The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (Touchstone, $15). A perfect jewel of a book. It's not a murder mystery; indeed, it's not clear any crime has even been committed. A British schoolgirl accuses an older woman and her middle-aged daughter of abducting her. The girl describes the women's home perfectly, though they claim to have never seen her before.
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale (Walker & Co., $16). One of the earliest murder investigations by police. Summerscale follows Inspector "Jack" Whicher, one of the original Scotland Yard detectives, as he investigates the murder of a child in Victorian England. A chilling true tale. Whicher all but invented the detection of homicide — and almost lost his job and his mind.
Longitude by Dava Sobel (Walker & Co., $14). Who knew that longitude was something that had to be invented? I didn't even care, frankly — until about a paragraph into this riveting account of the race to solve what was known as the "longitude problem."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A Fish Caught in Time by Samantha Weinberg (Harper, $14). Weinberg also takes an obscure topic and makes it read like a thriller. In this case, it's the true story of how a fisherman off the African coast brought up a coelacanth — a fish with arms, thought to be the missing link between fish and tetrapods. Soon the hunt was on to find whether the coelacanth held the key to many evolutionary mysteries.
Save Me by Lisa Scottoline (St. Martin's, $28). A searing mystery that, at its considerable heart, is an examination of the power of a mother's love. Rose McKenna's daughter is being bullied. Then one day a bomb goes off at the girl's school and Rose has to make a decision — to search for her daughter or save the girl who bullied her.
Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler (out of print). One of my all-time favorite Canadian books. Richler alternately skewers and celebrates Montreal's Jewish community in this hilarious, exuberant, irreverent romp through an improbable history and its many detours into wishful thinking.
The Canadian novelist and former journalist Louise Penny is the author of several best-selling works of crime fiction. Her latest novel, A Trick of the Light, continues the saga of Quebecois detective Armand Gamache.
-
Fannie Flagg’s 6 favorite books that sparked her imaginationFeature The author recommends works by Johanna Spyri, John Steinbeck, and more
-
Jessica Francis Kane's 6 favorite books that prove less is moreFeature The author recommends works by Penelope Fitzgerald, Marie-Helene Bertino, and more
-
Keith McNally's 6 favorite books that have ambitious charactersFeature The London-born restaurateur recommends works by Leo Tolstoy, John le Carré, and more
-
Garrett Graff's 6 favorite books that shine new light on World War IIFeature The author recommends works by James D. Hornfischer, Craig L. Symonds, and more
-
Helen Schulman's 6 favorite collections of short storiesFeature The award-winning author recommends works by Raymond Carver, James Baldwin, and more
-
Beatriz Williams' 6 timeless books about history and human relationshipsFeature The best-selling author recommends works by Jane Austen, Zora Neale Hurston, and more
-
Aysegul Savas' 6 favorite books for readers who love immersive settingsFeature The Paris-based Turkish author recommends works by Hiromi Kawakami, Virginia Woolf, and more
-
Geoff Dyer's 6 favorite books about the realities of warFeature The award-winning author recommends works by Ernie Pyle, Michael Herr, and more
