Books I’m Not Recommending for Christmas, Part 1

So it’s that time again – time to not recommend books for Christmas. I have this thing about imposing my book choices on people, so I get around it by not recommending books I really enjoyed during this past year.

And it was a good year, perhaps a great year, for reading. This week I cover mysteries and suspense, fiction, faith, writing, and art. Next week I’ll cover history and biography, general non-fiction, and poetry.

For all the listings, the links direct you to my reviews or articles at this blog or Tweetspeak Poetry.

Mystery and Suspense

Any of the Inspector Gamache novels by Louise Penny.

Two Judge Dee Mysteries by Robert Van Gulik.

The Chessmen by Peter May.

The Essential Margery Allingham Collection.

Burke’s Gamble by William Brown.

Murder and Other Acts of Literature, edited by Michele Slung.

The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell.

As the Crow Flies by Damien Boyd.

Any of the Stephen Puleston mysteries.

Any of the British Library Crime Classics.

A Question of Inheritance by Elizabeth Edmondson.

Fiction

East of Coker and Invective by Andy Owen.

Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.

The Yoga of Max’s Discontent by Karan Bajaj.

There Will Be Stars by Billy Coffey.

Romey’s Place by James Calvin Schaap.

A Whole Lot by Bradley Wind.

In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman.

The Story of Kullervo by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss.

Roverandom by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Stone of Destiny by Jim Ware.

Ember Falls by S.D. Smith.

Faith

The Word in the Wilderness by Malcolm Guite.

Chicken Scratch by Kelly Chripczuk.

George Whitfield: The Evangelist by John Pollock.

Writing

Christian Writer’s Guide by Mary Harwell Sayler.

Art

Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and His Paintings by David Coombs.

Four books on Ai Weiwei.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Images. Used with permission.