“I Want to Impress”

You knew this was going to happen--eventually. Quentin Rowan, aka Q.R. Markham, whose debut spy novel, Assassin of Secrets, was yanked from store shelves after it became clear that parts of it were plagiarized, has begun to apologize for his actions. Not in a big way, but in a strangely satisfying, small manner. UK thriller writer Jeremy Duns, who had taken an early interest in Assassin in Secrets, has recently carried on a correspondence with Rowan/Markham, in which the latter doesn’t justify his actions, but seeks to explain them. Here’s part of what he wrote:

When I was 19 a poem I wrote in high school was chosen for The Best American Poetry 1996. Up until that time I was an indifferent writer, a dabbler really, at the best of times. I was in college and like everyone trying to figure out what I wanted to do with myself. (Mostly I just wanted to play Rock music.) I took this anthology business as a sign that I was meant to be a famous writer. However, unlike any normal person who works at something a long time and eventually gets good, I decided I had to be good then and there. Because I was already supposed to be the Best. I didn’t really plagiarize poetry, it was when I switched to fiction (God knows why) at the age of twenty that I began to distrust my own voice and began swiping other people’s words or phrases because I thought they sounded better or more clever than my own. Perhaps if there had been no pressure to keep publishing it might have been different, but in my mind my course was set.

Many times through my twenties I stopped trying to write altogether, because once I got started on something that felt good enough for publication, I would inevitably start wanting to make it “better” and start stealing things. Therefore, some things I did in the past ten years are perfectly clean and others, obviously, aren’t. There was a need to conceal my own voice with the armor of someone else's words.

This is what happened with Assassin of Secrets, or Spy Safari. It started out as something fun and just for me. A much sillier, more parodic kind of thing. ( I should state that it was initially inspired by my long-time love and study of the genre, not any kind of contempt for it.) Then I decided maybe I could do something with it. But the minute I got an agent and started showing it to people who suggested changes, I began to distrust the quality of whatever real work I’d done on it. So I started ripping off passages from spy novels in my collection that fit. Somehow public scrutiny has always been the pressure point for me. Once I feel I’m doing the work for someone else’s eyes, I begin stealing, because I want to impress.

You can read the entirety of Rowan/Markham’s explanation here, as well as his responses to some of Duns’ excellent follow-up questions about the plagiarized novel.

(Hat tip to GalleyCat.)

Copy That

The mini-scandal surrounding first-time novelist Q.R. Markham (aka Quentin Rowan), who’s been accused of plagiarizing the work of previous authors in his new spy thriller, Assassin of Secrets, continues to be fed by the print and online press. The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the controversy here, while Edward Champion looks at the numerous read-alike passages here.

READ MORE: “Q.R. Markham’s Plagiarism Puzzle,” by Macy Halford (The New Yorker); “Assassin of Secrets” and “Highway Robbery: The Mask of Knowing in Assassin of Secrets,” by Jeremy Duns (The Debrief); “The Markham Affair,” by Duane Swierczynski (Secret Dead Blog); “Borrowing from Bond: The Amazing Q.R. Markham Plagiarism Scandal,” by Allan Massie (The Telegraph).

Cover to Cover

Come the end of every year, it’s now a tradition here at The Rap Sheet to look back over the preceding 12 months and choose our favorite crime novel fronts. We commenced this custom way back in 2007, and have no interest in discontinuing it. Especially not when there ample excellent candidates from which to select.

Which isn’t to say that every book cover in this genre produced since January 1, 2011, was a winner. Some of them were boring or downright repulsive, while most were simply unimaginative--lacking in wit or surprise. I mean, how many shadowy figures of men and women do we have to see decorating the jackets of mysteries and thrillers before readers and more imaginative graphic designers finally revolt, demanding less safe, less lackluster concepts? On the whole, bottom-line-oriented publishers are not terribly daring; it’s partly the responsibility of designers to convince them to experiment with fresh approaches. But it’s also up to readers to judge more books by their covers--and reject those that don’t display at least some novelty in their façades. We aren’t robots, after all. Part of the appeal of any new book is the way it looks, not just the author’s name (familiar ones selling the best) or the words inside or the price on the jacket flap.

As in previous years, our demanding panel of judges for 2011 is four strong: Linda L. Richards, a novelist and the editor of January Magazine; David Middleton, a graphic artist, illustrator, and photographer who also holds the title of art and culture editor for January; Kevin Burton Smith, the talented editor-creator of one of the Web’s top crime-fiction resources, The Thrilling Detective Web Site; and your humble servant, J. Kingston Pierce, editor of The Rap Sheet. We’ve spent the last year gathering works we thought merited inclusion in this Best Crime Novel Covers competition, and several weeks cutting our roster of two dozen picks in half. Some of the finalists are more audacious than others. One is notorious: the front of Assassin of Secrets, a novel that sparked a plagiarism scandal and was yanked from stores in November. Each of our judges has his or her favorites, but the finalists all rank as remarkable.

Now we want to know your opinions.

Below, you will find our dozen nominees for Best Crime Novel Cover of 2011. At the bottom of this post is a ballot on which you can vote for your favorites. Feel free to choose as many jackets as you think deserve acclaim. We’ll keep the voting open until midnight on Friday, January 6, after which we’ll announce the results.

Click on any of these covers for an enlargement.

One more thing: If you think we’ve neglected to mention some outstanding example of a crime-fiction front from the last year, please let us know about it in the Comments section of this post. And include a Web address where we can see your nominee for ourselves.

READ MORE: “My Year of Reading: Favorite Covers of 2011,” by David Abrams (The Quivering Pen); “Favorite Covers of 2011,” by Dan Wagstaff (The Casual Optimist); “The 10 Best Covers of 2011,” by Emily Temple (Flavorwire); “Top Covers of 2011” (Kirkus Reviews).

