Just in case you depend on the recommendations of strangers:
Here are a few award winners the last couple of years
Pulitzer
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys by Gilbert King
Man Booker Prize
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Nobel Prize in literature
Alice Munro
Patrick Modiano
Edgar Awards (mystery/thriller)
Live by Night – Dennis Lehane
Ordinary Grace – William Kent Krueger
Nebula Awards(science fiction/fantasy)
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Rita Award (romance)
The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James
No good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah Maclean
Amazon’s Best Fiction book of 2014
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Good Reads Favorite Book of 2014 (not actually an award but a survey of readers)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr