If I had to choose one must-buy from among all the fantastic graphic novels that were published in 2015, it would probably be Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics and Graphic Novels, a wondrous compendium featuring work by, among others, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes and Art Spiegelman. But honestly, why would you limit yourself to one? With new books from such leading names as Adrian Tomine (Killing and Dying) and Craig Thompson (Space Dumplins), and several excellent debuts, among them Evie Wyld and Joe Sumner’s lovely and strange shark-fest, Everything Is Teeth, this has been an exceptional year. Don’t let it end without a good splurge in the comics section of your favourite bookshop.

First, memoirs. They continue to come, and they continue to be mighty. Riad Sattouf’s shockingly blunt The Arab of the Future (Metropolitan Books), which tells the story of the French cartoonist’s itinerant childhood in the Middle East, is a must for anyone who wants to understand more about the failure of the pan-Arab dream, with all the consequences this has had for the situation in which we now find ourselves. It’s also a page-turner, dissecting as it does the psychology of a man (Riad’s Syrian father) whose increasingly deluded idealism results in a form of tyranny when it comes to his own family. Alison Bechdel is a fan, and I hope to write more about it soon. I also recommend The Art of Flying (Cape), Antonio Altarriba’s poignant unpicking of his father’s experiences in the Spanish civil war, and Invisible Ink (Fantagraphics Books) by Bill Griffith, which reconstructs a 16-year secret affair his mother had with a cartoonist in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Inflatable Woman (Bloomsbury) by Rachael Ball is fiction, not memoir, but it was inspired by its author’s brush with breast cancer. A surreal story that won’t be for everyone – I must admit it is not exactly to my taste – it combines magic realism with some of the more quotidian aspects of both illness and internet dating to deliver a veritable nightmare of a tale, its pages edged in black as if they were Victorian funeral notices. Iris is a zookeeper who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Her friends, among them a monkey called Larry, try to cheer her up, but to no avail. Slowly, her world shrinks, her attention snagged on a lighthouse keeper she meets online.

In biography, I would point you in the direction of Pablo by Julie Birmant and Clément Oubrerie (Self Made Hero), a life of Picasso as told by his lover, Fernande Olivier, with whom, as young man, he shared a Montmartre garret. Red Rosa, a biography of the revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg by Kate Evans (Verso), comes with praise from the cartoonist Steve Bell, Channel 4’s Paul Mason and the writer Barbara Ehrenreich. I found it a touch wordy at times – extensive notes bulk out the text – but in its best moments it does a fine job of telling her story. The prison scenes are particularly good. Hysteria (Self Made Hero) by Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate examines the early career of Sigmund Freud, drawing on the case histories of Anna O and others: a fascinating book that will, as I’ve said elsewhere, speak loudly to your inner shrink.

Those in search of jokes, postmodern or otherwise, should head to Kate Beaton’s new book of strips, Step Aside Pops (Cape), or to Jillian Tamaki’s SuperMutant Magic Academy (D&Q), while anyone with a taste for the macabre will favour Lucia by Andy Hixon (Cape) and The Pillbox by David Hughes (also Cape), both of which are set in rundown British seaside towns. In my review of Lucia last March, I described its lairy dystopian narrative as a cross between The League of Gentlemen and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin – and I still think that just about does it. The Pillbox, a salty, disturbing book about events that took place long ago – picture an old-school News of the World murder splash – is gentler, but this isn’t saying much: Hughes is every bit as interested in grotesques as Hixon. A special shout-out, too, to the genre-busting Death of the Artist (Cape) by Karrie Fransman (a judge at this year’s Observer/Cape graphic short story prize). In August 2013, she invited five friends to a cottage on a Peak District moor. The spooky plan was that they would – a la Byron, Shelley, et al – spend the weekend telling stories on the theme Death of the Artist…

Finally, two good adaptations. Jordy Diago, a Spanish illustrator, has produced a comic-book version of Sven Hassel’s classic 1959 semi-autobiographical novel of tank warfare, Wheels of Terror (W&N), a title much loved by British men of a certain age who devoured it as teenagers (stationed on the eastern front, Hassel and his comrades from the 27th Panzer regiment fight on, not for Hitler, or for Germany, but for themselves). We need to take all things Hassel-related with a hefty pinch of salt – the Dane’s military career remains shrouded in mystery – but there’s also no doubting the fact that Diago has caught the lurid, brutish, unrelenting spirit of the original novel.

Should you require something a touch more genteel, I recommend Dispossession (Cape) by Simon Grennan, a British artist and academic (he will publish his study A Theory of Narrative Drawing next year). This beautiful-looking book, commissioned as part of the bicentenary of the birth of Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), is based on John Caldigate, one of the Victorian writer’s less well-known novels, in which a young man with hefty gambling debts decides to try his luck in New South Wales. When he returns home a rich man, and marries the sweetheart he left behind, Hester, his luck seems to have turned – until, that is, another Mrs Caldigate appears, accusing him of bigamy.

Grennan has a special interest in the 19th century, and his book is full of feeling for the period. His drawing rooms and parlours, richly coloured yet deeply shadowed, speak to a society in which outward displays of moral rectitude – Hestor’s parents are so protective of her reputation, they imprison her at home the better that she does not return to her “adulterer” husband – go hand in hand with repression and hypocrisy. Richly satisfying, Dispossession will make a charming, slightly surprising Christmas present for – doesn’t every family have one? – the Trollope fan in your life, whether he or she likes comics, or not.

Browse all the books and save up to 30% at bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. 20p from each book you order until Christmas will be donated to the Guardian and Observer charity appeal 2015.

Best books of 2015

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