Smash hit

KLIMT ed Alfred Weidinger
Prestel £89

Gustav Klimt wasn't the greatest artist of his time, but he is one of the most popular, a fact reflected in the $135m fetched last year by his portrait — all golden glitter and sensuous decoration — of Adele Bloch-Bauer. This book is the most complete study of his work ever, featuring marvellous new material and breath-taking reproductions.

4. Pick of the year's gardening books, chosen by Carrie Donald

DREAM GARDENS by Tania Compton and Andrew Lawson
Merrell £24.95

It's all very well tilling the soil and feeding your plants, but if the results look like a dog's dinner it rather spoils the point. Sometimes we need to lift our heads into the clouds above such earthly matters. This book features 100 contemporary gardens with an allusive quality of space, colour, texture and form that raise them above the ordinary. Lawson's atmospheric photography and Compton's succinct text make it much more than just a coffee-table tome.

5. Pick of the year's rock books, chosen by Robert Sandall

TEARING DOWN THE WALLS OF SOUND The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector by Mick Brown
Bloomsbury £18.99

By sheer serendipity, Mick Brown conducted a long interview with Phil Spector in 2002, shortly before the architect of The Wall of Sound was arrested on suspicion of murdering a nightclub hostess in his gothic Los Angeles mansion. As well as being the most current account of an extraordinary, troubled life, Brown's book is also the most sympathetic and balanced.

6. Pick of the year's food books, chosen by Bee Wilson

PERSIA IN PECKHAM: Recipes from Persepolis by Sally Butcher
Prospect £17.99

This gem of a book mixes alluring Persian recipes with tales of modern Iran and insights about running a corner shop in southeast London. Sally Butcher is married to an Iranian, with whom she started up Persepolis, a magical bazaar in Peckham. Like the shop, the book is stuffed with unexpected treats — little asides on cinema in Iran, or the link between the Iranian love of saffron fudge and the large number of Iranian dentists.

7. Pick of the year's sport books, chosen by Nick Pitt

LEFT FOR DEAD by Nick Ward and Sinead O'Brien
A & C Black £16.99

The awful story of the 1979 Fastnet Race, which cost 15 lives when the fleet was hit by a terrible storm, is well known. But the most extraordinary personal account of all has been left untold until now. Ward was a young sailor who fulfilled a keen ambition when he competed in the Fastnet. After the skipper was lost overboard, three crew members took to the life-raft, leaving on board Ward and another crewman, who were unconscious and presumed dead. Ward awoke and managed to keep the stricken boat afloat until rescued 14 hours later. The other crewman died beside him. An unvarnished, gripping read.

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