Boswell's Top Books of 2012, Part One--Adult Hardcovers!

Hardcover fiction:
1. Sacré Bleu, by Christopher Moore (event)
2. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
3. The Giving Quilt, by Jennifer Chiaverini (2 events)
4. American Dervish, by Ayad Akhtar (2 events)
5. The Round House, by Louise Erdrich
6. Blasphemy, by Sherman Alexie (event)
7. Dear Life, by Alice Munro
8. Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver
9. What We Talk About when We Talk About Anne Frank, by Nathan Englander (event)
10. Darth Vader and Son, by Jeffrey Brown (it's fiction to me)
11. Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
12. Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon
13. A Hologram for the King, by Dave Eggers
14. The Casual Vacancy, by J.K. Rowling
15. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach (technically no event for the hardcover in 2012)
16. Canada, by Richard Ford
17. Building Stories, by Chris Ware
18. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs (despite being published as a young adult novel, I never saw someone under 21 buy this book)
19. The Selector of Souls, by Shauna Singh Baldwin (two events)
20. Friends Like Us, by Lauren Fox (event)
21. Redshirts, by John Scalzi (event)
22. Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James (2011 carryover)
23. This is How you Lose Her, by Junot Diaz
24. The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson (event)
25. The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers (event)
26. The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain (2011 crossover)
27. The Lighthouse Road, by Peter Geye (event)
28. A Thousand Mornings, by Mary Oliver
29. Goodnight iPad, by Ann Droyd
30. The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes (2011 crossover)
31. The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller
32. Gold, by Chris Cleave
33. The Beautiful Mystery, by Louise Penny
34. Broken Harbor, by Tana French
35. A Dance with Dragons, by George R.R. Martin (2011 crossover)
36. NW, by Zadie Smith
37. The Racketeer, by John Grisham
38. The Woman who Died a Lot, by Jasper Fforde (event)
39. Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, by Emma Straub (event)
40. Carry the One, by Carol Anshaw (event)
41. Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter
42. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce
43. This Bright River, by Patrick Somerville (event)
44. The News from Spain, by Joan Wickersham
45. The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker
46. Mission to Paris, by Alan Furst
47. Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan
48. Shadow of Night, by Deborah Harkness
49. Home, by Toni Morrison
50. Boleto, by Alyson Hagy (event)

Hardcover nonfiction:
1. A Father First, by Dwyane Wade (event)
2. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed (event)
3. The Good Food Revolution, by Will Allen (event)
4. How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough (event)
5. Closing the Gap, by Willie Davis (event)
6. Are You my Mother, by Alison Bechdel (event)
7. Fire in the Ashes, by Joanathan Kozol (event)
8. Visiting Tom, by Michael Perry (event)
9. Barack Obama, by David Marannis (event)
10. Paris: A Love Story, by Kati Marton (event)
11. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo (#1 non-event nonfiction hardcover)
12. Ace of Cakes, by Duff Goldman (event)
13. Thomas Jefferson: the Art of Power, by Jon Meacham
14. Wheat Belly, by William Davis
15. My Mother was Nuts, by Penny Marshall (event)
16. While America Sleeps, by Russ Feingold (sort of an event)
17. My Heart is an Idiot, by Davy Rothbart (event)
18. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, by Anna Quindlen
19. Barefoot Contessa: Foolproof, by Ina Garten
20. The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, by Deb Perelman
21. America Again, by Stephen Colbert
22. The Passage of Power, by Robert Caro
23. Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand (2010 crossover)
24. I Could Pee on This, by Francesco Marciuliano (maybe this is fiction?)
25. How Music Works, by David Byrne
26. The Signal and the Noise, by Nate Silver
27. Help Thanks Wow, by Anne Lamott
28. Drift, by Rachel Maddow
29. Quiet, by Susan Cain
30. Bushville Wins, by John Klima
31. The Journal of Best Practices, by David Finch (event)
32. Healing the Heart of Democracy, by Parker Palmer (2011 crossover)
33. Kentucky Derby Dreams, by Susan Nusser
34. Jerusalem, by Yottam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi
35. A Nation of Moochers, by Charles Sykes (event)
36. Imagine, by Jonah Lehrer
37. Roots, by Diane Morgan
38. Far from the Tree, by Andrew Solomon
39. Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson (2011 crossover)
40. The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt (2011 crossover)
41. Waging Heavy Peace, by Neil Young
42. Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (2011 crossover)
43. My Bookstore, edited by Ron Rice (event)
44. House of Stone, by Anthony Shadid
45 Pabst, by Paul Bialas (event)
46. Defender of the Realm, by William Manchester with Paul Reid
47. Patriarch by Joseph Nasaw
48. The Onion Book of Known Knowledge, edited by The Onion
49. The Emotional Life of the Brain, by Richard Davidson
50. Mortality, by Christopher Hitchens

1. I took out bulk sales when they comprised the lion's share of our sales for the title.

2. "Beautiful" is clearly the adjective of the year.