Authors and Editors in Conversation   Sean McDonald: So, 7th-century England! How did that happen? Your last novel was a distinctly 21st-century crime novel. How did you end up writing Hild? Nicola Griffith: In my early twenties I was living in Hull, a depressed (and depressing) industrialised city in East Yorkshire. For a break, for my sanity, I went north up the coast, to Whitby.

Authors and Editors in Conversation Sean McDonald: How surreal has it been to watch your debut novel, Hemlock Grove, become a TV series? How closely does it track what you imagined when you were writing? Brian McGreevy: There has been no shortage of interesting or disconcerting moments; for instance, standing in a physical location that had previously existed exclusively in your head is a bit of a reality collapse. It is also inevitable that the actor you cast for a part will have certain insights that you can’t—even if it’s a character you’ve been thinking about for five years—because this is an intelligent, sensitive person whose sole job is to think about it, and also because someone who is a closer approximation to the character’s age, sex, and physicality by nature will have a perspective that the author can’t.

Obviously, the best novel of the year is Ellen Ullman's By Blood, the best nonfiction book Richard Lloyd Parry's People Who Eat Darkness, the best manifesto Jeff Speck's Walkable City, the best travel book (and the best-titled book) Rosecrans Baldwin's Paris, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down, the best vampire book Brian McGreevy's Hemlock Grove, the best memoir Davy Rothbart's My Heart is an Idiot, the best debut Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.*

We're rewarding subscribers with an advance edition of Richard Lloyd Parry's People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished From the Streets of Tokyo—And The Evil That Swallowed Her Up. If you haven't yet joined, there may still be time to sign up and receive your own copy ahead of its June publication. But note that when they're gone, they're gone. (Also note this offer is only available in the United States.) -Ryan Chapman Sean McDonald, the book's editor, is the executive editor and director of paperback publishing at FSG. Two of my favorite books are In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song. My favorite city on the planet—after New York, I suppose—is Tokyo. So, for me, the set-up of People Who Eat Darkness is as alluring as they get: A young woman named Lucie Blackman moves to Tokyo, where she stands out like, well, like a tall, blonde, 21-year-old in Japan. And then she disappears. Her friend receives a mysterious message saying Lucie has joined a religious cult, but no one believes that. The Japanese police seem helpless and hopeless. Lucie's family comes to Japan, hires a series of investigators, digs into leads on their own that take them into the craziest, darkest corners of Tokyo's subcultures. And this is only the beginning of the story.

[caption id="attachment_1497" align="aligncenter" width="522"] Jesse Bering's Bookshelf[/caption] With more and more books published every year, it's increasingly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Does this increase the usefulness of all the annual "Best of" lists? Perhaps. It's irresistible when a critic distills a year of reading into a simple hierarchy, especially if her tastes match your own. It's just so efficient. I tend to eschew those books awarded the most (or loudest) hosannas in favor of the previously unknown novels that slipped past me at publication. (This year it's Ben Lerner's excellent Leaving the Atocha Station.) Sites like Salon, The Millions, and The Guardian go straight to the authors for their recommendations. I decided to do the same, canvassing our writers and editors. With a couple caveats: First, the editors couldn't choose their own titles; Second, one's choices didn't need to be published in 2011, just read in 2011. Old classics and novels from 2010 and 2009 are all welcome. Some submitted a straightforward list, while others penned brief summaries. (The Spanish-Argentinian novelist Andrés Neuman even separated his list by language.) I hope you'll find your next favorite book among them. Favorite Reads from 2011:

Sean McDonald is the executive editor and director of paperback publishing at FSG. To be clear, I agree with everyone else: The three best books of 2011 are Frank Bill’s Crimes in Southern Indiana, John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead, and Héctor Tobar’s Barbarian Nurseries. But you want me to think beyond the walls of FSG. That makes my head hurt, but here goes. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami I’m obsessed with Tokyo and a bit of a Murakami nut, so maybe I’m not to be trusted on this one. It’s a crazier book than most are letting on, but I like that about it. It may have its problems, but they mostly reflect falling short while taking impossible risks. Maybe because Murakami seems to keep having so much fun, the failings never (for me) got in the way of enjoying the reading and admiring the fireworks. Reamde by Neal Stephenson It’s a giant, pulpy techno-thriller, and as entertaining and implausible as that suggests. But it’s an extremely smart and insightful giant, pulpy techno-thriller in which the implausible characters doing implausible things feel whole and human, engaged with a world that’s undeniably ours, just presented in a way that reveals a series of new, exhilarating perspectives. The Information by James Gleick As if my fiction choices weren’t nerdy (and impossibly long) enough . . . This, for me, was probably the book of the year—erudite, urgent, definitive, beautiful.