These are the winners of the 12^th Annual Goodreads Choice Awards, the only major book awards decided by readers.  Congratulations to the best books of the year. Winners in other categories include: Nonfiction: ‘Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You’ by Jason Reynolds, Ibram X. Kendi, Memoir & Autobiography: ‘A Promised Land’ by Barack Obama and History & Biography: ‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’ by Isabel Wilkerson. The complete list of winners is available online.

Highlights include:

Fiction: ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig – Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

Mystery & Thriller: ‘The Guest List’ by Lucy Foley – On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast. And then someone turns up dead.

Historical Fiction: ‘The Vanishing Half’ by Brit Bennett -The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it is not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it is everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?

Fantasy: ‘House of Earth and Blood’ (Crescent City) by Sarah J. Maas – Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life―working hard all day and partying all night―until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of the investigation. She will do whatever it takes to avenge their deaths.

Romance: ‘From Blood and Ash’ by Jennifer L Armentrout – Chosen from birth to usher in a new era, Poppy’s life has never been her own. The life of the Maiden is solitary. Never to be touched. Never to be looked upon. Never to be spoken to. Never to experience pleasure. Waiting for the day of her Ascension, she would rather be with the guards, fighting back the evil that took her family, than preparing to be found worthy by the gods. But the choice has never been hers.

Science Fiction: ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ by Christopher Paolini – During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she is delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move. As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact is not at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human. While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation.

Horror: ‘Mexican Gothic’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She is not sure what she will find; her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, Noemí may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.