Favorite Books of 2014

No Ten Best List this year, instead I’ve chosen a batch of the books I’ve enjoyed in 2014. The emphasis here is on fiction. I may dig deeper in December for a separate nonfiction list.

CITY OF GHOSTS:
A Miranda Corbie Mystery
Kelli Stanley
Minotaur Books
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THE STONE WIFE
A Peter Diamond Investigation
Peter Lovesey
Soho Crime
BUY ON AMAZON

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THE LAST GIRL
Maeve Kerrigan Novels
Jane Casey
Minotaur Books
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STING OF THE DRONE
Richard A. Clarke
Thomas Dunne Books
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A MYSTERIOUS SOMETHING IN THE LIGHT:
THE LIFE OF RAYMOND CHANDLER
Tom Williams
Chicago Review Press
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FILM NOIR: 100 ALL-TIME FAVORITES
Edited by Paul Duncan and Jürgen Müller
Taschen
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USA NOIR: Best of the Akashic Noir Series
Edited by Johnny Temple
Akashic Books
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THE DARK GALLERIES:A Museum Guide to
Painted Portraits in Film Noir Gothic Melodramas
and Ghost Stories of the 1940s and 1950s  
by Steven Jacobs and Lisa Colpaert
ARAMER Books
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THE GETAWAY CAR: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany
Donald E. Westlake
University Of Chicago Press
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EMPTY MANSIONS: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark
and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr.
Ballantine Books
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THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: An Unnatural History
Elizabeth Kolbert
Henry Holt and Co.
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PRANKSTERS: Making Mischief in the Modern World
Kembrew McLeod
NYU Press
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KIPPENBERGER: THE ARTIST AND HIS FAMILIES
Susanne Kippenberger
J & L Books
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HOW TO READ
Eckhard Gerdes
Guide Dog Books
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THEORIES OF FORGETTING
Lance Olsen
Fiction Collective Two
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PRIMORDIAL: An Abstraction
D. Harlan Wilson
Anti-Oedipus Press
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INDUCED COMA
Harold Jaffe
Anti-Oedipus Press
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THEATRE OF INCEST
Alain Arias-Misson
Dalkey Archive Press
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THE CITY UNDER THE SKIN
Geoff Nicholson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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LOVE SONGS FOR LAS VEGAS
Suzanne Burns
FutureCycle Press
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MOON IN A DEAD EYE
Pascal Garnier
Gallic Books
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THE ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER
Hilary Mantel
Henry Holt and Co.
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LIFT YOUR RIGHT ARM
Peter Cherches
Pelekinesis
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NEXT LIFE MIGHT BE KINDER
Howard Norman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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TALIBAN
J. L. Anderson and Thomas Dworzak
Wrth Publications
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Editor’s Note: Taliban was originally published in 2004, but we didn’t discover it until this year. It also gets our vote for one of the strangest books we read in 2014.