Novel List

Choose one of these books to read for your Author Project and Novel Project (both projects will be over this book!). You’ll need to buy, rent, borrow, download, or access this book yourself. Some of these are freely available online, and many can be checked out from the library (as physical books or ebooks).

· Yes – audio books count! You may find it harder to search and quote them, though.

· Yes – You may choose a book you’ve already read, but you will need to read it again this semester. Projects require quotes, details, and specifics.

· Yes – you can get the book anywhere that sells, rents, or loans out books.

Braithwaite, Oyinkan: My Sister, The Serial Killer

My Sister, The Serial Killer (2018): Oyinkan Braithwaite offers up a tale of Nigerian sisters Ayoola, a beautiful and sociopathic serial killer who destroys boyfriends, aware that all they ever want her for is her appearance, and Korede, a nurse whose average looks leave her continually passed up in preference for Ayoola. Still, taciturn and devoted Korede works hard to cover up her charming sister’s crimes. What will happen when they both fall for the same guy?

Capote, Truman: In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood (1965): The most famous true crime novel of all time and one of the first non-fiction novels ever written; In Cold Blood is the bestseller that haunted its author long after he finished writing it. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy.

Carr, Caleb: The Alienist

The Alienist (1994): This modern classic continues to be a touchstone of historical suspense fiction for readers everywhere. The year is 1896. The city is New York. Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—a psychologist, or “alienist”—to view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. From there the two embark on a revolutionary effort in criminology: creating a psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again before their hunt is over.

Chandler, Raymond: The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep (1939): A dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

Christie, Agatha any novel (my top choice is The Pale Horse; The Murder On The Links is free here; Poirot Investigates is free here; click here to see all of her books that are available for free)

The Pale Horse (1961): When an elderly priest is murdered, the killer searches the victim so roughly that his already ragged cassock is torn in the process. What was the killer looking for? And what had a dying woman confided to the priest on her deathbed only hours earlier? Mark Easterbrook and his sidekick Ginger Corrigan are determined to find out. Maybe the three women who run The Pale Horse public house, and who are rumored to practice the “Dark Arts,” can provide some answers?

Collette, Abby: A Deadly Inside Scoop

A Deadly Inside Scoop (2020): This book kicks off a charming cozy mystery series set in an ice cream shop—with a fabulous cast of quirky characters. Recent MBA grad Bronwyn Crewse has just taken over her family's ice cream shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and she's going back to basics. Win finds a body in the snow, and it turns out the dead man was a grifter with an old feud with the Crewse family. Soon, Win’s father is implicated in his death. It's not easy to juggle a new-to-her business while solving a crime, but Win is determined to do it. With the help of her quirky best friends and her tight-knit family, she'll catch the ice cold killer before she has a meltdown...

Doyle, Arthur Conan any Sherlock Holmes novel (my top choice is The Hound of the Baskervilles – this book is free here, and the audiobook is free here)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902): The country doctor had come to 221B Baker Street, the famous lodgings of Sherlock Holmes, with an eerie tale—the legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles, the devil-beast that haunted the lonely moors around the Baskervilles' ancestral home. The tale warned the descendants of that ancient family never to venture out on the moor "in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted." But one of the most recent Baskervilles, Sir Charles, was now dead, and the footprints of a giant hound had been found near his body. Would the new heir of the Baskervilles meet the same dreadful fate? Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend Dr. Watson are faced with their most terrifying case in this wonderful classic of masterful detection and bone-chilling suspense.

Flynn, Gillian: Gone Girl, Sharp Objects or Dark Places

Gone Girl (2012): Told from the alternating perspectives of Amy and Nick whose marriage is falling apart in small-town Missouri, this is first a story of perfect young love in Manhattan, followed by its slow disintegration after both partners lose their jobs and move to Nick's hometown. When Amy disappears, who is innocent and who is guilty? Slowly, each spouse's lies and deceptions are laid bare until the real foundation of their relationship is revealed.

Sharp Objects (2006): Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. Now, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.

Dark Places (2009): Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben.

Foley, Lucy: The Hunting Party or The Guest List

The Hunting Party (2019): During Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps, just as a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world. Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead. . . and another of them did it.

The Guest List (2020): On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

French, Tana any novel (my top choices are In The Woods or Faithful Place)

In The Woods (2007): Twenty years after being only one of three boys to be found after having gone missing in the woods, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

Faithful Place (2010): Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was a nineteen-year-old kid with a dream of escaping his family's cramped flat on Faithful Place and running away to London with his girl, Rosie Daly. But on the night they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. He never went home again. Neither did Rosie. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank, now a detective in the Dublin Undercover squad, is going home whether he likes it or not.

Gamboa, Santiago: Night Prayers

Night Prayers (2016): A thrilling literary novel about crime and corruption in Latin America told in alternating voices and perspectives, Night Prayers is the story of Manuel, a Colombian philosophy student arrested in Bangkok and accused of drug trafficking. Unless he enters a guilty plea he will almost certainly be sentenced to death. But it is not his own death that weighs most heavily on him but a tender longing for his sister, Juana, whom he hasn't seen for years. Fans of both Roberto Bolaño and Gabriel García Márquez will find much to admire in this story about the mean streets of Bogotá, the sordid bordellos of Thailand, and a love between siblings that knows no end.

Grafton, Sue any novel (A is for Alibi is the first in her series)

A is for Alibi (1982): A tough-talking former cop, private investigator Kinsey Millhone has set up a modest detective agency in a quiet corner of Santa Teresa, California. A twice-divorced loner with few personal possessions and fewer personal attachments, she's got a soft spot for underdogs and lost causes. That's why she draws desperate clients like Nikki Fife. Eight years ago, she was convicted of killing her philandering husband. Now she's out on parole and needs Kinsey's help to find the real killer. But after all this time, clearing Nikki's bad name won't be easy. When her investigation turns up a second corpse, more suspects, and a new reason to kill, Kinsey discovers that the edge is closer—and sharper—than she imagined.

Hawkins, Paula: The Girl on the Train or Into the Water

The Girl on the Train (2015): With alternating perspectives ranging from the fantasies of a young woman who watches a couple from the window of her train commute every day, to the true story of the couple themselves, and a missing person case, the reader is plunged into a twisting, turning mystery of deception and misdirection.

Into The Water (2017): A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.

Khan, Vaseem: The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra (2015): On the day he retires, Inspector Ashwin Chopra inherits two unexpected mysteries. The first is the case of a drowned boy, whose suspicious death no one seems to want solved. And the second is a baby elephant. As his search for clues takes him across the teeming city of Mumbai, from its grand high rises to its sprawling slums and deep into its murky underworld, Chopra begins to suspect that there may be a great deal more to both his last case and his new ward than he thought. And he soon learns that when the going gets tough, a determined elephant may be exactly what an honest man needs...

Locke, Attica: Bluebird, Bluebird

Bluebird, Bluebird (2017): A powerful thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV show Empire. When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders--a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes--and save himself in the process--before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. A rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas.

Moriarty, Liane: Big Little Lies

Big Little Lies (2014): A murder...A tragic accident...Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead. Three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place. Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.

Nakamura, Fuminori: The Thief

The Thief (2012): The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections.... But he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. And now the Thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape.