Top Ten Tuesday Authors I Haven’t Read, But Want To

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 authors that we haven't read, but want to. This is a hard one as there are so many authors on my list. To make it easier to narrow them down to ten, I'm going to use mostly authors whose books I own.

01. Charles Palliser

The Quincunx is a lengthy book and I'm waiting for the right time to read it.

The protagonist, a young man naive enough to be blind to all clues about his own hidden history (and to the fact that his very existence is troubling to all manner of evildoers) narrates a story of uncommon beauty which not only brings readers face-to-face with dozens of piquantly drawn characters at all levels of 19th-century English society but re-creates with precision the tempestuous weather and gnarly landscape that has been a motif of the English novel since Wuthering Heights. The suspension of disbelief happens easily, as the reader is led through twisted family trees and plot lines.


02. Jessica James

Jessica James' American Civil War trilogy (Duty Bound, Honor Bound and Glory Bound) has been on my bookshelf since I did a book promotion last year.

Duty Bound: Takes readers across the rolling hills of Virginia in a page-turning tale of action and adventure as a Union spy spars with a renowned Confederate cavalry commander. Gallantry and chivalry are put to the test when Colonel Alexander Hunter discovers that Andrea Evans is not only the woman he promised his dying brother he would protect, but is the Union spy he has vowed to his men he would destroy.

Honor Bound: This volume follows Union Spy Andrea Evans as she finds herself recuperating from an injury in the home of her enemy, Colonel Alexander Hunter. Readers will discover the fine line between friends and enemies when the lives of these two tenacious foes cross by the fates of war and their destinies become entwined forever.

Glory Bound: The series culminates in this emotional final volume that reflects the sacrifices of both sides and proves there can be no bond stronger than that which unites enemies. Immortal love, whence it flows, can never die.

03. Hilary Mantel

I've ummed and ahed about reading Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy, but one of her other books, A Place of Greater Safety, set during the French Revolution is definitely one I want to read.

A spellbinding novel which recounts the events between the fall of the Ancient Regime and the peak of the Terror, as seen through the eyes of the French Revolution’s three protagonists – Georges-Jacques Danton, Maximilien Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, men whose mix of ambition, idealism, and ego helped unleash the darker side of the Revolution’s ideals and brought them eventually to their own tragic ends.

Georges-Jacques Danton: zealous, energetic and debt-ridden. Maximilien Robespierre: small, diligent and terrified of violence. And Camille Desmoulins: a genius of rhetoric, charming and handsome, yet also erratic and untrustworthy. As these young men, key figures of the French Revolution, taste the addictive delights of power, the darker side of the period’s political ideals is unleashed – and all must face the horror that follows.

04. John Anthony Miller

I'm partial to historical murder mysteries and have been wanting to read this author for a while. Honour the Dead appealed to me because of its links to World War I.

Six English survivors of the Great War – four men and two women – converge on Lake Como, Italy in 1921. The result: one corpse and one killer...

Psychiatrist Joseph Barnett is treating wealthy socialite Penelope Jones for schizophrenia at a sanitarium in Como. She is convinced someone is trying to kill her.

Penelope is married to war veteran Alexander Cavendish, hero of the Battle of the Somme. Barnett knows – and hates – Cavendish from the trenches where both were officers during the battle: one was trying to save lives, the other take them.

Both men had been wounded and treated at a hospital in Amiens where Bartlett met and later married Rose who worked there as a nurse. But why does Rose also harbour an intense animosity towards Cavendish?

05. Martin Sutton

I would have read this years ago if it had been released in print first rather than an ebook in 2014. I now have a paperback copy and hope to read it soon.

In late 1914, the gardeners of Heligan estate in Cornwall wrote their names in pencil on the walls of their privy, before enlisting for service in the war. Most did not return

When eighteen-year-old William Pascoe writes his name, the Head Gardener is only too pleased to be rid of the rebel in their midst. Infamous for his innovative botanical ideas, and distinguished by his commanding height and tangle of fair hair, he has drawn the eye of Diane Luxton, niece to the owner of the estate.

