The 2014 Mid-point Post

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that tomorrow is the first day of July! Where has this year gone? I guess I've been so busy reading that the days have gotten away from me. ;-)

So, I thought I'd do a mid-point rundown of my reading so far and then you all can share with me some of your favorite reads and numbers of books etc.

To date I've read 51 books by 51 different authors.
19 of those were written by women, 1 was written by a male/female writing team and the remaining 30 by men.
14 are unabridged audiobooks.
8 are debut novels.
31 are books written by authors I've never read before this year.
And 5 are non-fiction.

That's the lowdown on stats. Now, the fun part. The books at this point in the year that will be considered for my favorites list in December (in the order in which I read them):

The Stolen Ones by Richard Montanari
Roosevelt's Beast by Louis Bayard
The Deepest Secret by Carla Buckley
Talk by Michael Smerconish
The Intern's Handbook by Shane Kuhn
Any Other Name by Craig Johnson
Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
A Brand New World by Marcus Sakey
All Day and a Night by Alafair Burke

There are ten titles here, so obviously they won't all be on the final list--unless the second half of the year is really bad, but don't count on it--just consider this my mid-year favorites list. The titles linked above will go to my reviews. The remainder of the reviews are forthcoming.

So, your turn. What's knocked your socks off so far this year?

The Stolen Ones - Richard Montanari

My review of The Stolen Ones first appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers. It is appearing here today with their permission.

First line: "The first thing the hunter saw was the shadow, a long silhouette stamped on milk-blue snow, rising near a copse of maples halfway across the field."

A killer who seems to have the ability to vanish baffles Philadelphia detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano, and the city’s residents live in constant fear as more victims are discovered, virtually under the department’s nose. But instead of magical powers, Luther Wade has the city under the city.

Born and raised in the Delaware Valley State Hospital, a hospital for the criminally insane, Luther lived an unorthodox life. When the hospital closed, Luther remained, trolling the passageways below Philadelphia and carrying out the nightmarishly evil dreams of one of Europe’s deadliest serial killers.

A mute child found wandering in the street in the middle of the night carries with her a vital clue to the case, as well as a link between the past and the present. Byrne and Balzano have to race to put the clues together and find this mad man before he can wreak more havoc on Philly.

With a plot as eerie and contorted as the catacombs Luther Wade inhabits, The Stolen Ones is a thriller fan’s delight. This is a book readers stay up late to finish, but with all the lights on in the house.

Thrillers tend to be less about mystery and more about the race to stop someone or something. Byrne and Balzano do indeed race to stop Wade, and the reader knows Wade is the murderer, but Montanari has still steeped his story in the devious mystery of the hospital, enhancing the suspense.

Part thriller, part mystery, part horror, The Stolen Ones is a completely great story.

The Stolen Ones is available in hardcover (ISBN: 9780316244701) from Mulholland  Books and as an unabridged audio, narrated by William Hope, from Hachette Audio.