Top Ten Tuesday: My Favorite Books of 2023

 

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

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is Favorite Books of 2023. Note that the key word here is favorite, and these are the books I enjoyed reading the most in 2023. The list is in no particular order, and I included 13 books because it was so hard to choose only ten.

And here's my list:

Winter Solstice (2000) by Rosamunde Pilcher

This was a Christmas read and the first book I have read by Pilcher. It was published in 2000 and is over 500 pages long. A lovely story, with some romance on the side, set mostly in Scotland.

Assassin's Apprentice (1995) by Robin Hobb

This is a fantasy novel, the first book in The Farseer Trilogy. Hobb has written a good number of fantasies, under the pseudonym Robin Hobb and under her own name, Megan Lindholm. I don't have a lot of experience with reading fantasies, but this one sucked me in from the beginning. 

Slough House (2021) by Mick Herron

In the Slough House spy fiction series, Mick Herron has created a department in MI5 that is used to dump failed spies, agents, or analysts with no plans to allow them to be reinstated as MI5 agents. Most of the members of Slough House fool themselves into believing they can return, eventually. It seems like this concept would have a limited life span but the series is still going strong. This is book 7 of 8.

Killers of a Certain Age (2022) by Deanna Raybourn

This story is about four older women who have worked for years as assassins. The organization that hired and trained them is the Museum, and now the Museum has turned against them and ordered their deaths. The older women protagonists were a plus. It is not exactly spy fiction, but it reads much like a spy thriller, so it was perfect for me.

SS-GB (1979) by Len Deighton

SS-GB is an alternate history in which England has been invaded by Germany. The main character is Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer of Scotland Yard, who is forced to work under Gruppenführer Fritz Kellerman of the SS. Len Deighton is one of my favorite authors of spy fiction and I don't know why it took me so long to read this one.

The Last Devil to Die (2023) by Richard Osman

Book 4 in the Thursday Murder Club series. This was one of the few books I read that was published in 2023, and one of the few series that I try to keep current with. Two men and two women in their seventies or eighties form a club called the Thursday Murder Club. They started out investigating cold cases, but now they investigate current crimes whenever they get the chance.

The Mask of Memory (1974) by Victor Canning

The 3rd book in a loose series called the Birdcage books. They all revolve around a covert security group in the UK, a branch of the Ministry of Defense. The agents change from book to book, although some show up in multiple books. The series could easily be read out of order with no problems. Victor Canning is one of my favorite authors of spy fiction.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (2014) by Becky Chambers 

This is a space opera, the first book in a trilogy, the Wayfarers series. To get away from an unhappy event in her past, Rosemary Harper (not her real name) joins the small crew of a ship that creates tunnels through space for faster travel. She is the clerk, taking care of ordering and forms and such. Some of the crew is human and others are various types of aliens.

Greenwood (2019) by Michael Christie 

Christie is a Canadian author and the story is set in Canada, from 1908 through 2038. It is a multigenerational family story with a focus on nature and ecology, especially trees. It starts in a dystopian future in 2038 but soon travels back to follow the previous generations of the Greenwood family.

Missionary Stew (1983) by Ross Thomas

I loved this book; it is only the third book I have read by this author. I would call it a political thriller but it has a bit of espionage too. The two protagonists both had strange childhoods, one with a father who was jailed for being a Communist, the other having been basically ignored by his mother, an intelligence operative. The mother is a real piece of work. And one of the prominent secondary characters is named Velveeta Keats. Who can resist a book with a woman named Velveeta?

A Midsummer's Equation (2011) by Keigo Higashino

This is the 6th book in the Detective Galileo series but only the third to be translated to English. This entry in the series takes place at a fading resort town on the coast of Japan. Manabu Yukawa, also known as "Detective Galileo," plans to speak at a town meeting regarding a planned underwater mining operation. A guest staying at a hotel nearby is found dead at the base of the cliffs, and Yukawa is pulled into the investigation. 

Bullet Train (2010) by Kotaro Isaka

I like stories set on a train, and this one takes place almost entirely on the Bullet train that travels from Tokyo to Morioka. This is the type of thriller using very short chapters, each focusing on a particular character; the story hops from character to character. This can get confusing but it was still a favorite for me.

The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street (2017) by Karina Yan Glaser

The Vanderbeekers live in Harlem, in an apartment that takes up two floors of an old brownstone. There are five Vanderbeeker children between the ages of 4 and 12. Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbeeker struggle to make ends meet. Eleven days before the end of the year, in the midst of preparations for Christmas, the Vanderbeekers are notified that the lease on their apartment will not be renewed; they have to be out by the end of the year. This is a lovely middle-grade book, with nice illustrations. The first book in a series of seven.