The First Stop for Literature Lovers
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Jo Nesbo made his name overseas with the Harry Hole series, more specifically the ones which take place in Norway, the main character’s home country. It took publishers a fairly long time to translate the first novel of the series, The Bat, which uncharacteristically takes us to Australia, where Harry Hole finds himself working as an observer for the police following the murder of a young Norwegian woman.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Timothy Egan has long-ago immersed himself in the racial history of the United States of America, having authored numerous articles and books on the subject over the course of his life. In 2023 he published another important work in his long line of investigations, titled A Fever in the Heartland. In it, he investigates the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920 under the leadership of D.C. Stephenson, its growth as an organization, and downfall at the hands of a deathbed confession.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
David Grann has a knack for presenting history through an exciting framework, able to make virtually any true account as exciting as any work of fiction. In The Wager, he flexes his literary muscles once again, telling the story of the titular ship, which left England in 1740 on a secret mission and only reappeared on the coast of Brazil two years later. Its members had a hell of a story to tell, but a second group of survivors showed up six months later, with a very different story of their own to tell.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Kurt Vonnegut had the invaluable ability of pointing out all the truly ridiculous aspects of our lives hiding right beneath our noses, and few are the works where he does it better than Galapagos. The story follows a group of random people who, through sheer coincidence, are stranded on the titular islands and become the sole progenitors for a new, and somewhat different human race.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Timothy Hallinan has doubtlessly created one of the more unique investigators in Junior Bender, a man who generally serves the other side of the law. In Rock of Ages, Timothy Hallinan sends his protagonist on a weekend-long investigation for an old gangster, Irwin Dressler, who fears someone might be using the rock tour he put together as a front to steal his money.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
James A. Michener has shown himself capable of penning profound novels over the course of his career, the kind to explore the human condition at depths few are capable of reaching. The Drifters is one of his best-known novels, telling the story of a young group of people in the 1960s who, by pure chance, all meet at a bar in Spain, and decide to travel the world on hedonistic and philosophical pursuits.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
John Boyne has dealt with a wide variety of topics and ideas over the course of his twenty-plus novels, and in All the Broken Places he takes us into the life of a ninety-one year-old woman with a giant problem. She has a dark past she wishes to hide, one relating to Nazi Germany, but one night she witnesses a violent argument between her new neighbours, one which threatens to expose the history she so carefully protected for decades.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Freida McFadden has made a lot of fans for herself when she published The Housemaid, and now she returns with a tour-de-force of a sequel, titled The Housemaid’s Secret. This time around, we follow Millie as she finds a job working for a wealthy man living in a stunning penthouse, with a permanently-locked door where his ill wife allegedly resides.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Michael Crichton profoundly influenced the science-fiction genre decades ago with The Andromeda Strain, and over fifty years later, in 2020, the sequel titled The Andromeda Evolution, co-written with Daniel H. Wilson was posthumously published. The story takes us decades into the future, where humanity had just about forgotten about the deadly microparticle which almost brought about total extinction, when it suddenly reappears in the Brazilian jungle.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Bonnie Garmus may have taken quite a while to publish her debut novel, Lessons in Chemistry, but it was certainly worth the wait, with even a TV show adaptation being in the making. The novel tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a scientist who struggled during the 1950s amidst an all-male team at Hastings Research Institute, and in the 1960s became the unlikely star for a cooking show, and perhaps the catalyst to something much greater.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Jim Popkin might have waited a fairly long time to write his first novel, Code Name Blue Wren, but his vast experience as a journalist certainly helped to make it a deserved bestseller. The non-fiction book tells the true story of Ana Montes, who spent 17 years working as an expert on Cuba for the government by day, and transmitting classified information to that very same country by night.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Donna Tartt may not be the most prolific author out there, but her works have always carried profound meaning, and for many, The Secret History served as an introduction to a criminally-underrated writer. The story following Richard Papen, a young man who ends up in a liberal arts college and drawn to an exclusive group of classics students, eventually thrusting him dead-center into a murderous scheme.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Joel Dicker has a real knack for coming up with unusual and enthralling mysteries for modern readers, and he does so once again with The Enigma of Room 622. The slightly metafictional story follows a writer named Joel, who retreats to a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps in hopes of healing and recovering from recent ordeals. Unfortunately for him, an old murder rearing its head all but thwarts his plan to finally get some much-needed peace and quiet.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Gabino Iglesias has recently become a must-read author for many people for his unusual and poignant storytelling abilities. In his most recent novel, The Devil Takes You Home, he tells the tale of Mario, a man forced to become a hit man due the expensive treatments required by his ill daughter. One day, tragedy strikes, and Mario decides to take on one last and lethal job: to hijack a cartel’s money shipment.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Colleen Hoover has the habit of taking her readers along to explore some of the more difficult-yet-meaningful aspects of human existence, as she does once again in Reminders of Him. The story follows Kenna Rowan, a young mother having just served a five-year prison sentence, coming back home in an attempt to reconnect with her four-year-old daughter, despite everyone intent on shutting her out.