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