Sheri, I always enjoy reading these 'favorites of the year' lists. Thank you for starting the latest installment!

I'll have to think about this further, but off the top of my head I know I can include:

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson (nonfiction)

The first four of the Morland Dynasty series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, a saga of a fictional Yorkshire family:

• The Founding (appropriately begins the series in the 1430s)
• The Dark Rose (begins in 1501)
• The Princeling (begins in the mid-1500s with the reign of Elizabeth I)
• The Oak Apple (begins in 1630 with the brewing of the Civil War)

I am about to start The Black Pearl that is set during Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate. I am finding this series as addictive as Astrokath and Carolyn warned. Only 31 left to go in the series! Actually, I may never reach the end, but that's all right. At least I know that I will have something good to read as a fallback.

I also liked The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, a novel about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson.

I just finished Circling the Sun, also by Paula McLain, on Woodnymph's recommendation. It's a novel about Beryl Markham and her life in Kenya, including her relationship with Denys Finch Hatton, Karen Blixen's (Isak Dinesen's) lover. I haven't really absorbed it yet, but since I'm interested in anything about Colonial Kenya it might have lasting power. I usually prefer reading nonfiction about that era; but as far as fiction goes, I will say that I think this is several notches above most.

A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear, it is the latest in the Maisie Dobbs series.

Of course, I loved it...being a dyed in the wool fan of the series.

I look forward to the next book coming out this year !

I also very much enjoyed All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, but my favourite book of the year was The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks. I didn't know much about the story of King David beyond the basics, but this was a well fleshed out story and the characters were interesting and believable.

I just checked goodreads to refresh my memory- and these 4 would be mine.

My star favorite is The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce. I totally adored this.

Next would be The Grils by Lori Lansens.

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome Jerome, and

the Claverings by Anthony Trollope

I'm really happy to see some of these titles on your lists.

Kathy T., I loved The Martian (but read it last year) and my book group will be reading All the Light You Cannot See for our next meeting.

Frieda, I still have Dead Wake sitting in my TBR pile - time to move it up!

Astrokath, I was hoping to get The Secret Chord for Christmas and didn't ... I need to do a little after-holiday shopping.

Sheilaaus122, I've been wanting to read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, so it's good to hear such positive reviews of The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. I've heard Queenie was the better book of the two, would you agree?

I'm finally back. Here are my favorites of 2015:

By far the best: "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr.

The runner up in 2nd place: "Dead Wake: the Lusitania" by Erik Larsson.

Third place: "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed.

Others I liked a lot "The Dig" by John Preston, "The Mullet Manifesto" by Roger Pinckney, "Orca" by John Pennington, and two by Alexandra Fuller: "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness" and "Leaving Before the Rains Come".

Also: "Circling the Sun" by Paula McClain. I've discovered I have a deep interest in Colonial East Africa, Kenya, etc.

Books I have enjoyed in 2015 have included . . . in no particular order

The Dig John Preston about the 'uncovering' of a Saxon ship burial on the Suffolk coast in 1939.

Five Children at the Weston Front Kate Saunders A most moving account of what happened next to the family from 'Five Children and It'

The Children of Dymchurch William Trevor A slightly unsettling story of a strange boy who notices 'too much' in a quiet sea-side town and probably ruins the life of those with whom he comes into contact.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry Rachel Joyce An elderly man takes off to walk the length of England to visit a woman he used to work with . . . . and the odd selection of people he meets on the way.

A God in Ruins Kate Atkinson This has to be the best Atkinson book I have read. A follow-up to 'Time After Time' but can be read in isolation and, for me, is better. It follows the story of the youngest son Teddy from his fighter pilot days to marriage and his wonderfully portrayed awful hippy daughter.

Sheri, looking through my list of 'books read in 2015' I find I can't remember anything about some of them . . .plots/characters . . . nothing! Does that say more about my fading grey cells or my choice of bad books?

Sheri- I thought Harold Fry was a sweet book...but for some reason, Queenie just blew me away. I definitely thought Queenie was better. I have only heard lots of people mention Harold Fry but very few mentions of Queenie. I am anxious to hear what you think of it.

