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This is my bookshelf – I am starting to run out of space
When it comes to authors, we all have our favourites. I have a few I keep going back to time and time again. My reading habits lean towards thrillers, suspense, mystery, and crime but from time to time I recognise the need to try something different.
During the early 2000’s I discovered Johnathan Kellerman – I simply could not get enough. I worked my way through everything he wrote. After that, I took a break and when I returned to Kellerman with The Wedding Guest in 2019, I was disappointed. I found it extremely slow. The lesson I took from this experience was that it is important to mix things up and expand your experience.
If you are looking for something different, here are the books that have stood out for me over the years and books I believe everyone should read – at least once!
If you are looking for a supernatural tale, there are so many Stephen King books to choose from. I can safely say I have never read anything from Stephen King that I have not loved. There is a reason he is called a master storyteller. If I had to choose my favourites they are:
Mr Mercedes, Finders Keepers and End of Watch – these are brilliantly good reads and on the light side when it comes to the supernatural. I even convinced my husband, who has no patience for anything supernatural to read these. If these are not enough supernatural for you – get a copy of Lisey’s Story.
Mr Mercedes
In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed, fifteen are wounded. The killer escaped.
Lisey’s Story
Two years after her husband’s death, Lisey Landon decides it’s time to go through his office to clear out his papers. Scott Landon was a bestselling novelist and Lisey has been besieged by people wanting to buy any of his unpublished work but she is determined not to let that happen. As she begins the process of cleaning, she is contacted by an unsavoury character who claims that if she does not turn over the papers, he will make her suffer the consequences. Find strength she did not know she had and never used during their marriage, Lisey refuses, and true to his word “Zack McCool” begins to stalk her. Lisey begins to remember strange events from her marriage that she had suppressed and finds clues that may help save her life.
If you prefer a very dark thriller, you simply have to read Cody McFadyen’s Shadow Man, The Darker Side, The Face of Death, Abandoned, The Truth Factory. This bone-chilling thriller series introduces you to FBI Special Agent Smoky Barrett. An utterly unique heroine that faces some of the most horrific situations and killers so gruesome they are simply beyond compare. Be warned this tale will keep you up at night, and not just to keep reading. It is brilliantly written and sure to add Cody McFadyen to your favourite author list.
Shadow Man
Once, Special Agent Smoky Barrett hunted serial killers for the FBI. She was one of the best until a madman terrorized her family, killed her husband and daughter, and left her face scarred and her soul brutalized. Turning the tables on the killer, Smoky shot him dead but her life was shattered forever. Now Smoky dreams about picking up her weapon again. She dreams about placing the cold steel between her lips and pulling the trigger one last time. Because for a woman who’s lost everything, what is there left to lose?
She’s about to find out. In all her years at the Bureau, Smoky has never encountered anyone like him: a new and fascinating kind of monster, a twisted genius who defies profilers’ attempts to understand him. And he’s issued Smoky a direct challenge, coaxing her back from the brink with the only thing that could convince her to live.
The killer videotaped his latest crime, an act of horror that left a child motherless, then sent a message addressed to Agent Smoky Barrett. The message is enough to shock Smoky back to work, back to her FBI team. And that child awakens something in Smoky she thought was gone forever. Suddenly the stakes are raised. The game has changed. For as this deranged monster embarks on an unspeakable spree of perversion and murder, Smoky is coming alive again and she’s about to face her greatest fears as a cop, a woman, a mother—and a merciless killer’s next victim.
Michael Connelly’s The Poet draws you into the world of a devious serial killer who kills cops. I have not been too crazy about the new stuff he has brought out for the TV Series – but do not let that keep you for his best book ever: The Poet! If you only ever read one Michael Connelly book – please make sure it is The Poet! This is without a doubt one of my all-time favourite reads.
The Poet
Jack McEvoy specializes in death. As a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, he has seen every kind of murder. But his professional bravado doesn’t lessen the brutal shock of learning that his only brother is dead, a suicide.
Jack’s brother was a homicide detective, and he had been depressed about a recent murder case, a hideously grisly one, that he’d been unable to solve.
