Pile By the Bed’s top 5 picks for 2019 (with 4 honourable mentions)

Pile by the Bed reviews Brightfall by Jaime Lee Moyer a fantasy novel that picks up with Marian twelve years after the well known Robin Hood stories.

Pile by the Bed reviews Your House Will Pay the debut novel by Steph Cha that explores the ongoing echoes of 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Pile by the Bed reviewes To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek, a journey across England in 1348, a time of impending plague

Pile by the Bed reviews In Darkness Visible by Tony Jones, which looks at the Balkan war and its aftermath, sequel to his historical thriller The Twentieth Man.

Pile By the Bed reviews The Nickel Boys, by Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead, the story of a reformatory school in Florida in the 1960s.

Pile by the Bed reviews The Fifth Column by Andrew Gross, a historical thriller in which one man takes on Nazi sympathisers in America before World War II

Pile by the Bed reviews The Ten Thousand Doors of January, the debut fantasy novel by Alix E Harrow

Pile by the Bed reviews Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry, the story of two ageing Irish gangsters and finds it to be a cross between Samuel Beckett and Quentin Tarrantino

Pile by the Bed reviews Bone China the latest gothic offering from Laura Purcell.

Pile by the Bed reviews The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott, a debut novel about the creation and distribution of Doctor Zhivago during the Cold War.

Pile by the Bed reviews Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman, a timely historical crime novel that explores Baltimore in the 1960s.

Pile by the Bed reviews Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff using pulp horror and science fiction tropes to explore racism in America in the 1950s.

Pile by the Bed reviews the novel version of Pan’s Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke – a “stunning work of fantasy”.

Pile by the Bed reviews Fortune by Lenny Bartulin – “an original, vibrant and entertaining historical novel”

Pile by the Bed reviews Crossings by Alex Landragin, a body hopping romp across the centuries.

Pile by the Bed reviews Jess Kidd’s third novel Things in Jars – a Victorian crime thriller with a supernatural edge.

Pile by the Bed reviews The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith, engaging historical fiction that deals with the birth of the movies.

Pile by the Bed reviews The Silent Death by Volker Kutscher, the second of the 1930s Berlin set Gereon Rath books in translation

Pile by the Bed reviews The Porpoise by Mark Haddon and finds it a vital retelling of classic Greek stories.