Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life, Marta McDowell (lush full-color book about Potter's farms and love of nature, something that will warm you up on a cold rainy day) Becoming Queen Victoria, Kate Williams (not a bio of Victoria, but how her cousin Charlotte's life and death led to "little Drina" being queen) Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly (story of the African-American mathematicians who kept the United States flying and led us into space as they battled racism and sexism) The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase, Greg Cox (Cox captures the multiple characters of the television series perfectly; you might as well be watching a Librarians film) My Small Country Living, Jeanine McMullen (British woman and her boyfriend buy a small farm; all the joy and all the heartache of living off the land) Listen, Slowly, Thanhhà Lại (a thoroughly American girl of Vietnamese descent is reluctantly dragged back to her homeland so her grandmother can discover what happened to her husband; rich, rewarding portrait of modern Vietnam and the scars left by war) The World Remade: America in World War I, G.J. Meyer (the United States reluctantly went to war, and liberties took a beating—if you think today's government is restrictive, think again) The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Marta McDowell (Laura's life as seen against the different natural environments she lived in: the deep forest, the prairie, the rolling hills of Iowa and how it affected how the Ingalls family lived, ate, and worked) From Holmes to Sherlock, Mattias Boström (massive volume chronicling not just Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, but of the family and fans who gave Holmes eternal life, from the first Holmes story to the creation of Sherlock) Back Over There, Richard Rubin (author Rubin, who wrote a book about the surviving "doughboys" of the Great War, visits the sites he was told so much about; incredible that even though World War II cut a swath over the same territory, the scars of the previous war can still be plainly seen) Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse, Eric Jay Dolen (just what it says, engagingly told, including about one of the first boondoggles visited on the new American government) Caroline: Little House, Revisited, Sarah Miller (Little House on the Prairie told from Caroline Ingalls' viewpoint, of the sheer hardship of being a pioneer woman) Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Caroline Fraser (this was a bumper year for Wilder fans; this one tells the story of the Ingalls family against the history that was happening behind it)
I also want to give a shout-out this year to two series: Ben Aaronovitch's absolutely wonderful "Rivers of London"/Peter Grant books, which are both novel and graphic novels: six books so far, one Audible short story, one novella, and three graphic novels with a fourth just released. Every single one should be listed here. This is an inventive urban fantasy about a young biracial police officer who finds himself learning magic and fighting some of Great Britain's more esoteric enemies. Seriously, run, don't walk, to your nearest bookseller and pick up the first one, Midnight Riot (a.k.a. Rivers of London)!
Also Robert Ryan's 4-book (so far) series of "Dr. Watson Thrillers" in which John H. Watson rejoins the Army in World War I to serve as a surgeon. The realities of war are so brilliantly and frighteningly portrayed.
