Top Ten Tuesday: My Favorite Books of 2022

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is Favorite Books of 2022. Note that the key word here is favorite, and these are the books I enjoyed reading the most in 2022. The list is in no particular order, and I included 12 books because I couldn't cut any of them from the list.

And here's my list:

Convenience Store Woman (2016) by Sayaka Murata

My husband recommended this book to me. Keiko is a 36-year-old woman who has been a part-time convenience store worker in Tokyo for 18 years. She finds fulfillment and meaning in this job. Yet her family, friends, even coworkers expect her to do more with her life and be more normal. The novel is short, about 160 pages, and very strange, but I loved it. 

The Assault (1982) by Harry Mulisch

This novel is set in the Netherlands; it starts with a horrendous event during World War II. Near the end of the war, when many countries in Europe had been liberated, the Netherlands was still occupied. A policeman in the city of Haarlem, who was collaborating with the Germans, is shot down in a small neighborhood. Reprisals are taken and many people are killed, including children. This novel takes that one event and shows how it affected the people who were involved.  It continues up to 1980. The Assault was a great read, brief and straightforward, and very effective. Suggested to me by Patti Abbott at Pattinase.

Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier

I read Rebecca in April for my Classics Club list; it is a novel that most readers are familiar with. The heroine is very young, inexperienced, and naïve. As the novel begins she is in Monte Carlo working as a paid companion to Mrs. Van Hopper, an overbearing American woman. She soon meets Maxim de Winter, a rich widower, who invites her to go with him driving around the countryside, and she gradually falls in love with him. After their honeymoon in Italy, they go to Maxim's home, Manderley. It is a beautiful but sad coming of age story. We never know the narrator's name except as the second Mrs. de Winter. I wasn't sure how to classify this book as to genre. It could be called a mystery, or romance, or romantic suspense, or gothic mystery. I enjoyed reading it and plan to read more by du Maurier.

Because of Sam (1954) by Molly Clavering 

This book is part of the Furrowed Middlebrow collection from Dean Street Press, books by women writers of the early to mid-twentieth century. I was motivated to read this book after I read Cath's review at Read-Warbler. I loved it, although it took me half the book to figure out where it was going, and even then I was only partly right. It is a lovely postwar story set in a village in Scotland.

Smoke Without Fire (1990) by E.X. Ferrars 

This book is set at Christmas and I read it in December (because I loved the festive cover), but the Christmas setting serves mostly as a basis for the setting, at gathering of friends at a place in the country. Andrew Basnett is a retired botanist, widowed, in his mid-seventies. He is visiting friends for the Christmas holidays and a death occurs while he is there. The family and Andrew have been invited to Sir Lucas Deardon's home for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately Sir Lucas returns to Berkshire from London a day early, and is blown up by a bomb in the lane by his home. I enjoy Ferrars' writing and this mystery was no exception. The author was very prolific, but based on the books I have read so far,  her books are more about the people than the crimes, and focus more on psychology and relationships among the characters. 

The Long Goodbye (1953) by Raymond Chandler

This is another book I read for my Classics Club list, and I still have not written a review for it. It is a challenging story to describe. This is the fourth book in Chandler's Philip Marlowe series that I have read, and one of the best in my opinion. I liked it nearly as well as The Big Sleep. It is the sixth book in the series and it seemed more aimless than the other three I have read. Marlowe is more cynical and there is more social commentary. All of which I enjoyed. And the writing is beautiful.

The Man Who Died Twice (2021) by Richard Osman

This book is the second in the Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osman. In that series, the sleuths are four men and women in their late seventies who live at an upscale retirement complex. I have now read all three books in the series and I loved them all. I think this was my favorite because Elizabeth, the leader, is an ex-MI5 operative and the story connects to Elizabeth's former job and borders on being an espionage story.  There are also brushes with drug dealers, mob bosses, etc. A very fun series.

A Most Contagious Game (1967) by Catherine Aird

This was Aird's only standalone novel. Thomas Harding and his wife Dora have moved from London to a manor house in Easterbrook. Harding retired early because his health was bad, and he doesn't like the quiet life he is leading... until he finds a skeleton in a hidden room in his house (which turns out to be a priest hole that had been plastered over). This mystery was not a police procedural like Aird's Inspector Sloane series, but there is a death in the village about the same time. The story of Harding's research into the skeleton's origins and his settling into the small town with his wife was excellent. 

Safe Houses (2018) by Dan Fesperman

I love espionage fiction and this was my favorite that I read this year. The story is told in two time lines, one set in Berlin, 1979, and other in 2014, in Maryland, USA. I especially enjoyed the parts set in 1979; in that year I was about the same age as the female protagonist in this book. It is the first of a trilogy about Claire Saylor, who doesn't even show up until later in the book. I loved it and I have purchased the 2nd book in the trilogy, The Cover Wife.

The Tenderness of Wolves (2006) by Stef Penney 

This book is set in 1867, primarily in a small settlement in the Northern Territory of Canada. There are treks into even more remote areas to search for a murderer. This is a historical mystery, but the crime and the investigation are not primary to the story.  The focus is even more on the setting, the prominence of the Hudson Bay Company, and the treatment of Native American trappers. It is a very dense book; there are a lot of characters to keep up with. I loved it and the ending worked well for me.

O Caledonia (1991) by Elspeth Barker

This book is short, about 190 pages long, and the only novel that Barker published. It is set in Scotland in the 1950s.  The story is about a young girl, part of a large family, who is willful and stubborn, and won't be molded into what others want her to be, even from a very early age. It is a sad story but a wonderful read, written so beautifully that it makes me sad that the author did not write any other novels. The author died this year at the age of 81.

Death in the Off Season (1994) by Francine Mathews

This was the first novel that Mathews wrote, part of the Merry Folger Nantucket Mystery series. Four novels were published between 1994 and 1998. Later Soho Press asked her to write a fifth book in the series; Mathews returned to the first four books and edited them so that the fifth book could pick up where the last one ended (without a twenty year gap). In Death in the Off-Season, Merry is a new detective in the Nantucket police, working under her father. The death of Rusty Mason, whose family was prominent in Nantucket years before, is her first murder case. This was a very complex story with a lot of interesting characters and the writing kept me interested and involved until the very end. Judith at Reader in the Wilderness motivated me to read this book. I am sorry I waited so long.

There are my twelve favorites. It was a good year. Have you read any of these?