Our selection of the 10 best books of the year 2018.

We ended the year with a selection of the ten best books of 2018, which should really be called, the ten books that have caught our attention this year that leaves us. We chose ten, although we might as well have chosen twice as much. Half would have been very difficult for me.

As always, They are not all who are, but they are all who are. Any of them, a great choice, you just have to choose the genre that you like the most. The story will live up to it.

The witch by Camila Lackberg. Ed. Maeva.

Tenth installment of the series The crimes of Fjällbacka.

The disappearance of Linnea, a four-year-old girl, from a farm on the outskirts of Fjällbacka, awakens tragic memories. Thirty years before, the trail of another girl, Stella, was lost on the same farm, who was soon found dead. Then two teenagers were accused of his kidnapping and murder, tried and found guilty, but they avoided going to prison because they were minors.

One of them has led a peaceful life in Fjällbacka, the other, a successful actress, returns for the first time after the event to play Ingrid Bergman in a film to be shot in the area.

The people of Fjällbacka organize to search for Linnea, and when they finally find her, dead, near the pond where the other girl's body was found decades ago, they fearfully wonder if other girls may be in danger.

Although Patrik believes that the truth always finds its way despite rumors and superstition, both he and his colleagues at the police station investigate the connection between the two cases.

For this they will have the help of Erika, who has been working for some time on a book about the murder of that girl, apparently solved years ago.

The Captain's Daughters by María Dueñas when we have the information. Ed. Planet.

New York, 1936. The small food house El Capitán starts its journey on Fourteenth Street, one of the enclaves of the Spanish colony that at that time resides in the city. The accidental death of its owner, the tarambana Emilio Arenas, forces his indomitable daughters in their twenties to take over the business while the court resolves the collection of a promising compensation. Dejected and harassed by the urgent need to survive, the temperamental Victoria, Mona and Luz Arenas will fight their way through skyscrapers, compatriots, adversities and loves, determined to turn a dream into reality.

With a reading that is as agile and enveloping as it is moving, The Captain's Daughters unfolds the story of three young Spanish women who were forced to cross an ocean, settled in a dazzling city and fought bravely to find their way. A tribute to the women who resist when the winds blow against it and a tribute to all those brave people who lived — and live — the adventure, often epic and almost always uncertain, of emigration.

The day love was lost by Javier Castillo when we have the information. Ed. Sum.

At midnight on December 14, a bruised young woman shows up naked at the FBI facility in New York. Inspector Bowring, head of the Criminology Unit, will try to discover what hides a yellowish note with the name of a woman who hours later appears beheaded in a field. The investigation will plunge him fully into a plot in which destiny, love and revenge are intertwined in a gruesome story that is connected to the disappearance of a girl several years before and whose whereabouts he could never discover.

 Homeland by Fernando Aramburu when we have the information. Tusquets Editors.

National Narrative Award

Narrative Critics Award

Francisco Umbral Award for Book of the Year

The day ETA announces the abandonment of arms, Bittori goes to the cemetery to tell the grave of her husband, Txato, murdered by the terrorists, that she has decided to return to the house where they lived. Will she be able to live with those who harassed her before and after the attack that disrupted her life and that of her family? Will she be able to know who was the hooded man who killed her husband one rainy day, when he was returning from his transport company? No matter how sneaky, Bittori's presence will alter the false tranquility of the town, especially her neighbor Miren, a once close friend and mother of Joxe Mari, an imprisoned terrorist and suspected of Bittori's worst fears. What happened between those two women? What has poisoned the lives of your children and your close-knit husbands in the past? With their hidden tears and unwavering convictions, with their wounds and their bravery, the incandescent story of their lives before and after the crater that was the death of Txato, speaks to us of the impossibility of forgetting and the need for forgiveness in a community broken by political fanaticism.

Talion scored by Santiago Díaz Cortés when we have the information. Ed. Planet.

What would you do if you only had two months to live?

