As one of Dashiell Hammett's dangerous dames might have said: They're all the bees' knees. Gay traces her size to an early, unthinkable trauma, which led to compulsive. Gay's memoir is a work of unraveling the thorny contradictions in body (positivity) discourse especially those which become apparent when we move from the theoretical to the real. You can't go wrong with any of these books. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay. I can't imagine a more pleasurable way to close out this chaotic year than by following the Op through the fogs of a bygone San Francisco. In the early 1920s, Hammett revolutionized the figure of the detective and the language of detective fiction through the Op, whom he referred to as 'a little man going forward day after day through mud and blood and death and deceit.' Hammett's hero is an 'operative' working for the Continental Detective Agency. The name 'Op' derives from slang for a detective.

It's called The Big Book of The Continental Op and it gathers - for the first time, ever - the 28 short stories, two novels and one unfinished tale starring Dashiell Hammett's first series detective, known only as 'The Continental Op.' I could rattle off 10 recommendations for best books in the mystery category alone, but I'll end this list by bowing to a heavyweight of a hard-boiled collection that's just been published.

The best books to read 2017