Best Books of 2012: #1-25

Memo to the Pulitzer board: 2012 has been a year full of great reading, especially when it comes to fiction. When our editors finished stumping for their personal favorites and the votes were counted, our top 10 included three notable debuts, a few familiar names and one beautifully written memoir. Though reading choices—and rankings!—are intensely personal, we think our top 50 has something for every reader.

1. This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz
2. Wild by Cheryl Strayed
3. Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
4. May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes
5. The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan
6. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
7. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
8. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
9. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
10. The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
11. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
12. Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
13. The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
14. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
15. Thomas Jefferson by Jon Meacham
16. The Mansion of Happiness by Jill Lepore
17. The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
18. The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty
19. Love’s Winning Plays by Inman Majors
20. Broken Harbor by Tana French
21. Home by Toni Morrison
22. NW by Zadie Smith
23. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
24. The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger
25. You Came Back by Christopher Coake