93 books like Old God's Time

Emma Djan is a policewoman turned private investigator in Ghana. Her assignment is to track down the missing American who came out to Ghana to meet a woman who is almost certainly the fictional creation of internet scammers—the sakawa boys. We love Emma Djan’s combination of commitment and naiveté as she takes on the scammers, and the way Quartey weaves the local culture—complete with fetish priests and celebrities—into an intriguing plot. If you like to travel, visit Ghana. Great lead character, great plot, great sense of place. What’s not to like? A worthy Shamus Award winner.

Cadie Kessler has spent decades trying to cover up one truth. One moment. But deep down, didn’t she always know her secret would surface? An urgent message from her long-estranged best friend Daniela Garcia brings Cadie, now a forestry researcher, back to her childhood home. Now grown up, bound by long-held oaths, and faced with truths she does not wish to see, Cadie must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to protect the people and the forest she loves, as drought, foreclosures, and wildfire spark tensions between displaced migrant farmworkers and locals.

I love how Carrick-Dalton gives us parallel storylines about a secret buried by her protagonist and the truth of the climate crisis that the fossil fuel industry wants to bury.

The opening to this psychological thriller is stunning. Beautifully written, dark, tense and emotional – there is no way you can’t read on. And the rest of the book is equally good. There’s a complex plot that is revealed in bite-sized chunks at just the right time, the two main characters are likeable and authentic, and Cummin’s writing style keeps you just on the right side of ‘on edge’ throughout the book. But the reason this thriller really stood out for me is how it explores intense relationships formed in childhood under extreme conditions, and how they play out in adulthood decades later.

A writer is working on a true crime book when she goes out into a snowstorm and discovers a child. Many years earlier, two young girls ventured out into the night. One returned to discover her parents have been murdered and her brother is a suspect. The other girl never returns. Who is this child and how did he get there? Going from the current mystery to the cold case years earlier, the solutions to both are resolved with a truly surprising punch.

Life throws us many curves. How some of us deal with them at times forces an action that is unforgivable. Others take pains to hide the act and watch as another is punished for it.

However, in some cases circumstances recall the unforgivable act and the realization that the ‘guilty’ one who died in prison was also a victim. No matter how much time may pass, or how close the friendship, the threads of secrets unravel. No protagonist crime fighter here, just a friend searching for the truth to discover the real who and the why.

Very few writers capture the longings of young men trapped in small towns, struggling to escape to new and better worlds than does Donal Ryan.

I grew up in an Irish-German neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where few people ever left. I knew those kinds of men. 

This book has many of the same elements of Ryan’s past work, yet it brings with it a profound take on Ireland itself. The novel is divided into several sections, each focusing on seemingly unrelated narratives, until the final section when the stories of the men in the novel heartbreakingly come together.

Throughout, Ryan captures the essence of Irish history—the good and the bad—and combines it with the country’s always-present profound and unexpressed emotions, and its beautiful yet curious contradictions.

First things first, Simone Elkeles is my favorite YA author, and I couldn’t do a list of recs without mentioning one of her books, and my all-time favorite has always been Leaving Paradise. I also recommend LP because it’s close to my own book in that it features a reformed bad boy, Caleb, freshly on probation who’s trying to navigate his way into society and fix his “mistakes.” I so love the sorta forbidden dynamic between him and Maggie, because Caleb is actually on probation for hitting Maggie in a hit-and-run while drinking and driving. So not only is he trying to win over his former friends, parents, and town, he’s gotta make things right with Maggie, who is not giving him any play whatsoever—in the beginning! Love love Caleb’s voice in this novel.

Let’s take this European adventure to Italy. Like most of the books on my list, Love & Gelato doesn’t go heavy on the romance, which is an aspect I really appreciate. Lina, the sixteen-year-old protagonist, comes to terms with grief and uncertainty in this beautiful, tender story. The fact that it’s set in Italy is a big bonus.

Jenna Evans Welch has written similar books with settings in Ireland and Greece. She has a great voice and takes the reader to some of my favorite settings in the world. That’s amore!

When I went into this book, I sensed that Amelinda would pull zero punches. I was so right it was glorious. Skye is fed up. Fed up of being responsible for her insufferable little sister, Dierdre. Fed up with the stories, with the games, with their endless childhood fantasies. Moving halfway across the country seems like the perfect chance to start over. Finally, in this new, isolated neighbourhood, Skye is managing to fit in. Not Dierdre, though. No, Dierdre seems to be slipping more and more into a world of her own. And then one day: Dierdre vanishes. When a creature unlike anything Skye has ever seen comes scratching at her door claiming to know who took Dierdre, Skye is going to have to suspend her disbelief and re-enter a childhood of warped imagination.

I took a while to warm to Mabel Beaumont. She’s grumpy and wasn’t a loving partner to her late husband, Arthur, a caring attentive man.

When he dies, she’s bereft and feels bound to carry out his last wish, written cryptically in his last list, "Find D." Mabel thinks she knows what it means. She must track down her former best friend Dot, who she hasn’t seen since she suddenly left more than sixty years ago. But how?

Fortunately, savvy helpers turn up, thoughtfully arranged by Arthur before he died, and they all become unlikely friends. Did Arthur know her better than she knew herself? Did he love her more than she loved herself or him? Well-drawn characters make this an intriguing, uplifting story. It’s never too late!