Walter, Jess. Land of the Blind.

NY: HarperCollins, 2003.

Spokane police detective Caroline Mabry is back, but it’s not so much her story this time as that of the one-eyed Clark Mason, haunted by his past. He turns up in Caroline’s life one swing shift, having been picked up in an empty hotel that’s undergoing reconstruction. In the interview room, he insists he has a homicide to confess to — but only in his own way.

Bank, Melissa. The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing.

NY: Viking, 1999.

A few avid fellow readers have been urging this book on me for some time (we often start conversations with “What? You haven’t read that yet?!”) but I’ve just now gotten around to it. I wish I hadn’t waited.

Renault, Mary. The Last of the Wine.

NY: Random House, 1956.

This was the first of Renault’s historical novels set in the classical Greek world, and it’s still arguably her best, encompassing life in Athens and in the Aegean during the latter stages of the Peloponnesian War.

Renault, Mary. The King Must Die.

NY: Pantheon, 1958.

I first got hooked on history, and therefore on historical fiction, as a highly imaginative and rather geeky kid living in Europe in the ‘50s. Anywhere we went, I could look around and see buildings and street scenes that were ancient before the United States was even invented, and it affected me on a deep level.

Smith, Jennifer E. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight.

NY: Little, Brown, 2012.

Seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan of Connecticut is not having a good day. Being very reluctantly packed off to London by her mother to act as a bridesmaid in her father’s second wedding, she misses her flight at JFK by four minutes.

Lippman, Laura. Every Secret Thing.

NY: HarperCollins, 2003.

Six years ago, when sort-of best friends Alice and Ronnie were eleven years old and were sent home from a birthday party in disgrace, they kidnapped an infant from someone’s front yard on the spur of the moment. The baby died and the girls went to juvenile prison until they were legal adults.

Pratchett, Terry. Dodger.

NY: Harper, 2012.

A new book from Sir Terry is always a cause for celebration, and this one is no exception. It’s also somewhat unlike any he’s done before, being in the way of an “historical fantasy,” as he himself describes it.

Powell, Margaret. Below Stairs.

London: Peter Davies, 1968 (NY: St. Martin, 2012).

In 1920, thirteen-year-old Margaret Langley, like many English girls her age, had to go out to work. Her father, a house-painter, was unemployed for half the year and with five children in the family, money was very tight indeed. Margaret had to take the earliest opportunity to support herself.

Lippman, Laura. To the Power of Three.

NY: Morrow, 2005.

In an upper-middle-class suburb in north Baltimore County, Kat Hartigan and Perri Kahn have been best friends since preschool, and on the first day of Third Grade, newcomer Josie Patel makes it a threesome — and forever after she quietly resents being the junior partner by those three years.

Kent, Alexander. Richard Bolitho, Midshipman.

NY: Putnam, 1975.

Kent’s lengthy Royal Navy adventure series about Richard Bolitho is quite good (with one or two egregious exceptions), and this is the first installment by internal chronology. It’s 1772 and the sixteen-year-old Bolitho has already had four years’ experience at sea. It’s been pretty quiet, though, since Britain is temporarily at peace.