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The title intrigued me and I was not disappointed. Although Liane Moriarty cleverly interweaves the stories of three women, the husband's secret is the thread that ties them all together. Cecilia accidentally found the letter her husband wrote to be read after his death. John-Paul didn't die, but Cecilia's decision to open it anyway set into motion a series of events that profoundly affect the lives of three families in the St. Angela's School community in Sydney.

In The Husband’s Secret, twists and turns in the plot and characters' reactions leave the reader questioning the outcome until the very end.

To Ove, everything was black or white and controlled by routine, but Sonja gave color to his life. Now he just wants to be with her again. In the first few chapters, the reader sees Ove’s grumpy nature and then his sadness as he tries to deal with this great change that has occurred. Ove’s efforts are continuously interrupted by neighbors who want help, backing a trailer or regulating the radiators in their homes. Most of the time Ove is annoyed by their requests and shows it but he seems to have a good heart and always helps. Soon the young girls next door brings him cookies and call him Grandpa. With a little persuasion, even the neighborhood stray cat takes up with Ove.

Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove is a sad but funny short novel that can be a delight to both young and old. And now you can also enjoy another novel by Backman: Britt-Marie Was Here was released in May.

This sequel to Richard Russo’s 1993 novel Nobody’s Fool is set ten years later in the dying mill town of North Bath, New York. “Sully” Sullivan, hero of the first book, is mostly retired now after having his OTN bet pay off. His hapless sidekick, Rub, is at loose ends without Sully to tell him what to do every minute of the day.

Police Chief Douglas Raymer, a minor character in the first book, who considers Sully enemy number one, moves front and center. Raymer is a sad sack who sees himself as everybody’s fool. Still miserable over the accidental death of his wife who was on the verge of leaving him, Raymer is too morosely self-absorbed to see what is right in front of him. Funny and sweet, Everybody’s Fool is a book for those who are more interested in character than plot.

Are you looking for something action packed to satisfy your fantasy fix? Give Joseph Delaney’s Revenge of the Witch a try! It is the first novel of his Last Apprentice series and doesn’t disappoint.

Tom Ward is the seventh son of a seventh son which makes him exceedingly extraordinary. There are only a few others like him in the county and he’s about to be apprenticed to one that is older and wiser: Mr. Gregory, aka the Spook. Their special births causes Tom and other seventh sons to be able to see spirits and detect dark magic that normal people would have no idea is there.

Follow along on Tom’s and the Spook’s adventures, and you’ll be turning the pages into the wee hours of the night! (Though make sure to keep the light bright because these adventures are not for the faint of heart!)

Adrienne is 39 and desperate to be a mother. Her husband Gabe isn’t that anxious to have a family, but goes along with the idea to please his wife. After failed IVF attempts and being scammed by a fake birth mother, Adrienne is willing to do anything to fulfill her dream. Into their lives comes 19-year-old Leah, who is pregnant and not interested in keeping her baby. Leah, however, has some stipulations, including living with Adrienne and Gabe for one year before signing the adoption papers. What could possibly go wrong? Well, just about everything.

A Necessary End is a good psychological thriller, told from two different viewpoints. Holly Brown’s novel includes some unexpected twists toward the end.

After reading – and very much enjoying – Life After Life, the idea of more Todd family adventures was appealing. Kate Atkinson calls A God in Ruins a companion novel to Life After Life, not a sequel. She takes one of the alternate realities of Ursula's adored younger brother Ted, and develops the storyline after his miraculous recovery from a plane crash as a bomber pilot in World War II. The novel alternates between Ted's wartime experiences and his civilian life as father and grandfather. Curious readers of Life After Life will also be treated to an excerpt from Aunt Izzie's The Adventures of Augustus, the character she modeled after Teddy. Atkinson continues to test the reader's concepts of time and fiction with this engaging novel.

A rambling Connecticut lake house is the refuge for widowed Joan and her two grown daughters, bipolar concert violinist Sally and near-recluse Charlotte. Charlotte spends her days in the attic working on her very popular, but thoroughly fictional, mommy blog and hooking up with neighbor Everett whenever she can. Into this sheltered environment comes beloved stepbrother Spin with his too-good-to-be-true fiancée, Laurel. Is Laurel all she says she is, or do her lies rival the stories fabricated by Charlotte about her completely adorable but fictional children? A little quirky and humorous, Ann Leary’s The Children provides a glimpse into how the “other half” lives.