McEvoy decides that the best way to exorcise his grief is by writing a feature on police suicides. But when he begins his research, he quickly arrives at a stunning revelation. Following his leads, protecting his sources, muscling his way inside a federal investigation, Jack grabs hold of what is clearly the story of a lifetime. He also knows that in taking on the story, he’s making himself the most visible target for a murderer who has eluded the greatest investigators alive.
For something animal-related, you cannot go wrong with: A Dog’s Purpose by W Bruce Cameron this book had me laughing one minute and crying the next. Keep the tissues handy. After reading this book you will look at your dogs a little differently.
A Dog’s Purpose told from a dog’s perspective, has the highest reader-ranking of any recent New York Times Bestseller.
Probably what makes this story so beloved and unique is that it is told from the perspective of a real dog — that is, not a dog who understands English or talks to other dogs or animals. Often, this results in hilarious misunderstandings — just as in real life.
Also: it is not a story where at the end of the book the dog dies. That’s not a spoiler alert because the entire premise of the novel is that the dog never dies—he keeps being reborn, remembering each life, learning lessons from each life that help him with the next one. Eventually, he comes to conclude there must be a purpose, a reason for him to be reborn, and until he has figured out that purpose, he’ll keep being reborn, over and over again.
If you love dogs or know someone who does, you can’t go wrong with A Dog’s Purpose.
If tears are what you are looking for, The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. The only love story that had me crying like a baby. You can read this book in a day but be warned it is the saddest story ever!
The Notebook
A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open on his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn’t understand. Until he begins to read to her. The Notebook is an achingly tender story about the enduring power of love, a story of miracles that will stay with you forever. Set amid the austere beauty of coastal North Carolina in 1946, The Notebook begins with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner returned home from World War II. Noah, thirty-one, is restoring a plantation home to its former glory, and he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met fourteen years earlier, a girl he loved like no other. Unable to find her, yet unwilling to forget the summer they spent together, Noah is content to live with only memories…. Until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him once again. Allie Nelson, twenty-nine, is now engaged to another man but realises that the original passion she felt for Noah has not dimmed with the passage of time. Still, the obstacles that once ended their previous relationship remain, and the gulf between their worlds is too vast to ignore. With her impending marriage only weeks away, Allie is forced to confront her hopes and dreams for the future, a future that only she can shape. Like a puzzle within a puzzle, the story of Noah and Allie is just beginning. As it unfolds, their tale miraculously becomes something different, with much higher stakes. The result is a deeply moving portrait of love itself, the tender moments, and fundamental changes that affect us all.
And while we are on the sad stuff, for a nonfiction story that will simply blow you away try A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer
A Child Called “It” is the unforgettable story of a child whose courage and unyielding determination enabled him to survive extreme life-threatening odds.
As a child, Dave was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous games–games that left him, Dave, nearly dead. With only his willpower to survive, Dave learned how to play his Mother’s sinister games in order to survive because she no longer considered Dave a son but a slave, and no longer a boy but an “It.”
Although A Child Called “It” contains situations of mistreatment Dave suffered, it is a real-life story of the indomitable human spirit. This gripping account is told through the eyes of a child–who will pay any price in order to succeed.
The first part of a trilogy series*, A Child Called “It” is currently translated in nearly forty languages and has been read by millions throughout the world. As stated by Jack Canfield, co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Dave is the living example that all of us have the capability to better ourselves no matter what the odds.
One’s life is forever changed after living through the eyes of A Child Called “It.
The last on my list today – for something with a touch of history and war (even if those topics do not appeal to you) City of Thieves by David Benioff – This is one of those book that stay with you, long after you have read it! This is a moving story you will find yourself drawn into very quickly.
City Of Thieves
From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival — and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime.
During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.
By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men
When it comes to books I love, I can sit here all day…… sorry if this turn out to be a little long winded. I am sure, no matter what your preference, there is something here you will enjoy. What do you recommend? Leave a comment below.
Until next time, happy reading!
Hi
Thanks for sharing!
What motivates you to read? And why fiction?
Thanks
Animusfuel
Thank you for your comment. I discovered the wonderful escape of a good book in my teens, and I have enjoyed fiction ever since. For me reading has always been about relaxing and escaping the real world.