The Book You Have to Read: “In Deep,” by Bernard Wolfe

(Editor’s note: This is the 128th entry in our ongoing series about great but forgotten books. Today’s piece comes from Steven Nester, the host of Poets of the Tabloid Murder, a weekly Internet radio show heard on the Public Radio Exchange [PRX]. Steve has become a regular contributor to this series; his last piece looked back at Kem Nunn’s first novel, Tapping the Source [1984]. You’ll find Steve’s previous offerings here.)

In Deep, a 1957 spy thriller written by Bernard Wolfe, is a lot of book. An angry tirade against the socialist cause corrupted by a pernicious and amoral bureaucracy, a full-frontal parody of academics and authors in search of the genuine, a satire of Cuban jazz musicians who eye the big time as they foment revolution in the ghettos, a pithy commentary on human motivation, and an ironic account of the relations between the sexes, In Deep takes it all on without ever becoming too pedantic or too irritating.

The novel has all the ornamentation for a door-stopping epic; but instead of getting his Dr. Zhivago on, Wolfe keeps the story manageable by situating it within the confines of Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1950s. At its simplest, In Deep is an adventure novel in which hubris and revenge galvanize a man of action to engage foreign agents at their own game.

After Cuban idealist Barto Caro is murdered by European spymaster Michael Brod in Key West, his best buddy Robert Garmes determines to avenge that crime. Barto and Brod, we learn, have a very interesting history. While fighting for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Barto’s fellow-traveler father was kidnapped by Brod for challenging Soviet policy and was never heard from again. The younger Caro was luckier: Shot in the back by Brod while battling Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces, Barto survived, but Brod was unaware of that fact. Now, 20 years later, Brod hears of Barto Caro’s determination to kill him, and moves quickly to ambush Barto.

Faster than you can say Che Lives!, Barto’s friend Garmes is on his way to Cuba in pursuit of Brod, watched over by CIA agents and Brod’s own people. The CIA needs Garmes to lead them to spymaster Brod, who has information they crave. Time is tight, for Brod has been recalled home--and we all know what that means. First, however, he must eliminate Garmes, before Barto’s vengeful pal can complicate his getaway. But Brod is curious: Just who is this persistent amateur who’s been dogging him?

Any spy novel worth its cloak and dagger must have a clever plot, believable characters, trenchant observations, perhaps a bit of irony showing how similar Cold War antagonists actually were, and a compelling resolution--components that put the bitterness of spy versus spy on a human level. This book has all of those, but it also possesses a keen sense of humor that’s rarely found in espionage novels to the extent that it’s used here--and that’s why you want to read In Deep. While not as sly as say, Our Man in Havana, what distinguishes In Deep from the pack is its veracious and voracious satirizing. Wolfe, with Garmes as his mouthpiece, settles many accounts with humor that entertains and edifies, while also revealing the core of his characters and the folly of their ways.

Vincent Caprio, In Deep’s morally vacant yet highly efficient American espionage agent, walks “with scoutmaster briskness.” He’s described by Garmes as having “something too damned hardworking and clean cut about him, he reminded me of a YMCA counselor who gives a good account of himself on the parallel bars. His hair was despicably neat, and he didn’t blink enough.”

Musicologist and socialist sympathizer Owen Brooke, meanwhile, is “a coupon-clipping professor who thinks he’s a share-cropper” and is unwittingly used to lure Garmes to Cuba and into Brod’s reach. Brooke escorts Garmes into the island nation’s interior to experience the indigenous Afro-Cuban jazz which he believes is unsullied by homogenizing capitalist show-biz exploiters. And the musicians do put on a show, but while the professor believes he’s listening to the real thing, the band--with “New York-rapt eyes above the Congo lips”--is playing for another audience.

This was a Shubert Alley rendition of Africa, the jungle as jazzbo sociology professors dreamed of it behind their box hedges. In his staged Africa there was one and only one rite, the invocation Booking.

The fiction of American novelist Nelson Boyar (a man of the people as well as a yachtsman), who likes to believe that his books aid the socialist cause, is censured here by Brod as a “silly brand of literary proletarianism.” “Movements are inane literary critics,” Brod says as he lambastes the crestfallen writer. “They’ll acclaim any written word that acclaims them.”

And then we have Connie. This witty and wily Key West sex kitten, with whom Robert Garmes maintains a star-crossed romance, is lured to Cuba by U.S. agent Caprio as added bait for Garmes to follow. With a little bit of scratch and a little bit of purr she keeps Garmes off balance. She’s the obtainable vixen who can never to be possessed, and he can’t get enough of her. “I don’t care how many men you’ve had, you’re an incorrigible virgin,” Garmes insists. “You’ve never been had. You’ve only been touched on the outside, where it doesn’t count.” And Connie knows what she’s doing, too.

But in a matter of seconds the quills were out of her voice and she was playing with my earlobes and saying, with tin cups in her words, let’s get out of here, Robbie.

Michael Brod is a seasoned spy, and author Wolfe gives him some pretty heavy credentials. He was the assassin of a Leon Trotsky stand-in, and he played a role in the Soviets attaining American atomic bomb secrets. He’s at the end of a long career and knows his usefulness to his masters is over. Faithful to the cause, he’d never defect to the West, even if it meant saving his own life. Brod is determined to come in from the cold and face execution, if only because it’s the one choice he can make that is solely his. He knows that he’s going to get it, but whether the bullet comes from American agents or his own people--that’s his decision. “I cannot allow just anyone to kill me. I must arrange the circumstances myself. As a last act of will--it’s important, because will is the sign of life.”

(Left) The cover from Alfred A. Knopf’s original, 1957 hardcover edition

Finally, even when getting a little preachy Wolfe’s class observations ring true, as when Garmes travels to a Cuban bordello:

... I noticed this walking on eggshells of theirs. Whores in imperialist countries, pampered by robber barons, have learned to negotiate on French heels, but the ones of the exploited colonies, being long oppressed and cut off from the main sources of imperialistic frilly culture, never seem at home on those luxury item spikes, they look like kids on their first pair of stilts.

