Books like The Thursday Murder Club — picked by fans

Ever since I read the work of Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, and Georgette Heyer at an impressionable age, nineteenth-century England has fascinated me. My mother, a lifelong reader, is responsible for sparking this obsession. She never cared that I wanted to read “grown-up books” or later tried to discourage me from majoring in English. After college, I went on to teach British literature to high school students and to write two mystery series, one set during the Regency period, the other taking place half a century later. This new Victorian series introduces a bored spinster who finds her purpose in life as a detective.

I started reading mysteries as a way to avoid studying for final exams as an undergrad. Nemesis by Agatha Christie was my gateway mystery. That was fifty-plus years and many, many mysteries read ago. I managed an independent bookstore for several years and then worked in a public library for twenty more. I especially liked introducing readers to my favorite mysteries in the store and the library. Why mysteries in particular? Because they do something that doesn’t often happen in real life—they restore order. But the best mysteries, to my mind, are the ones that include humor. We need humor in our lives because it restores hope.  

People behave rationally and irrationally. Observing and thinking about human nature is the sport of my lifetime. In literature and art, I worship real wit. I thirst for the unusual, the deadpan, the acknowledging of one thing while another slips in unseen. Wit has been, for me, a shield and a tool for good. I try not to use it as a weapon because wit as a weapon often damages a wider target than one intends. I strive to endow my fictional women, my protagonists, with sharp yet understated wit that spares no one, not even themselves. Especially not themselves. The books I recommend here live up to my standards.

As a mystery writer and reader, I try to understand why some books feel bland or dull even when the characters are investigating a murder with high stakes. Writing style is a part of that and encompasses techniques such as good pacing. Yet I think it really comes down to the characters. In all these series, I enjoy spending time with the characters, in their worlds. They are people I would like to know in real life, so they have become book friends. That makes it possible to enjoy the mysteries on a reread, even if I know what’s going to happen.

I started my motherhood journey when I was barely out of my teens. For the next two decades, I only knew myself as a wife and mother. As my brood of five children grew into adults, I found myself poorly equipped to parent independent Gen X and Z’ers. Then, at 46 years of age, when perimenopause hit me like a hurricane, I found myself evolving into another woman altogether. The good news was – I really liked her! I hope you enjoy these books about mid-life women parenting adult children and rediscovering themselves in the never-ever-done-aftermath of motherhood.

I have always been a writer—and hence—a reader. I was an American historian and published eight books on twentieth-century American history. But, dissatisfied with the rigidity of historical research and composition, I became a novelist and have, since retirement, published eight novels, several of them in the Amanda Pennyworth Mystery Series. 

Many of the books I read are mystery stories, a genre which I believe often gives the writer an opportunity to explore subjects and characters who are beyond the scope of ordinary literature. The books I have chosen are all classics, each in its own way a wonderful example of the variety and depth of mystery literature. My passion begins with such books.

I love reading mysteries, ever since I started back in junior high with Hercule Poirot, I have loved an atmospheric murder and ensuing investigation. As I’ve gotten older and started writing my own books, though, I’ve gotten pickier about what kinds of detective novels I can stick with—I now require that they also be excellent on the sentence level, which isn’t always easy to find. I also find that I gravitate towards books that have pockets of dry humor from time to time and a unique investigator.

My greatest passion? Human nature and the endless cycles we repeat, different on the surface yet identical at their core. We build systems, cultures, and rules, destroy them, then rebuild everything in remarkably similar forms, as though we possessed no memory of the past. I have studied human nature throughout my life, but this passion took shape at university through cultural anthropology and comparative theology. Over thirty years, it has guided my work in developing human potential and talent, and has been refined further through working with thousands of people from more than 200 countries and territories. It is now the lens through which I write speculative fiction.

When I was nine, my family kayaked 100 miles on the Yukon River. Each night from my sleeping bag, I heard wolves howling, and each day we saw moose, grizzly bears, and even a fur-clad trapper. I was utterly enchanted by the wilderness and the experience of moving through the landscape silently, without disturbing the wildlife. I have never shaken the awestruck feeling of seeing those animals, free in their ample territory, and my work as a writer has remained entwined with wild nature and the far north ever since. I am deeply inspired by women writers who approach these subjects with reverence, passion, and unique perspectives.

I am Julia Buckley. I am an avid reader and writer of mysteries. This particular subgenre of mystery focuses on schools and academic settings. I love institutions of learning as settings for mysteries because the buildings can be spooky and oppressive, but also because the dialogue is always intelligent. There is great potential for conflict between students, faculty, and campus interlopers. All of it is intriguing, and it allows for a closed world with limited suspects! If you haven’t read an academic mystery, give it a try! It’s like going back to school, but as a detective.