Top Ten New-to-Me Authors Discovered in 2024

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's topic is New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2024. Last year, I read books by a total of 29 new-to-me authors, which accounts for about a third of the books I read. I suppose that number should not surprise me, but it does.

And here's my list of my 10 favorite new-to-me authors. The authors are not listed in any order.

Kate Wilhelm

I read The Hamlet Trap, the first book in the Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn mystery series, first published in 1987. Kate Wilhelm has written two mystery series and many standalone novels in the mystery and science fiction genres. She was married to Damon Knight, a very well-known author of science fiction. Kate Wilhelm's fiction was first recommended to me by Todd Mason at Sweet Freedom.

Willa Cather

My Ántonia is the first book I have read by Willa Cather and I now understand why other readers are so effusive in their praise for this book and its author. There are so many interesting aspects to this book: life on the prairies and in the small towns; the descriptions of backbreaking work on a farm; the difficulties of the immigrants who move to the Nebraska prairies, most of which cannot speak much English.

Gabrielle Zevin

I read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Zevin in early 2024. That book was about two young people who worked together to create video games. The story does focus on video games and the process of creating them, but it is about many other things: relationships, families, judgement and misunderstandings, and ambition. Later in 2024 I read The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and enjoyed it too.

Catherine O'Flynn 

I read What Was Lost, the author's debut novel, which was published in 2007. A ten-year-old girl, Kate, lives with her grandmother; her goal is to be a detective, and run her own detective agency. She has few friends, hates school, and entertains herself with investigating cases that she has made up. One day she disappears and most of the story focuses on how this event affects other people in her neighborhood, over the following years.

Fredrik Backman

A Man Called Ove was Backman's first novel, published in 2012, but I did not read any of his books until 2024. Ove is an older man, nearing sixty, whose wife has recently died. He has decided that he does not want to go on living without her. This story is alternately humorous and sad, and I loved it. I will be reading more books by this author.

Joseph Kanon

Defectors was the first book I have read by Joseph Kanon, and it definitely won't be my last. The story focuses on a group of American and British spies living in and around Moscow during the Cold War, after defecting. Frank is a US spy who defected to Russia in 1949. Simon, his younger brother, had to leave his job in intelligence to work in publishing after Frank's defection. In 1961, Simon is in publishing and has been allowed to come to Moscow to work with Frank on publishing his memoirs. I loved the exploration of family relationships, but the story has plenty of action also. I have six more of Kanon's books on my shelves.

Young-ha Kim 

I read Your Republic is Calling You. Published in 2006, the setting is South Korea. It was a different kind of spy fiction and I liked it very much. The story takes place over the course of one day in the life of Ki-Yong, a South Korean with a wife and teenage daughter. Except that he is really a North Korean spy who has been in Seoul, working as a film importer for over 20 years, and has now been recalled to North Korea. 

Karen Joy Fowler

The Jane Austen Book Club was not what I expected but I liked it very much. The book was less about the Austen books than I would have liked, but I enjoyed the individual stories about the members of the book club. I liked the different way the story was told and how the back stories were worked into the story gradually. It made me want to go out and find more books by Fowler.

Anthony Trollope 

Until this year I had not read anything by Trollope. I chose The Warden, the first book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series. I had gotten the impression that Trollope's writing was humorous but I failed to see the humor in this story at first. It seemed that all would end very sadly. As the story continued, it lightened up and I became immersed in it and did enjoy the humor of the situation. And I was happy with the ending.

Samantha Harvey

I read Harvey's Booker Prize winning book, Orbital, which depicts one day in the life of six astronauts on the space station, watching the sunrises and sunsets and monitoring a typhoon threatening inhabited islands. It is short, about 200 pages, and very meditative. The difference between Harvey and the other authors on this list is that I don't know if I want to read anything else she has written. I will certainly try other books by her and be interested to see what she writes in the future.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Orbital to Station Eternity

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Orbital by Samantha Harvey. For once, I have actually read the book. It depicts one day in the life of six astronauts on the International Space Station, watching the sunrises and sunsets and monitoring a typhoon threatening inhabited islands. The reader is privy to their thoughts, and watches their activities and their regimen.