And now a little about Bernard Wolfe himself. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, relax. Never a crime or thriller writer, Wolfe is better known to readers of jazz histories than to fans of spy fiction. His most famous work, Really the Blues (1946), is the putative autobiography of Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, perhaps the first-ever “white Negro.” Mezz was a lackluster clarinetist whose main function in life was procuring marijuana for jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong. Really the Blues is loaded with personality, allegedly Mezzrow’s, but it’s really all Wolfe and a must-read for anyone. What gives Wolfe the authority to sound off on espionage and the seamy side of the socialist cause is the year he spent as the amanuensis of Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, during the latter’s 1930s exile in Mexico. That’s the sort of credential that doesn’t show up on many résumés; and while Wolfe later fictionalized Trotsky’s 1940 murder in The Great Prince Died (1959), readers might ache just a little knowing that Wolfe never sat down to compose his memoirs. His life was richly lived, and while much of it found its way into his fiction, a factual accounting of his experiences might have been the most fascinating book of all.

Roger Ellory and His Sock Puppets

As scandals go, revelations that best-selling UK thriller writer R.J. “Roger” Ellory has been “faking his own glowing reviews” (to quote the subhead on a report in The Daily Telegraph) and simultaneously dissing rival wordsmiths online seems like fairly small stuff. He is, after all, only a single abuser of an online-reviewing system that, according to a recent article in The New York Times, has fetched some freelance writers a good deal of dough for their phony critiques and, in the process, brought under suspicion all reader reviews on the Web--whether their subjects are books, restaurants, movies, gardening equipment, cleaning services, or anything else. And he says that his faked or negative reviews are few in number compared to the totality of opinions he’s submitted online.

However, the 47-year-old Ellory has suddenly become the poster boy for the exploitation of a system that contains inadequate safeguards against chicanery of this sort. As The Daily Mail explains:

Novelist R.J. Ellory was forced to make a grovelling apology yesterday after it emerged he had been posting gushing praise of his own work--and attacking others’ novels--under an assumed name on Amazon.

The author, who won the crime novel of the year [award] in 2010, seems to have been using at least two fake identities to rave about his writing on the site.

Posting as ‘Jelly Bean’, he wrote that his novel A Quiet Belief in Angels was ‘one of the most moving books I’ve ever read’.

He continued: ‘It is so beautifully written I felt as though it enabled me to be a part of that era even though that can never actually happen.

'I would highly recommend this book to anyone who really wants to experience a class read.’

He also appears to have been posting as ‘Nicodemus Jones’, who described the same novel as a ‘modern masterpiece’.

Discovery of Ellory’s misbehavior--what’s known in the business as “sock-puppetry,” or the use of an online identity for purposes of deception--was made by Jeremy Duns, a UK spy-fictionist now based in Sweden. Duns, you may recall, was also the person who last year revealed significant plagiarism by Q.R. Markham, author of the debut espionage thriller Assassin of Secrets (which was later removed from store shelves by its publisher). He told the Telegraph that, while he hadn’t been a victim of Ellory’s pseudonymous mischief, he sees sock-puppetry as “pathetic” and worth exposing:

“I have only met Ellory once and this is not a personal attack, but I feel very strongly that fellow authors shouldn’t write reviews about their own ‘magnificent genius’ and slate the work of other hard-working writers without clearly declaring who they are.

“It is not my job to police it, but I think it is important to highlight what is ‘below the belt’ behaviour, which I have no time for.”

The British media say that authors Mark Billingham and Stuart MacBride were two prominent targets of Ellory’s online derision. After giving MacBride’s 2010 DS Logan McRae novel, Dark Blood, only one star on the Amazon UK site, Ellory allegedly wrote: “Unfortunately this is another in the seemingly endless parade of same-old-same-old Police procedurals that seem to abound in the UK.”

(Left) J. Kingston Pierce and Roger Ellory in San Francisco for Bouchercon 2010.

Now, let me say that Roger Ellory is a friend of mine, and I’ve long found him to be a talented, insightful author. He has always been very kind and generous to me, and I look forward to many long years of drinking and story-swapping together at crime-fiction conventions around the world. Even if all the charges made against him in the press are true, I shall not abandon him as a friend.

However, these allegations of serial sock-puppetry are certainly troubling. I claim no inside information as to his motives, but I can only guess that a combination of prankishness and arrogance lies behind Ellory’s deeds. It would have been manipulation of a lesser sort had he sought simply to pump up his own writing through bogus reviews; we all understand--even if we don’t approve--that people cheat the system of online reviewing if they can get away with it. When Ellory extended his abuse to knocking other writers, though, that took his acts to a higher and less excusable level.

After being confronted with questions about his transgressions, Ellory issued a statement saying, in part: “I wholeheartedly regret the lapse of judgment that allowed personal opinions to be disseminated in this way and I would like to apologise to my readers and the writing community.”

For some, it may be too late for mea culpas. Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black and other popular works, is said to have tweeted: “Once you’re found out reviewing yourself glowingly and dissing others your reputation will never ever recover.”

I’m not sure Hill is correct. As I said before, this small-scale, if deliberate attempt to fool readers and perhaps boost book sales seems like a fairly petty scandal. Significantly worse offenses have been overcome by people who were far more in the public eye than Ellory. Perhaps the best he could do is follow the example of another Brit: actor Hugh Grant. After being caught “in the act” with a Hollywood hooker back in 1995, Grant--who was famous at that time for dating gorgeous model-actress Elizabeth Hurley--proceeded to fess up at every opportunity to the idiocy of his actions. By admitting to his misdeeds, rather than trying to duck negative publicity, he retained the support of his fans and earned sympathy from others. Today, most filmgoers probably don’t even remember Grant’s embarrassing affair.

In all likelihood, Ellory’s readers will eventually forgive him his wrongdoings. Though whether other authors forget quite so easily is another question.

I am very sorry that my friend Roger has to go through the public shaming he’s brought upon himself. But I hope he digests the wrongness of his actions, and that the exposure of his abuse of online reviewing stops others from repeating those same errors. We ought to be able to trust that people who pen online reviews do so out of a wish to voice their honest opinions--not out of a nefarious, ethics-free desire to game a fault-ridden system.

