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What Should I Read Next
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What Should I Read Next?
- Novelist - a database of fiction that contains information on over 125,000 titles and is updated monthly. This easy-to-use source lets you browse books by genre or theme, find information on books in series, obtain book discussion guides, and use a favorite author or title to locate other authors and titles of interest.
Because this is a licensed product purchased by the library, you must enter a Hingham Library barcode to use Novelist outside the library.
From Home At the Library
When asked for User ID, enter your library card number
- Beyond the Bestsellers
No one needs advice about best-selling books – by definition, everyone’s reading them. However, hundreds of titles are published each year that may never attain “star status” but are every bit as absorbing, as gripping, as exciting, as suspenseful, or as literate as anything on the bestseller lists.
Click Here to find eclectic lists of recent fiction that’s too good to miss. Compiled and annotated by our library’s reader advisory staff, the lists are updated periodically, so be sure to check here regularly for good reads you may not find among the bestsellers.
- Read-a-likes
An easy way to find authors you might enjoy is to use our read-a-like lists of authors who share a similar style, content or genre. For example, one entry begins: “If you like… Patricia Cornwell’s forensic detective stories, try…” and a handful of names are listed. There are several lists within each of the three main headings, so you’re bound to find an author you haven’t read before!
MYSTERY | ROMANCE | SUSPENSE & ADVENTURE
- Award-Winning Books
http://www.bookwire.com/bookwire/otherbooks/Book-Awards.html
Browsing a list of award winners is a wonderful way to find some great reads. Visit this site to find the best of fiction, poetry, children's literature, and more.
- Recommended Reading Lists
http://www.springfieldlibrary.org/reading/booklist.html
This is an exceptional collection of booklists compiled by the Springfield, MA library covering every genre of fiction and non-fiction. In addition to the wonderful adult booklists, there are dozens of great lists for K-12 readers, as well!
MYSTERY back to the top
If you like ...
Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, try
Carol O'Connell
Lia Matera
Linda Barnes
Marcia Muller
Mary Willis Walker
Nevada Barr
Sara Paretsky
If you like ...
Robert B. Parker’s hard-boiled crime fiction, try
David Berlinski
Dennis Lehane
George Pelecanos
James Lee Burke
James Patterson
James W. Hall
Jeremiah Healy
K. C. Constantine
Parnell Hall
If you like ...
Patricia Cornwell’s forensic detective stories, try
J. A. Jance
Julie Smith
Kathy Reichs
Michael Palmer
Robin Cook
Tess Gerritsen
If you like ...
Tony Hillerman's detective stories set in the Southwest, try
Bill Branon
J. A. Jance
James D. Doss
Margaret Coel
Michael McGarrity
Nevada Barr
Ridley Person
Sarah Lovett
If you like ...
P. D. James’ British detective stories, try
Barbara Vine
Colin Dexter
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Deborah Crombie
Elizabeth George
Gwendoline Butler
John Harvey
Michael Gilbert
Ruth Rendell
Simon Brett
Veronica Black
If you like...
New England based mysteries, try
Jane Langton
Jeremiah Healy
Nancy Pickard
Philip Craig
William Tapply
If you like ...
English village mysteries, try
Agatha Christie
Antonia Fraser
Carola Dunn
Caroline Grahan
Catherine Aird
Charles Hampton
Dorothy Cannell
Jo Bannister
M. C. Beaton
Marjorie Eccles
Martha Grimes
Nancy Atherton
Rhys Bowen
Robert Barnard
Susan Moody
If you like ...
Ellis Peters' Cadfael series and medieval settings, try
Edward Marston
Fiona Buckley
Kate Sedley
Margaret Frazer
P. C. Doherty
Peter Tremayne
Sharon Kay Penman
Simon Beaufort
Susanna Gregory
If you like ...
Victorian or early American mysteries, try
Anne Perry
Elizabeth Peters
Maan Meyers
Margaret Lawrence
Peter Lovesey
Robert Lee Hall
If you like ...
police procedurals, try
Dan Mahoney
Ed McBain
Ian Rankin
James Ellroy
Michael Dibdin
Reginald Hill
Ridley Pearson
ROMANCE back to the top
If you like ...
contemporary romance, try
Elizabeth Lowell
Janet Dailey
Jayne Ann Krentz
Johanna Lindsey
Judith McNaught
Kay Hooper
Nora Roberts
If you like ...
the "soaps," try
Barbara Delinsky
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Danielle Steel
Jackie Collins
Judith Krantz
Rona Jaffe
Sandra Brown
Sidney Sheldon
Susan Isaacs
If you like ...
Maeve Binchy’s "gentle reads," try
Belva Plain
Hazel Hucker
Jan Karon
LaVyrle Spencer
Malcolm MacDonald
Miss Read
Rosamund Pilcher
If you like ...
romance from another place and time, try
Amanda Quick
Catherine Coulter
Diana Gabaldon
Eugenia Price
Jude Devereaux
Julie Garwood
SUSPENSE & ADVENTURE back to the top
If you like ...