Vee, I think it is a matter of reading so much that everything runs together in a delightful mishmash.

Some of my favorites for 2015 were:

The Devil in the Marshalsea, Antonia Hodgson (quite Dickensian)

The Lewis Man and Entry Island, Peter May

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin

Edge of Eternity, Ken Follett

Only the Innocent and The Back Road, Rachael Abbott

The Siege Winter, Ariana Franklin posthumously with her daughter

A Blind Goddess, James R. Benn

The Truth According to Us, Annie Barrows

I read a total of 110 books last year, fewer than any in the nine years I've been keeping count. I blame it on you all and my other imaginary friends.

Laughing out loud at your blame-assigning comment, Carolyn.

I'm away from home, where I have my list of books read in 2015. However, I remember I enjoyed:

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry -- Rachel Joyce

Where'd you go, Bernadette? --- Maria Semple I enjoyed this book particularly for her poking fun/insider jokes about Seattle.

Molly Fox's Birthday --- Deirdre Madden. Takes place in one day, the summer solstice.

Lillian on Life -- Alison Jean Lester

I didn't like The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, even though I wanted to.

When I return home I'll check my list to see if I forgot something.

Even if I enjoyed the books mentioned above, I didn't read anything that I would say "Wow!"

Since I'm using what you all read for ideas about what to read, I'll share my favorites as well.

1) Us. by David Nichols. Funny and touching -- a man is trying to save his marriage by taking his family to Europe for a vacation and nothing is working out as planned.

2) The Cowboy and the Cossack by Clair Huffacher. I chose this for my book group, so it was a re-read and I loved it as much the second time as the first. It opens when a group of cowboys (from our west) are on a ship, transporting a herd of cattle to a town in Russia and they find the port master will not let the ship dock to unload. So they unload about a mile off shore. Those who cannot swim are told to hold onto their horses' tails. They soon find they are to be escorted across Russia by a group of Cossacks. It's a wonderful book and this is from someone who does not enjoy Westerns. I also loved the fact that nearly everyone in the book group agreed with me!

3) A Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman. From this I learned I really like Swedish writers. Ove is a curmudgeon who keeps trying to kill himself and keeps getting interrupted by one thing or another. Very funny. Really.

4) Almost anything by Wendell Berry. Another author said he was one of the best writers ever, so I started reading his fiction and agree. His fiction books are all about the same group of people, different generations in Port William, Kentucky. Since I was raised in a close knit rural neighborhood like where his characters are living, I feel I KNOW these people. The stories can be funny, sad, philosophical -- you name it, it's there.

I'm still reading Mr. Berry's books and the only other book I've read this year so far is Lila by Marrianne Robinson, a book group pick for this month. I can't say I've ever liked a book any less!

I had no idea Wendell Berry had written anything other than poetry. I will have to look into his fiction.

Oh, yes, Mary. He is prolific.

I also enjoyed The Martian a great deal, but while I started it in 2015, I finished it in 2016. However I am unlikely to still remember this next year so I'll list it now.

I read and enjoyed the first two books of a trilogy that is not yet complete, Red Rising and Golden Son by Pierce Brown. SF rather than fantasy.

And I read two very good standalone fantasy books by a new author to the scene, Cruel Beauty and Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge.

I also read and loved Jo Walton's The Just City, in which the goddess Athena sets up an experiment in Plato's idea of the philosopher kings. As you see, I prefer not to be too heavily grounded in reality.

And I read an awful lot of so-so books I will not mention here.

I really enjoy reading about everyone's favorites--helps me make a list of what I want to read next.

General Fiction: Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans, Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart, The Turner House by Angela Flournoy, Hausfrau by Jill Essbaum (not for everyone, I know) and The Circle by Dave Eggars.

Favorite short stories were Margaret Atwood's Stone Mattress, sci-fi-ish was The Martian and Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things suspense/thriller would be Michael Robotham's Life or Death and Galbraith/Rowling's third Career of Evil. In the category of unusually fantastical/odd/kind of weird, I have to add Susann Cokal's The Kingdom of Little Wounds and Church of Marvels by Leslie Parry.