READ MORE: “‘I’m Sorry’: Award-winning Crime Novelist Admits Fake Five-star Reviews of His OWN Books,” by Natalie Evans (The Daily Mirror); “A Quiet Belief in Sockpuppets,” by Jedidiah Ayres (Hard-boiled Wonderland); “Women Writers at War Over Fake Book Reviews on Amazon,” by Nick Fagge (The Daily Mail); “Sock Puppetry: Not Just Fun and Games Anymore,” by Jeri Westerson (Getting Medieval); “Fake Reviews Are Just the Start in the Dodgy Art of Publishing Books,” by Terence Blacker (The Independent).

How About Some Villainy and Vice to Go Along with This Season’s Sand and Sunshine?

It’s happening already: print magazines, blogs, and other Web sites are announcing their choices of “the best books of 2019 (so far).” The Guardian, Real Simple, Esquire, New York magazine’s Vulture site—they have all done it, racing ahead of the usual November/December ritual of choosing the foremost works released during the preceding 12 months, as if their editors can’t possibly wait another half-year to broadcast their considered, if perhaps premature, opinions.

This isn’t an exercise in which I customarily take part. However, I have been impressed by a number of the crime, mystery, and thriller novels I’ve tackled over the last six months. Impressed enough that I have decided to applaud 10 of them early:

— Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
— The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason (Algonquin)
— The Devil Aspect, by Craig Russell (Doubleday)
— The King’s Evil, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)
— Metropolis, by Philip Kerr (Putnam)
— The Moroccan Girl, by Charles Cumming (St. Martin’s Press)
— The Paragon Hotel, by Lyndsay Faye (Putnam)
— Smoke and Ashes, by Abir Mukherjee (Pegasus)
— The Summer of Ellen, by Agnete Friis (Soho Crime)
— The Wolf and the Watchman, by Niklas Natt och Dag (Atria)

In addition, I should mention British author-historian Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a sedulously researched work that currently ranks as my favorite true-crime tale of 2019.

Of course, none of the aforementioned titles is guaranteed a spot on my year-end register of reading preferences; there are far too many books in this genre, due out between now and New Year’s Day, that still await my attention and may prove to be even more to my liking. For instance, Martin Walker has a new Bruno Courrèges yarn, The Body in the Castle Well (Knopf), just out, and we can look forward later in June to fresh fiction from Kate Atkinson (Big Sky), Mick Herron (Joe Country), Denise Mina (Conviction), and Andrew Martin (The Winker). As we move deeper into summer, we’ll also be offered new stories by Adrian McKinty (The Chain), Laura Lippman (Lady in the Lake), Richard Russo (Chances Are …), Helen Phillips (The Need), Peter Lovesey (Killing with Confetti), S.J. Rozan (Paper Son), James Oswald (Nothing to Hide), Christobel Kent (A Secret Life), Robert Crais (A Dangerous Man), Louise Penny (A Better Man), Alex Segura (Miami Midnight), Lisa Lutz (The Swallows), and Max Byrd (The Sixth Conspirator). Keep a watch, too, for Swedish author David Lagercrantz’s final Lisbeth Salander adventure, The Girl Who Lived Twice; a collection of unpublished works by Gil Brewer, Death Is a Private Eye; Jo Nesbø’s Knife, his 12th case for Norwegian detective Harry Hole; what I hope will be a wonderful anthology of vintage crime-fiction short stories, The Best of Manhunt; the third entry in John A. Connell’s World War II-era series about U.S. Army investigator Mason Collins, Blood of the Innocent; and Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre, a non-fiction release to which I contributed an essay.

Below, you will find a curated selection of more than 400 books—all due to appear in stores (on both sides of the Atlantic) during the next three, warmer months—that should be of particular interest to devotees of crime and thriller fiction. Those marked with asterisks (*) belong on the non-fiction shelves; the rest are novels or short-story collections. To learn which of them I find most engrossing, you’ll have to be patient until I post my “best of 2019” list in December.

JUNE (U.S.):

• The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective: Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime, by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)*

• All the Lost Things, by Michelle Sacks (Little, Brown)

• Assassin of Shadows, by Lawrence Goldstone (Pegasus)

• Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold, by Nancy Atherton (Viking)

• Backlash, by Brad Thor (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Beautiful Liars, by Isabel Ashdown (Kensington)

• Before I Wake, by David Morrell (Subterranean)

• Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, by Malin Persson Giolito (Other Press)

• Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson ( Little, Brown)

• The Body in Question, by Jill Ciment (Pantheon)

• The Body in the Castle Well, by Martin Walker (Knopf)

• The Body Lies, by Jo Baker (Knopf)

• Bone Deep, by Sandra Ireland (Gallery)

• Breaking the Dance, by Clare O’Donohue (Midnight Ink)

• The Buy Back Blues, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• Chai Another Day, by Leslie Budewitz (Seventh Street)

• Charlie-316, by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro (Down & Out)

• City of Fear, by Larry Enmon (Crooked Lane)

• Conviction, by Denise Mina (Mulholland)

• The Cutting Room, by Ashley Dyer (Morrow)

• The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason (Algonquin)

• Dead Big Dawg, by Victoria Houston (Gallery)

• Dead Wrong: The Continuing Story of City of Lies, Corruption and Cover-Up in the Notorious BIG Murder Investigation, by Randall Sullivan (Atlantic Monthly Press)*

• Death in Kew Gardens, by Jennifer Ashley (Berkley)

• Death in Summer, by Michael Theurillat (Manilla)

• Deep Waters: Mysteries on the Waves, edited by Martin Edwards (British Library)

• Die Behind the Wheel: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan, edited by Brian Thornton (Down & Out)

• The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth, by Leonard
Goldberg (Minotaur)

• The Ditch, by Herman Koch (Hogarth)

• Drink to Every Beast, by Joel Burcat (Headline)

