

How to Raise an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi – This guide for parents, caregivers and teachers focuses on strategies for talking to children about racism, how to avoid the mistakes of our past and help dismantle racist behaviors in ourselves and our world.

It All Comes Down to This by Therese Anne Fowler – Three sisters—Beck, a freelance journalist; Claire, a pediatric cardiologist; and Sophie, an Instagram influencer—come together to sell the family’s summer cottage in Maine, which becomes complicated by an enigmatic ex-con with his own hidden past. By a New York Times best-selling author.

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins Valdez – In 1973 Montgomery, Alabama, Civil Townsend, a young black nurse working for the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, grapples with her role when she takes two young girls into her heart and the unthinkable happens, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.

Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi – A young Omani woman attempting to assimilate in Britain reflects on the relationships that have been central to her life in the new novel from the Man Booker International Prize-winning author of Celestial Bodies.

~SEMANUR