The Book Plank

Best Young-Adult of 2014 The Young Adult genre has always been a genre to my liking. When I was young I never had the chance to read such books. Being from the Netherlands it's quite a different style of books for the younger readers, though there is shift now. I like fantasy and this is what I missed in my younger years. The best thing about many of the English Young Adult books is that they are also very well suited for an older audience. The books that feature on this list all reflect this in a certain way. ANd as you can see from this list, there are many influences in Young Adult fiction, from the dystopian Metawars: Freedom Frontier by Jeff Norton (whish is sadly the conclusion to the series) or Red Rising, Pierce Brown's debut, to the Epic Fantasy of Joe Abercrombie's Half a King , or Django Wexler's excellent The Forbidden Library and finally a completely different take on superhero fiction in Brandon Sanderson's Steelheart .  --------------------...

Half a King by Joe Abercrombie,  Shattered Sea #1 “I swore an oath to avenge the death of my father. I may be half a man, but I swore a whole oath.”   Prince Yarvi has vowed to regain a throne he never wanted. But first he must survive cruelty, chains, and the bitter waters of the Shattered Sea. And he must do it all with only one good hand. The deceived will become the deceiver.   Born a weakling in the eyes of his father, Yarvi is alone in a world where a strong arm and a cold heart rule. He cannot grip a shield or swing an axe, so he must sharpen his mind to a deadly edge. The betrayed will become the betrayer.   Gathering a strange fellowship of the outcast and the lost, he finds they can do more to help him become the man he needs to be than any court of nobles could. Will the usurped become the usurper?   But even with loyal friends at his side, Yarvi finds his path may end as it began—in twists, and traps, and tragedy. One of the l...

1. Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King, Hodder and Stoughton A riveting cat-and-mouse suspense thriller about a retired cop and a couple of unlikely allies who race against time to stop a lone killer intent on blowing up thousands. Retired homicide detective Bill Hodges is haunted by the few cases he left open, and by one in particular: in the pre-dawn hours, hundreds of desperate unemployed people were lined up for a spot at a job fair in a distressed Midwestern city. Without warning, a lone driver ploughed through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes. Eight people were killed, fifteen wounded. The killer escaped. Months later, on the other side of the city, Bill Hodges gets a taunting letter in the mail, from a man claiming to be the perpetrator. Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on hunting him down. Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. And he is preparing to kill again. Hodges, with a couple of misfit fri...