Recommended Reading for 2018

I asked for recommended reading for books written since 2000.  (I’ve been reading a lot of best-of lists, which tend to be 20+ years behind the times.)

Here what I got.  I marked the racy romances in case you’re around THOSE kind of people, the ones who disapprove of things as a hobby.

Fiction:

• Jonathan Mayberry’s Joe Ledger series, which starts with Patient Zero.
• Michael Connelly’s new series about Renee Ballard, which starts with The Late Show.
• Tom Hanks’s short story collection, Uncommon Type.
• N.K. Jemesin’s Broken Earth trilogy (read book 1, need to finish).
• Barbara Nickless’s Sydney Rose trilogy, which starts with Blood on the Tracks.
• Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series (read book 1).  There is also an attractive graphic novel series…
• The Revelations Cycle, which starts with Mark Wandry’s Cartwright’s Cavaliers and continues on to Asbaran Solutions, by Chris Kennedy.  A nifty multi-author series idea.
• HARD and Sometimes Never by Cheryl McIntyre, racy romances.
• The Jack and Jill series, by Jewel E. Ann, which starts with End of Day (more racy romances).
• The Bees, by Lauline Paull.
• Tana French’s Detective Murder Squad series, which starts with In the Woods.
• Gail Carriger’s Finishing School Series (read books 1 and 2 and need to finish).  Probably also the rest of her stuff I haven’t read.
• Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay.
• The Fisherman, by John Langan.
• The Heroes, by Joe Abercrombie.
• We Eat Our Own, by Kea Wilson.
• Company, by Max Barry.
• James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series (read book 1).
• The Temeraire series and Uprooted, by Naomi Novik (read book 1).
• Carrie Vaughn’s Bannerless Saga, starting with Bannerless.
• The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud.
• Ramsey Campbell’s The Three Births of Daoloth, starting with The Searching Dead.
• Mark T. Barnes’s Echoes of Empire series, starting with The Garden of Stones.
• The Secret King: Lethao, by Dawn Chapman.
• Wraith Knight, by C.T. Phipps.
• Tim Marquitz’s Blood War trilogy, starting with Dawn of War.
• The Fold, by Peter Clines.
• The Genesis Code, by John Case.
• KL Kreig’s Finding Me duet, starting with Lost in Between (racy romance).
• Carian Cole’s Devils Wolves series, starting with Torn (racy romance).
• Mark Z. Danielzewski’s The Familiar, of which Volume 1 is One Rainy Day in May.
• Indigo, by Beverly Jenkins.
• Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones.
• Maggie Fenton’s Regency Romp trilogy.
• Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past series, starting with The Three-Body Problem.
• Sergei Lukyaneko’s Night Watch series, starting with Night Watch (I’ve read Night Watch and Day Watch already).
• Drop City, by T.C. Boyle.
• Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, by Bradley W. Schenk.
• Sabrina York’s Tryst Island series, starting with Rebound (racy romance).
• The Martian, by Andy Weir.
• Harry Connolly’s Twenty Palaces series, starting with Child of Fire.
• The Virgin Romance Novelist, by Meghan Quinn.
• Janet Evanovitch’s Stephanie Plum series (read the first two).
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz.
• The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson.
• A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini.
• Delia’s Shadow, by Jamie Lee Moyer.
• Anything is Possible, by Elizabeth Strout.
• Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series, starting with Sandman Slim.
• T. Kingfisher’s Clocktaur War series, starting with Clockwork Boys.
• The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson.  I don’t normally reread things because of a new translation, but this might be an exception.
• The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick DeWitt.
• Ferrett Steinmetz’s ‘Mancer series, starting with Flex.
• The Last Namsara, by Kristen Ciccarelli.
• All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr.
• The Nightengale, by Kristen Hannah.
• Ella Minnow Pea, by Mark Dunn.
• A Secret History of Witches, by Louisa Morgan.
• The Rules of Magic, by Alice Hoffman.
• The Witches of New York, by Ami McKay.
• Karen Robards’s Dr. Charlotte Stone series, starting with The Last Victim.
• Lisa Scottoline’s Rosato & Associates series, starting with Everywhere That Mary Went.
• Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville.

Nonfiction:

• The Devil’s Flu, by Pete Davies.
• The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine, by Lindsey Fitzharris.
• Welcome to the Universe, by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
• Hero, by Michael Korda (Lawrence of Arabia).
• The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls.
• Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari.
• Endurance, by Alfred Lansing (Shackleton).
• A Universe from Nothing, by Lawrence Krauss.

Let me know if you have more 🙂