10 best books of 2022 | members only access

_SOUTH TO AMERICA: A JOURNEY BELOW THE MASON-DIXON TO UNDERSTAND THE SOUL OF A NATION_ BY IMANI PERRY Yes, we’ve got another National Book Award winner on this list, this one in the

nonfiction category, by a professor of African American studies at Princeton, who details her travels through the American Deep South (a region and culture “made at a crossroads between the

lust for cotton and the theft of Indigenous land,” she notes). Raised in Alabama, Perry is returning home, in a sense, to look at the South and its history of racial division with fresh eyes

and a thoughtful perspective to help understand the nation as a whole. MORE 2022 BOOKS OF NOTE _FINDING ME_ BY VIOLA DAVIS: A best-selling memoir by the actress, who offers a raw, frank

look at her life, from growing up in poverty in Rhode Island, to finding success on stage and beyond. The audiobook version, read by Davis, has also received great praise. _THE RABBIT HUTCH_

BY TESS GUNTY: Winner of this year’s National Book Award, Gunty’s debut novel is about residents of a low-income housing complex in a down-and-out town in Indiana during a hot week in July.

The award judges called it “beautiful, biting, darkly comic, and provocative.” _WE DON’T KNOW OURSELVES: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF MODERN IRELAND_ BY FINTAN O’TOOLE: O’Toole, a masterful

essayist, incorporates stories from his own life, including growing up in working-class Dublin, to explore the larger story of his homeland with sensitivity and insight. It won the 2021 An

Post Irish Book Award; judges described it as “an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand modern Ireland.” _LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY_ BY BONNIE GARMUS: A charming, funny debut novel,

this bestseller is about Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in 1960s California who becomes the host of a cooking show and ends up teaching viewers about far more than how to bake a cake. An Apple

TV+ adaptation starring Brie Larson is in the works. _OUR MISSING HEARTS_ BY CELESTE NG: By the best-selling novelist of _Everything I Never Told You_ and _Little Fires Everywhere_, Ng’s

bestseller focuses on a 12-year-old named Bird who lives with his father in a dystopian America where the dictatorial leadership has eliminated all dissent and banned books deemed

unpatriotic.  _BLACK CAKE_ BY CHARMAINE WILKERSON: I loved this absorbing novel about two adult siblings, Byron and Benny, who learn incredible secrets about their mother’s past after she

passes away. The book is being adapted into a Hulu series. _KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE_ BY DEANNA RAYBOURN: This witty, lighthearted thriller features a kick-butt group of women in their 60s

who work as elite assassins. (“We don’t murder on our days off any more than a thoracic surgeon will cut your rib cage open for kicks,” one character notes. “We have standards.”) _THE

REVOLUTIONARY: SAMUEL ADAMS_ BY STACY SCHIFF: The Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer — for her book about a literary giant’s wife, _Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) _— probes the life of the

American revolutionary, born three centuries ago this year.