Reading Orbital motivated me to read more about life on the International Space Station. I want to know how astronauts are selected for this type of mission and how they train for it.  I don't even like to fly in an airplane (of any size) but I would love to know more about the lives of people who live in the space station.

1st degree:

My first book is from my husband's shelves: Lonely Planet's The Universe. This book has a wealth of information about Earth and the other planets, and other parts of the known universe. Photos on every page. There are smaller sections on the manned space flights and the International Space Station. A lovely book to dip into now and then.

2nd degree:

I am sticking with the space station theme throughout, and my next book is Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, by Scott Kelly with Margaret Lazarus Dean, a memoir published in 2017. Per his website: "A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on three expeditions and was a member of the yearlong mission to the ISS." 

I have purchased a copy of this book to read sometime this year. 

3rd degree:

My next link is a short story, "Stranger Station" by Damon Knight, which I read in Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg. The story is about a race of aliens that were so massive and repulsive to humans that the contact has been sparse and only occasionally do the aliens visit a space station that is set aside especially to enable that visit. When one of the aliens comes, it is for one purpose, to provide a substance for the humans which the humans have come to rely on. The story focuses on the one human who is on the space station to facilitate the exchange with the alien being. He is alone on Stranger Station until the alien arrives, although he can communicate with a computer AI called "Aunt Jane." 

"Stranger Station" was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1956, but has been included in a good number of anthologies since then.

4th degree:

Since reading Orbital, I have been looking for fiction set on a space station, and I found that my son has several books that fit that category. This is one he read: Diving into the Wreck by Kristine Kathlyn Rusch. The heroine of the book explores derelict space vehicles, sometimes for salvage, sometimes as a historian. The book consists of three connected novellas and at least one of them is about The Room of Lost Souls, which is an abandoned space station which most people consider a myth.  It sounds great and I will be reading this book.

5th degree:

The fifth link in my chain is to The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher. From the description on the back of the book:

Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.

This one sounds good too, so I will add it to my TBR list.

6th degree:

My sixth book is a genre blend of mystery and science fiction: Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty, first published in October 2022. 

From the back of the book:

From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.

Unfortunately for Mallory, that doesn't last very long. I love mystery and science fiction mixed, so I will probably read this one too.

My Six Degrees started in space and it stayed mostly in space. It started with a novel about our International Space Station, but took me to science fiction worlds set in the future. It also added four books to my "To Read" list.

The next Six Degrees will be on February 1st, 2025 and the starting book will be a classic – Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.

Books Read in September and October 2024

I read 12 books in September and October. I enjoyed all of them. Seven of the books were mysteries; five were in other genres.

Humor / Cartoon Collection

A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection (2020) by Harry Bliss and Steve Martin

In this book, Steve Martin partnered with the cartoonist Harry Bliss to create a collection of cartoons and comic strips. Steve provided caption and cartoon ideas, and Harry created the artwork. It was a fun read.

Fiction

My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather

The story, which is narrated by Jim Burden, focuses primarily on Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrant parents who have settled on a farm on the Nebraska prairies. Jim and Ántonia were both children when they arrived in Nebraska, on the same train. See my review here.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) by Maria Semple

Bernadette Fox and Elgin Branch have promised their daughter a trip to Antarctica if she makes excellent grades. She succeeds, but unfortunately Bernadette get so mired down in the preparations that everything falls to pieces in their already precarious marriage. This is a real mishmash of a book, and there were many times that I was totally lost. Fortunately, it was worth the effort getting to the end. Bee Branch, their daughter, was my favorite character. The story is told partially through emails and documents.

Orbital (2023) by Samantha Harvey

Although I did have a few nitpicks when reading this book, I loved it. I was very pleased and surprised when it won the Booker Prize. It depicts one day in the life of six astronauts on the space station, watching the sunrises and sunsets and monitoring a typhoon threatening inhabited islands. The reader is privy to their thoughts, and watches their activities and their regimen. It is short, about 200 pages, and very meditative. It inspired me to read more about the space station, and I wish it had been longer.

