2007 offered great reads in fiction, nonfiction

In no particular order, here, in my opinion, are the best books of 2007:

Fiction

Richard Russo's "Bridge of Sighs" is an expansive and intriguing story about ordinary people in a small New York town, Thomaston — encompassing their entire lives, told with flashbacks and different voices. The story starts when the main characters are in their 60s and then works back. Russo's prose is enthralling, and this book is the fictional masterpiece of the year.

• Kate Christensen's "The Great Man" is an ingenious novel about art and aging. The focus is Oscar Feldman, a fictional 20th-century New York painter, who is deceased. Two biographers think his artistic life is worthy of study, so they search for documents and interview the women in his life — his wife, his mistress and his sister (also a painter). All are past the age of 70 and notable for their intellect and sexiness.

• Colin Cotterill's "Anarchy and Old Dogs" is a delightful tale of 73-year-old Dr. Siri Paiboun, "the reluctant national coroner of Laos," who tries to identify the body of a man who turns out to be a retired, blind dentist, killed by a logging truck in front of the post office. He was delivering a letter written in invisible ink. The coroner's best friend, Civilai, a senior member of the Laos politburo, is also in his 70s. The two bounce off each other with wit and color. Count this one as a happy discovery.

• Carol Muske-Dukes' "Channeling Mark Twain" is a stunning tale about a poet named Holly who volunteers to teach a workshop in a New York women's detention center. Based on the author's own experiences, the narrative is filled with tension, humor and realism. One of Holly's students claims to be a direct descendant of Mark Twain and tries to prove it by speaking in a steady stream of words taken from Twain's writings.

• Christian Jungersen's "The Exception" uses the voices of four women characters who work together in a small nonprofit organization in Copenhagen, where they disseminate information about genocide. When two of them receive death threats, they assume they are being harassed by Mirko Zigic, a Serbian torturer and war criminal, because they have recently written about him. As time goes on, tensions increase among the women and they start to suspect each other of making the threats. This is a brilliant study of conflict in the workplace, masterfully written by a second-time novelist whose work has been translated from Danish.