Marta Aguilera, a journalist committed to her trade, receives news that will change her fate: a tumor threatens her health and she has barely two months to live. With nothing to lose and no one to be held accountable, Marta feels that reality is a threatening place and decides to occupy the time she has left teaching JUSTICE.
In a race against time for her own life and against the unshakable inspector Daniela Gutiérrez, Marta Aguilera will try to apply her particular law of retaliation.

I, Julia scored by Santiago Posteguillo. Ed. Planet.

Planeta Prize 2018 with a feminist novel set in the Roman Empire.

192 AD Several men fight for an empire, but Julia, daughter of kings, mother of Caesars and wife of emperor, thinks of something greater: a dynasty. Rome is under the control of Commodus, a mad emperor. The Senate is conspiring to end the tyrant and the most powerful military governors could stage a coup: Albino in Britain, Severo on the Danube or Black in Syria. Comfortable holds his wives to prevent their rebellion and Julia, Severo's wife, thus becomes a hostage.

Suddenly, Rome burns. A fire ravages the city. Is it a disaster or an opportunity? Five men prepare to fight to the death for power. They think the game is about to begin. But for Julia the game has already begun.

He knows that only a woman can forge a dynasty.

In the times of Hate by Rosa Montero when we have the information. Seix Barral.

Third installment in the Bruna Husky series. National Prize for Literature.

Independent, unsociable, intuitive and powerful, replicant detective Bruna Husky has only one vulnerable point: her big heart. When Inspector Lizard disappears without a trace, the detective sets out on a desperate, timed search for the cop. Her research leads her to a remote colony of the New Ancients, a sect that denies technology, as well as tracing the origins of a dark web of power that dates back to the XNUMXth century. Meanwhile, the world situation is becoming more and more convulsed, populist tension increases and civil war seems inevitable.
Bruna will have to face her greatest fear, death, in a story that is an accurate and dazzling portrait of the times in which we live.
The Times of Hate is an intense novel with fast-paced action, in which the great themes of Rosa Montero are present: the passage of time, the need of others to make life worthwhile, passion as rebellion against the death, the excesses of power and the horror of dogmas.

The mushroom hunter by Long Litt Woon. Ed. Maeva.

After the unexpected death of her husband, Long Litt Woon discovers the wonderful world of mushrooms and joins the Mushroom Pickers, a group dedicated to their study and collection. In these memories he also ventures on a personal journey of self-knowledge and overcoming pain. Long tells a story as positive as it is painful, and makes the reader enter his personal search and feel it as his own. The author not only shows mushrooms as a food or a dangerous poison, but also explains their history and cultural importance. The encounter between the mushrooms and your personal grieving process will trigger profound changes in your life, and will give you a new meaning and a new identity.

Ordesa by Manuel Vilas. Ed. Alfaguara.

Best book of the year according to Babelia (El País)
Book recommended by La Esfera (The World)
Literature Arts & Letters Award (El Heraldo)

A novel about how to put our broken pieces back together to understand who we are.

An intimate reading of the recent history of Spain.

Reality and fiction are mixed in this novel written with a courageous and transgressive voice that tells us a true, difficult story in which we can all recognize ourselves.

From the tear at times, and always from the emotion, Vilas tells us about everything that makes us vulnerable, about the need to get up and move on when it does not seem possible, when almost everything that united us to others has disappeared or we have broken it. It is then when love and a certain distance -also that which irony allows us- can save us.

An education by Tara Westover. Ed. Lumen.

Best Book of the Year by the New York Times.

Best Book of the Year by Amazon.

Born in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover has grown up in harmony with a great nature and bowed to the laws established by her father, a fundamentalist Mormon convinced that the end of the world is imminent. Neither Tara nor her siblings go to school or see a doctor when they are ill. They all work with their father, and their mother is a healer and the only midwife in the area.

Tara has a talent: singing, and an obsession: knowing. He sets foot in a classroom for the first time at the age of seventeen: he does not know that there have been two world wars, but neither does the exact date of his birth (he has no documents). He soon discovers that education is the only way to escape from home. Despite starting from scratch, he gathers the strength to prepare for the university entrance exam, cross the ocean and graduate from Cambridge, even if he must break ties with his family to do so.