Top Ten Tuesday is hosted each week by That Artsy Reader Girl.

Over time, book reviewers (and dedicated readers) get better and better at guessing whether or not they will like a book. Descriptions, genres, author history, even cover art all play a factor in deciding if one should devote several hours to a book. And while I am still occasionally surprised (good and bad) by things I read I can often tell pretty quickly if a book is going to be something extraordinary. Here are a few (I don’t have ten) titles on my to-be-read list that have the potential to be five-star reads for me.


In all fairness, I’ve started this one already. So far, so good.

from the publisher: Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities–beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners, and hundreds upon hundreds of books–sat an investigator who would go on to crack at least two thousand cases in his forty-year career. Known as the “American Sherlock Holmes,” Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America’s greatest–and first–forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural.

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons (February 11, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0525539557


I loved both Watchmaker of Filigree Street and The Bedlam Stacks and I know that Natasha Pulley must have something wonderful in store again.

from the publisher: 1888. Five years after they met in The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Thaniel Steepleton, an unassuming translator, and Keita Mori, the watchmaker who remembers the future, are traveling to Japan. As the weather turns bizarrely electrical and ghosts haunt the country from Tokyo to Aokigahara forest, Thaniel grows convinced that it all has something to do with Mori’s disappearance–and that Mori may be in serious danger.

Hardcover: 512 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (February 18, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1635573300


I’m rather obsessed with the Fandorin books already. I’m so glad Mysterious Press and Grove Atlantic have picked up the mantle making sure these get published in America.

from the publisher: Naive young Masha Mironova arrives in Moscow at the turn of the century with a modest inheritance and a determination to shed her provincial Siberian upbringing. As soon as she alights in Moscow, she becomes Columbine, a reckless and daring young woman with eccentric outfits and a pet snake worn as a necklace. In her quest for danger and passion, Columbine soon discovers the Lovers of Death—a small group of poets enraptured by death who gather nightly at the home of their leader, the Doge, and conduct séances to determine death’s next chosen lover.

Series: Fandorin Mysteries (Book 8)
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Mysterious Press (March 3, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 080214814X


I love stories like this. I’m always hoping to stumble upon some piece of ephemera and then turning into a detective. This find is epic.

from the publisher: Brigitte Benkemoun’s husband buys a vintage diary on eBay. When it arrives, she opens it and finds inside private notes dating back to 1951—twenty pages of phone numbers and addresses for Balthus, Brassaï, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Leonor Fini, Jacqueline Lamba, and other artistic luminaries of the European avant-garde.

by Brigitte Benkemoun (Author), Jody Gladding (Translator)
Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: Getty Publications; 1 edition (May 5, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1606066595


What books are you looking forward to giving five stars?