Alex Preston’s best fiction of 2017
George Saunders’s Booker-winner lived up to his masterful short stories, Salman Rushdie turned his gaze on America, and then there was Hollinghurst and Pullman…
Rowan Moore’s best architecture books of 2017
This year’s picks take in absurdist humour, a deeply humane memoir and some stunning Italian hallways
Rachel Cooke’s best graphic novels of 2017
There were fine memoirs and a deluxe life of Chris Ware, but the year belonged to Joff Winterhart’s moving portrait of masculinity
Peter Conrad’s best art books of 2017
A quest for the real Leonardo da Vinci, a memorial to Leonora Carrington and the art in Proust fascinate and illuminate
The Man Who Invented Christmas review – bah, humbug!
Dan Stevens plays Charles Dickens in this tin-eared, saccharine, entirely terrible comic fantasy about the writing of A Christmas Carol
The best books on food of 2017
Tasty spices from India, long-forgotten recipes from France – and Turkish delight from Narnia. Bee Wilson takes comfort in cookbooks
The best science fiction and fantasy of 2017
Adam Roberts finds floods in Manhattan, magic in Paris and a shortage of electricity across the world
The best crime books and thrillers of 2017
Mark Lawson welcomes the return of George Smiley, drunken spooks and the recreation of a real-life murder trial
The best fiction of 2017
We look back on a year that saw Arundhati Roy’s return and George Saunders’ Man Booker victory, along with dark short stories and a haunting last novel
A Christmas Carol review – Rhys Ifans’ shaggy skinflint serves up a festive feast
Jack Thorne’s superb retelling mines the ghosts of Scrooge’s past in a timely production brimming with love and affection
The best biography and autobiography books of 2017
Memories of the high life, heart surgery and a Homer odyssey move Kathryn Hughes
Tracker by Alexis Wright review – a weighty portrait of a complex man
Biography of Indigenous activist Tracker Tilmouth from the Miles Franklin award-winning novelist is a testament to the power of collective storytelling
Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre review – murder in zero-gravity
The Scottish writer puts his detectives aboard a city-in-space in a twisting, sci-fi-flavoured crime mystery
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 95 – Areopagitica by John Milton (1644)
Today Milton is remembered as a great poet. But this fiery attack on censorship and call for a free press reveals a brilliant English radical
The Standing Chandelier by Lionel Shriver review – love and the ex factor
A woman feels threatened by her boyfriend’s old flame in this merciless dissection of male/female friendships