• Fake Like Me, by Barbara Bourland (Grand Central)

• A Family of Strangers, by Emilie Richards (Mira)

• The First Mistake, by Sandie Jones (Minotaur)

• The Friend, by Joakim Zander (Harper)

• Girl Gone Missing, by Marcie Rendon (Cinco Puntos Press)

• Girl in the Rearview Mirror, by Kelsey Rae Dimberg (Morrow)

• The Gone Dead, by Chanelle Benz (Ecco)

• Gone Too Long, by Lori Roy (Dutton)

• Grab a Snake by the Tail, by Leonardo Padura (Bitter Lemon Press)

• Her Daughter’s Mother, by Daniela Petrova (Putnam)

• Hitchcock and the Censors, by John Billheimer (University
Press of Kentucky)*

• I Know You, by Annabel Kantaria (Crooked Lane)

• I’ll Never Tell, by Catherine McKenzie (Lake Union)

• Joe Country, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

• Just One Bite, by Jack Heath (Hanover Square Press)

• Killing State, by Judith O'Reilly (Head of Zeus)

• A King Alone, by Jean Giono (NYRB Classics)

• The Last House Guest, by Megan Miranda (Simon & Schuster)

• The L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, by James Ellroy (Everyman’s Library)

• The Last of the Armageddon Wars, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation, by Rich Cohen (Spiegel & Grau)*

• The Last Widow, by Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins)

• Like This Afternoon Forever, by Jaime Manrique (Kaylie Jones/Akashic)

• A Long Way Down, by Randall Silvis (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Man of the Year, by Caroline Louise Walker (Gallery)

• A Matter of Will, by Adam Mitzner (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Mausoleum, by David Mark (Severn House)

• A Merciful Promise, by Kendra Elliot (Montlake Romance)

• Miss Pinkerton, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (American Mystery Classics)

• Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing, by
Maryla Szymiczkowa (Oneworld)

• Murder in Bel-Air,
by Cara Black (Soho Crime)

• Murder in the Crooked House,
by Soji Shimada (Pushkin Vertigo)

• My Life as a Rat,
by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)

• A Nearly Normal Family, by M.T. Edvardsson (Celadon)

• Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History, by Peter Houlahan (Counterpoint)*

• One Night at the Lake, by Bethany Chase (Ballantine)

• The Perfect Fraud, by Ellen LaCorte (Harper)

• The Perfect Plan, by Bryan Reardon (Dutton)

• A Philosophy of Ruin, by Nicholas Mancusi (Hanover Square Press)

• A Plain Vanilla Murder, by Susan Wittig Albert (Persevero Press)

• The Playground Murders, by Lesley Thomson (Head of Zeus)

• Rag and Bone, by Joe Clifford (Oceanview)

• Random Act, by Gerry Boyle (Islandport Press)

• Recursion, by Blake Crouch (Crown)

• The Right Sort of Man, by Allison Montclair (Minotaur)

• The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: The Greatest Detective Stories, 1837-1914, edited by Graeme Davis (Pegasus)

• Rogue Strike, by David Ricciardi (Berkley)

• Rouge, by Richard Kirshenbaum (St. Martin’s Press)

• The Safe House, by Kiki Swinson (Dafina)

• Searching for Sylvie Lee, by Jean Kwok (Morrow)

• The Secret Mother, by Shalini Boland (Grand Central)

• Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry, by Jen Conley (Down & Out)

• The Shallows, by Matt Goldman (Forge)

• Shoot the Bastards, by Michael Stanley (Poisoned Pen Press)

• A Shot of Murder, by J.A. Kazimer (Midnight Ink)

• Sleepless Summer, by Bram Dehouck (World Editions)

• Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Snakes, by Sadie Jones (Harper)

• The Spies of Shilling Lane, by Jennifer Ryan (Crown)

• The Starter Wife, by Nina Laurin (Grand Central)

• Ten Swedes Must Die, by Martin Österdahl (Amazon Crossing)

• Their Little Secret, by Mark Billingham (Atlantic Monthly Press)

• Thin Air, by Lisa Gray (Thomas & Mercer)

• This Storm, by James Ellroy (Knopf)

• Those People, by Louise Candlish (Berkley)

• Traitor’s Codex, by Jeri Westerson (Severn House)

• The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus, by Ryan Jacobs (Clarkson Potter)*

• The Ugly Truth, by Jill Orr (Prospect Park)

• Ungentlemanly Warfare, by Howard Linskey (No Exit Press)

• Unraveling, by Karen Lord (DAW)

• The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone, by Felicity McLean (Algonquin)

• Wherever She Goes, by Kelley Armstrong (Minotaur)

• The Woman in Our House, by Andrew Hart (Lake Union)

• The Woman Who Spoke to Spirits, by Alys Clare (Severn House)

• Your Life Is Mine, by Nathan Ripley (Atria)

JUNE (UK):

• The Art of Deception, by Louise Mangos (HQ)

• The Beijing Conspiracy, by Shamini Flint (Severn House)

• Black Summer, by M.W. Craven (Constable)

• The Boy Who Fell, by Jo Spain (Quercus)

• The Colours of Murder, by Ali Carter (Point Blank)

• Date with Poison, by Julia Chapman (Pan)

• Death at Burwell Farm, by Betty Rowlands (Bookouture)

• Death in Avignon, by Serena Kent (Orion)

• The End of the Line, by Gillian Galbraith (Polygon)

• The Exiled, by David Barbaree (Zaffre)

• A Fatal Game, by Nicholas Searle (Viking)

• The Friend Who Lied, by Rachel Amphlett (Saxon)

• Girl at Midnight, by Katarzyna Bonda (Hodder & Stoughton)

• I Looked Away, by Jane Corry (Penguin)

• The Killing Gene, by E.M. Davey (Duckworth)

• The Lies We Tell, by Niki Mackay (Orion)

• A Line of Forgotten Blood, by Malcolm Mackay (Head of Zeus)

