My Favorite New Releases of 2014
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) gives us a chance to celebrate our favorite books of the year. I’d like to do a bit of a wandering recap after the Christmas holiday, but in the meantime I thought I would use this week’s theme as a chance to pick ten of my favorite 2014 releases. I don’t tend to read a lot of new releases every year so posts like these aren’t typically an option, but looking back I realized I actually had an unexpectedly ample selection to pick from. And I enjoyed so many of them. Narrowing it down was really difficult. I tried to strike a balance between the escapist books that gave me the warm-fuzzies and the ones that were challenging yet impossible to put down.
No Country by Kalyan Ray
Spanning two centuries and three continents, from famine-stricken Ireland to colonial India to modern-day upstate New York, No Country is a riveting, enchanting melting pot of a story about history, family, fate, and the enduring ties of friendship. (Read more…)
As soon as I finished No Country I marked it as my favorite book of the year. Kalyan Ray’s beautiful language tells the story of two boyhood friends in Ireland during the Potato Blight and the extraordinary journeys that lead their families across continents and countries for generations. It’s hard to explain what I loved about the book beyond simply everything. The writing is wonderful, the characters clutch at your heart, and the story is beautifully crafted. Just…lovely.
I Always Loved You by Robin Oliveira
The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War to be an artist was going to be easy, but when, after a decade of work, her submission to the Paris Salon is rejected, Mary’s fierce determination wavers. Then one evening a friend introduces her to Edgar Degas and her life changes forever. (Read more…)
Funnily enough, as soon as I finished I Always Loved You I also marked it as my favorite book of the year. Everything about it is precisely my cup of tea; I love the history, the characters (Cassatt! Degas! Manet! Morisot! Renoir! Monet!), the thoughtfulness of the writing, and all the emotion Robin Oliveira pacts into these artists and their stories. Paris during the Belle Époque is divinely intriguing, and it’s exciting to experience the could-be emotional complexities of the Impressionist masters through a medium other than painting.
The Mirror by John A. Heldt
On September 11, 2020, Ginny and Katie Smith celebrate their nineteenth birthday at a country fair near Seattle. Ignoring the warnings of a fortune-teller, they enter a house of mirrors and exit in May 1964. Their sixties adventure becomes complicated when they meet a revered great-grandmother and fall in love with local boys. (Read more…)
John Heldt’s Northwest Passage series ended this year with the fifth installment. As sad as I was to see the last of these wonderful time-travel stories, The Mirror was an apt way to wrap it all up. (Bonus: the Beatles have a cameo!) The combination of history, romance, fantasy, and the heartwarming quality of family that Heldt brings to the series is absolutely charming.
Read my review.
Crane by Stacey Rourke
Washington Irving and Rip Van Winkle had no choice but to cover up the deadly truth behind Ichabod Crane’s disappearance. Centuries later, a Crane returns to Sleepy Hollow awakening macabre secrets once believed to be buried deep. What if the monster that spawned the legend lived within you? Now, Ireland Crane, reeling from a break-up and seeking a fresh start, must rely on the newly awakened Rip Van Winkle to discover the key to channeling the darkness swirling within her. (Read more…)
I love the classic story of Sleepy Hollow, and I loved seeing Stacey Rourke turn it right on its head. (Pun most thoroughly intended.) Crane has just the right balance of darkness, humor, and emotion to capture the essence of Irving’s legend, yet it’s presented in an entirely new way. I had such a hard time putting this one down, but I didn’t want it to end, either. (Luckily, it’s the first in a series!)
Paint Me Gone by Molly Greene
Private Investigator Genevieve Delacourt is hired to find a missing sibling, but the search is complicated by two things: the woman was thought to have committed suicide over twenty years before, and she was the only suspect in a stranger’s murder before she disappeared. Gen’s client, Sophie Keene, revives the case when an unsigned painting that depicts her sister in unmistakable detail finds its way into Sophie’s hands. (Read more…)
Molly Greene has released two Gen Delacourt mysteries this year and it was a bit like pulling teeth to pick one. I had to go with Paint Me Gone because I loved the foray into San Francisco’s art world, and the high jinks between Gen and her best friend Oliver are delightful. Added to that is the smart complexity of the mystery and the sparks that fly between Gen and SFPD cop Mackenzie Hackett. Just thinking about it has me wanting to re-read. (I love when that happens.)
