Best books 2009: a look back at our favorite books.

Each issue of Bookmarks features our Selections--staff favorites from among the books reviewed. Below is a round-up of our Selections from earlier in 2009. Please also see this issue's selections on page 4.

Literary

Deaf Sentence

By David Lodge

Like his protagonist, British author David Lodge is retired, suffers from hearing loss, and recently lost his own father. In his novel, Professor Desmond Bates meets Alex, a flirtatious and unbalanced graduate student who wants his help analyzing suicide notes for her thesis. (Jan/Feb 2009)

A Mercy

By Toni Morrison

Several reviewers ranked A Mercy near the top of Toni Morrison's catalogue--an impressive feat. An Anglo-Dutch trader takes a young girl slave in payment of debt, and we learn of her history and her search for love. (Jan/Feb 2009)

Sea of Poppies

By Amitav Ghosh

The first in a projected trilogy, this historical novel by Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh (The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide) was short-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. In 1838, the eve of the Opium Wars, tensions run high as a motley band of passengers embarks on an indentured-labor ship on its way to Mauritius. (Jan/Feb 2009)

Songs for the Missing

By Stewart O'Nan

Stewart O'Nan has quietly written his way to the top rank of American novelists working today, and Songs for the Missing showcases his skill for crafting character-driven novels. Here, when beautiful, popular, conscientious 18-year-old Kim Larsen disappears from a small Ohio town, lives are thrown into disarray. (Jan/Feb 2009)

American Savior

A Novel of Divine Politics

By Roland Merullo

Roland Merullo crafts an endearing, satirical novel that imagines an election season with Jesus, representing the Divinity Party, on the presidential ballot. (Jan/Feb 2009)

Lark and Termite

By Jayne Anne Phillips

Novelist and short story writer Jayne Anne Phillips took American literature by storm in 1979 with Black Tickets, a collection of character sketches and short stories. Here she tells intertwined stories of a Korean War serviceman and, nine years later, his disabled son. (Mar/Apr 2009)

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County

By Tiffany Baker

Truly Plaice, a 400-pound woman, is the star of this debut novel, a gothic, macabre tale involving revenge, redemption, folk medicine, and magic. (Mar/Apr 2009)

The Piano Teacher

By Janice Y. K. Lee

Janice Y. K. Lee graduated from Harvard and worked as a literary editor for Elle magazine before returning to her native Hong Kong. In her debut novel, a 28-year-old woman leaves England for Hong Kong in 1952, marrying a man she doesn't love. (Mar/Apr 2009)

Cutting for Stone

By Abraham Verghese

Abraham Verghese is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In his first novel, twins born to an Indian nun and a British surgeon are driven apart--but one needs the other. (May/June 2009)

The Secret Scripture

By Sebastian Barry

Irish poet, novelist, and playwright Sebastian Barry won the Costa Prize (previously the Whitbread Prize) for this novel, in which a 100-year-old woman in a mental hospital writes her memoirs while a doctor works to prove she's sane. (May/June 2009)

The Vagrants

By Yiyun Li

Born in China, Yiyun Li previously authored a prize-winning book of short stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (**** Jan/Feb 2006). In her first novel, a young Chinese woman who embraced the Cultural Revolution faces public execution. (May/June 2009)

Little Bee

By Chris Cleave

In journalist Chris Cleave's second novel, a couple meet two girls running for their lives in Nigeria. The unflinching, brutal story balances an outwardly political motive with rich, deep character development (and even some welcome humor). (May/June 2009)

The Housekeeper and the Professor

By Yoko Ogawa

Yoko Ogawa is a prize-winning, critically acclaimed author in her native Japan. This novel, about a housekeeper in Japan who cares for a man who cannot retain new memories for longer than 80 minutes, sold more than 2.5 million copies on the island nation. (May/June 2009)

The Family Man

By Elinor Lipman

Elinor Lipman returns with another comedic novel populated by deep, charming characters. (July/Aug 2009)

The Cradle

By Patrick Somerville

Patrick Somerville's short story collection, Trouble, was named by Time Out Chicago as the best book by a Chicago writer in 2006. In The Cradle, two storylines converge when Marissa Bishop asks her husband to hunt down the antique cradle her mother took when she abandoned Marissa ten years earlier. (July/Aug 2009)

The Little Stranger

By Sarah Waters

Set in post--World War II Britain, this is an old-fashioned ghost story, complete with spooky house, eccentric inhabitants, and a narrator who may not be as mild-mannered as he seems. (July/Aug 2009)

The Missing

By Tim Gautreaux

After World War I, Sam works as a security guard in New Orleans. But when a little girl is kidnapped under his watch, he sets out to find her. (July/Aug 2009)

Sag Harbor

By Colson Whitehead

Benji is one of the few African Americans at his Manhattan prep school, but he spends his summers in a mostly black neighborhood on Long Island. This is a nuanced portrayal of teen life and Benji's attempts to navigate between black and white society. (July/Aug 2009)

2666

By Roberto Bolano

This is Roberto Bolano's masterwork, epic in scope, labyrinthine, frustrating, disjointed, maybe a bit pretentious, always somewhat aloof--and brilliant. (Jan/Feb 2009)

Commencement

By J. Courtney Sullivan

In this entertaining but intelligent story about modern friendship, Sullivan follows the lives of four women who were first-year hall mates at Smith College. She skillfully explores the complexity and depth of female friendships, including their dark side. (Sept/Oct 2009)

