Top 10 Books On My Fall To-Read List

Hello and welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Today's topic is one of my favorites -- the top 10 books I'm hoping to read this fall. These lists are fun to compile and get me excited about all the awesome reading I have to look forward to!

I did stunningly well with my summer TBR list. I listed 16 titles in that post and have read 12 of them, with a 13th currently checked out from the library. I really enjoyed most of the books and am glad to have checked the rest off my list. Some favorites from the summer are "The Martian" by Andy Weir (my review), "One Plus One" by Jojo Moyes (my review), and "The Book of Life" by Deborah Harkness, the conclusion to her superb All Souls trilogy.

And without further ado, here's my fall list. Let's hope I do just as well with this one!

From the Goodreads summary:

In this thrilling new addition to the New York Times bestselling series, Lady Emily travels to Paris where she struggles to unmask a murderer amid a case of assumed identities and shadowy figures.

I do so love Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily series. If you like mysteries and historical fiction, check these books out!

 

From the Goodreads summary:
A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

I am FINALLY going to make it a point to read this book. I'm a Neil Gaiman virgin and I need to see what all the fuss is about!

 

From the Goodreads summary:

After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face to face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times.

But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the F.B.I., putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.

I had hoped to read "Fourth of July Creek" over the summer and didn't get around to it. I've got it on hold at the library, though, so I will definitely be reading it this fall. I must say, I absolutely love the title and cover, and the plot sounds quite gripping!

 

From the Goodreads summary:

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class.

When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite. But they don't laugh.

Melanie is a very special girl.

 

This book sounds like it'll be a new and different take on the zombie theme.

 

 

From the Goodreads summary:

When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she knows it isn’t love at first sight. They wouldn’t even go so far as to consider themselves friends. The only thing Tate and Miles have in common is an undeniable mutual attraction. Once their desires are out in the open, they realize they have the perfect set-up. He doesn’t want love, she doesn’t have time for love, so that just leaves the sex. Their arrangement could be surprisingly seamless, as long as Tate can stick to the only two rules Miles has for her.

Never ask about the past.
Don’t expect a future.

They think they can handle it, but realize almost immediately they can’t handle it at all.

 

"Ugly Love" will be my first foray into the "new adult" genre. It has a ridiculously high rating on Goodreads -- so I'm hoping I'll love it!

 

From the Goodreads summary:
Sixteen-year-old Leilani loves surfing and her home in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii. But she's an outsider -- half white, half Hawaiian, and an epileptic.

While Lei and her father are on a visit to Oahu, a global disaster strikes. Technology and power fail, Hawaii is cut off from the world, and the islands revert to traditional ways of survival. As Lei and her dad embark on a nightmarish journey across the islands to reach home and family, she learns that her epilepsy and her deep connection to Hawaii could be keys to ending the crisis before it becomes worse than anyone can imagine.

Well, there's no way I could resist a disaster novel set in Hawaii! When we lived there, my husband urged me to write just such a book. I guess someone's beaten me to the punch! I have this checked out from the library so I'll be reading it soon.

 

From the Goodreads summary:

A vividly original literary novel based on the astounding true-life story of Laura Bridgman, the first deaf and blind person who learned language and blazed a trail for Helen Keller.

At age two, Laura Bridgman lost four of her five senses to scarlet fever. At age seven, she was taken to Perkins Institute in Boston to determine if a child so terribly afflicted could be taught. At age twelve, Charles Dickens declared her his prime interest for visiting America. And by age twenty, she was considered the nineteenth century's second most famous woman, having mastered language and charmed the world with her brilliance.

 

This based-in-fact book sounds fascinating! Can you imagine being both blind and deaf?

 

I'm looking forward to the last book in this series. I found the previous two a bit hard to get through, but of course I have to find out how the adventure concludes!

And some non-fiction!
I'm always saying I'm going to read more non-fiction and then seldom do, but these two titles sound like awesome reads.

 

From the Goodreads summary:

New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides returns with a white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and survival in the Gilded Age.

This sounds like the kind of non-fiction tale that reads like a novel -- and that's how I like 'em!

 

From the Goodreads summary:

From an award-winning, meticulously observant, and masterful writer comes a groundbreaking account of three women deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, and how their military service affected their friendship, their personal lives, and their families.

 

As a woman and a military spouse, I'm totally intrigued by this book. I feel like I should read more military non-fiction, especially since my husband spent six months in Afghanistan and will probably go back to the Middle East at some point in the next few years, and this looks like a great place to start.

 

And a few more books on my radar:
* "Delicious" by Ruth Reichl
* "A Sudden Light" by Garth Stein (I LOVED "The Art of Racing in the Rain"!)
* "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory" by Caitlin Doughty (sounds morbid but interesting)
* "Blindsighted" by Karin Slaughter (recommended by a co-worker at the library)