Our Favorite Books of the Year

One of the pleasures of the holiday season is the pivot from past to future, as we take stock of the preceding 12 months and glimpse ahead to the coming year, just behind a shimmer of tinsel. Here Oprah Daily serves up its list of 45 Favorite Books of 2022, spanning fiction genres, including romance and suspense, to nonfiction standouts in memoir, science, and biography—a cornucopia of rich reads to captivate bibliophiles. They also make perfect gifts for friends and family.

This year's fiction enthralled us with daring techniques, wide-ranging themes, and gorgeous prose. Jonathan Escoffery's linked stories trace the arcs of one striving Jamaican family after they immigrate to Miami, their fates shaped by Hurricane Andrew. Bolu Babalola's rom-com drizzles honey and spice into modern love. Hernan Diaz packs not one but four books into his virtuosic Trust, thwarting our expectations and illuminating the chasm between the haves and have-nots. Suspense writer Deanna Raybourn delivers a page-turner featuring four older women, professional assassins on the cusp of retirement, confronting a new—and potentially deadly—threat. And in Demon Copperhead, an Oprah Book Club pick, Barbara Kingsolver beautifully transposes Charles Dickens's classic David Copperfield to present-day Appalachia.

Nonfiction dazzled as well. Hollywood icon Viola Davis recounts her road out of savage poverty in her raw yet beguiling Finding Me, also an Oprah Book Club selection. In her lush, candid memoir ,Kathryn Schulz maps her journey from grief to joy. The oncologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Siddhartha Mukherjee sifts through our cells to divine the meaning of life, while Ed Yong guides us through the realms of animal senses. Even serious topics entertain in the hands of talented authors.

These books—and the others curated here--have lifted our spirits, nourished our hearts and minds, and taught us invaluable lessons. Dip into Oprah Daily's 45 favorites, and build your own reading list to savor as Father Time marches on.