When William is sent to the front, Diane follows him, working as a nurse for the Red Cross. Their lives, and the lives of friends and family around them, are soon changed beyond all recognition. Losing many of the fixed certainties he has lived by, William no longer knows who he is.

As the war rages on, Diane searches for him, and his family await word, but William is amongst those who have gone missing.

06. Carolyn Kirby

While I own a copy of When We Fall, it is her debut novel, The Conviction of Cora Burns, I'm hoping to read first.

Cora was born in a prison. But is this where she belongs?

Birmingham, 1885.

Born in a gaol and raised in a workhouse, Cora Burns has always struggled to control the violence inside her.

Haunted by memories of a terrible crime, she seeks a new life working as a servant in the house of scientist Thomas Jerwood.

Here, Cora befriends a young girl, Violet, who seems to be the subject of a living experiment. But is Jerwood also secretly studying Cora…?

07. Beatriz Williams

I don't own any of this author's books, but her name kept popping into my head while I was writing this post. I've read some of the novels that Beatriz Williams wrote in collaboration with Lauren Willig and Karen White, but never one she has written alone. There are a few to choose from and even though I have recommendations from other bloggers, I still cannot decide which one to read first. Perhaps it will be her latest release, Our Woman in Moscow, or the one before that, Her Last Flight.

In 1947, photographer and war correspondent Janey Everett arrives at a remote surfing village on the Hawaiian island of Kauai to research a planned biography of forgotten aviation pioneer Sam Mallory, who joined the loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War and never returned. Obsessed with Sam’s fate, Janey has tracked down Irene Lindquist, the owner of a local island-hopping airline, whom she believes might actually be the legendary Irene Foster, Mallory’s onetime student and flying partner. Foster’s disappearance during a round-the-world flight in 1937 remains one of the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

At first, the flinty Mrs. Lindquist denies any connection to Foster. But Janey informs her that the wreck of Sam Mallory’s airplane has recently been discovered in a Spanish desert, and piece by piece, the details of Foster’s extraordinary life emerge: from the beginnings of her flying career in Southern California, to her complicated, passionate relationship with Mallory, to the collapse of her marriage to her aggressive career manager, the publishing scion George Morrow.

As Irene spins her tale to its searing conclusion, Janey’s past gathers its own power. The duel between the two women takes a heartstopping turn. To whom does Mallory rightfully belong? Can we ever come to terms with the loss of those we love, and the lives we might have lived?

08. Maggie O'Farrell

Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnett is in my TBR, but when I saw her upcoming release The Marriage Portrait due out in August this year, I may read that one first.

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Moderna and Regio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance.

Full of the drama and verve with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life, and offers an unforgettable portrait of a resilient young woman’s battle for her very survival.

09. M. J. Porter

This author writes novels set before 1066 (Anglo Saxons and Vikings), but it is her historical mysteries appeal to me most, starting with The Custard Corpses

Birmingham, England, UK, 1943.

While the whine of the air raid sirens might no longer be rousing him from bed every night, a two-decade-old unsolved murder case will ensure that Chief Inspector Mason of Erdington Police Station is about to suffer more sleepless nights.

Young Robert McFarlane’s body was found outside the local church hall on 30th September 1923. But, his cause of death was drowning, and he’d been missing for three days before his body was found. No one was ever arrested for the crime. No answers could ever be given to the grieving family. The unsolved case has haunted Mason ever since.

But, the chance discovery of another victim, with worrying parallels, sets Mason, and his constable, O’Rourke, on a journey that will take them back over twenty-five years, the chance to finally solve the case, while all around them is uncertainty, impossible to ignore.

10. Sarah Perry

The Essex Serpent, set in late Victorian England, has been sitting on my bookshelf for ages. I just haven't been in the right mood to read it.

Moving between Essex and London, myth and modernity, Cora Seaborne's spirited search for the Essex Serpent encourages all around her to test their allegiance to faith or reason in an age of rapid scientific advancement. At the same time, the novel explores the boundaries of love and friendship and the allegiances that we have to one another. The depth of feeling that the inhabitants of Aldwinter share are matched by their city counterparts as they strive to find the courage to express and understand their deepest desires, and strongest fears.