Exiles in the Garden

By Ward Just

Ward Just's An Unfinished Season (**** Sept/oct 2004) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. In his sixteenth novel, the son of a powerful U.S. Senator wonders if he's lived a worthy life . (Sept/Oct 2009)

Far Bright Star

By Robert Olmstead

Robert Olmstead is the author of Coal Black Horse (**** July/Aug 2007), which won the Heartland Prize for Fiction in 2007. In his seventh novel, a man given a pistol with a single bullet is left to die in the desert. (Sept/Oct 2009)

Let the Great World Spin

By Colum McCann

Colum McCann details Phillippe Petit's high-wire walk between the World Trade Center twin towers--and its parallel to a much larger, more tragic event more than a quarter century later. (Sept/Oct 2009)

Sacred Hearts

By Sarah Dunant

Sarah Dunant completes her trilogy of historical novels set during the Italian Renaissance, which look at the lives of women in the renowned Benedictine convent of Santa Caterina. (Sept/Oct 2009)

The Thing Around Your Neck

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nigerian native Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of a Yellow Sun (***** Nov/dec 2006), has captivated the literary world with her vivid stories of African families. Twelve of those stories are collected here. (Sept/Oct 2009)

Crime

Cold in Hand

By John Harvey

The British master of crime procedural novels resurrects detective Charlie Resnick, nearing retirement as he enters his 30th year on the force. (Jan/Feb 2009)

Eclipse

By Richard North Patterson

A San Francisco lawyer must defend a former lover's husband, now a West African leader. (Mar/Apr 2009)

Fatal Lies

By Frank Tallis

This is the fourth in the series about a 19th-century Viennese detective and his psychoanalyst sidekick. (May/June 2009)

The Rules of the Game

By Leonard Downie Jr.

The executive editor of the Washington Post for 17 years writes a Washington thriller. (May/June 2009)

The Scarecrow

By Michael Connelly

Journalist Jack McEvoy reports on one more high-profile case in an attempt to save his job. (July/Aug 2009)

The Manual of Detection

By Jedediah Berry

This book initially seems to be a private eye novel, but it's also a work of absurdist art. It may not be the best book for those who like their gumshoes straight. (July/Aug 2009)

The Last Child

By John Hart

Hart's highly acclaimed page-turners pay tribute to the Southern novel. Here, when his 13-year-old twin sister is abducted, Johnny scours the county on his bicycle. (Sept/Oct 2009)

Road Dogs

By Elmore Leonard

Felons familiar to Leonard readers return, including Jack Foley from Out of Sight. (Sept/Oct 2009)

SF

The Graveyard Book

By Neil Gaiman, illustrated by dave McKean

* NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER

After the murder of his parents, toddler Nobody Owens (or Bod) finds refuge in a cemetery and is raised by kindly ghouls and werewolves. (Jan/Feb 2009)

Daemon

By Daniel Suarez

A computer program threatens the networked world ... and must be stopped! (Mar/Apr 2009)

Eon

Dragoneye Reborn

By Alison Goodman

In the Empire of the Celestial Dragons, a girl posing as a boy works to become a Dragoneye. (May/June 2009)

Cyberabad Days

Return to the India of 2047

By Ian McDonald

This future India is steeped in technological and cultural transformation. (July/Aug 2009)

Julian Comstock

A Story of 22nd-Century America

By Robert Charles Wilson

Stephen King called Wilson "probably the finest science-fiction author now writing." See why. (Sept/Oct 2009)

general

The Magician's Book

A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia

By Laura Miller

The cofounder of Salon.com reevaluates a childhood favorite--the fiction of C. S. Lewis. (Mar/Apr 2009)

Columbine

By Dave Cullen

Dave Cullen spent the last ten years working to write an accurate record of the tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999. (July/Aug 2009)

biography

American Lion

Andrew Jackson in the White House

By Jon Meacham

The editor of Newsweek magazine profiles the two-term president. (Mar/Apr 2009)

A Journal for Jordan

A Story of Love and Honor

By Dana Canedy

A solider in Iraq keeps a journal for his infant son--and is killed. (Mar/Apr 2009)

Somewhere Towards the End

A Memoir

By Diana Athill

Diana Athill--in her day one of Britain's most respected editors and more recently a writer--has penned several memoirs. Here she takes a hard look at growing old. (Mar/Apr 2009)

A. Lincoln

A Biography

By Ronald C. White, Jr.

Ronald White is the author of two books on Abraham Lincoln's rhetoric, including Lincoln's Greatest Speech. (May/June 2009)

history

With Wings Like Eagles

A History of the Battle of Britain

By Michael Korda

The former Simon and Schuster editor in chief and Royal Air Force veteran examines the 1940 battle. (Mar/Apr 2009)

The Third Reich at War

By Richard J. Evans

In the third book in his trilogy, Evans brings nuance and clarity to the all-too-familiar details of the final years of Germany under Nazi power. (July/Aug 2009)

The Lost City of Z

A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

By David Grann

A British adventurer met a mysterious end while trying to find the golden city of El Dorado. (May/June 2009)

science

The Age of Wonder

How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

By Richard Holmes

Richard Holmes offers a group portrait of British scientists in an era dominated by the Romantic imagination. (Sept/Oct 2009)