UPDATE: While I was driving home from work today, a little voice in my head asked me, “Did you leave Noelle Holten off the list?” and, “How could you?” Not only did I love Dead Inside, but Holten has been very supportive of my meager social media. It had to be a reckless click of the mouse that got her off the list. And then I was AFK all evening, so it took until the wee small hours to address. Argh.

Anyway, fixed now.

Friday Favorites is a weekly meme hosted by Something of the Book.

I typically resist doing any “____ of The Year” posts until the end of the year, but reading this one on the topic list got me thinking, and I ended up compiling most of the list from memory (but I’m glad I keep a log, because I’d have been mad in a day or two when I remembered the rest of these). Still, this is an incomplete list—I still have a handful of books to get through this year, and there are 3 strong contenders for this list.

There were plenty I cut from this, including authors of books that I really enjoyed. But at the end of the day, these are the 18 New-to-Me authors from the past year that are auto-buys/borrows for me. I should say a thing or two about all of these, but I just don’t have the time. Check the original posts I wrote about these books for a little more about the way these writers worked their way into my subconscious.

bullet James Bailey, author of The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo and Dispatches from a Tourist Trap
bullet C.J. Box, author of Back of Beyond, The Highway, Open Season, Savage Run, and The Badlands
bullet Gyles Brandreth, author of Have You Eaten Grandma?: Or, the Life-Saving Importance of Correct Punctuation, Grammar, and Good English
bullet Mike Chen, author of Here and Now and Then
bullet Sarah Chorn, author of Seraphina’s Lament
bullet Helen Fitzgerald, author of Worst Case Scenario
bullet Peter Grainger, author of An Accidental Death
bullet Noelle Holten, author of Dead Inside
bullet Niel Lancaster, author of Going Dark and Going Rogue
bullet Adrian McKinty, author of The Chain
bullet Luna Miller (and I should probably mention Aidan Isherwood, translator), author of Lions Tail
bullet Todd Morr , author of Instant Karma
bullet David Nolan, author of Black Moss
bullet Judith O’Reilly, author of Killing State
bullet Nick Quantrill, author of Broken Dreams
bullet Andy Redsmith, author of Breaking the Lore
bullet Ian Shane, author of Postgraduate
bullet Melissa Simonson, author of Lingering
bullet Abbi Waxman, author of The Bookish Life of Nina Hill Post