So many books, so little time. It’s easy to feel that way when faced with an entire bookstore full of possibilities.

How do you pick? How do you know what’s good? Start here, with some of The Bookworm’s Best of 2014.

Throughout the year, every time something bad happens, you’re reminded to hug the ones you love. Five Days Left by Julie Lawson Timmer, the story of a woman who is at the end stages of a terminal disease, and a man in another state who has fallen in love with a child he’s fostering, will actually make you want to do that. Bring tissues. That’s all I’m saying.

My list wouldn’t be complete without my annual nod to Emma Donoghue. Her novel Frog Music, a big story of murder and lust set in 1870s San Francisco, is a must-read for this year. It’s a gauzy tale – in fact, it seems at times like a dream, as though the main character, Blanche Beunon, has imagined the whole friendship she had with Jenny Bonnet and the reason for Jenny’s death.

I almost guarantee you won’t see The Last Time I Died by Joe Nelms on any other “Best Of” list. It’s here because it was one of those books that just struck me: Christian Franco, a loser in life and love, learns he can revisit his childhood by being brought back from the edge of death. Early trauma left him with holes in his memory. Reviving gave him answers. But he had to die again and again, and you won’t be able to put this book down until you know what happens.

They say we all have a doppelganger, and Recognition by O.H. Bennett is based on that idea. On a rainy night, as a young widow heads home to pick up her son, she sees a beggar who is her late husband’s double. Many years ago, he went missing and was presumed drowned – but did he? You’ll wonder, too.

The Baby Boom by P.J. O’Rourke will bring back memories for anyone born between 1947-64. O’Rourke recalls the usual things Boomers will remember – playing outside ’til dark, getting that first color television – but the real appeal comes when he finds something you’ve long-forgotten, and expounds upon it. This book is like time-travelling to your childhood.

Lovers of the Old (or new) West will love Badluck Way by Bryce Andrews, the story of cowboying, ranch life and the end of both. It’s also a tale of conservation; wolves were a big problem on the ranch where Andrews worked, and they cost his employer a good amount of money. But where’s the happy medium between raising cattle and being a steward to the land and its wildlife?

I’m normally not a big fan of biographies that include “recreations,” but Death of a King by Tavis Smiley was a great exception. In this book, Smiley envisions the last year of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: his friendships, his dilemmas, the heartbreak he knew and caused, the work he did and that which he might’ve wished he didn’t do. I liked this book because it’s thoughtful, and because it makes Dr. King into an ordinary man.

If you’ve read other “Best Of” lists lately, you’ve probably found Being Mortal by Atul Gawande there – and for good reason. It’s about the end-of-life, aging and how medicine perceives both.

Terri Schlichenmeyer has been reading since she was three years old and never goes anywhere without a book. Readers with questions or comments may write to Terri in care of this publication.