• Mr. Campion’s Visit,
by Mike Ripley (Severn House)

• Mosaic, by Caro Ramsey (Severn House)

• The Most Difficult Thing,
by Charlotte Philby (Borough Press)

• The Mother-in-Law,
by Sally Hepworth (Hodder)

• Murder at Whitby Abbey, by Cassandra Clark (Severn House)

• Naked Flames,
by Graham Ison (Severn House)

• The Nanny, by Gilly Macmillan (Century)

• Now You See Me, by Chris McGeorge (Orion)

• The October Man, by Ben Aaronovitch (Gollancz)

• One Way Out, by A.A. Dhand (Bantam Press)

• Our Little Secrets, by Peter Ritchie (Black and White)

• The Perfect Betrayal, by Lauren North (Corgi)

• The Serpent’s Mark, by S.W. Perry (Corvus)

• Shadowplay, by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker)

• The Sleepwalker, by Joseph Knox (Doubleday)

• Somewhere Close to Happy, by Lia Louis (Trapeze)

• Spring Cleaning, by Antonio Manzini (Harper)

• Tell Me Your Secret, by Dorothy Koomson (Headline Review)

• Trap Lane, by Stella Cameron (Creme de la Crime)

• The Unseen Hand, by Edward Marston (Allison and Busby)

• White Hot Silence, by Henry Porter (Quercus)

• Who Killed Ruby? by Camilla Way (HarperCollins)

• Who’s Sorry Now? by Maggie Robinson (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Winker, by Andrew Martin (Corsair)

• Wolves at the Door, by Gunnar Staalesen (Orenda)

• Your Truth or Mine? by Trisha Sakhlecha (Macmillan)

JULY (U.S.):

• Almost Midnight, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur)

• American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century, by Maureen Callahan (Viking)*

• The Arrangement, by Robyn Harding (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Bad Axe County, by John Galligan (Atria)

• Bark of Night, by David Rosenfelt (Minotaur)

• Beijing Payback, by Daniel Nieh (Ecco)

• The Best of Manhunt, edited by Jeff Vorzimmer (Stark House Press)

• Betrayal in Time, by Julie McElwain (Pegasus)

• The Bird Boys, by Lisa Sandlin (Cinco Puntos Press)

• Black Sun, by Owen Matthews (Doubleday)

• Blindsided, by Kate Watterson (Crooked Lane)

• Blood in Eden, by Peter Tremayne (Severn House)

• Bodies from the Library 2: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense by the Queens of Crime and other Masters of Golden Age Detection, edited by Tony Medawar (Collins Crime Club)

• The Body in Griffith Park, by Jennifer Kincheloe (Seventh Street)

• Bones of the Innocent, by John A. Connell (Nailhead)

• A Capitol Death, by Lindsey Davis (Minotaur)

• The Chain, by Adrian McKinty (Mulholland)

• Chances Are …, by Richard Russo (Knopf)

• The Churchgoer, by Patrick Coleman (Harper Perennial)

• The Content Assignment, by Holly Roth (Dover)

• The Dead Girl in 2A, by Carter Wilson (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Dead Silence, by Wendy Corsi Staub (Morrow)

• Death in a Desert Land, by Andrew Wilson (Washington Square Press)

• Deep Dive, by Chris Knopf (Permanent Press)

• Dragonfly, by Leila Meacham (Grand Central)

• The Dreaming Tree, by Matthew Mather (Blackstone)

• The Escape Room, by Megan Goldin (St. Martin’s Press)

• First Tracks, by Catherine O’Connell (Severn House)

• Fragments of Fear, by Carrie Stuart Parks (Thomas Nelson)

• Frozen Secrets, by Michael L. Douglas (MCP)

• Game of Snipers, by Stephen Hunter (Putnam)

• The Ghost Clause, by Howard Norman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Girls Like Us, by Cristina Alger (Putnam)

• Good Girl, Bad Girl, by Michael Robotham (Scribner)

• Goodnight Stranger, by Miciah Bay Gault (Park Row)

• The Gomorrah Gambit, by Tom Chatfield (Mulholland)

• Grave Expectations, by Heather Redmond (Kensington)

• Greasy Bend, by Kris Lackey (Blackstone)

• Gretchen, by Shannon Kirk (Thomas & Mercer)

• Growing Things and Other Stories, by Paul Tremblay (Morrow)

• The Hallows, by Victor Methos (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Hard Stuff, by David Gordon (Mysterious Press)

• The Haunted Martyr, by Kenneth Cameron (Felony & Mayhem)

• The Heart Keeper, by Alex Dahl (Berkley)

• Heart of Barkness, by Spencer Quinn (Forge)

• Heavy on the Dead, by G.M. Ford (Thomas & Mercer)

• Her Deadly Secrets, by Laura Griffin (Gallery)

• The Honorary Jersey Girl, by Albert Tucher (Shotgun Honey)

• Hope Rides Again, by Andrew Shaffer (Quirk)

• The Hound of Justice, by Claire O’Dell (Harper Voyager)

• A House Divided, by Jonathan F. Putnam (Crooked Lane)

• Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan)

• Killer in the Carriage House, by Sheila Connolly (Minotaur)

• Killing with Confetti, by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime)

• Knife, by Jo Nesbø (Knopf)

• Labyrinth, by Catherine Coulter (Gallery)

• Lady in the Lake,
by Laura Lippman (Morrow)

• The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt, by Andrea Bobotis (Sourcebooks Landmark)

• Layover, by David Bell (Berkley)

• Lock Every Door, by Riley Sager (Dutton)

• The Magic Chair Murder,
by Diane James (Severn House)

• Maigret’s Childhood Friend, by Georges Simenon (Penguin Classics)

• Marah Chase and the Conqueror’s Tomb, by Jay Stringer (Pegasus)

• Marked Men, by Chris Simms (Severn House)

• The Mountain Master of Sha Tin, by Ian Hamilton
(House of Anansi Press)

• Murderabilia, by Carl Vonderau (Midnight Ink)

