• “Where Rivers Part” by Kao Kalia Yang

Yang had an astonishingly productive year, publishing four books aimed at various age groups. My favorite was her memoir of her mother, a companion to “The Song Poet” (about her father) that goes back to her mother’s youth to trace her astonishing story of survival — through multiple miscarriages, life in a refugee camp, marital woes, unsafe living conditions and more.

As we’ve come to expect from Yang, the writing is lyrical in this beautiful, courageous book. (And, by the way, the title refers both to the Laotian village where Tswb — prounounced “Chew” — grew up and their eventual home in St. Paul, between the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers.)

• “Dogland” by Tommy Tomlinson

Although it starts out as a behind-the-scenes peek into those dog shows where frumpily dressed owners trot around a ring behind their pampered pooches, “Dogland” ends up being much more.

Tomlinson writes that he began wondering if “dogtestants” in pageants like the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show were having a good time and, although he comes up with no definitive answers to that question, he reveals a lot about what dogs mean to us and what we may mean to them.

Tomlinson’s book works both as a wry, zinger-filled look at a world that’s not so far from “Best in Show,” the movie that parodied it, and as one that makes you cry with his insights into what makes the dog/human bond so special.

• “The Siege” by Ben Macintyre

Astonishing from beginning to end, Macintyre’s book recounts a hostage crisis at the Iranian Embassy in London, during the same time period as the better-known Iran hostage crisis at the American Embassy in Tehran.

Macintyre, whose books usually focus on World War II spycraft, offers a minute-by-minute account of what was happening in the embassy, where inexperienced terrorists wavered on their demands, frightened hostages (many of whom just happened to have dropped in on the fateful day) feared for their lives and authorities worked to plant rescuers in neighboring buildings and on the floors above. Macintyre keeps the tension on high throughout this real-life thriller.

• “Vanishing Treasures” by Katherine Rundell

The accent is on wonder in Rundell’s 23 delightful essays about creatures who may not be long for this world. Her book is packed with fun facts (polar bears can smell a meal 18 miles away, Atlanta residents are prohibited from chaining their pet giraffes to traffic lights) but her main theme is that the world is filled with incredible creatures whom we should take better care of.

Rundell is a witty, fluid writer and, although her book often looks to the past, her writing feels ideal for the present moment. Here, for instance, is Rundell on why she finds long-lived sharks so hopeful: “They will see us pass through whichever spinning chaos we may currently be living through, and the crash that will come after it, and they will live through the currently unimagined things that will come after that: the transformations, the revelations, the possible liberations.”

• “Hip-Hop Is History” by Questlove, with Ben Greenman

The Oscar and Grammy winner is a charming guide in this book, the title of which works two ways: He’s saying that much of what he has always loved about hip-hop is no longer true and that the deeply American art form is a great way to trace the history of the last half-century.

“History” is packed with sweet anecdotes from Questlove’s childhood, when he first fell in love with the music (his parents were musicians) and began trading mixtapes with other Philadelphia kids, many of whom also grew up to be giants of hip-hop.

By the time hip-hop becomes the dominant musical genre in the ’90s, Questlove knows the dirt on just about everyone (only some of which he is willing to dish) and he seems to have listened to everything ever recorded. The best evidence of this is the 16-page appendix, called “Hip-hop Songs I Actually Listen To,” which is like having a pal telling you what tracks you need to hear.

• “3 Shades of Blue” by James Kaplan

The title is slightly deceptive, or it was for me. I was expecting a history of the making of “Kind of Blue,” the bestselling jazz album of all time. That album was credited to trumpeter Miles Davis, but its roster was full of big names, including the two other legends whom Kaplan focuses on: sax player John Coltrane and pianist Bill Evans. There’s a little behind-the-scene intel on “Kind of Blue” in “3 Shades,” but it’s more interested in tracing what brought the men to the moment of inspiration and what they did to follow up that masterpiece.

Kaplan’s a splendid writer — he notes that Billie Holliday was hospitalized because of heroin, “the drug that was both killing her and just barely keeping her alive” — and he has packed this book with stories of artistic triumphs and way too many personal tragedies.

• “Challenger” by Adam Higginbotham

The “Midnight in Chernobyl” writer is back with another detailed, humane account that rescues meaning from tragedy. Like “The Siege,” it’s a minute-by-minute page-turner that reads like a thriller.

Higginbotham tells us the stories of all the people who died in the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger (not just teacher Christa McAuliffe, although Higginbotham has surprising insights about her, too). He also traces the decisions that led to the tragedy and steps back to see how the Challenger disaster continues to affect decisions now being made about space exploration.

Higginbotham concludes that, although the tragedy shocked the world, it was eminently preventable and it has changed the way Americans see themselves.

• “Feeding Ghosts” by Tessa Hulls

It can be a little intimidating diving into Hulls’ graphic memoir. Each page is packed with information, not just heavily cross-hatched images but also nervous-looking type that she ingeniously fits into the artwork. But a little patience is rewarded with a gorgeous and shocking tale of generational trauma.

It begins with the author trying to figure out who she is and how she connects to the Chinese heritage that her mother and grandmother believe she disdains. But it becomes a moving story of multigenerational forgiveness as Hulls digs into her family’s secrets and discovers the reasons for the fear and anxiety that have always dogged her. No spoilers here, but all three women have more in common than they realize and it takes a triumphant work of art — specifically, the one we are reading — to help them understand that.

• “Circle of Hope” by Eliza Griswold

There are stunningly intimate details on just about every page of Griswold’s account of a Philadelphia church that is reckoning with injustice after the murders of George Floyd and other Black men by police. Griswold, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her fracking book “Amity and Prosperity,” essentially embeds herself with a group of people for an extended time, and that’s probably the only way she could have obtained this story, which includes tons of stories the people involved shared with Griswold but not one another.

Griswold shifts among the points of view of four pastors, who increasingly find themselves divided by the very things they grapple with in their sermons: injustice, sexism, identity, racism. It’s a sad chronicle, not just because the Circle of Hope church eventually collapsed but also because Griswold shows us that the pastors agreed on most things but couldn’t effectively communicate that to each other.

“Circle of Hope” was a finalist for the National Book Award.

• “Strong Passions” by Barbara Weisberg

Maybe the most incredible thing about Weisberg’s social history is that she was able to get to the bottom of this story at all. Unlike, say, World War II or the fall of apartheid, “Strong” focuses on a tiny, long-ago story that would not seem to have left much impact: the collapse of the marriage of New Yorkers Peter and Mary Strong more than 160 years ago.

Fortunately, they left behind lots of letters and said many foolish things in court — all of which Weisberg spins into gold in this gripping book, which is both a look at the things that can lead to a marriage’s failure (which were not so different in the 1860s) and the ways our society has become at least a little smarter about grappling with human foibles (in the Strongs’ day, decisions on whether a couple could divorce were not up to them but to a jury). Weisberg tells us a lot about love and law, with a bonus appearance by Edith Wharton, a relative of the couple who eventually wrote about them.

Chris Hewitt and Laurie Hertzel write about books for the Minnesota Star Tribune.