Justin Cartwright

The best book of the year for me was  The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross (Fourth Estate, £20), a revelatory account of the rise of modern music. Two books which disappointed were from two of my favourite novelists: Philip Roth’s Indignation (Cape, £16.99), a muddled and incredible rehash of his favourite themes, and John Updike’s Widows of Eastwick (Penguin, £18.99). At least with the Updike there is some acute obvservation.

Charlotte Moore

Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey (Faber, £16.99) is the story of the Cooperative Correspondance Club, a secret magazine started in 1935, in which a group of women wrote frankly about everything that mattered to them. It’s an absorbing  and moving account of 20th-century female experience, and was a big hit with my book club.

Mark Bostridge’s Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend (Viking, £25) is the first full biography for nearly 60 years. It is a well-judged, fair-minded and readable assessment of the astonishing achievements of this often impossible and endlessly fascinating genius.

In Unstrange Minds (Icon Books, £14.99) the American anthropologist, Roy Richard Grinker, explores the way different cultures define and respond to autism; this intelligent and original book opens important new areas in the autism debate.

Best collection of poems: Lip by Catherine Smith (Smith/Doorstop Books, £7.95).

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