The Sea House by Elisabeth Gifford
In 1860, Alexander Ferguson, a newly ordained vicar and amateur evolutionary scientist, takes up his new parish, a poor, isolated patch on the remote Scottish island of Harris. He hopes to uncover the truth behind the legend of the selkies—mermaids or seal people who have been sighted off the north of Scotland for centuries. (More than a century later,) Ruth and Michael buy the grand but dilapidated building and begin to turn it into a home for the family they hope to have. Their dreams are marred by a shocking discovery. The tiny bones of a baby are buried beneath the house; the child’s fragile legs are fused together—a mermaid child. To heal her own demons, Ruth feels she must discover the secrets of her new home—but the answers to her questions may lie in her own traumatic past. (Read more…)
I thought The Sea House was just so beautifully rendered; it’s atmospheric and ethereal, with a unique combination of stories that meld the struggles of loss with the curiosities of myths and legends. The novel wears two faces, in a way – one of human drama and the other of lore-based fantasy – but the way they tied together is really what set it apart for me.
The Glass Kitchen by Linda Francis Lee
Portia Cuthcart never intended to leave Texas. Her dream was to run the Glass Kitchen restaurant her grandmother built decades ago. But after a string of betrayals and the loss of her legacy, Portia is determined to start a new life with her sisters in Manhattan… and never cook again. But when she moves into a dilapidated brownstone on the Upper West Side, she meets twelve-year-old Ariel and her widowed father Gabriel, a man with his hands full trying to raise two daughters on his own. Soon, a promise made to her sisters forces Portia back into a world of magical food and swirling emotions, where she must confront everything she has been running from. (Read more…)
Linda Francis Lee’s novel of love and magic really charmed me; it was so much fun to escape into the world of this story. I loved the balance of sweet romance and family drama, and especially the depth of the characters’ relationships. It had a way of being both an entertaining vacation from real life and an honest examination of the hard truths we face.
The Hollow Ground by Natalie S. Harnett
The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the Black Lung stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the “curse” laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft. In the aftermath, decades’ old secrets threaten to prove just as dangerous to the Howleys as the burning, hollow ground beneath their feet. (Read more…)
It was hard to believe Natalie Harnett’s debut was actually a debut, her storytelling ability is so strong and her prose so sure. I was impressed by the scope of the novel, and also moved by the disturbing history that inspired it (the mine fires in Centralia, Pennsylvania, which lit in the ’60s and are still burning today). The characters are fascinating in their raw vulnerability and their rough edges; pre-teen protagonist-narrator Brigid is particularly unforgettable. There’s a big convergence of detail, literary skill, and emotion in The Hollow Ground.
Sleep in Peace Tonight by James MacManus
It’s January 1941, and the Blitz is devastating England. Though the United States maintains its isolationist position, Churchill knows that England is finished without the aid of its powerful ally. Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt’s most trusted adviser, is sent to London as his emissary, and there he falls under the spell of Churchill’s commanding rhetoric—and legendary drinking habits. But back home FDR is paranoid about the isolationist lobby, and even Hopkins is having trouble convincing him to support the war. As Hopkins grapples with his mission and personal loyalties, he also revels in secret clubs with newsman Edward R. Murrow and has an affair with his younger driver. Except Hopkins doesn’t know that his driver is a British intelligence agent. She craves wartime action and will go to any lengths to prove she should be on the front line. (Read more…)
I read Sleep in Peace Tonight shortly after watching Ken Burns’s fabulous documentary, The Roosevelts, and I delighted in seeing this time of history – as well as FDR himself – brought to life through fiction. Historical figures (the protagonist included) become characters in this wonderfully paced novel full of intrigue, romance, and the complex social emotions of wartime.
The Children Act by Ian McEwan
Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. But Fiona’s professional success belies domestic strife. Her husband, Jack, asks her to consider an open marriage and, after an argument, moves out of their house. She decides to throw herself into her work, especially a complex case involving a seventeen-year-old boy. But Jack doesn’t leave her thoughts, and the pressure to resolve the case—as well as her crumbling marriage—tests Fiona in ways that will keep readers thoroughly enthralled until the last stunning page.
(Read more…)
It’s slight and it’s sparse, but there’s something about The Children Act that I really enjoyed. It hit a good note with me, one that felt comfortably more on the side of profundity than pretentiousness. Reading about flawed characters that are kept at a distance – it could make for a bit of a literary nosedive, yet the honesty and open curiosity of it just worked. And, of course, McEwan’s aptitude for gorgeous prose kept me enthralled.
