I am delighted to kick off this end of year special feature, in conjunction with Vicki Goldman, with the first group of authors giving us their top pick of 2015.
For Day One I have Erin Kelly, Susi Holliday, Steve Cavanagh, Joanne Spain, , Michael Grothaus TR Richmond, Jack Jordan and Nick Quantrill telling us their ONE top pick from the books they read in 2015.
Pop over to Vicki’s place http://off-the-shelfbooks.blogspot.co.uk/ to see who she has for you today!
Erin Kelly author of The Ties that Bind published by Hodder in 2015 has chosen:
The more fiction I write, the more non-fiction I like to read. This is Iain Sinclair’s perfectly-written account of walking around ‘the ginger line’. He’s been documenting London for years yet the books never get old. It’s brilliant to find him describing some parts of London I know well, and introducing me to others I know nothing about, even though I’ve lived here my whole life. His insight and descriptions are stunning.
Book Blurb:
Echoing his journey in London Orbital over a decade ago, Iain Sinclair narrates his second circular walk around the capital. Shortly after rush-hour and accompanied by a rambling companion, Sinclair begins walking along London’s Overground network, or, ‘Ginger Line’. With characteristic playfulness, detours into folk history, withering assessments of the political classes and a joyful allegiance to the ordinary oddball, Sinclair guides us on a tour of London’s trendiest new transport network – and shows the shifting, changing city from new and surprising angles.
Click here to purchase London Overground published in June 2015
Visit Erin’s website here and if you fancy one of her great novels including one of my favourites of all time The Poison Tree click here
Susi Holliday author of Blackwood, published by Black & White Publishing in March 2015
“Peter Swanson’s The Kind Worth Killing. The way the story switched from past to present had me gripped throughout, there was a huge WTF moment part way through, and the ending…. I actually gasped.”
Book Blurb:
Delayed in London, Ted Severson meets a woman at the airport bar. Over cocktails they tell each other rather more than they should, and a dark plan is hatched – but are either of them being serious, could they actually go through with it and, if they did, what would be their chances of getting away with it?
Click here to purchase The Kind Worth Killing published by Faber in 2015
Follow Susi on Twitter @SJIHolliday and visit her website here If you’d like to try out Black Wood click here
Steve Cavanagh, author of The Defence, published by Orion in March 2015
“My book of the year – A Song of Shadows. A bench mark in series crime fiction. Utterly brilliant.”
Book Blurb:
Grievously wounded, private detective Charlie Parker investigates a case that has its origins in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. Broken, but undeterred, he faces the darkest of dark forces in a case with its roots in the second world war, and a concentration camp unlike any other . . .
Click here to purchase A Song of Shadows published by Hodder in 2015, Paperback in 2016.
Follow Steve on Twitter @SSCav and visit his website here. If you’d like to try out The Defence click here
Joanne Spain author of With Our Blessing published by Quercus in September 2015
Camille by Pierre Lemaitre – thought it was another fantastic book by him. I love Verhorven’s sensitivity and brilliance and it was one of the most shocking opening chapters I’ve read!
Book Blurb:
Camille–whose wife Irene was murdered by a sadistic serial killer–has at last opened his emotional lockbox for Anne Forestier, the new woman who has unexpectedly entered his life. But brutal history seems to repeat itself as Anne is violently attacked one day in what seems like a random instance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As she recovers, Camille begins the investigation while keeping his relationship with Anne secret from his superiors.
Click here to purchase Camille, published by Maclehose Press in May 2015
Follow Jo on Twitter @SpainJoanne and if you’d like to try With Our Blessing click here.
Michael Grothaus, author of Epiphany Jones, published by Orenda Books in May 2016
The prose is short and beautiful and though it’s about so much more than a love story, its realistic portrayal of a growing relationship between two people separated by decades is something all fictionalized romances should strive for. Kawakami has the guts to end it not sentimentally, but truthfully.”
Book Blurb:
Tsukiko is in her late 30s and living alone when one night she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, ‘Sensei’, in a bar. He is at least thirty years her senior, retired and, she presumes, a widower. After this initial encounter, the pair continue to meet occasionally to share food and drink sake, and as the seasons pass – from spring cherry blossom to autumnal mushrooms – Tsukiko and Sensei come to develop a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love.
Click here to Purchase Strange Weather in Tokyo published by Portobello books in 2014
Follow Michael on Twitter @michaelgrothaus visit him here you can pre-order Epiphany Jones here
TR Richmond, author of What She Left, published by Penguin in October 2015
This book had been recommended to me countless times, but I’d never got round to reading it until this year. It follows an unnamed narrator immersed in the 1980s New York party lifestyle – the highs, the lows and the eventual, inevitable fall. It’s that rarest of things – a book that perfectly captures its decade, but is also perfectly timeless.”
Book Blurb:
You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. So begins our hero’s trawl through the brightly lit streets of Manhattan, sampling all this wonderland has to offer yet suspecting that tomorrow’s hangover may be caused by more than simple excess. This is a classic 80s novel.
Click here to purchase Bright Lights Big City published by Bloomsbury in 2007
Follow on Twitter @TRRichmondbooks and if you fancy What She Left click here
Nick Quantrill, author of the Joe Geraghty series
Never afraid of tackling a tough subject, the master of the police procedural examines mercy killings in the latest instalment of his immaculate Devon-set crime series.
Book Blurb:
D/S Jimmy Suttle is called to a brutal murder in the picturesque Devon village of Lympstone. Harriet Reilly, a local GP, has been found disembowelled in the bedroom of her partner, climate scientist Alois Bentner.
Suttle’s estranged wife, Lizzie, has abandoned Portsmouth, moved to Exeter and returned to journalism, hearing rumours of a local GP offering mercy killings to patients meeting certain criteria. The name of the GP is Harriet Reilly.
So begins two investigations of the same crime.
Click here to purchase The Order of Things published by Orion in 2015
Follow Nick on Twitter @NickQuantrill and visit his website here. Try the Joe Geraghty series here
Jack Jordon, author of Anything For Her published independently in 2015
This true story shocked me to my core, and has stayed with me ever since. I mourned all of the men that history forgot. If you only read one non-fiction title in 2016, make sure it is this one
Book Blurb:
In 1939, Heger, a Viennese university student, was arrested and sentenced to prison for being a “degenerate.” Within weeks he was transported to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp in East Germany, and forced to wear a pink triangle to show that his crime was homosexuality. He remained there, under horrific conditions, until the end of the war in 1945. The power of The Men with the Pink Triangle comes from Heger’s sparse prose and his ability to recall–and communicate–the smallest resonant details.
Click here to purchase The Men with the Pink Triangle published in 2010 by Alyson Publications
Follow Jack on Twitter : @_JackJordan_ and visit his website here. To give Anything For Her a try click here
SO that is your lot for today!
Remember to pop by Vicki’s blog http://off-the-shelfbooks.blogspot.co.uk/ to find some more Authors’ Top Reads of 2015.
Join Vicki and I again tomorrow for some more great picks!
Happy Reading Folks!
Great to see Nick mentioning Graham Hurley, a vastly under-rated author imho. And Susi – A Kind Worth Killing? You’re a girl after my own heart! Superb book which set the bar for the rest of the year! Fantastic post, as ever, Liz. Hope you had a good Christmas! xx