Experts name their favourite fiction books of 2022

In a year of international tumult and change, we’ve done what we always do to achieve clarity and transcendence – read. Booktopia’s book experts name their favourite fiction books of 2022.

Australian fiction

Marshmallow by Victoria Hannan

Some moments change everything. For five friends, what should have been a birthday to remember will instead cleave a line between before and after. From then on, the shockwaves of guilt, sorrow and disbelief will colour every day, every interaction, every possibility. Each will struggle. Each will ask why. Secrets will be kept. Lies will be told. Relationships reassessed. Each friend will be forever changed. And the question all of them will be forced to ask is, ‘Can they ever find a way to live without what was lost?’

Buy it here.

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott

In the heat of a long summer, Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat. His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost. Desperate to ignore it all – to avoid the future rushing towards him – Ned dreams of open water.

Buy it here.

The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding by Holly Ringland

The last time Esther Wilding’s beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura’s disappearance, Esther’s family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister’s death, Esther reluctantly travels from Tasmania to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands. On her journey, Esther is guided by the stories Aura left behind: seven fairytales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body.

Buy it here.

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Son of Sin by Omar Sakr

An estranged father, an abused and abusive mother, an army of relatives. A tapestry of violence, woven across generations and geographies, from Turkey to Lebanon to western Sydney. This is the legacy left to Jamal Smith, a young queer Muslim trying to escape a past in which memory and rumour trace ugly shapes in the dark. When every thread in life constricts instead of connects, how do you find a way to breathe?

Buy it here.

The Whitewash by Siang Lu

It sounded like a good idea at the time – a Hollywood spy thriller, starring, for the first time in history, an Asian male lead. With an estimated $350 million production budget and up-and-coming Hong Kong actor JK Jr, who, let’s be honest, is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but probably the hottest, Brood Empire was basically a sure thing. Until it wasn’t.

Buy it here.

International fiction

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

It’s 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He’s 40, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or ‘externalising’ memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology – Own Your Unconscious, which allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others – has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

Buy it here.

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid

One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’ skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first, he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbours, friends, and family will greet them.

Buy it here.

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Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

By the time Carrie Soto retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed 20 Slam titles. And if you ask her, she is entitled to every one. But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record taken by a brutal, stunning, British player named Nicki Chan. At 37, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record.

Buy it here.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Florence, the 1560s. Lucrezia, third daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici, is free to wander the palazzo at will, wondering at its treasures and observing its clandestine workings. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her marriage to Alfonso d’Este, ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight. The duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father to accept on her behalf.

Buy it here.

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

1980, Pass Christian, Mississippi: It is 3am when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the coast guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the 10th passenger. But how?

Buy it here.

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Crime and thriller

Wake by Shelley Burr

Once a thriving outback centre, punishing droughts have whittled the small town of Nannine down to no more than a couple of pubs and a police station. And its one sinister claim to fame: the still-unsolved disappearance of Evelyn McCreery 19 years ago from the bedroom she shared with twin sister Mina. Enter Lane Holland, a private investigator who dropped out of the police academy to earn a living cracking cold cases. Lane has his eye on the unclaimed money, but he also has darker motivations for wanting to solve the case.

Buy it here.

The Mother by Jane Caro

Recently widowed, Miriam Duffy is a respectable North Shore real estate agent and devoted mother and grandmother. She was thrilled when her younger daughter Ally married her true love, but as time goes by Miriam wonders whether all is well. Ally moves to the country and gradually withdraws, finding excuses every time Miriam offers to visit. Their relationship has always had its ups and downs, and Miriam tries to give her daughter the distance she so clearly wants. But is all as it seems?

Buy it here.

Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor

On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never makes it home. Ronnie’s going to find her, she has a plan. Lewis will help. Their friend can’t be gone, Ronnie won’t believe it. Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe it; she has seen what people are capable of. She knows more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a person can be driven to do something they never thought possible.

Buy it here.

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle meet Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club in this fiendishly clever blend of classic and modern murder mystery. I was dreading the Cunningham family reunion even before the first murder. Before the storm stranded us at the mountain resort, snow and bodies piling up. The thing is, us Cunninghams don’t really get along. We’ve only got one thing in common – we’ve all killed someone.

Buy it here.

All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien

‘Just let him go.’ Those are words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger brother Denny out to celebrate his high school graduation. That night in 1996, Denny – optimistic, guileless, brilliant Denny – is brutally murdered inside a busy restaurant in Cabramatta. Returning home for the funeral, Ky learns that the police are stumped by her brother’s case. Several people were at Lucky 8 restaurant when Denny died, but each of the bystanders claim to have seen nothing.

Buy it here.

What was your favourite book in 2022? Have your read any of the books suggested above? Why not share your suggestions in the comments section below?