The following titles, which I prefer to list without ranking them, are my top picks among those published in 2013-2014 that I reviewed during 2014. It would be easy to find room for another 5-6 fiction titles, but I’m staying with the top ten selected.
The first three lists (Young Adult now listed as separate category for the first time) reflect my favorites among the trade publications that I reviewed. Separately, I’ve listed four self-published titles that seem to me especially worthy of notice.
FICTION [trade]
Julia Dahl, Invisible City
Lisa Unger, In the Blood
Randy Wayne White, Haunted
Zachary Lazar, I Pity the Poor Immigrant
James Lilliefors, The Psalmist
Boris Fishman, A Replacement Life
Leonard Rosen, The Tenth Witness
Michael Lister, Rivers to Blood
Beverle Graves Myers, Whispers of Vivaldi
Michael Wiley, Blue Avenue
YA FICTION [trade]
Gwendolyn Heasley, Don’t Call Me Baby
Amber Hart, Before You
Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea
NONFICTION [trade]
James Webb, I Heard My Country Calling
Artis Henderson, Unremarried Widow
Libby Garland, After They Closed the Gates
Neville Williams, Sun Power
Andrew Furman, Bitten: My Unexpected Love Affair with Florida
Natan Ophir, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach: Life, Mission, and Legacy
Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure
Joshua Muravchik, Making David into Goliath
Anais Nin, Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin, 1939-1947. Ed. Paul Herron
SELF-PUBLISHED
Robert J. Taylor. Hardship Post
Robert Lane, The Second Letter
Gidi Grinstein, Flexigidity
Hélène Gaillet de Neergaard, I Was a War Child
Phil Jason Reviews Books 