Our one word for fiction this year is literary.

		Related coverage Year's best in nonfiction Some great talents didn't display them in 2004

It was a really quiet year, with no commercial blockbusters like "The Da Vinci Code" although Stephen King delivered another installment of another series, "The Dark Tower."

In fact, 2004 ends with two novels from 2003 among the top 10 best sellers, "Da Vinci" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven."

That dismaying fact is proof enough, although what is more dismaying is that the small collection of truly fine fiction was largely overlooked at the bookstores.

Literary fiction is about people, not puzzle-solving or cliched characters suitable for TV treatment.

A trio of books added to that tradition this year.

"Runaway" by Alice Munro, "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson" and "The Master" by Colm Toibin join the best fiction written in the past 10 years.

The first two have just surfaced at the cash register, while Toibin barely made a blip.

His successful effort to capture the spirit, if not the soul, of Henry James as the writer returned to novels after failing as a playwright in the 1890s, is a tour de force of style and mood.

For James, the smallest gesture, the slightest inflection, the absence of a word was all the meaning needed, and Toibin captures that subtlety.

Munro's new story collection is in the Jamesian spirit. What attracts people to each other and holds them together is her subject, and she writes with a restraint and quietness that reflects James' best work.

Then, there's Robinson. Publishing her first novel in nearly 20 years, she restores dignity and grace to religious subjects that current devouts have disowned in favor of political fund-raising and voter drives.

Here are others that sparkled in 2004:

• "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth.
  
• "A Bit on the Side" by William Trevor.
  
• "The Amateur Marriage" by Anne Tyler.
  
• "The Dew Breaker" by Edwidge Danticat.
  
• "Four Souls" by Louise Erdrich.
  
• "The Darling" by Russell Banks.
  
• "The Man in My Basement" by Walter Mosley.
  
• "Coal Run" by Tawni O'Dell.
  
• "Crossing California" by Adam Langer.
  
• "Fallen" by Kathleen George.
  
• "Mr. Paradise" by Elmore Leonard.
  
• "Hottentot Venus" by Barbara Chase-Riboud.
  
• "The Collected Poems of Donald Justice."
  
• "An Unfinished Season" by Ward Just.