When Lu Brant is elected the first female state's attorney of a county outside Baltimore, it should be the pinnacle of her career, but when she decides to try a murder case against homeless Rudy Drysdale, she's forced to confront buried memories of her own childhood. Lu's brother A.J. was involved at 18 in an incident where he broke his arm and another man died. Lu was ten at the time, enamored of popular A.J. and his group of friends. No charges were ever brought against anyone, but as Lu proceeds in her case, she finds that Drysdale was two years behind A.J. in school and that they might have known each other. Lu also reflects on being raised by her father, also a state's attorney, after her mother died while Lu was very young.

Wilde Lake is a novel that transports you to 1970s and 1980s suburban Baltimore and fully immerses the reader in a world of childhood and family secrets. Like Laura Lippman's best novels, Wilde Lake is a book that stay with you even after the last page is turned.

Sister Jane Arnold, Master of Foxhounds with the Jefferson Hunt, would never return with a fox tail flying from her horse’s mane, but rather puts out treats (some with embedded worm medicine) to keep her clever red-furred friends in fine form for the next chase. These two novels give an engaging overview of the Virginia foxhunting scene as well as good murder mysteries, literally dug up after decades under the earth.

On occasion, author Rita Mae Brown allows the foxes, horses, and foxhounds to tell parts of the story from their own viewpoints to better help the reader understand the finer points of the hunt. Thus the reader can gently learn of foxhunting traditions while following the unfolding mysteries of both Let Sleeping Dogs Lie and Hotspur.

David Harwood is the main character in Linwood Barclay’s latest novel. He is a down-on-your-luck guy, a widower and father of a young boy. The newspaper he worked for has gone out of business, and he and his son live with his parents in Promise Falls, New York. A cousin he is close to has recently been accused of kidnapping a baby and killing his mother.

Since David has a lot of time on his hands, he sets out to prove his cousin’s innocence. In the meantime, there are several strange occurrences happening in Promise Falls, and the police are scrambling to find answers. Broken Promise is a good novel filled with suspense. The author left the ending open with several unanswered questions. Maybe there will be a Promise Falls sequel?

This is a good addition to the genre of humorous tall tale westerns. Something of a cross between Little Big Man and The Sisters Brothers, Joe R. Lansdale’s Paradise Sky is the story of Nat Love, a black man, set shortly after the end of the Civil War who must flee his Texas home and takes off to the Wild West. As a story of a black man in 19th century America, there are, of course, sad moments, but Nat's darkly ironic tone make for a read that hits many emotions from laugh out loud to frown in sadness or exasperation.

Five hundred years after Machiavelli wrote The Prince, Vito Bruschini appropriately named his novel the same. One might regard this later The Prince as a prequel to Puzo’s Godfather but the characters are not the same. Bruscini gives us Prince Ferdinando Licata, a respected land owner in 1920-1930s Sicily who does not hesitate to use charm and strong strategies to control the peasantry.

With the advent of Mussolini, he has conflicts with local fascists and flees to New York to escape a possible murder charge. In New York, Licata, helped by a few others from his home area of Sicily, becomes powerful and a man to be feared. When other powerful leaders seek his removal, he joins with U.S. intelligence (OSS) in planning the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. Thus he is able to avenge some of the wrongs he received from the fascists and begin building a new basis for power in his area of Sicily. This book shows how violence, terror, and revenge was used to gain a position of power.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s unique mysteries are cleverly written and entertaining. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (comprised of twelve short stories) was a tremendous re-read for me.

For similar titles, check out our list of Classic Tales of Mystery & Suspense.

Need something to fulfill your Martin fix while waiting on The Winds of Winter?

Try George R.R. Martin’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms! While it is grim like all of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, it has a more lighthearted feel to it than the main series. It’s a compilation of three short stories that take place 90 years before the events in A Game of Thrones. They follow the adventures of Dunk and Egg as they traipse their way across the Seven Kingdoms, finding lords that require their services in exchange for money and housing.

In this historical novel (and great Chicago book), Renee Rosen tells a fictionalized story about Marshall Field from the perspective of his mistress Delia Spencer. What the Lady Wants includes some history of the late nineteenth century, including the Great Chicago Fire and the World’s Fair, plus shows how people lived at that time.

Do you enjoy fictionalized history? Check out other Novels Based on Real People.