From Jeremy Lee’s gorgeous and long-awaited cookbook to the Waterstones Book of the Year winner by Katie Hessel, these are the best books of 2022.
NON-FICTION
The Year of Miracles: Recipes About Love + Grief + Growing Things by Ella Risbridger
Nigella Lawson, Nigel Slater and Diana Henry have heaped praise upon this cookbook. But ‘cookbook’ is too simple a word: here you’ll find stories alongside recipes. Written in the aftermath of Risbridger’s partner’s death, when she moved into a flat with a friend just as the country went into lockdown in 2020, this is a chronicle of a year in a kitchen filled with leftovers pie, dippy eggs, cardamom buns and iron soup, and conversations about grief, loss and the people who love you. Charming, utterly readable and unintimidating.
Bloomsbury, £22
Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
This is the story of the greatest manhunt of the 17th century. The title of this epic historical thriller from the bestselling writer Robert Harris refers to legislation passed by Parliament in 1660 pardoning everyone involved in the civil war except for those directly involved in the murder of King Charles I. Harris has described his tale as a “Puritan Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.
Hutchinson Heinemann, £22
Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis
A powerful memoir from one of our greatest acting talents. Davis is one of only 24 actors to have won the Triple Crown of acting — receiving an Emmy, Oscar and Tony award — and is the first and only African-American actor to accomplish that feat. Yet her early life was far from one of privilege. She recalls her deprived childhood and her rise to fame, and doesn’t shy away from calling out the violence, racism and abuse she experienced along the way. A must-read.
Coronet, £20
The Facemaker: One Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I by Lindsey Fitzharris
These days plastic surgery is often associated with cosmetic procedures such as boob jobs or face lifts. Yet this work has its origins in war. Fitzharris, an award-winning medical historian, traces the work of the pioneering reconstructive surgeon Harold Gillies, who, through bone and skin grafts, sought to help the soldiers disfigured by the bombs and guns used during the the First World War. Gruesome and fascinating.
Allen Lane, £20
Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many by Jeremy Lee
This gorgeous and long-awaited cookbook, from the chef proprietor at Quo Vadis in Soho, is a celebration of food. Arranged alphabetically, Lee guides us from artichokes to wild garlic, via his trademark pies and smoked eel sandwiches, among other delights. The sheer joy of it all leaps off the page of this beautiful, witty, authoritative tome.
4th Estate, £30
Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
One for the literary buffs. Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, aka the Booker for non-fiction, Super-Infinite is a sparkling biography of the life of John Donne, the 17th-century poet of love, sex and death. It is written by the acclaimed children’s book author and Donne scholar at All Souls College, Oxford, Katherine Rundell.
Faber and Faber, £16.99
Menu Design in Europe: A Visual and Culinary History of Graphic Styles and Design 1800-2000, edited by Jim Heimann
The menus featured in this book are as delectable as the dishes they describe. The journey begins in France, where the earliest paper menus can be found in the mid-1700s, where chefs were newly liberated from their ties to aristocratic families and began preparing meals for private diners. As the 1800s progressed, the marvellous graphics of many European menus were unparalleled, prompting many diners to retain them as souvenirs. Hotel, ship, and, later, airline menus were another category in which European menu design flourished.
Taschen, £50
The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel
In 2015, the art historian and creator of the popular @thegreatwomenartists Instagram account Katy Hessel “walked into an art fair and realised that, out of the thousands of artworks before me, not a single one was by a woman”. This smart, accessible corrective, which runs from 1500 to the present day, tells the history of art through the work of known and unknown women artists. It also just won the Waterstones Book of the Year award.
Hutchinson Heinemann, £30
Without Warning and Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood by Kit de Waal
The author of the Costa-shortlisted novel My Name Is Leon shares the story of her own childhood. De Waal was born in Sixties Birmingham, the second of five children for parents (and Jehovah Witnesses) Arthur, a bus driver from St Kitts, and Sheila, a child of Irish immigrants. The children often starved and yet Arthur would return home with riches to line his wardrobe. This is a powerful story of survival and life lived in the extremes.
Tinder Press, £16.99
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It by Janina Ramirez
This book comes laden with praise from experts including Lucy Worsley and Peter Frankopan, among others. The Oxford and BBC historian Janina Ramirez reveals the medieval world to us afresh through the stories of remarkable — often entirely overlooked and forgotten — women. From the mystic and anchoress Julian of Norwich to Jadwiga, the only female king in Europe, Ramirez shows us women as brave warriors, powerful rulers and individuals with the power to write their own stories and determine their histories (many of whom had to do so while juggling raising kids, obviously).
WH Allen, £22
The Premonitions Bureau: A True Story by Sam Knight
An expansion on a 2019 New Yorker article, Sam Knight offers us the strange but true story of a British psychiatrist named John Barker who, after the 1966 spoil tip disaster that killed 144 people — 116 of them children — in Aberfan, Wales, tried to predict the future by mining people’s visions and dreams for clues. This bestseller is also an intriguing look at the history of second sight, stretching back to Socrates.
Faber and Faber, £14.99
FICTION
I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel
“I stalk a woman on the internet who is sleeping with the same man as I am,” begins this visceral, intense debut novel that explores race, toxic exes and unbalanced relationships, among other things. It’s one of this year’s below-the-radar hits, un-putdownable and it has just won Foyles Fiction Book of the Year.
Rough Trade Books, £14.99
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
Longlisted for the Booker prize, Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, set in the 19th century, is a reimagining of the life of John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. It interweaves Booth’s life with that of his family in a story that is moving and colourful and tragic.
Serpent’s Tail, £18.99
The Trees by Percival Everett
This Booker-shortlisted, Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize-winning police procedural opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi, and draws on horror and comedy as it reveals the history of lynching.
Influx, £9.99
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Sometimes the book is worth the hype. Set in the Sixties, this international bestseller follows the life of chemist Elizabeth Zott, who experiences sexism and has her research stolen by her all-male team. She falls for a brilliant fellow chemist but soon ends up a single mother, before becoming the reluctant star of an American cooking show. “Cooking is chemistry,” she tells her viewers, “and chemistry is life. Your ability to change everything — including yourself — starts here.”
Doubleday, £16.99
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
When marine biologist Leah finally returns from a deep sea mission, her wife Miri is beside herself with joy believing that, at last, their life together can resume. But as the days go by, Miri realises Leah may have brought back with her something from the murky depths. This much-anticipated novel from the author of Salt Slow is a beautifully strange love story mixed with body horror — go with it because the result is perfection.
Picador, £16.99
One Day I Shall Astonish the World by Nina Stibbe
Nina Stibbe is a comic genius — and an award-winning one at that. The author of Love, Nina, which was adapted into a BBC TV series, is a reliable name to turn to whenever you want your spirits lifted. Her latest novel takes on the subject of female friendships.
Viking, £14.99
Lessons: A Novel by Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan’s 17th novel follows the life of Roland Baines, alternating between his childhood — where he is preyed upon by his piano teacher — and his adult life, where his wife abandons him and their infant son. Peppered throughout are historical landmarks from Hitler to Chernobyl, 9/11 to Covid, in a book that asks questions about how we can take charge of our lives, how global events shape us and what we can learn from the past
