Here are 27 books that Tenzing Norbu Mysteries fans have personally recommended once you finish the Tenzing Norbu Mysteries series.
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I’m a mystery, thriller, and suspense author who’s written dozens of books across five series. In addition to writing crime fiction, I’ve always loved reading in the genre. I’ll take a fast-paced thriller any day. I’ve noticed, over time, that my reading tastes have changed. I gravitate toward crime fiction that features flawed but ethical protagonists who believe, as I do, that light drives out darkness, love is a demonstration of courage, and kindness is a weapon. These five books share this theme in common—all against the backdrop of gripping, high-stakes plots with twists and turns aplenty. These are books that will get your heart racing andgive you hope for humanity.
Daniel, the unforgettable protagonist of this mystery, is resilient, resourceful, and realistic. Clear-eyed about the world and how it views him, Daniel—who has a debilitating, degenerative condition called spinal muscular atrophy—witnesses an abduction from his wheelchair. The amateur sleuth enters into a risky game of cat and mouse to draw out the kidnapper and save the victim. What I love most about this book is Daniel’s belief that “the world is a place that can welcome everyone.” Driven by his personal philosophy, and with some help from his goofy best friend, Travis, and his outstanding health aide, Marjani, he risks his life to prove it.
“A fantastic novel. . . . You are going to like this a lot.”—Stephen King
“What’s more thrilling than a fictional character speaking to us in a voice we haven’t heard before, a voice so authentic and immediate—think Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Mattie Ross—that we suspect it must’ve been there all along, that we somehow managed to miss it? Daniel, the protagonist of Will Leitch’s smart, funny, heartbreaking new novel How Lucky, is just such a voice, and I’m not sure it will ever completely leave my head, or that I want it…
I've been an avid reader of murder mysteries since I was a kid when my grandmother gave me my first Agatha Christie novel for Christmas. What I love about Christie and the books I’ve picked here is that just when you think you have the whole thing figured out, the writers give you a big SMACK up side the head. So, whether the mysteries are cozies, courtroom dramas or femme noir, they all give you that moment toward the end where you cry out loud, “No way!” and then flip furiously back through the pages to see how you missed it.
Louise Penny has hooked me again with another great installment in the Inspector Gamache series. I was so excited when I opened the book and found I would be returning to Three Pines for a new murder and an old story line Penny has been dangling in front of me since book one.
Both are resolved in this book (I think, but you never know) and the end is more than satisfying. There's still a lot of unfinished business in that little town and this incredible cast of characters just keeps me coming back for more. Moreover, (I remind my husband every time I start a new book in the series), I would run away with Armand Gamache if given even the slightest chance.
How the Light Gets In is the ninth Chief Inspector Gamache Novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny.
"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." —Leonard Cohen
Christmas is approaching, and in Québec it's a time of dazzling snowfalls, bright lights, and gatherings with friends in front of blazing hearths. But shadows are falling on the usually festive season for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Most of his best agents have left the Homicide Department, his old friend and lieutenant Jean-Guy Beauvoir hasn't spoken to him in months, and hostile forces are lining…
I’ve been drawn to islands ever since I was a child spending summer holidays ferry-hopping around the Inner Hebrides in Scotland. In 2017 I was lucky enough to be able to live for several months in a remote settlement called Cliff on the Atlantic coast of the Outer Hebrides. It was such a life-changing experience: the isolation, storms, abandoned villages, standing stones, and shipwreck memorials; the beauty and wonder and peace, but also the fear, how vulnerable living somewhere like that can make you feel. How vulnerable you are. My latest novel, The Blackhouse, is a gothic thriller inspired by all the wonderful and eerie islands that I have ever known or read about!
I have read and loved all of Ann Cleeves’ books about Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, set on the Scottish Shetland Islands. Red Bones is about two feuding families with generations of secrets between them, who are somehow involved in at least two murders. Islands, particularly those that are small and/or remote, foster communities that are incredibly tight-knit by necessity – often your survival entirely depends on one another. That has always made me wonder what lengths such communities might go to in order to survive; what secrets they might have to keep, what lies they might have to tell if something terrible happens that could jeopardise their whole existence. My time living on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Outer Hebrides very much inspiredThe Blackhouse, but it was in no small part also inspired by the wild Shetland Islands as described in Cleeves’ wonderful stories.
The third Shetland novel featuring detective Jimmy Perez.
Sometimes the dead won't stay buried . . .
When a young archaeologist uncovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find - or a more contemporary mystery?
Then an elderly woman is shot in what appears to be a tragic accident in the middle of the night, Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called to investigate.