• Murder at Crossways, by Alyssa Maxwell (Kensington)

• A Necessary Murder, by M.J. Tjia (Legend Press)

• The Need, by Helen Phillips (Simon & Schuster)

• Never Have I Ever, by Joshilyn Jackson (Morrow)

• Never Look Back, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow)

• The New Girl, by Daniel Silva (Harper)

• The Night of Rome, by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo de
Cataldo (World Noir)

• Off the Grid, by Robert McCaw (Oceanview)

• One Good Deed, by David Baldacci (Grand Central)

• One Little Secret, by Cate Holahan (Crooked Lane)

• The Other Mrs. Miller, by Allison Dickson (Putnam)

• Paper Son, by S.J. Rozan (Pegasus)

• Pretty Revenge, by Emily Liebert (Gallery)

• Purgatory, by Guido Eekhaut (Skyhorse)

• The Reunion, by Guillaume Musso (Little, Brown)

• Rocket to the Morgue, by Anthony Boucher (American
Mystery Classics)

• The Russian, by Ben Coes (St. Martin’s Press)

• Season of Darkness, by Cora Harrison (Severn House)

• Second Sight, by Aoife Clifford (Pegasus)

• Shamed, by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)

• The Shameless, by Ace Atkins (Putnam)

• Sherlock Holmes: Adventures in the American West,
by John S. Fitzpatrick (Riverbend)

• Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Seven, edited by Martin
Rosenstock (Titan)

• Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu: The Adventure of the Innsmouth Mutations, by Lois H. Gresh (Titan)

• Shibumi (40th Anniversary Edition), by Trevanian (Rare Bird)

• A Shroud of Leaves, by Rebecca Alexander (Titan)

• A Sinner’s Prayer, by M.P. Wright (Black and White)

• Slugger, by Martin Holmén (Pushkin Vertigo)

• Smokescreen, by Iris Johansen (Grand Central)

• Snowball, by Jimmy Sangster (Brash)

• Someone We Know, by Shari Lapena (Pamela Dorman)

• Speaking of Summer, by Kalisha Buckhanon (Counterpoint)

• A Stranger on the Beach, by Michele Campbell (St. Martin’s Press)

• The Subject of Malice, by Cynthia Kuhn (Henery Press)

• Surfeit of Suspects, by George Bellairs (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Tangled Roots, by Marcia Talley (Severn House)

• Tell Me Everything, by Cambria Brockman (Ballantine)

• Temper, by Layne Fargo (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Theme Music, by T. Marie Vandelly (Dutton)

• This Side of Night, by J. Todd Scott (Putnam)

• Too Close, by Natalie Daniels (Harper)

• True Believer, by Jack Carr (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Triumph of the Spider Monkey, by Joyce Carol Oates
(Hard Case Crime)

• The Two Lila Bennetts, by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke (Lake Union)

• Under the Cold Bright Lights, by Garry Disher (Soho Crime)

• An Unsettled Grave, by Bernard Schaffer (Kensington)

• The Venetian Masquerade, by Philip Gwynne Jones (Constable)

• Watchers of the Dead, by Simon Beaufort (Severn House)

• We Went to the Woods, by Caite Dolan-Leach (Random House)

• Whisper Network, by Chandler Baker (Flatiron)

JULY (UK):

• The Bear Pit, by S.G. MacLean (Quercus)

• The Bone Fire, by S.D. Sykes (Hodder & Stoughton)

• A Breath on Dying Embers, by Denzil Meyrick (Polygon)

• Call Him Mine, by Tim MacGabhann (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

• The Closer I Get, by Paul Burston (Orenda)

• Come Back for Me,
by Heidi Perks (Century)

• Darkest Truth, by Catherine Kirwan (Arrow)

• Death’s Dark Valley,
by Paul Doherty (Headline)

• Don’t Tell Teacher, by Suzy K. Quinn (HQ)

• A Grave for Two, by Anne Holt (Corvus)

• The Hidden Wife,
by Amanda Reynolds (Wildfire)

• The Holiday, by T.M. Logan (Zaffre)

• The Home, by Sarah Stovell (Orenda)

• The Housemate, by C. L. Pattison (Headline)

• Hudson’s Kill, by Paddy Hirsch (Corvus)

• The July Girls, by Phoebe Locke (Wildfire)

• The Maltese Herring, by L.C. Tyler (Allison and Busby)

• Nothing to Hide, by James Oswald (Wildfire)

• On My Life, by Angela Clarke (Mulholland)

• The Poison Garden, by Alex Marwood (Sphere)

• The Possession, by Michael Rutger (Zaffre)

• The Room of the Dead, by M.R.C. Kasasian (Head of Zeus)

• Sanctuary, by Luca D’Andrea (MacLehose Press)

• A Secret Life, by Christobel Kent (Sphere)

• Short Range, by Stephen Leather (Hodder & Stoughton)

• Stone Cold Heart, by Caz Frear (Harper)

• Tightrope, by Marnie Riches (Trapeze)

AUGUST (U.S.):

• An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam, by Michael Grant (Severn House)

• Below the Line, by Howard Michael Gould (Dutton)

• Below the Radar, by Dana Ridenour (Wise Ink)

• A Better Man, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

• The Birthday Girl, by Melissa de la Cruz (Dutton)

• The Bitterroots, by C.J. Box (Minotaur)

• The Broken Fixer, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• Careful What You Wish For, by Hallie Ephron (Morrow)

• The Catholic School, by Edoardo Albinati (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• City of Pearl, by Alys Clare (Severn House)

• City of Windows, by Robert Pobi (Minotaur)

• The Cold Way Home, by Julia Keller (Minotaur)

• Cold Woods, by Karen Katchur (Thomas & Mercer)

• A Conspiracy of Wolves, by Candace Robb (Crème de la Crime)

• A Dance of Cranes, by Steve Burrows (Oneworld)

• A Dangerous Man, by Robert Crais (Putnam)

