The Seven Novels I Loved Most In 2015

​Self-explanatory title there, I’m saying. And you’re too bloated with post-Christmas cheese and chocolate to wade through a long intro, so let’s get to it. In no particular order…

​SLADE HOUSE by David Mitchell
Remarkably, this is the first David Mitchell book I’ve read, but it certainly won’t be the last. A surprisingly scary and disturbing piece of work, this short novel apparently inhabits the same world as The Bone Clocks, but you don’t need to have read that one in order to appreciate the madness here. We follow several different characters as they encounter the titular building for different reasons, each of them seven years apart. Naturally, everything goes great and they all have a lovely time. Cough. It’s a brilliantly effective ghost story which makes especially great use of POV shifts and perspective shifts in general. Loved it. (UK | US)

LOST GIRL by Adam Nevill
What I particularly admire about Adam Nevill is the sincerity and passion he pours into every sentence. You constantly feel the work, and the depth of imagination, which fuel his novels. And in a publishing industry where horror is the genre that dare not speak its name and generally veers towards restraint, Nevill seems happy to stay hardcore. While Lost Girl, with its more bookseller-friendly title and cover, might initially seem to mark an attempt to reach a broader audience, it’s the most brutal thing of his I’ve read, which is great. A near-future thriller about a father determined to find his abducted child, it painstakingly catalogues every scrap of hell the man wades through. Seriously bleak and deranged, it’s a gruelling experience and one I highly recommend. (UK | US)

​DAY FOUR by Sarah Lotz
This, as the title kinda suggests, is the sequel to 2014’s blockbuster novel The Three, which was a stone-cold killer of a supernatural thriller. This one is a different beast, in a good and intriguing way. Whereas The Three spanned the globe, charting the global response to three plane crashes in which only three children survived, this semi-sequel takes place aboard a cruise liner. Yes, Lotz is heartlessly and systematically amping up our fear levels about every form of public transport. Really hope she doesn’t next turn to my favourite, the train. The eerie atmosphere is strong with this one, which again hints at a massive overarching storyline working away, virtually behind the scenes. And like The Three, it suggests that humanity has more to fear from itself than any creepy kids. (UK | US)

ZER0ES by Chuck Wendig
Mr Chuck Wendig, the human word machine, The Wordinator, is a veteran practitioner of whip-crack prose that comes atcha like an automatic rifle. I’m a big fan of that style, which carries you effortlessly along with it, and Zer0es is a mighty cyber-thriller about five hackers funnelled into working for a shady government op in order to avoid prison. This evergreen premise provides a springboard into pleasingly unpredictable lashings of sci-fi, action and horror: Zer0es ends up being quite a different novel from the one it started out as, which I tend to enjoy. By the end, it has explored man’s relationship with machine in profoundly disquieting ways, while piling on a whole bunch of cinematic carnage, body-horror and strong, mouthy characters. A riot! (UK | US)

TOUCH by Claire North
North’s The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August was awash with mindboggling metaphysical magnificence, and Touch again showcases her uncanny knack for existential thrillers with a dash of horror. I already waxed lyrical about this book in my blog post earlier this year about offering a safe pair of hands as a writer, so I’ll just say that it’s about an entity, our narrator, which has the ability to jump from one human body to the next, commandeering each like a coldly calculating joyrider. The writing is once again superb and if you haven’t had the pleasure, you’re really missing out. (UK | US)

A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS by Paul Tremblay
Definitely the coolest title of the year, and Tremblay backs it up with one hell of a scary ride. I was always going to love this book, given that he and I seem to share reference points, like The Exorcist, John Carpenter’s The Thing and the found-footage aspect of The Blair Witch Project, as well as Mark Z Danielewski’s House Of Leaves. It’s the story of two young sisters, Marjorie and Meredith, one of who begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia (or possession?) and ultimately attracts a TV documentary crew to the family home. Marjorie and Meredith’s relationship is handled beautifully, as are the framing devices, but what really stayed with me were some of the most insidiously creepy ideas I’ve ever read in a novel. And Paul Tremblay looked like such a nice man, too. (UK | US)

THE DEATH HOUSE by Sarah Pinborough
I said these were in no particular order, and that’s true, but there’s no point denying that The Death House is my favourite novel of 2015. I put off reading it for a while, purely because the concept of a house where ill children go to die didn’t exactly sound like it would put a spring in my step. And God knows, this book is not full of knock-knock jokes. Pinborough handles death and illness here with much the same unflinching tough-love she employed in her excellent 2013 novella The Language Of Dying. Yet there’s such a beautiful flipside to The Death House: one which is all about savouring each moment to the full. I found myself entirely immersed, and tears escaped my battle-hardened head not once, not twice, but THRICE. Sweet Jesus. On the day I finished reading, I went down to Brighton beach and had a good, long, appreciative look at the sea. I can’t imagine that this unusual behaviour and reading The Death House were at all unconnected. Read it. (UK | US)

​I should add three things...
 
I’ve restricted myself to novels. If I hadn’t, then Stephen King’s The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams and Chuck Palahniuk’s Make Something Up – fine short-story collections which I’ve devoured over Christmas – would’ve entered the picture.
 
I’m not generally into straight sci fi or ‘other world’ fantasy, so books within those spheres tend to fall under my radar.
 
And like most people, I certainly didn’t read all the books I wanted to this year.  In fact, I was way off.  Just a few of the delights I’m still looking forward to absorbing are Tim Lebbon’s The Hunt and The Silence, Nathan Ballingrud’s The Visible Filth, Rob Boffard’s Tracer, James P Smythe's Way Down Dark, Adam Christopher's Made To Kill, Rebecca Levene's The Hunter's Kind, Mark Morris' Albion Fay, Stephen Volk's Leytonstone, Edward Cox’s splendidly-titled The Cathedral Of Known Things, Marlon James’ A Brief History Of Seven Killings, Gillian Flynn’s The Grown-Up and Stephen King’s Finders Keepers and Mr Mercedes. And I’ll wager there are plenty more I’ve momentarily forgotten about.
 
So which were your favourite novels released in 2015?  Lay 'em on me in comments. 

And hey, have you downloaded my free novelette Auto Rewind yet?  Get it here, in all ebook formats known to man or beast.

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