I’ve read so many good books through the first half of this year that I cannot wait until the end of the year to tell you about them. It’s a long list (longer than most full year posts), so I’m going to try to write one-sentence summaries. The title/author link will most often take you to the author’s website.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald

• A bookish young Swedish woman comes to America to meet her recently deceased pen-pal and meets a charming community instead.

Aviva vs the Dybbuk by Mari Lowe

• (Middle Grade) When a girl’s father dies, she and her mother move into a home that is haunted by a Dybbuk, a ghost of Jewish folklore.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

• Dicken’s David Copperfield moved to the setting of modern-day Appalachia.

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

• As a lover of fairy tales, I enjoyed how King played with the genre in this not-a-horror-story novel.

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

• In this near-future, science fiction novel, an array of diverse and fun characters attempt to solve global warming and other world issues.

The Beatrice Hyde-Clare mystery series by Lynn Messina: A Brazen Curiosity (1), A Scandalous Deception (2), An Infamous Betrayal (3), A Nefarious Engagement (4), A Treacherous Performance (5), A Sinister Establishment (6), A Boldly Daring Scheme (7), A Ghastly Spectacle (8), A Malevolent Connection (9), An Ominous Explosion (10), An Extravagant Duplicity (11) and related to the series: A Lark’s Tale and A Lark’s Flight

• I’ve read every book in this witty, romantic series that my husband Andy is now making his way through. I posted about this series before.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

• A year in the life of Tookie, an ex-con, Native American woman, and book store employee who reads with “murderous attention” and is haunted by an annoying ghost.

Sisters at the Edge of the World by Ailish Sinclair

• In ancient Scotland, a silent, prophetic young woman is caught between her Caledonian tribes and Roman invaders.

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

• A midwife struggles with her conscience and a legal battle when one of her patients dies.

A Blackened Mirror by Jo Graham

• The first in a trilogy about Giulia Farnese, a young woman and seer who befriends Lucretia Borgia and becomes lovers with her father, the ambitious Cardinal Borgia.

Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall

• A young white girl runs away from home in 1963 Mississippi and gets lessons in racism, family, and love.

The White Donkey by Maximilian Uriarte

• A powerful, adult graphic novel about life as a solder in the US Marine Corps.

Alchemy of a Blackbird by Claire McMillan

• A fictional biography of the fascinating and amazing Spanish surrealist artist Remedios Varo.

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

• (nonfiction) This memoir of a female anthro-biologist is beautifully and skillfully written, mixing life information with a love of plant life.

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

• This epistolary novel, mostly letters of recommendation interspersed with emails and memos, is a hilarious (and sometimes too close to home) glimpse of the life of an English professor.

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

• (middle grade) The story of one of the “lost boys” of Sudan and his long journey out of his war-torn home country to the US, told in alternating chapters with the story of a young girl currently living in a village in Sudan.

Wildoak by C.C. Harrington

• (middle grade) In alternating chapters: a young girl who stutters is sent to live with her grandfather in Cornwall while her father decides how to fix what is “wrong” with her, and a young snow leopard is purchased as a gift and then dumped in Cornwall’s Wildoak Forest when he becomes too much to handle.

Thanks for making it to the end of this list. If you are trying to decide on what to read next, I recommend buying books from authors you’ve never heard of and getting books from famous authors from your library. The small-time authors are the ones who need your support the most.