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Peter Matthiessen has long been an idol to me, ever since reading the passionate, brilliantly written nature voyage epic, The Snow Leopard (1978); his feverish book on American Indian rights, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983); and, closest to my heart, his majestic paean to the fifteen Crane bird species, The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes (2001). Now Australian author Lance Richardson has penned the first comprehensive biography of the man (Matthiessen died in 2014), making wonderful use of extensive personal archives. True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen covers the man and the writer in all his glory and grubbiness. Throughout his illustrious career, which kicked off with the joint founding of The Paris Review in 1953, Matthiessen longed to be known most for his novels but nonfiction writing, mostly hard-won, remote-travel-based nature articles and books, swamped the latter decades of his life, until his amazing Killing Mister Watson trilogy of novels (later condensed into one prizewinning volume) from the 1990s. Notwithstanding his heartfelt writing in support of nature suffering under humanity’s predations, his championship of indigenous peoples, and his embrace of Zen Buddhism, Matthiessen’s personal life was fissured by childhood woes and serial love affairs; Richardson unfolds this aspect of his life judiciously and fully. Richardson is an elegant and precise stylist and the 700+ pages of this book slide by easily. Artfully plotted across the many arcs of Matthiessen’s life, the biography never fails to excite and interest. Biographies rarely shine brighter than True Nature. Read it to understand a dazzling novelist and a pioneer of nature and environmental writing.

British author Carys Davies’ third novel Clear is slim but packed with language and an unwinding plot that starts slowly but then rockets to an unexpected climax. In the mid 1800s, a Scottish minister, strapped for cash, travels to a remote island to expel its sole inhabitant, a silent, gentle, hulk of a man. When the minister falls and is cared for by the primitive tenant with his strange language, a bond develops between the two, even as the minister’s wife embarks on a fraught journey to rescue him. The author is a stylist of rare beauty, able to conjure up the harsh, storm-lashed rock on which the action takes place. The moral dimensions of this seemingly simple but complex tale are clear but the human reactions of the characters are rich in suspense and weighted with ethical import. Not much longer than a novella, Clear is an easily read jewel that raises as many fundamental questions as it attempts answers.

Frank Kennedy’s superb space opera omnibus of series, set in a fascinating Collectorate of planets, concluded last year. Luckily he has launched a new, markedly different series. Set on a semi-blighted but fantastical planet called Teton, The Rogues of Teton will be a five-book venture, and Blend kicks it off. When a blue-skinned “blend,” an enhanced human created to save the planet, returns to mega-city Vandress (the author’s depiction of this wondrous, scabrous city reminds me of the best of William Gibson) after a lunar prison shift, he struggles to reunite with his son and wife. All three are thrust into the foment of rebellion, a rebellion that somehow is underpinned by forces from beyond Teton. The author is a kinetic stylist and fierce plotter, and the characters (including an evil high official) spring to life from the book’s pages. Blend is a hoot from start to finish.

If you read a decent number of food/diet/health books, as I do, you become jaded with their earnest stories that never seem to surprise. I knew a book by Kevin Hall would be different, because Hall, a highly analytical physicist who was drawn to his field of nutrition science, is at the forefront of high-quality, important diet research. Moreover, he has a reputation for absolute integrity, a quality that in other food/diet/health authors can be smudged by conflicts of interest and careerism. My worry, upon turning over the first page of Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us was whether his writing and narrative storytelling would match his scientific fame, but I need not have fussed, for his co-author, health journalist Julia Belluz, is a splendid, cogent, readable writer, as well as an intelligent, dogged researcher in her own right. In this book, the authors range over the entire gamut of modern diet wars, beginning by tackling calories, metabolism, protein, and fat, before turning to the nervous system’s role in eating and the impact of our food environment (which Hall has proven, beyond doubt, messes with human brains and directly leads to the obesity epidemic blighting modern society through heart disease and diabetes), before tackling some possible solutions and criticizing elements of the “individual responsibility” paradigm pushed by the food industry. The final chapters tackle the overall food system and its horrors. Although the authors strike an optimistic note in the climax to Food Intelligence, the overall message is hugely troubling. Readable, full of food/diet insights I can guarantee you do not know, and inflamed by a passion for proper science, Food Intelligence is THE health book you must read this year.

On the spectrum of commentators/analysts/writers dealing with the climate crisis, I read everyone from extreme doomsters to blithe “abundance” gurus, Oxford data scientist Hannah Ritchie lies firmly on the side of the optimists. She is everywhere on her patch, which is the application of solid numeric data to Anthropocene policy issues and options. Now, just a year after her debut book, Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, both enlightened and frustrated me, she is back with a more nuanced book, Clearing the Air: A Hopeful Guide to Solving Climate Change — in 50 Questions and Answers. This is the book everyone needs to read in order to navigate the sewers of online discourse on the subject. Much of the book is spent quashing bad-faith arguments spread by malicious foes of decarbonisation, such as the supposed evils of renewables and petty arguments against EVs. Throughout, Ritchie writes with clarity of prose and numeracy, and she has an engaging style. If we feel unease at the positivity (after all, emissions continue to skyrocket, temperatures still rise), we can find plenty of voices of more sober mien. In any event, Clearing the Air is a cudgel of reason to seize and wield.

Noir books do not need to be thick and, at 211 pages, Melbourne author Mark Brandi’s Eden, his fifth novel, is perfectly sized. When Tom Blackburn hits the streets of town after a long spell in prison, life seems bleak, sprinkled with morsels of hope. When he lucks upon a dream job at a heart-of-the-city cemetery, it seems he might finally face a better future. But rosy futures are not noir futures, and Tom stumbles into a mire of personal, moral quandaries. The author adopts a pared down, present-tense style that reflects the simple character of his protagonist, a style dotted with evocative descriptions that bring inner Melbourne to life, and Tom quickly wriggles into the reader’s heart. Foreboding quickly appears and swells, and the plot is excellent. If the climax offers few resolutions, Eden is a taut, atmospheric noir tale that this reader, for one, will remember for a long time.