Ending 2018/starting 2019 on a productive note, with a rant about resolutions and a long list of good books.
(The latter was inspired by an even better list of reading recommendations from Kirsty Logan.)
But, here we go...
Crime and Thriller
- *Give Me Your Hand (Megan Abbott)
- Red Harvest and The Glass Key (Dashiell Hammett)
- East of Hounslow (Khurrum Rahman)
- *Something in the Water (Catherine Steadman)
- All Her Father's Guns (James Warner)
SF and Fantasy
- Age of Assassins (RJ Barker)
- The Drowning City (Amanda Downum)
- The Crystal Cave (Mary Stewart)
- *Paris Adrift (EJ Swift)
- *The Stars Now Unclaimed (Drew Williams)
Romance
- Miss Wonderful (Loretta Chase)
- *A Princess in Theory (Alyssa Cole)
- A Lady's Code of Misconduct (Meredith Duran)
- The Masqueraders and The Reluctant Widow and all the other Heyers (Georgette Heyer)
- Once Upon a Marquess (Courtney Milan)
Young Adult
- Overheard in a Tower Block (Joseph Coelho)
- *Slay (Kim Curran) (BOY BAND VS DEMONS)
- The Way You Make Me Feel (Maurene Goo)
- Ghost (Jason Reynolds)
- This Lullaby (Sarah Dessen)
Gold Medal (that's a publisher, not a genre, but they're my comfort reading and deserve the recognition - plus, my rules!)
- The Turrett Room (Charlotte Armstrong)
- The Expendables (Richard Avery)
- Castle Ugly (Mary Ellin Barrett)
- Meet Morocco Jones (Jack Baynes)
- The Magnolia Murder (Wyatt Bell)
- The Hideaway (Nikki Content)
- Smoky Valley (Donald Hamilton)
- Guns Along the Brazos (Day Keene)
- Sinner Take All (Wade Miller)
- Steal Big (Lionel White)
Genre categories are self-defeating and diminishing and, more importantly, I don't know how to categorise these
- "Dr Frankenstein" (Selma Dimitrijevic)
- *There's a Witch in the Word Machine (Jenni Fagan)
- The Talisman Ring (Georgette Heyer)
- *And the Ocean Was Our Sky (Patrick Ness / Rovina Cai)
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Graphic novels
- Afterlife with Archie (Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa / Francesco Francavilla)
- Josie and the Pussycats (Marguerite Bennett / Cameron DeOrdio)
- Mockingbird (Chelsea Cain / Kate Niemcyzk)
- In the Pines (Erik Kriek)
- Goldie Vance (Hope Larson / Brittney Williams)
Nonfiction
- Made in Bradford (M.Y. Alam)
- Hold Everything Dear (John Berger)
- Community (Peter Bloch)
- The Nasty Bits (Anthony Bourdain)
- The Age of Jihad (Patrick Cockburn)
- Poverty Safari (Darren McGarvey)
- State of Insecurity (Isabell Lorey)
- The Mosaic of Islam (Suleiman Mourad)
- Bloody Nasty People (Daniel Trilling)
*: published in 2018
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And for some recommendations for 2019, check out this massive list at Tor.com. I chimed in with a few.