December is one of my favorite months because it’s when the “best of” book lists come out for the year. While there are many such lists you can consult when building your gift or personal reading list, you will find none so local as that compiled by members of The Library Book Club at Redmond Library.

Here’s a sampling from this year’s list:

FICTION

“Beartown” by Fredrik Backman

Winning a junior ice hockey championship would mean everything to the ailing Beartown, but a scandal involving the team’s general manager divides the town’s residents.

“If I Run” by Terri Blackstock

This new cat-and-mouse series begins with Casey Cox covered in blood at a murder scene. Innocent, but vulnerable she flees and is followed by Dylan Roberts, the war-weary veteran hired to find her.

“The Sandcastle Girls” by Chris Bohjalian

The parallel stories of a woman who falls in love with an Armenian soldier during the Armenian Genocide and a modern-day New Yorker prompted to rediscover her Armenian past.

“The Dry” by Jane Harper

This taut thriller is set in a small Australian town. After decades, Federal Agent Aaron Falk is summoned home to attend the funeral of his former best friend, now suspected in the murder-suicide of his family.

“High Dive” by Jonathan Lee

This tale inspired by the 1984 Brighton Hotel bombing assassination attempt on the lives of Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet is told from multiple perspectives.

“The Good Lord Bird” by James McBride

This wildly entertaining book follows escaped slave Henry who, posing as a girl, joins John Brown’s anti-slavery crusade and witnesses many key points of history including the raid on Harpers Ferry.

“Every Heart a Doorway” by Seanan McGuire

The extraordinary first book in a trilogy centered around Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, a home for kids who have returned from fantasy worlds, is a powerful fable of loss and yearning.

“The Alice Network” by Kate Quinn

The true story of a World War I female spy ring serves as the skeleton of this fast-paced book filled with intrigue, heartache, and courage.

“Home Fire” by Kamila Shamsie

Two London families of Pakistani descent become intertwined in inescapable ways in this examination of terrorism and how the West handles it. Gripping, topical and heartbreaking.

“The Life She was Given” by Ellen Marie Wiseman

A vivid, daring novel about the devastating power of family secrets — beginning in the poignant, lurid world of a Depression-era traveling circus and coming full circle in the transformative 1950s.

NONFICTION

“The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey” by Rinker Buck

Buck’s epic account of traveling the length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way — in a covered wagon with a team of mules, an audacious journey that hasn’t been attempted in a century.

“Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod” by Gary Paulson

Each page shines in Paulson’s classic tale of running the iconic Iditarod dog-sled race in Alaska. His challenges are recounted so vividly you’ll feel them yourself.

“The Lost City of the Monkey God” by Douglas J. Preston

Preston adventures deep into the Honduran jungle in this riveting, danger-filled true story about the discovery of an ancient lost civilization.

“Temperance Creek” by Pamela Royes

A disaffected youth and a Vietnam War veteran meet in the austere beauty of Eastern Oregon’s Hell’s Canyon in the 1970s and embark on a four-year sojourn into the wilderness in this beautiful memoir.

— Jenny Pedersen is a community librarian at the Redmond Library. Contact her at jenniferp@dpls.lib.or.us.