John Grisham’s legal thrillers, try
Barry Reed
Brad Meltzer
Greg Iles
John Lescroart
Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
Phillip Margolin
Richard North Patterson
Scott Turow
William Lashner
If you like ...
Tom Clancy’s military thrillers, try
Allan Mallinson
Clive Cussler
Dale Brown
David Poyer
Jack Higgins
James H. Cobb
John J. Gobbell
Larry Bond
Patrick A. Davis
Stephen Coonts
W. E. B. Griffin
If you like ...
"eco-thrillers," try
James Powlik
John Darnton
Michael Crichton
Peter Benchley
Richard Preston
Steve Alten
If you like ...
Nelson DeMille’s crime capers, try
David Baldacci
Elmore Leonard
Gerald Browne
John Nance
Jon A. Jackson
Jonathan Kellerman
Peter Maas
Robert Ferrigno
If you like ...
Mary Higgins Clark’s suspense novels, try
Anthea Fraser
Iris Johansen
John Sandford
Joy Fielding
Judy Mercer
Mary Jane Clark
Nancy Price
Patricia Carlon
Patricia O'Brien
Robin Cook
Susan Kelly
Tami Hoag
Tess Gerritsen
Tom Savage
If you like ...
John LeCarre’s espionage novels, try
Clive Egleton
Frederick Forsyth
Gerald Seymour
Jeffrey Archer
Ken Follett
Robert Littell
Robert Ludlum
If you like ...
crime with a touch of humor, try
Alistair Boyle
Carl Hiaasen
Eric Garcia
Gregory McDonald
Janet Evanovich
Jennifer Crusie
Laurence Shames
Lawrence Block
If you like ...
Stephen King’s horror stories, try
Dan Simmons
Dean Koontz
Ira Levin
James Herbert
John Saul
Thomas Harris
V. C. Andrews
Beyond the Best Sellers back to the top
Connoisseurs of Crime: Suspense and Mystery
Amagansett. Mark Mills, 2004.
On one level a carefully constructed tale of murder, this literate mystery also delves deeply into character and renders the windswept beaches of outer Long Island in the years before tourism so perfectly that the setting itself becomes a character. One of the best standalone crime novels of the year.
Thirteen Steps Down. Ruth Rendell, 2005.
Psychological suspense from a master of the genre. Michael (“Mix”) Cellini, as chillingly psychopathic as he is apparently ordinary, hates his landlady as fervidly as he worships a young model who, he is convinced, returns his passion.
Map of Bones. James Rollins, 2005.
If Dan Brown and Tom Clancy had collaborated on a novel, the result might have been an action-packed, puzzle-driven thriller like this one. When masked men invade Cologne’s cathedral, massacre those in attendance at midnight Mass, and steal the relics of the Magi, the top agent of the U.S. Defense Department’s Sigma Force leads his team on a hunt that involves spies, Vatican secrets, and an evil alchemical cult intent on bringing about Armageddon.
Walking Money. James O. Born, 2004.
A humor-laced crime caper in which a fortune keeps slipping into and out of the hands of its various pursuers. Pitch-perfect dialogue and wonderfully realized glitz in a south Florida setting.
Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Jeff Lindsay, 2004.
The truly offbeat premise of this first in a series is that the narrator, a police department blood-spatter analyst in his day job, is also your friendly neighborhood serial killer. But this is sociopathy with a redeeming feature: Dexter kills only the very bad guys.
The Four Courts Murder. Andrew Nugent, 2005.
A witty, fast-paced series debut, set in Dublin, in which a judge found murdered in chambers is discovered to have a parallel career fencing stolen art.
The Circle. Peter Lovesey, 2005.
Agatha Christie fans, take note: Lovesey writes classic British whodunits full of village characters, red herrings, and devious plot twists. Here, Inspector Hen Mallin is called upon to discover who is trying to incinerate the members of the Chichester Writing Circle.
Sudden Death. David Rosenfelt, 2005.
A single quote from the irrepressibly witty narrator, here called in to defend an NFL star accused of murder, should send readers running for this mystery and its three equally wicked predecessors: “I’m in Los Angeles. I’m not sure why I’ve never been here before. I certainly haven’t had any preconceived notions about the place, other than the fact that the people here are insincere, draft-dodging, drug-taking, money-grubbing, breast-implanting, out-of-touch, pate-eating, pompous, Lakers-loving, let’s-do-lunching, elitist scumbags.”
Another Time, Another Place: Historical Fiction
Gilead. Marilynne Robinson, 2004.
In the story told by an elderly clergyman about the life of his abolitionist grandfather, we are given an elegantly written account of a century of American history.
A Sudden Country. Karen Fisher, 2005.
