2014's "Top Ten"s and "Best Of"s, a NYT bestseller, and a winner of the most "Best Of"s prize!

This year, JVNLA had seven books on a huge breadth of year-end “Top Ten” and “Best Of” lists! Including one book that topped lists ABOUT the top lists of the year: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters.

Below is the round-up of these phenomenal books:

Lost in Translation by Ella Frances Sanders (Ten Speed Press, September 2014)

Amazon chose this gorgeous book of illustrations that depict untranslatable words for its Best Books of the Year: Art and Photography list!

Lost in Translation also recently hit the New York Times bestseller list in the Travel section! It reached #6 in December and climbed to #4 in January. Congrats, Ella!

Songs Only You Know by Sean Madigan Hoen (Soho Press, April 2014)

In its list of 10 Best Music Books of 2014, Rolling Stones spotlighted Hoen's “gritty, gripping punk-rock memoir” (as they called it), and heaped praise on it: "It's funny at times, always brutally honest; a half-healed bruise, tender and multi-colored. Few books convey the fever-pitch intensity of youth with such vividness and so little glamorization, or as deeply explore the heartbreaking complexity of family—both those we're born into and the ones we choose."

This Is a Moose written by Richard Morris and illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, May 2014)

Morris and Lichtenheld's picture book collaboration is about a moose being filmed in a nature documentary who just wants to be an astronaut (to the chagrin of the director). Kirkus named it to its Best Children's Books of 2014 list, calling it “a humorous—make that hysterical—homage to movies and big dreams.”

Booklist named it to its Editors' Choice: Books for Youth 2014 list, raving that “this rambunctious picture book is stuffed with delightfully absurd chaos.”

This Is a Moose was also featured in ABC's Best Books for Children 2014 catalog!

And Amazon picked it for its Best Books of the Year: Ages 3-5 list!

The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert (Riverhead, February 2014)

The Kansas City Star named The Swan Gondola, a "love story set at a steampunk carnival in turn-of-the-century Omaha, with a clever take on The Wizard of Oz" to their Best Books of 2014 list!

Archetype by M.D. Waters (Dutton, February 2014 hardcover, June 2014 paperback)

Pop Sugar featured this futuristic suspense novel reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale on its Best Books for Women 2014 list!

The Tyrant's Daughter by J.C. Carleson (Knopf Books for Young Readers, February 2014)

Kirkus named The Tyrant's Daughter to its Best Teen Books of 2014 list, calling this YA about a girl whose family relocates to the US after her father is killed in a coup "smart, relevant, required reading."

Amazon also named it to its Best Books of the Year: Teen and Young Adult list!

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters (Riverhead, September 2014)

In a unique “Top Ten” approach, The Wall Street Journal decided to look at ten “Best Of” lists to find the books most often at the top. They named the “suspenseful and sensual” The Paying Guests as the winner who appeared most often! The Paying Guests is about a widow and her spinster daughter who must take in lodgers in 1922--though things are not nearly as simple as they seem. It won by appearing on the six below lists:

The New York Times's Notable Books of 2014

The Washington Post's Best Books of 2014

The Guardian's Best Books of 2014, chosen by various writers; Ruth Rendell chose The Paying Guests.

Kirkus's Best Fiction Books of 2014; The Paying Guests was also a finalist for 2014's Kirkus Prize.

The Telegraph's Best Books of 2014

Barnes and Noble's Words of the Year: The Best Things They Read in 2014, chosen by various writers; Michael Dirda chose The Paying Guests. Barnes and Noble also included The Paying Guests among its Top Fiction Books for the Holiday list.

Beyond these, there is an incredibly lengthy list of places that included The Paying Guests as one of their “top ten” or “best of” books! Below is just a very brief sampling of some of the rest:

People Magazine's Ten Best Books of 2014

Pop Sugar's Best Books for Women 2014, the #1 pick!

Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Fiction Books of 2014

NPR Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan's Favorite Books of 2014; The Paying Guests was also front and center on NPR's Book Concierge, their Guide to 2014's Great Reads.

Slate's Best Books of 2014

The Seattle Times's Best Books of 2014

The Kansas City Star's Best Books of 2014

Amazon's Best Books of the Year: Literature and Fiction

Congrats to all!