36 books like Terrier

I’d never have guessed I’d be so beguiled by a book about moss. Or, more precisely, about Alma Whittaker, a bryologist observing moss.

I enjoyed this book's ‘differentness’. It’s an episodic story, unusually structured, with various life-like trailings-off of plotlines, characters, and marriage, but no less gripping for that.

Researching natural sciences in the nineteenth century is skilfully described, but it’s Alma who lingers in the mind. Its sentences, I thought, are beautiful too.

What if, all over the world, women suddenly discovered they now had all the power? Questions around equality are always at the center of my own writing and much of what I read, so this book went straight to the top of my reading pile when it was released!

This is a dystopian novel with a difference – it turns the status quo of millennia upon its head to create a world in which girls and women can literally dominate men with a flick of the fingers and a flash of electrocution. Bad men are overthrown, and new sisterhoods are formed, but as with all types of control, it doesn’t take long for power to turn to abuse. Everyone, men and women alike, should read it.

In the era of Bridgerton and in the wake of 2005’s Pride and Prejudice film, my heart has been swallowed whole by regency era period pieces.

This novel has the best banter I have ever read. The female lead, Abigail, considers herself a spinster (in her *gasp* late twenties) and thus past the age of romance. She resigns herself to caring for her very high-maintenance relatives. Until she meets Mr. Calverleigh.

She is so determined to loathe him, but can’t help but be charmed by his conversation. I loved watching this independent woman learn to put herself first and reluctantly fall in love with the last person she expected.

This one I read when I was much younger and think about often.

Georgia, a tomboy with an awful stepbrother and a serious lack of parental support, makes friends with an old man in an antique store who gives her the key to traveling to another world.

What sticks with me most about this book is that she spends the majority of it ashamed of her own skin, hiding who she is, dressing as a boy, and shrinking from who she truly is. Throughout the course of the novel, she finds her voice, discovers her strength, and claims the beauty what she has to offer the world.

This was such an important book when I was a teenager, as I felt incredibly uncomfortable in my rapidly changing body. To read about a girl who earns her own love was truly empowering.

Anna Feigenbaum’s book describes the origins of tear gas as a weapon of war and its transition to a crowd control tool. Tear Gas tells a story about the relationships between militaries, arms manufacturers, and police forces that has critical public policy and societal implications today. The continued use of tear gas to counter-protest movements and mass demonstrations around the globe remains a challenge for advocates of arms control, social justice, and human rights.

I chose this series, not because of the fun crimes Scotland Yard Inspector Rutledge solves, but because he is a soldier from WWI who battles PTSD. He experiences some of the symptoms other soldiers had, or have, following a traumatic war experience. His dead corporal constantly pesters him throughout the series by being a voice in his head. Additionally, after his fiancée leaves him following the war, he has intimacy issues and cannot express his feelings for the woman he loves. To cope with his sleeplessness and PTSD, he immerses himself in the cases he’s assigned. This series, in part, inspired my book. 

The Vault is the sequel to A Sight for Sore Eyes. It is a police procedural with the detective trying to identify several dead bodies found in an abandoned coal cellar. The dead seem to have no connection to each other, so the detective must also puzzle out how each of them came to be there. I recommend it because the reader has some fun: She knows the answers to all those questions from having read the first book. It’s a great twist on mystery-as-riddle whodunits. 

If you love underdog stories, this one offers a double helping. First, Inspector Witherspoon’s career is threatened by ambitious and unscrupulous men who want to see him fail. Secondly, his household staff are the real heroes, tracking down clues that they cleverly feed to their unsuspecting employer to help him solve murder cases. Each staff member has unique methods for uncovering information, and together they make an effective team. I chuckle at their close calls as they scramble to hide their secret sleuthing from the inspector and the rest of the police force.  

This first novel gives the backstory: what’s at stake for the inspector and his household, plus why his housekeeper (Mrs. Jeffries) is a plausible and capable sleuth.

Creative writing instructors (and later TV showrunners and network executives) taught me that the protagonist in a crime story can be flawed, but he has to be likable, someone you want to spend time with and who you will root for.

They were all wrong. The detective hero of this book borders on repulsive, and the world he lives in is dark, violent, and a touch grotesque…but also very, very funny. The humor not only makes it all palatable but somehow even more vivid and powerful. And entertaining, oh, how entertaining.

There may not be a single likable character in the whole book, and I don’t care. I love every word. 

Another in Donna Leon’s series set in Venice with a focus on Commissario Guido Brunetti, a totally believable detective with all the skills any good detective would need to have while meeting up against all the difficulties any detective would encounter in a society (Italy) where the nature of bureaucracy is extremely problematic. So problematic that Brunetti is forced to take a break on a nearby island where he runs into other crimes and difficulties.