1846: Many hundreds of adventurous, naïve, or desperate souls are trekking west, beyond the boundaries of the then-United States. James MacLaren, a trader familiar with the unmapped territories, has lost his children to smallpox and his wife to another man; he becomes a guide for Lucy Mitchell and her family. The slowly deepening feelings between the two are played out against the massive westward migration.
Captain Alatriste. Arturo Perez-Reverte, 2005.
A swashbuckler with a brain, 17th-century hired swordsman Diego Alatriste y Tenorio is enmeshed in complicated affairs of state between Spain and England when he spares the lives of two Englishmen whose assassination the Church has sanctioned.
The Plot against America. Philip Roth, 2004.
In an alternate history of World War II America as observed by a young Jewish boy growing up in New Jersey, Charles Lindbergh’s defeat of FDR in the 1940 election unleashes a wave of anti-Semitism. At once a human drama of family relationships and a cautionary tale about what happens when government limits individual liberty in the name of national interest.
Emilie’s Voice. Suzanne Dunlap, 2005.
Young Emilie’s incredibly pure voice propels her from her working-class world to the court of Louis XIV, where she becomes a pawn of two powerful rivals for the king’s favor.
Kingston by Starlight. Christopher John Farley, 2005.
High adventure on the high seas as seen through the eyes of 17th-century female pirate Anne Bonney. This fictionalization of Bonney’s outrageous and improbable career and subsequent trial for piracy is packed full of compelling characters and wonderful descriptions of the seafaring life.
The Widow of the South. Robert Hicks, 2005.
When the graves of Confederate dead in a nearby field are threatened, Carrie McGavack and her husband move them to their own property. Told from multiple points of view (Carrie, her husband, their freed slave Mariah, their neighbors, and soldiers from both sides), the story that emerges stands well above the crowded field of Civil War fiction.
A Woman’s Place: Fiction about Women and Their Lives
Raising Hope. Katie Willard, 2005
Twelve-year-old Hope Teller is being raised by her aunt and her father’s former lover. Salt-of-the-earth waitress Ruth Teller and wealthy attorney Sara Lynn Hoffman could not be more unlike in background, personality, or world view, but love for the child they share unites them and leads them to reexamine heir ties to their own mothers.
Pomegranate Soup. Marsha Mehran, 2005.
When three sisters, refugees from the Iranian Revolution, settle in a sleepy Irish village and open the Babylon Café, the stage is set for a clash of wildly divergent cultures. Wonderful characters inhabit this good-food-conquers-all-obstacles story, reminiscent of Joanne Harris’s Chocolat.
Joy Comes in the Morning. Jonathan Rosen, 2004.
Deborah Green, a gifted young rabbi, finds herself falling in love with a religious skeptic and experiencing a crisis of faith engendered by the burden of her calling in the midst of a secular world. An intelligent and touching story centered on a complex woman wonderfully realized.
In Dahlia’s Wake. Yona Zeldis Mcdonough, 2005.
In their grief over the death of their child, a man and woman look for comfort in separate affairs with tragic consequences. Fans of Oprah’s early selections will enjoy this.
The Myth of You and Me. Leah Stewart, 2005.
An affecting exploration of the complexities of women’s friendship, the story follows Cameron and Sonia through the dissolution of a bond both had cherished since childhood. Puzzles, secrets, and emotional roadblocks draw the reader forward to an unforeseen end.
The Thing about Jane Spring. Sharon Krum, 2005.
An addition to the “chick lit” genre that’s smart, fresh, and funny, this story of an overachieving lawyer turned Doris Day clone will appeal to fans of better-known genre authors like Jennifer Weiner and Jane Heller.
As Hot as It Was, You Ought to Thank Me. Nanci Kincaid, 2005.
During a stiflingly hot Florida summer in the 1950s, a ferocious hurricane eradicates most of 13-year-old Berry Jackson’s surroundings and rocks her quirky family to its foundation. The heroine of this coming of age story – precocious, resourceful, with a charmingly colloquial voice – will remind readers of Harper Lee’s Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird.
An Almost Perfect Moment. Binnie Kirshenbaum, 2004.
Teenaged Valentine Kessler, daughter of single mother Miriam, develops an irresistible attraction to Catholicism and is eventually convinced that, like the Blessed Virgin Mary, she is carrying a child conceived through divine intervention. A funny and thoughtful look at mother-daughter relationships and the clash of ethnicities in 1970s Brooklyn.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Lisa See, 2005.
“Laotong,” an arranged friendship between girls in 19th-century China that was meant to be lifelong, is the basis of a haunting story about women surviving the strictures of traditional upbringing, in which female worth was measured by the ability to produce male offspring.
Trophy House. Anne Bernays, 2005.
Set on outer Cape Cod and narrated by intelligent, restless, sharply witty Dannie Faber, a children’s book illustrator whose marriage has long been moribund, this literary and highly readable fiction threads class conflict, anti-Semitism, and over-the-top American consumerism into Dannie’s story.
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