The Best Books We Read 2011

As we did last year, we'll be running a series of posts featuring our staff members' selections of their favorite books read in 2011. Forgive our presumption, but we're booksellers: most of us can't limit ourselves to just one book.

Martin's picks:

"My favorite mystery of 2011. Not only has Block written a great, gritty novel, he's done it around the 12 steps of AA, which also makes this a compelling account of the difficulties of early recovery."

"My favorite nonfiction book of 2011 was, without a doubt Lost London by Philip Davies. It is almost literally a door into the past: photos of London, most taken before WW1, of buildings and streets that are no more, that have either been torn down to make way for the new or destroyed during the blitz. There are some haunting images in here. None of the photos are less than interesting, and some are incredible for the glimpse of daily life in Victorian and Edwardian London."