We Are Completely Beside Ourselves (Karen Joy Fowler) – A wonderfully written novel about a very untraditional family (go in blind; definitely don’t read the synopsis on the back).

Freedom (Sebastian Junger) – Combining both historical context and a first-person account of Junger’s itinerant, self-supported (with a dog and a few other companions) travel along the railways from Washington, D. C. to Pennsylvania, this slim book explores what it means to be truly free.

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock (Paul Tremblay) – Tremblay takes the inherently horrific premise of a missing child and, in typically gripping Tremblay fashion, makes it even more horrific.

Train Wrecker (Andrew Livingston) – Funny, well-written coming-of-age story set Vancouver/Kerrisdale/my hood in the 70s/early 80s.

Gwelf: Into the Hinterlands (W/A, Larry MacDougal) – Exquisitely illustrated story set in a magical land of talking foxes and otters and the like.

Ducks: Two Year in the Oil Sands (W/A, Kate Beaton) – This graphic novelized account of writer/artist Kate Beaton’s two years being one of only a few women working in the oil sands is fascinating, disturbing, and eye-opening.

Never Flinch (Stephen King) – Stephen King gifts us with another terrific Holly Gibney adventure. This time around, she takes a job doing security for a controversial right-wing personality who’s on a speaking tour.

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (Suzanne Simard) – Suzanne Simard’s memoir/thesis on the physical (i.e., vast underground mycorrhizal networks) interconnectedness of trees in the forest is a wonderful, somewhat sobering read, the latter because her scientifically backed observations and conclusions were so often met with indifference and scorn by those in charge.

The Sleepwalker (Lars Kepler) – The Swedish crime-writing duo collectively known as Lars Kepler drop another disturbingly compelling Joona Lina thriller.

This Book Will Bury Me (Ashley Winstead) – A great twisty thriller about a group of on-line true crime enthusiasts/investigators who get themselves wrapped up in a case involving murdered sorority sisters.

The Secret of Secrets (Dan Brown) – Dan Brown has a formula for getting you to keep turning the pages of his novels. It’s a formula that works on me, as I stayed up late for several nights in a row turning all the pages in his latest Robert Langdon adventure

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue (V. E. Schwab) – A terrific fantasy about a 17th-centuruy girl who is gifted/cursed with everlasting life, the catch being, as soon as she leaves anybody’s immediate vicinity she’s completely forgotten.

The Material (Camille Bordas) – Camilla Bordas writes the absolute shit out of this story about a group of comedy MFA students and their instructors that unfolds over a single eventful day and night.

All the Sinner’s Bleed (S. A. Cosby) – This mystery/thriller about a school shooting that leads to a serial killer investigation, written by the always great S. A. Cosby, is easily one of the best books I read this past year.

The Savage Sword of Conan #11 (W/A, Liam Sharp) – Writer/artist Liam Sharp’s “Tattered Wings” story is a thing of mythic, gorgeously drawn, black and white beauty.

Absolute Batman (W, Scott Synder; A, Nick Dragotta) – I’ve been consuming Batman-related comicbooks for almost forty years, and this Scott Snyder/Nick Dragotta reimagining is one of the best, most consistently surprising iterations of the Dark Knight I’ve ever read.