The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber’s 922-page novel about a Victorian era prostitute and a soap-and-perfume industrialist, was a full-sensory immersion into 1875 London. I haven’t had this much fun reading a novel about Merrie Olde England since Pillars of the Earth. — MF

A science fiction novel I really liked is The Three-Body Problem. It is the first Chinese-written novel to win a Hugo award. It is making waves in China and, in a new English translation, with the rest of the world. Complicated, deep, and steeped in a different view of China, it’s a masterpiece. — KK