Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

What better topic to read in October but a book involving a murder? This could be a creepy thriller, or it could be more lighthearted vibes. There are lots of ways you can go with this prompt, so let us know below what you'd recommend!

ATY Listopia: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

What are you reading for this prompt? What would you recommend?

Oh noooo my favorite type of book...how will I choose something...

Yeah, I almost said well I'll just read until I hit a murder that doesn't fit another prompt LOL. I did decide to plan on A Brief History of Seven Killings though. It seems to me like the quintessential book for this prompt.

Let's see: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, or Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, or Sherlock Holmes short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or The Guest List by Lucy Foley, or This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, or The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, or The House At Riverton by Kate Morton, or The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton, or The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne, or Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay, or The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray, or A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie

I am going to read Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, which everyone but me seems to have read already! As the author is Polish, it fits with my 2023 plan to read European authors.

I have lots of options for this one. For fiction I may go for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd or 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. For non-fiction I'm most intrigued by The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir .

I just found out last night that A. A. Milne (yes, of Winnie-the-Pooh fame) also wrote a murder mystery! Didn’t expect that… The book is The Red House Mystery - a locked room whodunnit, and the only mystery that he wrote. “Rabbit did it in Owl’s old house with a jar of honey” - haha.

Here are some nonfiction options for those so inclined:

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities
Plants That Kill: A Natural History of the World's Most Poisonous Plants
Botanical Curses and Poisons: The Shadow-Lives of Plants
A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them
The Science of Murder: The Forensics of Agatha Christie
A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie
Poison: The History of Potions, Powders and Murderous Practitioners

Tracy wrote: "“Rabbit did it in Owl’s old house with a jar of honey” - haha."

I laughed way too hard at this.

@dalex - happy to bring a smile to your morning ;)

Tracy wrote: "@dalex - happy to bring a smile to your morning ;)"

And I needed it. Thank you!

Tracy wrote: "I just found out last night that A. A. Milne (yes, of Winnie-the-Pooh fame) also wrote a murder mystery! Didn’t expect that… The book is The Red House Mystery - a locked room whodunnit, and the onl..."

I've read The Red House Mystery and it's pretty good. A classic country house style murder mystery. Honestly I'm surprised he only ever wrote one because it's well written.

Jackie wrote: "Tracy wrote: "I just found out last night that A. A. Milne (yes, of Winnie-the-Pooh fame) also wrote a murder mystery! Didn’t expect that… The book is The Red House Mystery - a locked room whodunni..."

I may decide to choose The Red House Mystery from my list of possibilities. :)

Easiest prompt ever and I have sooo many possibilities!

Some of them:
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
The Maid by Nita Prose
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano
The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus
Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister
The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith
The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

Going for In the Woods (and its sequels) this year

I finished this one this morning. I read Cat on the Edge by Shirley Rousseau Murphy, but I wouldn't really recommend it. It wasn't that good. I mean it was okay, but it was kind of dumb.

The Spanish Daughter by Ecuadorian Lorena Hughes is a historical mystery set in the cacao plantations of the 1920s. It involves intrigue, family secrets and creates a picture of the era. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ here is my review

I've decided (and started) Sunburn

My first book of the ATY had a delicious murder in it. The Woman in the Library It also is about books, authors and has a story within a story. It was a lot of fun.

I read Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn and absolutely LOVED it!

For this prompt I read Tooth and Nail - Rebus is lent to a London Police enquiry looking into a batch of serial murders.

Full of his renegade style with a little bit of the personal life thrown in

I read The Thursday Murder Club. I would recommend it. I rated it four stars. The characters were really cute. It kept me guessing.

Oh, so many to choose from, but my pick was Death at La Fenice by the other Donna, Donna Leon. I'd had it on my TBR list forever and this seemed like the right time to pick it up. Great reading...and the best part is the extremely likeable Commissario Brunetti.

Some others: The Secret History, In the Woods, The Thursday Murder Club and Falling Angel.

I read We Are the Light

I read Murder Past Due, a cozy mystery by Miranda James

What are you reading for this prompt?
I read The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

I am reading The Troutbeck Testimony by Rebecca Tope and can recommend any of the books by this author.

I read The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne. Winnie the Pooh does not appear, but it is well-crafted and intriguing.

For this prompt, I read:
Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich - 1* - My Review

Didn't care for it at all, but I seem to be in the minority opinion.

I read a novel that featured details about a professional hitman's last assignment, The Intern's Handbook by Shane Kuhn. Another book that I considered for this prompt but will probably use for another one is Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes.

A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny.

I read A Dying Fall, the 5th book in the Ruth Galloway series.

I'd recommend:
The Death of Mrs. Westaway
State of Terror
The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun
From Doon With Death

American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI - 5 stars

I read The Dark by Emma Haughton. This was a closed circle mystery set in a research station in Antarctica. The setting was good, and the mystery well done, but how the MC and her problems ended up there is another mystery.

I also read A Thousand Cuts: A Spike Sanguinetti Novel by Thomas Mogford, a thriller set in modern Gibraltar. It was well written and as well as being a good example of the genre, it gave a very good idea of Gibraltar's history and current problems.

For round 2 I read The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. I loved the characters.

I read the Housemaid by Freida McFadden

I read The Quiet Tenant.

Some books that aren't the typical murder mystery :
My Sister, the Serial Killer this is good for anyone not interested in anything to dark or serious.
The Nickel Boys - very well written but pretty difficult to read
Notes on an Execution - Gets you thinking
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - everyone's favorite from 2022

Samantha wrote: "My Sister, the Serial Killer"

I read this s few years ago and enjoyed it. It would also work for debut novel or for a book set somewhere that starts with A, T or Y (Africa).

I read the Paris Apartment by Foley

Nonfiction .. and it's horrifying ...


The Daughters of Juárez – Teresa Rodríguez – 4****
Subtitle: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border. Beginning in 1993, the residents of Juárez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, became aware of a disturbing frequency of murders of young women. Some estimate that at least 350 women were murdered between 1993 and 2005. It seems that the machismo culture put little value on these women. But Rodríguez makes it clear that there was considerable corruption and/or ineptitude among authorities. The most disturbing thing to me is that the book leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
LINK to my full review

I was planning on reading the Booker Prize winning The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (International maybe? the author is Sri Lankan), but it was too dark for my mood since I had just read Demon Copperhead, which I think is the first book I recall to really through off my reading plans.

So I did a complete 180 (as far as you can with a murder anyway) and read Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano. It was a fun read, but I was disappointed that there were several holes in the plot that could have easily been filled with just once sentence each. This is kind of ironic, because if you read the Acknowledgements, the author starts off saying that the idea came from a meeting with her critique partners when they were talking through "some particularly challenging plot holes" in a different book she was writing at the time. i guess the group was worn out from that session? Where was the editor? Anyway, not serious literature, just a fun read, so...

I gave it 3.5 stars - not sure how I'll round it where half stars are not available. Probably down just to be fair to all the definite 4 star books.