Top Ten Books For Readers Who Like Everything

This weeks Top Ten Tuesday list (weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) is the Top Ten Books for Readers Who Like ______.

Sometimes the top 10 lists feel like I'm just pimping out the same books over and over.  Well, I'm sick of offering feedback on Chick Lit.  Everyone knows that's my favorite - but I've read lots of other types of books, I just don't talk about them as much.

When I was younger, I used to love cop/private eye novels.  I was totally old school, reading Ed McBain, Robert Parker and Lawrence Sanders (loved the McNally series).  When they died, I was crushed and wondered who I would read next.  I've found lots of great authors since then, but none that I loved like those three crime writers.

So this week, I've decided to give you a mixed bag of books choices. 

Top Ten Books...

For Readers Who Like Crime Novels

1.  McNally's Risk by Lawrence Sanders....My favorite of the McNally books.  Just a fun whodunit.

Sex, scandal, and suspicion. Palm Beach playboy sleuth Archy McNally is seduced by the very temptress he's been hired to investigate. Theodosia Johnson has a past as provocative as her butterfly tattoo. And a future as questionable as her shocking flirtations with marriage, McNally, and murder.

2.  Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man by Ed McBain...Loved the 87th Precinct novels.  So dated now, but I still liked them.  The boys of the 87th Precinct knew what it all meant: their arch nemesis was back in town -- the Deaf Man. Even the gruesome crucifixion murder and a cat burglar who leaves live kittens as his calling card could not keep Carella, Kling, Hawes, and Brown from the torment of the riddles. And time was running out. 

3.  Chance by Robert B. Parker....Still miss Robert Parker.  One of the best things was having books to discuss with my Grandmother.  Mafia princess Shirley Meeker wants her husband back. So does her father the kingpin and a few other shady characters. Spenser and hawk head to Vegas to find Anthony Meeker and to confirm their suspicion that all these people aren't just missing Anthony's smile. And Spenser has to make some sense of some very disorganized crime


For Readers Who Like Freaky Families

4.  Mother, Mother by Karen Zalickas......So freaking weird.  Makes you

wonder if any family you see is real.  Josephine Hurst has her family under control. With two beautiful daughters, a brilliantly intelligent son, a tech-guru of a husband and a historical landmark home, her life is picture perfect. She has everything she wants; all she has to do is keep it that way. But living in this matriarch’s determinedly cheerful, yet subtly controlling domain hasn’t been easy for her family, and when her oldest daughter, Rose, runs off with a mysterious boyfriend, Josephine tightens her grip, gradually turning her flawless home into a darker sort of prison. 

5.  The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell....So good and unexpected.  Totally weird, but sad family.   One Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. The event is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. Soon it seems as though they've never been a family at all. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grew up in -- and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.

6.  The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf....This book sat on my bedside table for close to a year before I got to it, then I couldn't put it down.  It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn's shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night.


 7.  Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.....One of the best titles I've ever seen, it sticks in your mind, as the story does.  At Finn’s funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail. Inside is a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and if she can bring herself to trust this unexpected friend, he just might be the one she needs the most.


For Readers Who Like WWII Books

8.  The Distant Hours by Kate Morton....I love Kate Morton and all of her books, but this one is

special.  A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old house, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13 year old child during WWII. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn’t been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941. 

9.  A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams....I can't imagine losing a man to a war or a friend.....Memorial Day, 1938: New York socialite Lily Dane has just returned with her family to the idyllic oceanfront community of Seaview, Rhode Island, expecting another placid summer season among the familiar traditions and friendships that sustained her after heartbreak. 

10.  Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.....So heartbreaking.  Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door-to-door arresting French families in the middle of the night. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard-their secret hiding place-and promises to come back for him as soon as they are released.


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