2014: The Story So Far – Third Quarter

Back in July I did a list of my favourite books of the year so far, and as we’re now in November it’s way past time for another update.

For the months July through September, I began and/or finished a total of twenty nine books.

So, in the order I preferred them when I wrote the list ten minutes ago (and, of course, it may be subject to change), here’s my top thirteen books for 2014 so far, with new entries shown in bold:-

The Anthologist – Nicholson Baker (Pocket Books)

The Road – Cormac McCarthy (Picador)

The Three – Sarah Lotz (Hodder & Stoughton)

Dark Father – James Cooper (DarkFuse)

The Broken Ones – Stephen M. Irwin (Anchor Books)

Where Furnaces Burn – Joel Lane (PS Publishing)

Everything You Need – Michael Marshall Smith (Earthling Publications)

The Race – Nina Allan (NewCon Press)

The Unquiet House – Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher Books)

Murder – Sarah Pinborough (Jo Fletcher Books)

Monsters in the Heart – Stephen Volk (Gray Friar Press)

The Lord Came at Twilight – Daniel Mills (Dark Renaissance Books)

Film Freak – Christopher Fowler (Doubleday)

That breaks down as eight novels, four collections and one autobiography, with Jo Fletcher Books the only publisher to appear twice.

And, although they’re both included in my tally for the year, I haven’t taken into consideration Carole Johnstone’s novella Cold Turkey, as it’s published by TTA Press, or Dana Gioia’s poetry collection The Gods of Winter, as I’ve read it umpteen times before.

And, of course, many of these titles were first published in 2013, if not earlier, so it is a ‘best of Pete’s reading’ rather than ‘best of the year’.

Check back early in 2015 to see which of these titles remain.