• A Darker State, by David Young (Bonnier Zaffre)

• Dead at First Sight, by Peter James (Pan Macmillan)

• A Deadly Deception, by Tessa Harris (Kensington)

• Death Comes to Dartmoor, by Vivian Conroy (Crooked Lane)

• Death Is a Private Eye, by Gil Brewer (Stark House Press)

• Devotion, by Madeline Stevens (Ecco)

• The Doll Factory, by Elizabeth Macneal (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• The Dragon Lady, by Louisa Treger (Bloomsbury Caravel)

• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga
Tokarczuk (Riverhead)

• Empty Hearts, by Juli Zeh (Nan A. Talese)

• Forgotten Bones, by Vivian Barz (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America,
by Karen Abbott (Crown)*

• The Girl on the Porch, by Richard Chizmar (Subterranean)

• The Girl Who Lived Twice, by David Lagercrantz (Knopf)

• Gumshoe Rock, by Rob Leininger (Oceanview)

• The Hidden Things, by Jamie Mason (Gallery)

• Inheritance Tracks, by Catherine Aird (Severn House)

• Invitation to Die, by Barbara Cleverly (Soho Crime)

• Killer’s Choice, by Louis Begley (Nan A. Talese)

• The Lake of Learning, by Steve Berry and M.J. Rose
(Evil Eye Concepts)

• The Last Good Guy, by T. Jefferson Parker (Putnam)

• The Last Widow, by Kari Slaughter (Morrow)

• Lost You, by Haylen Beck (Crown)

• Love and Death Among the Cheetahs,
by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)

• Maigret and the Killer,
by Georges Simenon (Penguin Classics)

• The Man in the White Linen Suit,
by David Handler (Morrow)

• The Man Who Wouldn’t Die,
by A.B. Jewell (Morrow)

• The Memory Police,
by Yoko Ogawa (Pantheon)

• Miami Midnight, by Alex Segura (Polis)

• The Missing Ones, by Edwin Hill (Kensington)

• Murder in the Mill-Race, by E.C.R. Lorac (Poisoned Pen Press)

• No Good Deed, by James Swain (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Passengers, by John Marrs (Berkley)

• The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave, by Bill Pronzini (Forge)

• The Pearl Dagger, by L.A. Chandler (Kensington)

• The Perfect Son, by Laura North (Berkley)

• The Perfect Wife, by J.P. Delaney (Ballantine)

• Play with Fire, by William Shaw (Mulholland)

• Relative Fortunes, by Marlowe Benn (Lake Union)

• The Runaway, by Hollie Overton (Redhook)

• Run, Hide, Fight Back, by April Henry (Henry Holt)

• Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession, by Rachel Monroe (Scribner)*

• The Second Biggest Nothing, by Colin Cotterill (Soho Crime)

• Simply Dead, by Eleanor Kuhns (Severn House)

• Singapore Sapphire, by A.M. Stuart (Berkley)

• The Sixth Conspirator, by Max Byrd (Permuted Press)

• Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, edited by Andrew Nette and
Iain McIntyre (PM Press)*

• Stolen Things, by R.H. Herron (Dutton)

• The Swallows, by Lisa Lutz (Ballantine)

• The Third Mrs. Durst, by Ann Aguirre (Midnight Ink)

• Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Flatiron)

• This Poison Will Remain, by Fred Vargas (Penguin)

• Tin Badges, by Lorenzo Carcaterra (Ballantine)

• The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Twisted at the Root, by Ellen Hart (Minotaur)

• Vanishing in the Haight, by Max Tomlinson (Oceanview)

• The Warehouse, by Rob Hart (Crown)

• The Warlow Experiment, by Alix Nathan (Doubleday)

• What You Did, by Claire McGowan (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Whisperer, by Karin Fossum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• The Whisper Man, by Alex North (Celadon)

• The Wolf Wants In, by Laura McHugh (Spiegel & Grau)

• The Woman in the Park, by Teresa Sorkin and
Tullan Holmqvist (Beaufort)

AUGUST (UK):

• The Art of Dying, by Douglas Lindsay (Mulholland)

• The Art of Dying, by Ambrose Parry (Canongate)

• At Your Door, by J.P. Carter (Avon)

• Bad Day at the Vulture Club, by Vaseem Khan (Mulholland)

• The Bastille Spy, by C.S. Quinn (Corvus)

• Black Ops, by Chris Ryan (Coronet)

• The Burning Land, by George Alagiah (Canongate)

• The Cabin, by Jørn Lier Horst (Michael Joseph)

• Control, by Hugh Montgomery (Zaffre)

• The Darker Arts, by Oscar de Muriel (Orion)

• The Dirty Dozen, by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre)

• Don’t Say a Word, by Rebecca Tinnelly (Hodder)

• Drowned Lives, by Stephen Booth (Sphere)

• The Family Upstairs, by Lisa Jewell (Century)

• Fugitive 13, by Rob Sinclair (Orion)

• How the Dead Speak, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)

• Ice Cold Heart, by P.J. Tracy (Michael Joseph)

• Impolitic Corpses, by Paul Johnston (Severn House)

• I Spy, by Claire Kendal (HarperCollins)

• Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar,
by Kate Saunders (Bloomsbury)

• The Murder Map, by Danny Miller (Bantam Press)

• Night, by Bernard Minier (Mulholland)

• Sanctuary, by V.V. James (Gollancz)

• The Sanctuary Murders, by Susanna Gregory (Sphere)

• Take It Back, by Kia Abdullah (HQ)

• Then She Vanishes, by Claire Douglas (Penguin)

• Time for the Dead, by Lin Anderson (Macmillan)

• The Victim, by G.D. Sanders (Avon)

• The White Feather Killer, by R.N. Morris (Severn House)

When compiling this list, I sought a mix of darker, hard-edged crime and lighter-weight fiction, historical and modern stories, and both plot-driven and character-propelled yarns. If you believe I’ve missed mentioning any works of particular note, please let us all know about them in the Comments section at the end of this post.