My favorite books of 2014, in random order

Plaster City by Johnny Shaw—sequel to Dove Season, and even funnier. Jimmy Veeder is older, but no wiser, and lives up to Mr. Shaw’s maxim: “When you’re all out of crazy ideas, it’s time to try the stupid ones.”

Full of Days and Dead Men’s Teeth by Bart Lessard—It’s been a busy year for Mr. Lessard, with a brilliant neo-noir meditation on death and morality, and a riotous, alternative-historical tale of crime and fantasy that might be described as “Poepunk.”...