It’s that time of year again*: Lists. Lists of lists. Best of. Worst of. Best Cover. By genre, etc., etc. My list will be straightforward: favorite fiction of 2014. It’s funny, I’ve been in the biggest reading slump the last several weeks and I was thinking that it had not been a great reading year for me. However, looking back, it’s been a pretty good year.
So, in no particular order:
10. Steal the North // Heather Brittain Bergstrom. “Vocally graceful and fearlessly intimate, STEAL THE NORTH, Heather Brittain Bergstrom’s remarkable debut novel, is a strikingly beautiful portrait of modern identity, faith, family, and love in all its forms.”
09. Fourth of July Creek // Smith Henderson. “In this shattering and iconic American novel, PEN prize-winning writer, Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our nation’s disquieting and violent contradictions.”
08. The Heart Does Not Grow Back // Fred Venturini. “The Heart Does Not Grow Back is a darkly comic, starkly original take on the superhero tale, introducing an exceptional new literary voice in Fred Venturini. ”
07. Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma // Kerry Hudson. ” Told in an arrestingly original — and cry-out-loud funny — voice, it launches itself headlong into the middle of one of life’s great fights, between the pull of the past and the freedom of the future.”
06. All the Birds, Singing // Evie Wyld. “From one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, a stunningly insightful, emotionally powerful new novel about an outsider haunted by an inescapable past: a story of loneliness and survival, guilt and loss, and the power of forgiveness.”
05. Bellweather Rhapsody // Kate Racculia. “A high school music festival goes awry when a young prodigy disappears from a hotel room that was the site of a famous murder/suicide fifteen years earlier, in a whip-smart novel sparkling with the dark and giddy pop culture pleasures of The Shining, Agatha Christie, and Glee.”
04. The Ploughmen // Kim Zupan. “A young sheriff and a hardened killer form an uneasy and complicated bond in this mesmerizing first novel set on the plains of Montana.”
03. Cry Father // Benjamin Whitmer. “In the tradition of Cormac McCarthy and Larry Brown comes a haunting story about men, their fathers, their sons, and the legacy of violence.”
02. Road to Reckoning // Robert Lautner. “With taut prose and a swift plot, this literary crime novel set in 1800s Pennsylvania captures the unlikely friendship between a spirited young boy and a gruff ex-ranger on a shared quest for vengeance.”
01. A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain // Adrienne Harun. “In this intoxicatingly lush debut novel, Adrianne Harun weaves together folklore, mythology, and elements of magical realism to create a compelling and unsettling portrait of life in a dead-end town. A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain is atmospheric and evocative of place and a group of people, much in the way that Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones conjures the South, or Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children provides a glimpse of the Las Vegas underworld: kids left to fend for themselves in a broken world—rendered with grit and poetry in equal measure. “
Honorable mentions: Ruby // Cynthia Bond and The Supernatural Enhancement // Edgar Cantero.
What was your favorite book of 2014?
*This list is hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.
flannel and folklore 
I’m going to go with Everything I Never Told You- but there was so much amazing debut fiction this year that it’s a tough call.
And you are so eclectic that I haven’t read any of the books on your list- which means my TBR just increased by 10.
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5 has been on my wishlist for forever (I think I originally saw it here). And number one’s cover totally wins me over.
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Great list! I spy some books that are on my wishlist (well, namely A Man Came out of a Door in the Mountain), but yay for Bellweather Rhapsody 🙂
My TTT
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Interesting list of books!! I haven’t read any of the books you’ve mentioned in your post. I’ll have to check them out! Here is a link to my TTT list for the week: http://captivatedreader.blogspot.com/2014/12/top-ten-tuesday-top-ten-books-i-read-in.html
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I so loved All the Birds, Singing and wish it could be on all the lists. There are a few I’ve been meaning to read here you’ve reminded me of (The Ploughmen, A Man Came Out of a Door)!
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Wow, I haven’t read any of these, but a lot of them sound fantastic! All the Birds Singing is on my shelf and I really want to read Bellweather Rhapsody.
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Oh look! 10 more books to add to my TBR! Haha. Everyone’s lists are full of things I haven’t read yet, and they all sound so GOOD.
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I’ve only read All the Birds Singing, but most of the others are still on my list, and have probably been there since the first time you mentioned them. 🙂
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You and I had very different reading this year…I haven’t read any of those! But this is what I like about the new year…feels like so many possibilities 🙂
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Oh, wow! This is a great list! I have a few of these in my TBR and need to get to them sooner rather than later.
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Haven’t heard of or read any of those. Glad looking back your reading year was better than you thought! Thanks for sharing! Here’s my Best Books of 2014.
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Rory, I always feel like our tastes are so the same but also really different if that makes any sense. I think you approach books that I might not take up otherwise. I lurved Bellweather Rhapsody and I anticipate really enjoying ‘The Ploughmen’ when I’m in the proper mood.
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The only book I’ve read from your list is Fourth of July Creek, which was such a fascinating, dark, and beautifully written story! I’m intrigued by several other books on you mentioned and I’ll be adding them to my to-read list!
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You know how I feel about Fourth of July Creek! It will be on my faves this year also. I have The Ploughmen and intend to get to it before years end!
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I love the inundation of year-end lists (I’m a list addict, myself), but my favorite are lists like yours: I’ve read none of the books here, and heard of maybe half of them. This is why I love book bloggers so much. It’s so much more than an echo chamber of the big books the publishers throw dollars behind.
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Cry Father and The Ploughmen were both fantastic. Few of these I never made it around to. Eventually. 🙂
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I added your list to my collection of end of the year book lists at my blog Semicolon. Thanks for the recommendations.
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