Top Ten Tuesday Books on My Summer 2021 Reading List

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. A topic is assigned to each Tuesday. For that topic you are encouraged to make a top ten list, putting your own spin on it, if needed. Upcoming topics and more information can be found here.

For this week's Top Ten Tuesday we are asked to list ten books on our summer or winter reading lists. Here is my list. Book descriptions taken from various sources.

01. The Swift and the Harrier by Minette Walters

Dorset, 1642.

When bloody civil war breaks out between the King and Parliament, families and communities across England are riven by different allegiances.

A rare few choose neutrality.

One such is Jayne Swift, a Dorset physician from a Royalist family, who offers her services to both sides in the conflict. Through her dedication to treating the sick and wounded, regardless of belief, Jayne becomes a witness to the brutality of war and the devastation it wreaks.

Yet her recurring companion at every event is a man she should despise because he embraces civil war as the means to an end. She knows him as William Harrier, but is ignorant about every other aspect of his life. His past is a mystery and his future uncertain.

The Swift and the Harrier is a sweeping tale of adventure and loss, sacrifice and love, with a unique and unforgettable heroine at its heart.seems uncertain.

02. The Silver Collar (Thomas Hawkins #4) by Antonia Hodgson

Autumn, 1728. Life is good for Thomas Hawkins and Kitty Sparks. The Cocked Pistol, Kitty's wickedly disreputable bookshop, is a roaring success. Tom's celebrity as 'Half-Hanged Hawkins', the man who survived the gallows, is also proving useful.

Their happiness proves short-lived. When Tom is set upon by a street gang, he discovers there's a price on his head. Who on earth could want him dead - and why?

With the help of his ward, Sam Fleet, and Sam's underworld connections, Tom's investigation leads to a fine house in Jermyn Street, the elegant, enigmatic Lady Vanhook and an escaped slave by the name of Jeremiah Patience.

But for Tom and Kitty, discovering the truth is only the beginning of the nightmare.

A powerful, deeply immersive thriller, The Silver Collar is both a celebration of love and friendship, and a terrifying exploration of evil.

03. The Bloodless Boy by Robert J. Lloyd

London, 1678.

The blood-drained body of a young boy is discovered in the snow on the bank of the Fleet River.

The city, overlooked by the exhumed head of the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, teeters on the brink of riot and hysteria, with rumours of Catholic plots, devil-boys, and sinister foreign assassins.

It is twelve years since the Great Fire ripped through the heart of the city. Robert Hooke, natural philosopher and Curator of Experiments of the Royal Society is an architect of the rebuilding. Hooke and his assistant, Harry Hunt, reluctantly agree to investigate the murder of the bloodless boy after instruction from King Charles II.

Harry, ambitious, wanting to prove himself as an able natural philosopher and to break free from the shadow of Hooke's brilliance, takes the lead in investigating the death of the boy. He finds a sinister tale with roots in the dark past of the Civil Wars.

As he gets closer to finding the use of the bloodless boy, he uncovers the terrible consequences of experiments performed in the name of the New Science.

04. Lily by Rose Tremain

Nobody knows yet that she is a murderer...

Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter's night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood's Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret...

Across the years, policeman Sam Trench keeps watch over the young woman he once saved. When Sam meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction between them and Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness - but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death?

05. Sharpe's Assassin (Sharpe #22) by Bernard Cornwell

Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe is a man with a reputation. Born in the gutter, raised a foundling, he joined the army twenty-one years ago, and it’s been his home ever since. He’s a loose cannon, but his unconventional methods make him a valuable weapon.

So when, the dust still settling after the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington needs a favour, he turns to Sharpe. For Wellington knows that the end of one war is only the beginning of another. Napoleon's army may be defeated, but another enemy lies waiting in the shadows – a secretive group of fanatical revolutionaries hell-bent on revenge.

Sharpe is dispatched to a new battleground: the maze of Paris streets where lines blur between friend and foe. And in search of a spy, he will have to defeat a lethal assassin determined to kill his target or die trying . . .

06. The Colonial's Son by Peter Watt

Danger, passion and bravery in nineteenth-century Australia, Europe and onto the battlefield of Kandahar.

As the son of 'the Colonial', legendary Queen's Captain Ian Steele, Josiah Steele has big shoes to fill. Although his home in the colony of New South Wales is a world away, he dreams of one day travelling to England so he can study to be a commissioned officer in the Scottish Regiment.

