Best of 2010 - 100 recommended books
Fiction Alone With You: Stories, by Marisa Silver (Simon & Schuster; $22). Silver is an ambitious realist, and she is able to breathe life into a wide range of characters. By Nightfall, by Michael Cunningham (Farrar,...

Top 10 books of 2010
John McMurtrie
If anyone doubts that these are dark days, one need only look, for confirmation, at a cross-section of books published in 2010. Of the best-of-the-year selections we have made here - a top 10 list, 100 additional...

Best of 2010 - Books by Bay Area authors
Fiction The Adventures of Unemployed Man, by Erich Origen and Gan Golan (Little, Brown; $14.99 paperback). This hilarious graphic novel follows a ragtag band of superheroes who take on corporate villains. City of...

San Francisco Chronicle Best-Sellers / Dec. 19
This week FICTION Bay Area Last week Weeks on list 1 FREEDOM, by Jonathan Franzen (FSG; 562 pages; $28) 3 15 2 SQUIRREL SEEKS CHIPMUNK, by David Sedaris (Little, Brown; 176 pages; $21.99) 1 11 3 AN OBJECT OF BEAUTY, by...

Best poetry books of 2010
Dean Rader, Special to The Chronicle
The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, by Kay Ryan (Grove; $24). No one writes like Kay Ryan - a sort of dashless Dickinson for the 21st century. Spanning 16 years, this compendium of hyphen-thin poems somehow feels...

Best science fiction and fantasy books of 2010
Michael Berry, Chronicle Staff Writer
The Loving Dead, by Amelia Beamer (Nightshades Books; $14.95). In Beamer's first novel, the undead uprising finally comes to our own East Bay. When their house party in the Oakland Hills is interrupted by a couple of...