Top Ten New-To-Me Authors I Read In 2014

Top Ten Tuesday is sponsored by TheBroke and the Bookish.  
The following are the top works of fiction I have read in 2014 whose authors were new to me. Some of these will be included in my top ten reads for the whole year while there are other new authors that did not make this list. I highly recommend all of the following:

1.  Tim Winton:  This is an Australian author I have read most recently (last month) and his book, Cloudstreet, will be on my ten best list for the year.  It is a family saga  that is both a paean to working-class Australians and an unflinching examination of the human heart's capacity for sorrow, joy, and endless gradations in between.  


2.  Romain Gary:  I had wanted to read  The Roots of Heaven for several years and did so as part of as part of the Romain Gary Literature Month sponsored by Emma at Book Around the Corner.   This French author won  the Goncourt Prize for his novel about freedom and elephants in Africa.


3.  Cameron Hawley:  A  friend of mine recommended this author and I read  Executive Suite last spring.  It is a suspenseful and inspiring novel about business.  


4.  Nurrudin Farah:  His novel Maps was a book group selection that we all enjoyed.  It is a moving and historical story about growing up in Somalia during its difficult transition to independence.  The author is  a chronicler of modern Africa's sociopolitical turbulence and growth who has lived in exile from his native Somalia since 1974.


5.  Ernest Sabato:  His short novel The Tunnel  is An unforgettable psychological novel of obsessive love, It  was championed by Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and Graham Greene upon its publication in 1948 and went on to become an international bestseller. 


6.  Thomas Landolfi:  In his short novel An Autumn Story  the dramatic action of the narrative provides complexities sufficient to make this one of the most competent novellas of its kind. That is a story of adventure, Eros, and mystery combined with a deeper sense of the spirit of the unknown. 


7.  Danilo Kis:   The Attic  is a novel written by candlelight and it is in the shadows that the world creeps into the life of young Orpheus. His real life is in his mind and it is as interesting and beautiful as any imagined world could ever be. 


8.  Marcel Theroux:    Strange Bodies  is an often enthralling and occasionally maddening novel that expands the reader’s sense of possibility even as it strains credulity. 


9.  Jean Patrick Manchette:    The Mad and the Bad, first published in 1972, is a taut crime thriller which opens as wealthy Parisian architect Michel Hartog springs Julie Ballanger from a New Age mental hospital and hires her to look after his nephew. 


10.  Nicholas Mosley:    Accident  is allusive, controlled, and with ideas that are implicit. For those who love novels of ideas and their relation to human emotions this is a perfect short novel.