Robert B. Parker’s Cold Service is one of my favorite Spenser novels because it provides more insight into the character Hawk. Hawk is in the hospital, three bullets in his back from trying to protect a bookie from the Ukrainian mob. The Ukrainians are spreading their turf from NYC to the Boston area (a town called Marshport). Spenser comes to the rescue, and the two men take on the impossible task of defeating the Ukrainian mob and their Afghani heroine-dealing overlords while avenging Hawks shooting. Alone, Hawk can’t deal with the thought of showing weakness and Spencer ponders his mortality. Together Spenser and Hawk appear to be invincible. Their code allows them to engage in brutality and come out as likable characters. The way in which Parker spins a tale using simple dialogue is ingenious. His main characters Spenser, Hawk, and Susan Silverman are a joy to get to know… show more.

Julia Henry’s third book in her Garden Squad Mysteries makes my list.

In Digging Up the Remains, Julia Henry brings readers a modern Jessica Fletcher with her character Lilly Jayne. Senior citizen Lilly is roommates with Delia, nearly forty years age difference! Somehow this works exquisitely for both of them. The rest of the characters span in age, but not in ethnicity, although there is small LGBT representation.

The theme of Digging Up the Remains is about secrets. The skeletons are in the closet so to speak.

Due to the contemporary setting this book’s way of showing the status of the journalism business is accurate. Now the world favors unsubstantiated, high-traffic live feeds of the “average” citizen hoping to get 15 minutes of fame and go viral. 

This is one of the better time travel adventures that could make anyone a believer! Or at least make you wonder, at least it did for me. And I’m a real fan for a good time travel mystery.

If you’re a history buff, you’ll love the science of time travel mixing with the method of travel, as your sent back to the start of the American Revolution in Massachusetts. One spark to this intriguing story was the main characters are thrown off their initial course of testing their time-ship, hoping to travel just a couple years into the future only to find themselves over 200 years in the past. It’s a great adventure read.

Hailed by historians as one of the most important memoirs authored by a Civil War veteran, Hard Tack and Coffee tells the story of army life. John D. Billings traces the trail of the citizen soldier from recruitment and enlistment to the trials and tribulations of camp and campaign. Written more than two decades after the end of the conflict, Billings reflects on those tumultuous times with humor as he and his comrades stumbled their way through the varied lessons of the art of war. After he mustered out of a Massachusetts artillery regiment in 1865, Billings went on to become a respected educator.

This story is told from the perspective of a serial killer's stepdaughter, Sophie, and I swallowed it in two sittings.

Matty Melgren, Sophie’s stepfather, is dying and wants to meet. He’s in prison and his imminent death takes Sophie right back to her childhood. The story is told from Sophie’s perspective as a twelve-year-old observing the breakdown of her mother and Matty’s relationship and as an adult debating how much she wants answers and what they might cost her.

I loved the dual timeline and thought it was a really fresh way to approach a serial killer novel. 

Bound is set in the years prior to the American Revolution, and highlights the difficulties faced by girls and women indentured servants. Alice and her family set out for America from England, but when her mother and brothers die during the voyage, Alice’s father decides he cannot keep her and sells her as an indentured servant upon reaching Boston. Alice should have had a middle-class upbringing, but instead, she becomes chattel. The scenes of abuse in this book are stark, but it helps to shed light on the sufferings of the disenfranchised and the helpless. Alice’s determination will inspire.

One fine day, sixteen-year-old Ethan walks down his driveway and then vanishes. This was the short description of the book and I immediately picked it up. Instead of being a thriller, this book deals with the aftermath of Ethan’s disappearance, how his family and friends searched for him with little success. More than that, this was a book without a definitive happy ending.

As I was going through grief, a story that doesn’t wrap everything nicely in a bow was very cathartic for me. This book helped me accept that not everything in life ends in happily ever after. This opened me to the bittersweet nature of life, how loss is very much a part of it, and that not everything has to make sense. Things happen that make no sense at all and that’s the most bitter pill I had to learn to swallow.

Dava Sobel is the unquestionable queen when it comes to writing the history of women in science. You can’t go wrong in choosing anything she’s written, but I particularly enjoyed this group portrait of the women hired as “human computers” at the Harvard Observatory in the late 1800s to interpret astronomical data and observations collected by the male astronomers.

While some of these women were trained scientists, many were simply wives, sisters, or daughters of the Harvard astronomers. Sobel deftly shows how, when given a chance, women were capable of incredible scientific inquiry. I love all of the vivid scenes Sobel recreates and how she is able to bring these women to life so eloquently. 

Who can match the character development and killer pacing of Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles books? Her characters are best friends who understand and accept each other’s flaws completely. I love the menacing characters who stalk the BFF duo and the baggage the two have to overcome to keep up with the fight.

Her pacing is stellar, and her dialogue is perfect. I adore her treatment of stalkers—very creepy. While these characters do not have to travel through the jungle, forest, or cave—the city streets, elements, crime scenes, and killers are worthy foes.

Having spent a lot of my reading year in darkish-fantasy mode, I branched out with Community Board, a refreshing, funny, and – yes, I’ll say it – heartwarming novel about trying desperately to go home again.

Set in a small Massachusetts town and told partly through its Nextdoor-type message board, Community Board tells the story of a young woman, heartbroken and jobless, who returns home expecting her parents’ loving comfort, only to find they’ve left town.

She holes up to nurse her grievances, finally venturing back into society via the drama and turmoil of the message board. The characters are as quirky as their messages, and the whole thing coalesces gratifyingly and hilariously.