Best of books: Our reviewers name their best reads of 2022

You can find the books we've also reviewed this week below.

And I welcome your thoughts and feedback on what we've been reading. You can reach me by email at sally.pryor@canberratimes.com.au.

From novels by eminent local authors to political biographies, pacey thrillers to new poetry collections, our reviewers rounded up a year's worth of reading from a year's worth of new publications.

Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self, by Andrea Wulf, is a historical account of what happened when a group of extraordinary minds gathered in Germany in the 18th century and introduced the concept of romanticism.

Reviewer William Christie, Emeritus Professor of English at the Australian National University, says the book shows the extent of human vanity and fickleness.

"Magnificent Rebels celebrates a high point in German intellectual and literary history, 'a new confederation of minds' that found strength and glory in a newly liberated self," he writes.

It's a surefire recipe for something thrilling, the campus murder mystery. Lauren Nossett's debut novel, The Resemblance, hits all the right notes as she constructs an intriguing murder plot in an American college.

And it's far from your average frothy beach thriller, says reviewer Will Salkeld.

"The narrative structure of The Resemblance mirrors the discreet darkness under the glossy coat of university life," he writes.

"Nossett does not shy away from the continuous traumatic effects that institutional betrayal has on an individual's psyche."

It's a strange thing, how familiar some dystopian writing feels when we consider how world events and climate disaster is unfolding.

Bestselling US novelist Celeste Ng's latest book, Our Missing Hearts, has interwoven real-life events with fiction, to create an eerily familiar other-world.

"Given its inspiration from real-life events it feels all too real and one cannot help but wonder if this, in fact, could be a future America," writes Lucy Bladen in her review.

"It doesn't give everything away all at once but is constantly hinting at different elements, which makes the book all-consuming."

The lives of movie stars aren't always scandalous, but they are often entertaining, as a new memoir, Playing Under the Piano. From Downton to Darkest Peru, by Hugh Bonneville demonstrates.

Just as often, they are tragic, sordid, and filled with histrionics, as this new account of the doomed romance between Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, Truly Madly by Stephen Galloway illustrates.

But fun usually prevails, as Colin Steele points out in his review of these two books, plus a third, Elizabeth Taylor's Kiss and Other Brushes With Hollywood, by David Wood.

"Wood describes these 'brushes with Hollywood' as a 'dreamlike wander through Wonderland'. A far cry from the often nightmarish wander through Hollywood of Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh," Steele writes.