18. This Must be the Place by Kate Racculia

When Arthur Rook’s wife, Amy, dies in a freak accident on the movie set she is working on, he suddenly realizes how little he knew about his mysterious wife.  Searching through her belongings, he stumbles across a shoebox full of childhood memorabilia and a cryptic postcard to her best friend, Mona, which Amy never sent.  Arthur flees Hollywood and his confusion about losing his young wife, to the quaint upstate New York town of Ruby Falls, where Amy grew up.  Hoping to learn more about his wife, he moves into the boarding house run by Amy’s childhood best friend, Mona, and her teenage daughter, Oneida, who are themselves mysteries in their hometown because Mona has never disclosed who Oneida’s father was after she and Amy ran away as teenagers and Mona came back to town with an infant. Arthur soon realizes that maybe childhood secrets aren’t meant to be exposed.

In this debut novel by Racculia, a writer who grew up in Syracuse and uses the area in her book, Amy’s world is slowly uncovered by everyone who knew her.  The truth about who Oneida’s parents are is easy to guess, but doesn’t distract from the story.  Through vivid characters that you grow attached to you, this quirky yet complex novel perfectly explores grief, love, humor, and hope and makes readers wish Racculia would write more in the years to come.

17. Dead Like You by Peter James

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is finally moving on with his life.  His wife, Sandy, disappeared ten years ago, and he has fallen in love again and is about to be a father for the first time.  Life is suddenly going smoothly, until a series of brutal rapes take place in Brighton that are very similar to rape cases he was working on right before his wife went missing.  In 1997, one of the victims was never found, and Roy always thought that the rapist accidently committed murder, but could never prove it.  Could the new cases help him finally solve the decade old case?

As with James’s other novels, Dead Like You is full of fast pacing, action, and intrigue.  The thriller moves easily between the past cases and the present cases, effectively building up drama.  Although a long book, readers easily get caught up with the cases and the pages fly by.  An international bestselling author from England, Peter James deserved to be better known to US mystery readers.

16. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philp K. Dick

An influential post-apocalyptic novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was written in 1968 and was the basis for the cult classic 1982 movie Blade Runner, by Ridley Scott.  Set in San Francisco in 2021, World War Terminus has left the planet devoid of almost all life except for humans and some pets.  The ownership of pets is highly coveted by the remaining humans, and extremely expensive, so many turn to owning electric animals.  Richard Deckard owns one of those electric animals, and is also a bounty hunter called to “retire” androids that have escaped from Mars and have returned to Earth.  Since the androids have become increasingly like humans, Deckard must use skillful questioning to determine if they have empathy, one of the last traits that distinguishes humans from androids.  The novel offers readers a reflection on the meaning of human life, the role of artificial intelligence, our responsibility for the environment, and what is real or artificial.

15. Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman

When Meg Rosenthal’s husband dies unexpectedly from a heart attack, she is left not only emotionally devastated, but financially ruined. Her easy life on Long Island suddenly is over for her and her teenage daughter, Sally, and it isn’t until she is offered a teaching job in Arcadia Falls that life begins to feel normal again. Arcadia School is tucked away in rural upstate New York and has a mysterious past, especially since it was started by a lesbian couple, Lily Eberhardt and Vera Beecher, who were famous painters and fairy tale authors before their love took a tragic turn and Lily fell off a cliff on school property. Within a few days of the new school year, a student falls off of the same cliff during a pagan festival, and soon hidden secrets, ghost sightings, and more deaths occur.

Goodman’s seventh novel again takes her back to what she writes best – wonderfully atmospheric, gothic novels that have some mystery woven into them. Her setting on the creepy, isolated school campus, especially when a snow storm paralyzes the area at the end, adds to the growing tension of the story. The role of fairy tales in our culture adds an interesting side story that ends up becoming more central to the book as it moves on, all with great results.

14. A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart by Maria Alexandra Vettese

A table with a basket of eggs. A field of daisies. A cat curled into a ball on an unmade bed. A rainy street in Portland. A child’s sock discarded on a floor. A half-eaten grapefruit. These are just some of the beautiful and quiet images in this book based on the popular blog, 3191, that documented the lives of two women who live 3191 miles apart from each other (one in Portland, Maine and the other in Portland, Oregon).

Every morning, before their days became busy, bloggers Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes took pictures of how they were spending their morning. Each posted one picture for every weekday for one year without discussing what they would be taking pictures of. At the time of the project, they had only met each other in person once, but had maintained an online friendship and a shared love of photography and solitude.

The resulting book captures 236 images of their views of early morning life. What becomes apparent quickly is how similar their photos are, sometimes eerily so, with matching breakfast shots, or pictures that share the same use of color. The photos are intimate, quiet, and striking to look at. If you are looking for a chance to unwind and spend some quiet alone time with a book, this is a perfect solution. Highly recommended for those who like to read books based on blogs, those who like photography, or are looking for something different to read.

13. The Pull of the Moon by Diane Janes

Kate Mayfield is just trying to lead a quiet, uneventful life away from public scrutiny. A retired schoolteacher, she is leading that sort of life until the day she receives a letter from a dying woman from her past requesting to see Kate. Over thirty years ago, during the long, hot summer of 1972, Kate had a very different life – a life she doesn’t want to remember.

The summer of 1972 starts out as the ultimate summer getaway. Kate’s parents think she is in France with a girlfriend, but actually she is spending it nearby in an isolated country house with her new boyfriend, Danny Ivanisovic, and his university friend, Simon. While at the beach one day, they meet a young woman named Trudie, who quickly offers to spend the summer with them. What the group doesn’t know is that Trudie has run away from home and is missing from her family. As tension among the four heats up because of the changing group dynamics, a terrible accident that the group must hide ends up destroying all those involved. When Danny’s mother reaches out to Kate to find out what really happened that summer, the mysteries begin to unravel.

Janes does a great job switching back and forth from Kate’s present life to Kate’s mysterious past. The building tension in the group adds to the mystery of what will happen to everyone, and a side story of a murder of a fellow student of Danny and Simon ties into the story neatly in the end. Perfect for readers who like Donna Tartt and Ruth Rendell, this is a great debut suspense novel.

12. Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman

A map of the world on an IHOP placemat leads two young women on a frightening trip in Gilman’s latest memoir. In 1986, Susan Jane Gilman has just graduated from college and doesn’t know what to do with her life. One night, she and a distant friend, Claire, are drunkenly talking about traveling around the world once they see the placemat. They decide to start their world-wide journey in China, which has just opened up to tourists. Little do they know the drama that awaits them.

Once in China, Susan quickly realizes that the two are in over their heads. What starts off as an innocent rite of passage quickly deteriorates into an ultimately scary attempt to get out of the country. The women are confused as to where they are going, travel is hindered by delayed transportation, they are constantly hungry, and they are monitored at all times because they look so different from everyone else. Susan also realizes that she doesn’t know Claire as well as she should have probably known her before she agreed to travel around the world with her – as the trip progresses Claire becomes more and more paranoid, sick, and mentally ill. When she jumps off a bridge in a possible suicide attempt and the military police get involved, Susan realizes that she must quickly get Claire back to the United States.

Gilman does an excellent job in portraying the claustrophobic feeling of being on a doomed trip, trapped in a foreign country with a person she doesn’t know very well that clearly needs medical and psychiatric help. Even though her world-wide trip was cut short and most would agree was disastrous, Gilman surprises everyone, including herself, by traveling again shortly after she comes back to the U.S. Part travel memoir, part cautionary tale, this personal account of a trip gone wrong is ultimately uplifting.