The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding…
I like books in which there are moral stakes, which sometimes draws me to stories with criminals, and I like when the character at the center of the problem is complex or destabilizes things. Dark humor always helps. Average people should be able to see themselves in some way in the criminal’s bad behavior or at least in their desires. I have published two story collections and two novels. My first collection of short stories won the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award. My fiction has appeared in Tin House, Southern Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. I'm a professor of English at Kalamazoo College.
Raymond Carney—savvy furniture store owner in 1960s Harlem; a small-time, look-the-other-way fence for stolen goods—is one of the most likable criminals I’ve ever read about.
He dreams of moving his young family on up to a nice apartment on Riverside Dr. and scraps for every dollar. His hustling ways occasionally flare into big-time crime or revenge, but his insights into the teeming city are always keen.
Whitehead can do it all: perfectly observed details of the time and place, great characters, wry humor, surprising plot developments, devastating emotional scenes. The implications of race and class are deftly drawn. The prose is gorgeous.
Really, no American writer is better than Whitehead right now. A fun and profound ride.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is “fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny ... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel" (San Francisco Chronicle).
"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents…
The first books I loved were Gothic classics like Jane Eyre and Rebecca, because of their isolated settings and secretive characters. When I first started writing, it was always stories about communities–the first novel I wrote featured a retirement village and a circus. Maybe that’s because I love observing communities in everyday life, like local pubs in which everybody has their place. When domestic suspense novels really took off, I started devouring crime books with close-knit settings and soon was writing them, too. I love the claustrophobia, the backstories, the landscape, the web of relationships. It can be done in so many different and brilliant ways.
From the first page of this book, I was there. The drought-ridden farming community of Kiewarra, Australia, is evoked so vividly that the whole story feels as gritty and parched as the landscape. For me, this book has all the ingredients that make a claustrophobic setting even more intense: harsh weather conditions, hostile locals, and a dingy bar where fights break out and people drink away their troubles. For these reasons alone, I was sold! This is a community where everyone knows everyone, but they’re all under so much pressure you just know they’d turn on their neighbors in a heartbeat.
I’m also a sucker for a narrative in which someone who has moved away from their hometown is drawn reluctantly back, and this book has that in spades. The main character, Detective Aaron Falk, left Kiewarra under murky circumstances as a teenager and is forced to return when his…
I am Peter C. Bradbury, and it was reading the books of P.G. Wodehouse that attracted me to the career of being a butler. I have also always loved murder mysteries, so when I started writing, I combined those aspects into my first book. I chose these particular books because of the details and the subjects. I was a butler for over twenty years in the UK and the USA, and it annoys me when household staff are incorrectly portrayed. I love movies like Gosford Park and series like Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey. The butler sees and hears everything, so I like the writers who know that.
I loved this book because I worked in hotels before I became a butler, and the protagonist is a maid. You can walk into many situations in a hotel room, so a murder mystery is no big stretch. I love hotel or rich home dramas, especially if they portray the staff correctly. Domestic staff are generally likable, meticulous, quiet, and honest. This is a really nice, cozy murder mystery.
*THE NO.1 NEW YORK TIMES & SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER *WINNER OF THE NED KELLY AWARD FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL CRIME FICTION *A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME PICK
'An escapist pleasure' SUNDAY TIMES 'Delightful' GUARDIAN 'An instantly gripping and delightful whodunnit' STYLIST 'Smart, riveting, and deliciously refreshing ' LISA JEWELL
I’ve been a stay-at-home mom and author for the past decade, and during that time, I went through the stillbirth of my second baby. Grief taught me a lot about compassion, including the importance of being able to see the nuance of difficult subject matters. I learned it’s easy to theorize what to do in a situation until you're in that situation. For that reason, I love books in all sorts of genres that are layered with characters’ past griefs, impossible scenarios, and tensions regarding the choices they make. I picked five of my favorite books with a heart-ripping plot that sparks interesting discussion and leaves readers pondering, "What would I have done?"
This book was a very bingeable read. I got caught up in the mystery of Hannah’s missing husband, and I also loved the layers of complicated family relationships shown with her stepdaughter.
I’m a sucker for the “he isn’t who he said he was” storyline, and this book masters that through Hannah’s husband, Owen. The entire story is weaved with surprises and plot twists, including the impossible choice Hannah faces at the end.
* SOON TO BE A MAJOR TV SERIES STARRING JULIA ROBERTS *
'Brilliant. Pacy tense and twisty' - LISA HALL
'I adored this beautifully written thriller' - JO SPAIN
IT WAS THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME: PROTECT HER
Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his new wife, Hannah: protect her. Hannah knows exactly who Owen needs her to protect - his sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. And who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.
