10 books we loved in 2012

10 best books of 2012

The main female character in 'Flight Behavior' is unforgettableAnd who can forget Amazing Amy, the psycho heroine of Gone Girl'The Patriarch' paints a surprising portrait of Joseph P. Kennedy

1. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, fiction)

You, too, will fall in love with Dellarobia Turnbow, the young Tennessee mother whose accidental encounter with millions of misguided Monarch butterflies sets her on her own flight to freedom.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

2. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Henry Holt, fiction)

The Man Booker-winning novelist brings alive Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's ruthless low-born fixer, and the endlessly dramatic world of Tudor England in all its blood and glory.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

3. Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel (HMH, non-fiction)

The brilliant creator of Fun House, the best-selling 2006 graphic memoir about her father, turns her pen to her relationship with her mother in this fascinating illustrated book that probes feminism, psychology, therapy and Virginia Woolf.

Read USA TODAY's 3 1/2-star review.

4. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Crown, fiction)

Nick Dunne and his "Amazing" wife Amy earn the crown of Psycho Couple of the Year in this entertaining yo-yo of a thriller that had everybody talking about the five-year itch.

Read USA TODAY's 3-star review.

5. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (Random House, fiction)

Only stone-hearted readers will resist rooting for an unlikely hero, an emotionally numb retired sales rep, who decides to walk the length of England to see an old friend who's dying.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

6. The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw (The Penguin Press, non-fiction)

This compelling bio reveals that old Joe — disastrous diplomat, compulsive womanizer, adoring father — was the most complicated of all the Kennedys.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

7. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton, fiction for ages 14 and up)

A pitch-perfect elegiac comedy about star-crossed teen lovers who meet at a support group in Indianapolis for kids with cancer.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

8. What It Was by George Pelecanos (Reagan Arthur / Back Bay, fiction)

Vintage Pelecanos at his best as crazy Red "Fury" Jones goes on a killing spree in this thrill ride of a crime novel set in 1972 Washington, D.C.

Read USA TODAY's 3 1/2-star review.

9. Canada by Richard Ford (Ecco, fiction)

A triumph of voice as the narrator, a 65-year-old teacher, remembers how everything changed when he was 15 and his parents robbed a North Dakota bank.

Read USA TODAY's 4-star review.

10. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (Random House, non-fiction)

An unforgettable portrait of an impoverished neighborhood in Mumbai, courtesy of Boo's brilliant reporting, extraordinary language and psychological insights into human beings trapped in a poverty unimaginable to Americans.

Read USA TODAY's 3 1/2-star review.

Deirdre Donahue considers her job - writing about books authors for USA TODAY - to be an honor and privilege. Lit major ever immersed in a book. Platform and genre: irrelevant. Human craving for story - eternal.

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