Fiction / Short Stories

Ladies' Lunch: and Other Stories (2017) by Lore Segal

This book of short stories was published by Lore Segal in 2023 on her 95th birthday. Ten of the sixteen stories in the book are about a group of older women, now in their 90s, who have been meeting for lunch for thirty years or more. See my review here.

Crime Fiction

The White Lioness (1993) by Henning Mankell

This is the third book in the acclaimed Kurt Wallander series. Henning Mankell is a Swedish author. This book is set mostly in Sweden but there are also sections of the book set in South Africa. See my review here.

Silent Voices (2011) by Ann Cleeves

This is the fourth book in the Vera Stanhope series. DI Vera Stanhope is relaxing in the spa of a health club, after swimming laps in the pool. I know this doesn't sound like Vera at all but her doctor has strongly recommended some exercise, and this is what she can manage. She discovers the dead body of a woman in the spa with her. This series has great characters; I like Vera's relationship with Sergeant Joe Ashworth, her 2nd in command, and the way she works with her team of investigators. The setting is very nice too.

The Mayors of New York (2023) by S.J. Rozan

I am a big fan of Rozan's Lydia Chin and Bill Smith series, totaling 15 books; this is the newest one. The first book was published in 1994. I started reading the books in 2008; since then I have read all the books in the series. See my review here.

Winter Work (2022) by Dan Fesperman

I regret not having the time to review Winter Work. This is the third book to feature Claire Saylor, an agent for the CIA. Safe Houses was the first book in the series, set in 1979 (Berlin)and 2014 (US), and it was fantastic. The second book, The Cover Wife is set in 1999. This book goes back to 1990; it is set in Berlin after the fall of Berlin Wall. The trilogy features strong female characters and intelligent plots.

The Hamlet Trap (1987) by Kate Wilhelm

Kate Wilhelm, who wrote both science fiction and mysteries, published her first novels in the 1960s and published her last novel in 2017. She was married to Damon Knight, a well-known science fiction author. This book is the first one in the Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn mystery series. The story is set in Ashland, Oregon and the story revolves around preparation for a play to be performed there, and the people involved in creating it, the author, director, set designers, etc. The story is excellent, very complex, with lots of characters. I have two more books in the series to read.

Then We Take Berlin (2013) by John Lawton

This is the first book in the Joe Wilderness series. Wilderness's real name is John Holderness; he is sometimes an agent for MI6 and sometimes a con-man and thief. I learned a lot about Berlin during the time immediately following World War II, when the city was divided up into four sectors. It was a good, although very confusing, story up until the end, which was a cliffhanger. I will be reading book 2 in the series.

Big Sky (2019) by Kate Atkinson

This is the 5th book in the Jackson Brodie series. Reading mysteries by Atkinson can be confounding. They just seem to meander along and several unrelated threads come together to resolve themselves. Nevertheless, I love them. The fourth books in the series, Started Early, Took My Dog, was published in 2010, and I read it in 2011. Big Sky did not come out until 2019, and I just read it this year, so after 14 years I had forgotten a lot about the series. But I settled into Atkinson's quirky approach very easily, and was certain that I would be satisfied with the experience and the ending. It was a wonderful book full of eccentric characters and I have bought the 6th book, Death at the Sign of the Rook, to read sometime in 2025.

Currently reading

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid, the second book in the Inspector Karen Pirie series. Karen Pirie investigates cold cases. I am about a third of the way in, and I am loving the book. It grabbed me immediately. In 2007, a woman reports that her father has been missing for over 20 years, from the time of the Miner’s Strike of 1984. At the time he left, the family thought that he had deserted the family and did not look for him, but now she needs to find him desperately because her son is dying. 

The three photos at the beginning and end of this post are ones my husband took while we were walking around in downtown Santa Barbara. The ones directly above are from a bridal shop in 2014. The top photo was taken in 2010. Click on the images for best viewing quality.