I did the Goodreads's book challenge last year and ended up reading 106 books, very little of which was nonfiction. That's a lot of books--which is why I have so many favorites--but even more forgettable schlock! One nonfiction choice was a standout--Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. The repeatedly mentioned All the Light We Cannot See was my favorite in 2014.

Vee.........maybe you actually didn't read them !

Yet another wrinkle in that time of our lives :0) lol

Sheri, I, too, enjoy your lists!

Favorite books of 2015 for me:

The Martian: Andy Weir (the movie was good, but as always, the book was better.)

Dead Wake: Erik Larson

1421: the year the Chinese discovered America : Gavin Menzies

The Murder Room: Michael Capuzzo

PAM

I've added a lot of books to my list, thank you all!

bigdogstoo- if I can get to the library the Martian is waiting for me. ( I have not seen the movie and have no idea what it;s about but I hear it;s good).... and The Murder Room I read a few years ago and thought it was so amazing.. The story of the boy in the box has stayed with me since. Such a good read.

I'm going to cheat a bit and include series as well as particular books - the first title that came to mind as a favorite is Mr. Penumbra's 24 hour Bookstore. That has to be my number 1 pick. Also liked Mrs. Queen takes the Train quite a lot! After that I blanked a bit, and mostly thought of series I enjoyed, so I'll go with W.E.B. Griffin - I read the Semper Fi series and am halfway through The Brotherhood series. I had never read anything of his before and am liking it very much. Also never had read Mercedes Lackey at all, but read the first 2 of the 500 Kingdoms series and am looking forward to the rest.

And thanks for the mention of Stop You're Killing Me - I had not heard of that site before but it looks delicious and I signed up for the newsletter.

(Also furiously scribbling down books to add to the list of TBR)

Dawn

I have slowly been working my way through that "50 Best Science-Fiction and Fantasy" list that i posted here a couple years ago (I've now read 41 of the 50), so not surprisingly, two of my 'best of 2015' are from that list:

Ubik, Philip K Dick - in a world of telepaths and precognitives playing with your perceptions, what is real and what is not? The last page still leaves you wondering!

The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester - although written in the 50's, the story and ideas are as good today, in fact, Bester uses SF ideas that have now become standard in all SF. Bester described it as "Count of Monte Cristo" in space and it was a thrill ride to read. When I finished, all I could do was sit there, breathless, and say WOW. :)

The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Living with a Tawny Owl, Martin Windrow - thanks to whomever mentioned this last year. I owned a parrot for 30 years, and this book captures all the charm, work and heartache of keeping a bird as a pet.

Silently, and Very Fast, Catherynne Valente, a Locus-award winning novella about an artificial intelligence. The AI tells the story (although it takes a while to figure that out), from its first development as a house monitor program, through a multi-generational evolution with the original programmer's descendants, when the question still remains - is this a true intelligence or merely programmed responses, yet how does it differ from the learned responses of a human. Interspersed with several creation myths & fairy tales told from the perspective of the AI. Fascinating. Valente knows her stuff.

Babel-17, Samuel Delany - I tried twice to read Delany's Dahlgren, which is on all of the 'best of' lists, but gave up and tried his earlier Hugo & Nebula winner, Babel-17, which uses the concept language drives perception. A page-turner that kept surprising me.

I noticed that The Martian showed up multiple times above; I enjoyed it very much but found that the explication of all Watney's ingenious solutions eventually got tedious. And anyone at NASA can tell that the NASA center Weir talked to the most was JPL (just as with Tess Gerritsen's Gravity, you knew she did her research at Johnson Space Center)! Being at Headquarters (which every NASA center loves to hate), I found it amusing that in both novels HQ was portrayed as the villain/obstacle to overcome.

I first read The Stars My Destination some 40 years ago, and have re-read it several times since, so I cannot list it for this year. But I do agree with Donnamira that it is a wonderful story. I once heard it described as one of the best SF books ever written. I don't think I would go that far, but it certainly would make my top 100 list. I read a lot of SF, having started at age 9, so that list represents some serious thought.