So. What a year that was, huh? Happily, good books are one of the constants of life, and I am very thankful to have had them this year for comfort, inspiration, and yes, distraction. When it came time to put this list together I noted with some amusement how heavy it is on mystery fiction—mysteries are one of my “comfort read” genres, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my reading habits leaned heavily in that direction in 2020.

Per usual, I’m linking up with Top Ten Tuesday as I share my top ten books read this year—listed here in the order read:

Penny Plain by O. Douglas

It’s always hard to describe a book that you can’t pigeonhole neatly into a genre category—a book that’s simply about a family, a neighborhood, friendships, and two different love stories. It’s also sometimes hard to accurately describe a book that meant a lot to you. All I know is that this one dropped into my lap during a very difficult week of my life, and it was a lifeline. It made me cry, made me smile, made me highlight passages that jumped out at me. It’s just one of those books that seems to celebrate the beauty of life in spite of sorrow or daily cares. I don’t know if you can ever objectively rate a book after such a strong emotional attachment to it, but be that as it may, Penny Plain goes down as my favorite book of the year.

Holiday With Violence by Ellis Peters

While on holiday in Italy, a group of English young people become involved in a mystery when a fellow-traveler they’d befriended is attacked on a train. Their trip turns into a delicate game of cat-and-mouse over mountains and through the canals of Venice, with a set of criminals determined to recover something that has accidentally come into the young tourists’ possession, in a highly entertaining novel that leans more toward suspense than straight detective work.

Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham

I have a love-hate relationship with Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion series. Perhaps “hate” is too strong a word, but I’ve enjoyed a couple and been unenthused by the others—not because Allingham isn’t a good writer, but because she so often chooses to write about nasty, off-putting characters. Sweet Danger, though, is quite different: it’s also more of a romping suspense thriller than a whodunit, complete with treasure hunt, tiny fictional country, and charmingly eccentric characters—proving that Allingham can write delightful people when she so chooses! (In fact, I picked it up entirely on the strength of one character who had appeared in a later novel I read, The Fashion in Shrouds.)

Deadly Duo: Two Novellas by Margery Allingham

And what do you know, here’s Allingham again. This isn’t a series book but a pair of standalone novellas, both excellently written with vivid characters and abundant suspense (the plot of the first story, “Wanted: Someone Innocent” is particularly clever and unusual).

Crowning Heaven by Emily Hayse

This one is probably the most unlikely title to make my top ten, for the simple reason that it’s not my usual type of fiction—planetary fantasy with a contemporary protagonist traveling between worlds. I’d expected to like Hayse’s The Last Atlantean better because of its historical element, but to my surprise, Crowning Heaven surpassed it. Even though I didn’t connect as much to the imaginary world as I typically do to a real-world setting, this novel gripped and moved me chiefly because of its wonderful characters and the depth of their emotions and relationships.

The Will and the Deed by Ellis Peters

A group of travelers end up snowbound in an Austrian village over Christmas when their plane goes down in the Alps—and then a murder occurs, occasioned by an opera diva’s controversial will that they are all connected with in some way. A fine classic-style whodunit with well-drawn characters and a fun setting.

Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes

This is high-concept country-house mystery! An amateur theatrical performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at a lavish English country estate, on a stage recreating the design of an Elizabethan theatre, turns into a murder investigation when one of the performers is shot at the very moment their character is supposed to die in the play. The play itself is twined all throughout the intricate plot, and you know all along that somehow Hamlet holds the vital clue to the culprit, though the revelation of how doesn’t come till the very end.

Dawn Like Thunder: The Barbary Wars and the Birth of the U.S. Navy by Glenn Tucker

Every so often I pick up a historical nonfiction title not for research, but just because a random historical event or era that’s outside my usual wheelhouse sounds interesting. Mentions of the Barbary Wars had been cropping up in Regency-era fiction I read and around the fringes of conversations about history, so I decided I’d like to fill in my sketchy knowledge of them. Dawn Like Thunder is a fascinating look at a young American nation building a navy and a foreign policy from scratch, daring naval battles, Napoleonic-era diplomacy, and the perilous, colorful milieu of the Barbary states that literally made their living off of Mediterranean piracy and international protection money.

The Cowboy: His Characteristics, His Equipment, and His Part in the Development of the West by Philip Ashton Rollins

I actually read a significant part of this one last year, but returned to it after a hiatus and finished it in 2020. It’s definitely one of the top nonfiction titles I’d recommend to someone writing stories set in the West or just interested in real Western history. There’s a lot of focus on the nitty-gritty details like clothing, equipment, social customs, speech, and so forth. I’ve added a physical copy to my personal library, and I’m looking forward to re-reading it and marking especially helpful passages for future reference. I haven’t written a full review, but I did share a thought-provoking excerpt with a bit of commentary on Facebook.

Mother Mason by Bess Streeter Aldrich

Bookending the list, another title that I loved for its simple warmth and wholesomeness: a book of interconnected short stories telling of happenings in the lives of an average American family, comfortable without being rich, leading citizens of a classic Midwestern small town in the early 20th century.

