Movies Gallery 10 Best Fiction Books of 2014 The Southern Reach Trilogy, ''We Are Not Ourselves,'' ''The Bone Clocks,'' and more of the year's best stories By EW Staff Published on December 4, 2014 12:05AM EST Close 10. The Southern Reach Trilogy, Jeff VanderMeer Over the course of three compulsively readable and nontraditional sci-fi novels—Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance—VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy confronts the sinister, rapidly expanding landmass known only as Area X. The first book trails a team of women chosen (sacrificed?) for an exploration of X. The second investigates the aftermath of the expedition from the halls of a broken, festering government. And the third? It ties everything together, forming the crux of VanderMeer's deeply unsettling philosophical argument. —Madison Vain 9. Euphoria, Lily King How could such a brief novel based on such a seemingly uncool topic—Margaret Mead in the field in New Guinea in the 1930s—pack such a walloping, sensuous punch? King has so engagingly brought to life Mead (in the fictionalized form of Nell Stone), her work, and the men fighting for her affection that she's going to make cultural-anthropology nerds of us all. —Stephan Lee 8. We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas Ten years in the making, Thomas' epic debut traces three generations of Irish-Americans living in New York, all driven by the goal of doing better than their parents—and making sure their children do better than they have. It's a wrenching meditation on the limits of the American dream for immigrants and the working class during the 20th century. But it's also just a gripping family drama. Be prepared to ugly-cry at the end. —Melissa Maerz 7. Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng 'Everything I Never Told You,' by Celeste Ng. Other novels have begun with a teen girl dead in a lake. But in Ng's freakishly assured debut, the question of who killed Lydia Lee, the golden child in a biracial family in 1970s Ohio, is only one thread in a complex tapestry that keeps the pages turning as much with stunning psychological revelations as with the burning central mystery. —Stephan Lee 6. The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell A young girl gets pulled into a centuries-long war between two factions of immortal beings. That premise may sound a bit YA for the author of Cloud Atlas, but Mitchell's latest is just as exquisitely constructed as any of his previous books, with a large cast of memorable characters (including a dissolute Eton type and a thinly veiled Martin Amis stand-in) and a plot that blossoms outward beautifully. —Keith Staskiewicz 5. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr Doerr braids together two parallel stories during World War II: One follows a blind French girl with a rich imaginary life, and the other describes a German orphan whose brilliant mind has brought him to the attention of the Nazis. Without glossing over the atrocities of war, Doerr has somehow managed to write the most hopeful novel of the year. —Stephan Lee 4. The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters What starts off as a keen examination of class in the post-Edwardian years following World War I (think Downton Abbey, season 4) morphs into a steamy, forbidden lesbian love story. That is, until a violent incident transforms it into a thriller with an eye-opening glimpse at the antiquated British judicial system. Part courtroom drama, part sizzling romance, it's the sort of novel that will keep you up reading for three nights straight. (At least three nights—it's 564 pages long!) —Stephan Lee 3. Fourth of July Creek, Smith Henderson The myth of rugged individualism crumbles like so much shale at the side of the body of water that gives Henderson's debut novel, Fourth of July Creek, its name. Pete Snow is a social worker in the early '80s trying to save a young boy living in the Montana wilderness with his deranged, and possibly dangerous, father, a self-styled doomsday prophet who is quick to bite helping hands. Henderson's saga of looking for salvation by way of saving others is lyrical, suspenseful, and heartbreaking. Not all can be rescued, but we can all be redeemed. —Anthony Breznican 2. Redeployment, Phil Klay War has always been hell, and reams have been filled with the ugly poetry of battle. But in his unvarnished prose, Klay—an Iraq-war vet who just won a National Book Award for this collection—captures the voice of the contemporary American soldier, whiplashed by both combat and peace. ''We shot dogs. Not by accident,'' a grunt says in one of 12 stories that not only put the reader's boots on the ground, metaphorically speaking, but put the sand in his teeth as well. —Jeff Labrecque 1. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel For those of you suffering from dystopian fatigue, Station Eleven will renew your hope in the end of the world. To say it's not the typical postapocalyptic novel is an understatement—no zombies, no aliens, not even nuclear war. Instead, a virus called the Georgian flu dispatches 99 percent of humanity with elegant swiftness. Among the things that no longer exist: running water, swimming pools, planes, the Internet. Twenty years after the fall, we follow a constellation of survivors—members of the Traveling Symphony who stage Shakespearean plays in the desolate, scattered towns of North America, and a group that has made a home in an abandoned airport—to uncover the often surprising, sometimes sinister bonds that existed among these characters before the plague. And even though near extinction is never happy, Station Eleven never gets bogged down in bleakness. The fixtures of our modern world have turned out to be fleeting, and this radiant novel will still bowl you over with the beauty of it all. —Stephan Lee