Aspiring authors, beware: as a former editor on our Culture desk I’ve seen the massive sacks of books that come in for review almost every day. There are too many published; most are (pretty much by definition) mediocre or worse. But fortunately the law of large numbers means there are a fair few good ones. Once again this year we’ve rounded up our favourites, from politics and business to history, science and literature.

You already knew that the Chinese are good at entering businesses, undercutting rivals on cost, scaling up and eventually learning to win on innovation. You may not have known that this also applies to money-laundering. The scale of China’s dirty-money business is unknowable, but the best estimates suggest that it’s about the size of America’s illegal drug market (which is not a coincidence).