In a different trend from previous years, only two of these titles are in the public domain: Penny Plain and Mother Mason (the latter newly so, hence a free version doesn’t seem to be available yet). Dawn Like Thunder was a library borrow; Deadly Duo, Crowning Heaven, and Hamlet, Revenge! were Kindle Unlimited borrows; and the rest were Kindle purchases.

Previous years’ lists: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

When I saw this idea at The Captive Reader last month, I immediately knew I had to do it too: a recap of my favorite books read each year in the past decade. There are actually only nine titles here, because I find I didn’t start keeping records of what I read until 2011—but since everyone else is treating this year as the time to do best-of-the-decade roundups, I’m going ahead and doing it now.

It was an intriguing exercise, reading back over my top-ten lists for each year—seeing how my tastes have stayed the same and how they’ve changed; seeing which books are still favorites and which ones might not necessarily make my lists if I redid them now. I was almost tempted to list a runner-up for each year as well, but in several cases it would have been extremely difficult to choose just one from two or three titles, so I omitted it altogether.

I’ve reproduced here only what I wrote about each book in the original top-ten posts—the length of the paragraphs does vary wildly, since in the last couple of years I haven’t written full reviews of my top picks and so described them more thoroughly in my blog post! The linked titles go to full reviews where they exist.

2011: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

What I wrote: “I was impressed by this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a wealthy, influential family’s gradual decline during the industrialization of America at the turn of the last century, which seems to be a somewhat overlooked classic of American literature.”

2012: The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart

What I wrote: “A Rinehart non-mystery, this beautiful novel about American students living in Vienna just before the Great War kept me up till midnight finishing it.”

2013: Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart

What I wrote: “Easily my favorite read of the year. Gorgeous writing, a stunningly evoked setting, suspense and intrigue and romance…it doesn’t get much better than this.”

2014: Thorofare by Christopher Morley

What I wrote: “A big, rich, rambling, beautiful novel, this wins my award for favorite book of the year. Told mostly from the perspective of an English boy, the nephew of a college professor who teaches in America, it traces his journey to the States and the family’s life in village, city and country on both sides of the Atlantic, exploring with pleasant humor and an incredible eye for detail the curious differences and similarities of English and American culture in the late Victorian/early Edwardian era.”

2015: Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

What I wrote: “If I were pressed to name my single favorite book of the year, this would have to be the one. A teenage girl trying to decide what to do with her life discovers more than she bargained for when she takes on a summer job helping to investigate the legatees of an eccentric will.”

2016: Saturday’s Child by Kathleen Thompson Norris

What I wrote: “I often have a hard time distilling into a review my thoughts on the books that make the most impression on me. That was the case with this, my favorite read of the year. It follows the fortunes of a young woman earning her living in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, her struggles to reconcile poverty and family obligations with dreams of wealth and luxury; and her attempts to find a purpose for her life when it appears that romance and marriage are not in her future.”

2017: Letters to Julia by Meredith Allady

What I wrote: “This is a sequel, and it’s definitely necessary to have read Friendship and Folly by the same author to have a knowledge of the characters; but this one found its way even deeper into my heart than the first book in the series. It’s a hefty epistolary novel set in Regency/Napoleonic-era England, told through four years’ worth of letters from a large and affectionate family and some of their friends to a married daughter living at a distance, dealing with both happy and difficult times in the lives of senders and recipients. I can understand how the style might not be for everyone, but it definitely was for me.”

2018: The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish by Linda Przybyszewski

What I wrote: “This is my favorite book on fashion I’ve ever read. There was a time in the earlier 20th century when American women were considered some of the best-dressed women in the world, and this book reveals why. It takes a fascinating look at a generation of designers and fashion experts who taught American women how to apply the principles of art, as found in the natural world—harmony, proportion, balance, rhythm, and emphasis—to create and choose beautiful and tasteful clothing that suited them and their lifestyles. And how to do it on a thrifty budget. What’s so neat about this book is that it’s both a fun history lesson yet also practically inspiring, as you come to realize that the principles of art can be applied to choosing tasteful and flattering clothing in any era.”

2019: The Huguenots: Their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland by Samuel Smiles

What I wrote: “I had a basic knowledge of who the Huguenots were and the fact of their persecution; but this book blew me away with the breadth and scope of their saga and its effect on the culture and economy of more than one nation. Smiles’ primary focus is on what the exiled Huguenots brought to England and Ireland in the way of art, trade, industry, learning, et cetera (hint: a lot), but he also grounds it in a comprehensive overview of the zero-tolerance policy pursued by the French Catholic monarchy that drove the Huguenots to flee their homeland. I came away marveling at how Americans are taught so little of what is a big part of our heritage by extension as well; and also with a much clearer understanding of how the Huguenot persecutions contributed to the conditions that led to the French Revolution.”

If you’d like to see my full top-ten lists for each year, you can find links to them all at the bottom of this year’s list.