There is no better leisure than to sit curled up in the couch in chilly winters, with steaming mug of coffee or hot chocolate and reading your favorite book and let yourself drowned in the imaginary world of fiction. From fantasy to thriller, from heartbreaking stories to humour, from period works to contemporary writing, the world of books is full of adventures and emotions. With so many different story telling styles, different contexts, and different genres, it becomes difficult to decide which one is your favourite. Some of them have kept you awake all night, some of them left you in a state of emotional turmoil, some of them made you laugh and some of them made your contemplate about the life. However, there was something that was still common in all those books. They were simply amazing. Here is a list of ten most popular fictional books of the year 2015, for those who loves to read books. All these books are available online at amazon, you do get a discount with Amazon promotion code.
1. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Harper Lee’s second novel, Go set a Watchman, is set twenty years after her first published and much beloved novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Jean Louise (Scout Finch) is now a 26 years old woman, who comes to visit the sleepy Maycomb, from New York, to meet her growing old father Atticus. However, on her return, she finds distressing truth about her family and people she loved. Set in the time when the South was transforming with the political movements of equality in civil rights and arising disorders due to civil unrest, the novel tells the story of insight, humanity and a journey of evolution taken by one’s own conscience.
2. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
A spellbinding thriller by Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train, revolves around three women, somehow tied to one man. Rachel is an alcoholic woman who is not yet in terms with the dissolution of her marriage with Tom, who has left her to marry his previous mistress Anna. Rachel’s inability to bear a child makes her seek solace in dissolving herself in alcohol, which leads to her unemployment as well. She takes a train everyday to deceive her flatmates about her unemployment which sadly passes through her old house. She also looks longingly at the attractive couple who lives just a few houses away, imagining their perfect lives. Little she knows that a scandalous sight will change the lives of all three women.
3. Language Arts by Stephanie Kallos
Stephanie Kallos is the bestselling author of her first book ‘Broken for You’. Language Arts is the story of a devoted English language teacher Charles Marlow and his autistic son Cody Marlow. Charles believes and teaches his students that the language will help in spreading out their worlds. However, at home, even with all his meticulous command over the language, he cannot form a connection with his son, neither with his estranged wife, nor with his daughter who is off to college. However, a number of events and a number of people, including an Italian nun and his own memory of one of his 4th grade classmate, changes the way he thinks about life, to write a fresh and new script. At the heart of the book is language with its many forms.
4. The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall
The award winning Sarah Hall has come again yet with another masterpiece of her writing. The Wolf Border is a story of a young Rachel Caine, a zoologist in Idaho by occupation and fiercely independent and a loner in personality. In Nez Perce, she had dedicated her days and night studying a pack of wild wolf, tracking their each and every movement and their behaviour. She gets a call from an affluent but eccentric Earl of Annerdale, who wants to bring grey wolf back to the Northern England. Though Rachel is not interested in the project, she still decides to meet him, because he lives near her childhood village. Her two worlds collide as she comes back to relive the memory of her past.
5. The Harder They Come by T.C. Boyle
The T.C. Boyles 15th novel, The Harder They Come looks at the innate American violent nature. It is a potent and transfixing novel, about three broken people and their volatile relationship with each other. The novel is set in Northern California and revolves around a 70 year old Vietnam veteran Sten Stensen, his delusional son Adam, and the Adam’s older and obsessed lover Sara Hovarty Jennings. Sten comes back to his home after a vacation cruise, where he unwaveringly kills a robber. However, his ordeal was far from over as he comes back to find his son Adam, getting severely unbalanced. He is involved with Sara, who is fifteen years elder to her, and has little considerations for the laws of the country. Adam becomes schizophrenic which leads him to shoot two people. What follows is the largest manhunt of the California.
6. Golden State Stephanie Kegan
A fast paced novel by Stephanie Kegan, Golden State, is a story of a sister, a mother, a daughter and the boundary of faithfulness. Natalie Askedahl, is the youngest child in one of the most important political families of California. She has spent her childhood idolizing his big brother Bobby, a sensitive, caring and protective boy. At the age of sixteen, Bobby leaves on a Princeton scholarship, only to become more isolated from his family and Natalie. Now Natalie is happy with her small family with a loving husband and two pretty daughters. However, her almost ideal life changes into a chaos and turmoil after finding out that his ideal brother is accused of terrorism against the universities of the state. What follows is a series of lies and betrayals and Natalie finds herself torn between his brother and her family.
7. The First Bad Man by Miranda July
The First Bad Man is the debut Novel of acclaimed filmmaker Miranda July. She has earlier published her short stories collections “No One Belongs Here More Than You”. The First Bad Man is a blend of tenderness, humour, sexual fantasies, and heartbreaking. Cheryl is as vulnerable as a crab that refuses to come out of her shell. She lives alone with haunting memories of a baby boy she met as kid and sexual fantasies of Philips, a board member at the place she works. Her life becomes upside down and her methodical world ripped of all orders, when her bosses’ 21 year old daughter Clee, a self-centred and mean blonde girl, moves to her house. However, it is due to Clee’s bullying, that Cheryl comes in terms with her own reality and gets her love.
8. Disclaimer by Renée Knight
Disclaimer is a compelling story by the debutant writer Renée Knight. This mystery thriller book keeps the readers hooked to it till the last. Catherine Ravenscroft, a documentary filmmaker, finds a mysterious novel titled “The Perfect Stranger” at her bedside. To her horror, this apparent fictional novel, details the terrible secret of Catherine’s past which is only known to her and another person who is dead. With her past tormenting her from the pages of the book, her world is on the brink of falling apart. All she can do now is to set on a horrific journey to revisit the dark secret and find out who is trying to destroy her present.
9. The World Before Us by Aislinn Hunter
The World Before Us, is a story that tells us that until we confront the ghosts of our pasts, they are going to haunt us forever. Jane Standen, in her mid-thirtees, is working with a small museum in London, which in all likelihood will be closed due to shortage of funds. She keeps haunted by the memory of her past. When she was 15 years old, she was babysitting a cute young girl named Lily. In a blink of a moment, Jane lost the baby, who was never found again. Twenty years later, Jane, as her final project, in an attempt to salvage some of her past, she finds the archives of a mysterious disappearance of a women, a century back in the same place where Lily was lost.
10. Girl at War by Sara Nović
A beautiful book from start to finish, Girl at War by Saran Nović, is a story of a young girl named Ana Jurić. When she was ten years old, Ana was a happy-go-lucky tomboy, who worshipped her father, ran the boulevards of Croatia with her best friend ever and care and protects her little sister. However, the civil war breaks out and all her carefree days turned into nightmares of guerilla combat and child soldiers. The only way she can survive is by making an escape to America. Now, she is twenty years old student in NY, and keeps her past secret from everyone. But the ghosts of her past are reluctant, and she has to travel alone to her home land and discover, what happened to everything and everyone whom she once loved.