After cutting his teeth in business on the rough and ready goldfields of Far North Queensland's Palmer River, he finally realises his dream and travels to England, where he is accepted into the Sandhurst military academy. While in London he makes surprising new acquaintances - and runs into a few old ones he'd rather have left behind.

From the Australian bush to the glittering palaces of London, from the arid lands of Afghanistan to the newly established Germany dominated by Prussian ideas of militarism, Josiah Steele must now forge his own path.

07. An Irish Hostage (Bess Crawford #12) by Charles Todd

In the uneasy peace following World War I, nurse Bess Crawford runs into trouble and treachery in Ireland ...

The Great War is over—but in Ireland, in the wake of the bloody 1916 Easter Rising, anyone who served in France is now considered a traitor, including nurse Eileen Flynn and former soldier Michael Sullivan, who only want to be married in the small, isolated village where she grew up. Even her grandmother is against it, and Eileen’s only protection is her cousin Terrence who was a hero of the Rising and is still being hunted by the British.

Bess Crawford had promised to be there for the wedding. And in spite of the danger to her, she keeps that promise—only to be met with the shocking news that the groom has vanished. Eileen begs for her help, but how can Bess hope to find him when she doesn’t know the country, the people, or where to put her trust Time is running out, for Michael and for Bess herself, and soon her own life is on the line. With only an Irish outlaw and a man being hunted for murder on her side, how can she possibly save herself, much less stop a killer.

08. Daughter of the Hunter Valley by Paula J. Beavan

1831, New South Wales

Reeling from her mother's death, Madeleine Barker-Trent arrives in the newly colonised Hunter River to find her father's promises are nothing more than a halcyon dream. A day later, after a dubious accident, she becomes the sole owner of a thousand acres of bushland, with only three convicts and handsome overseer Daniel Coulter for company.

Determined to fulfil her family's aspirations, Maddy refuses to return to England and braves everything the beautiful but wild Australian country can throw at her - violence, danger, the forces of nature and loneliness. But when a scandalous secret and a new arrival threaten to destroy all she's worked for, her future looks bleak ... Can Maddy persevere or should she simply admit defeat?

A captivating historical tale of one young woman's grit and determination to carve out her place on the riverbank.

09. Blood is Blood (Barker & Llewelyn #10) by Will Thomas

A bombing injures private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker, leaving it up to his soon-to-be-married junior partner-Thomas Llewelyn-to find the person trying to murder them both before it's too late.

In 19th century London, Cyrus Barker and his associate Thomas Llewelyn are renowned private enquiry agents, successfully employed by the highest levels of Her Majesty's government as well as private citizens. Their success, however, has led to their acquiring a powerful group of enemies, many of whom are determined to have their revenge.

At least one of those enemies is responsible for a bombing of their offices that puts Cyrus Barker into the hospital and endangers Thomas Llewelyn's rapidly forthcoming nuptials. To add to the confusion, Barker's long-lost brother Caleb turns up on the rubble of their doorstep not long after the not-quite-fatal bombing.

Unsure of Caleb and warned about him by Barker, Thomas reluctantly accepts Caleb's help both with a new case that comes in as well as trying to pinpoint which of Barker's enemies is making a move against them. As Thomas works his way through their enemy list, someone else is winnowing down that list: one by one those enemies are dying.

With time running out-and his bride-to-be reconsidering their marriage-Llewelyn must (with the sick-bed bound Barker's help) uncover the killer and the plot before it's too late.

10. Farewell, the Tranquil Mind by R.F. Delderfield

Tranquility was a word unknown in the 1700s.

Young David Treloar left his desolated home and made his way to France. It was there that he saw the revolution for what it was, a many-headed beast that had obliterated the reason for its existence; it was there that he fell in love with Charlotte the niece of an old parisian wig-maker; it was from there that the two lovers escaped, flirting with danger to arrive in England only for David,ironically, to be suspected as a French spy.

A sweeping drama amind the flames of the French Revolution, Farewell The Tranquil Mind begins in 1794 at Exeter Castle in Great Britain. "Delderfield writes with a gusto, combined with sheer narrative skill, that tops everyone's since Dickens." -- Boston Herald Traveler review.