As her increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, his boss…
I’m a former rock writer turned television critic, but in my teens, I became hooked on Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled Philip Marlowe detective sagas. The plotting was intricate, the writing exquisite and poetic. I also loved the no-nonsense pulp fiction of Mickey Spillane and his Mike Hammer character. So I’m always on the lookout for authors who combine realism and pace with great prose–like James Crumley, whose writing was like Chandler crossed with Hunter S. Thompson. Through journalism and band management, I came into contact with real gangsters and have always aspired to reflect their three-dimensional reality rather than glorifying them as television and Hollywood tend to do.
‘Bug’ Montage was once the sharpest get-away driving east of the Mississippi, but he had put all that behind him to become a loving family man, getting by on an honest wage as a motor mechanic. When Bug’s respectable life starts to fall apart, a former associate offers him one last job with a huge payout.
The temptation of earning a quick buck is too strong to ignore, but can Bug survive?
*GUARDIAN BEST CRIME AND THRILLERS OF 2020* *LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER 2020*
'BLACKTOP WASTELAND may be the book of the year.' MICHAEL CONNELLY 'Sensationally good' LEE CHILD 'I loved BLACKTOP WASTELAND' STEPHEN KING 'Stunning. Can't remember the last time I read such a powerful crime novel' MARK BILLINGHAM
"Bug" Montage: honest mechanic, loving family man. He's no longer the criminal he was - the sharpest wheelman east of the Mississippi.
But when his respectable life crumbles, a shady associate comes calling with a one-time job promising a huge payout. Inexorably drawn to the driver's seat - and haunted by…
I’ve always been interested in high performers and the psychology behind success, and my time at the CIA - during which I served in hostile and unpredictable environments - showed me that success and excellence at anything requires mastering one’s “head game.” When I transitioned into the private sector, I consciously chose to challenge myself and stretch myself to be bigger, better, and bolder than I would naturally be, and that lived experience combined with my CIA career inspired the work I do now in helping leaders and organizations push themselves into their discomfort zones and make the seemingly impossible possible.
This book introduced me to the powerful concept of “upper limit problems” which helped me see some of the self-sabotaging behavior I used to engage in (picking fights for no reason, finding things to be annoyed about, giving too many f*cks about silly things) for what it was.
The idea goes that we all have internal “thermostats” that regulate how much success, happiness, and fulfillment we allow ourselves. Then, as we get close to the upper limit of those self-set limits, we engage in sabotaging behavior to bring things back down to a level we are comfortable with.
This one concept alone changed my own behavior and helped me help others see where they might be “upper limiting”. An unexpected life-changing book.
"The Big Leap" reveals a simple yet comprehensive model of life fulfillment, presented in a way that engages both mind and heart. Gay Hendricks, a major voice in the fields of relationship transformation, and body-mind therapies, developed these methods over the last thirty years by working closely with more than one thousand extraordinary achievers in business and the arts. Readers will discover what prevents them from fulfilling their true potential so they may enjoy the highest levels of success. Through a step-by-step program, Hendricks shares his proven method for identifying and breaking through our personal upper limits to achieve ultimate…
I live and work in Santa Cruz, CA (close to Silicon Valley). I’ve been extremely fortunate to be a multi-time start-up founder, executive coach and consultant, and key contributor or operational leader at world-class brands like Apple, DreamWorks, Google, and SGI. In 2015, I had an epiphany that changed the direction of my life: that prioritization was the most important verb in business, but nobody had written a book that successfully demystified how individuals, teams, and organizations should do it. My book became a pandemic project. I sincerely hope it will help improve the world and make it a better place.
I recommend this book more than almost any other one because it simplifies personal prioritization–prioritizing by yourself and for yourself–to its core. It helped me evaluate my life through the sharp lens of what I might regret most when I eventually reach the "end of the line," so to speak. Helping me develop a plan to prevent myself from ever having to experience that regret shed a blinding but compassionate light on what ultimately will matter most to me, at the point I can no longer go back and change anything.
This short and lovely book held the key to identifying my number one priority and how to develop a practical plan for getting to a place where I would be at peace with myself.
You never know when it is going to happen — when you will experience a moment that dramatically transforms your life.
When you look back, often years later, you may see how a brief conversation or an insight you read in a book changed the entire course of your life.
Gay Hendricks had an extraordinary, life-altering experience during a conversation at a party. The gift he received in that meeting became his touchstone for creating the life of his dreams. Now, in this wonderful gem of a book, he passes on to all of us the pivotal insight he gained…
