From Ali Smith’s How to Be Both to Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk to the recipes of The Bloomsbury Cookbook, Review readers pick their favourite books of 2014
These are the books our readers picked as the best of 2014 – from searing polemic to stunning fiction and a story of very intimate science
Observer books of the year 2014
The best thrillers of 2014
A murder mystery in a girls’ boarding school, the welcome return of Hercule Poirot and Philip Marlowe, and Lauren Beukes’s truly disturbing crime chiller. By Alison Flood
Observer books of the year 2014
The best psychology books of 2014
From moving accounts of how we deal with dying and suffering to two brilliant takes on Freud. By Lisa Appignanesi
Guardian writers round up the books that have made their year special – from Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch to Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle via Andrew Solomon’s Far from the Tree and beyond
