Some favorite novels from 2009

Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca (Word Riot Press) (actually, this might qualify as a novella)

The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes (William Morrow) (better than his first, The Somnabulist)

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry (Penguin Press) is an utterly charming first novel that brings to mind G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday and some of the works of Franz Kafka.

Last Days by Brian Evenson (Underland Press) combines the novella "The Brotherhood of Mutilation," published in 2003 as...