This is really the tail end of my July list, but:
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. Someone in the July incarnation of this thread recommended it to someone else asking for piratey goodness. I found a long forgotten copy on my bookshelf and settled down to read it. Very good. Powers has those crazy leaps of imagination which really still surprise me. What if voodoo was real and part of the bag of tricks used by the pirates of the caribbean? Recommended highly.
The Scar by China Mieville. OK, so despite being a big fan of his stuff, I just got around to this book. Just in time for the July 31st Hugo deadline, as a matter of fact. Again, very good stuff; an interesting world that any DM scavenging for ideas would do well to read. It takes place in a different part of the same world as Perdido Street Station. It's amazing how different the atmosphere is in some ways while still remaining rather gritty. I'm not sure his pirates (an oddly recurring theme of my recent reading) are as pirate-y as Powers', but thats probably a reaction caused by reading On Stranger Tides right before. Certainly, events in the book show that it's an intentional characterization. Recommended highly again.
I also read tons of short fiction for the ballot. It was a strong year; usually there's a couple stories in each catagory that I consider chaff and one that really stands out. This year the competition was very tight in Short Story and Novella. I personally voted Creation and Wild Girls as the top works, but I can see strong arguments made for almost any of the contenders this year. It's probably a good year to pick up Best of SF 8 edited by Hartwell or The Year's Best Science Fiction edited by Dozios which usually have several of the nominees.