General Books / Top Ten Tuesday

#TopTenTuesday: Shouting Out the Backlist!

Dini @ dinipandareads42 Comments

We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s topic is: Forgotten Backlist Titles (Spread love for books that people don’t talk about much anymore!)

This week’s prompt has us throwing it back to titles that we’ve previously read and don’t see many people talking about. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to come up with a list because my memory is very foggy and right now also very tired (of course, I’m doing this at the last minute at close to 10PM on Tuesday, lol). But I dove into my Goodreads list and was able to come up with ten books that I don’t see a lot of people talking about but that I loved a lot when I read them (“very many”) years ago. I hope they would hold up now if I ever re-read them! 😂

On that note, let’s get to it…

The Riyria Revelations by Michael J. Sullivan

They killed the king. They pinned it on two men. They chose poorly.

📖 SYNOPSIS

There’s no ancient evil to defeat or orphan destined for greatness, just unlikely heroes and classic adventure. Royce Melborn, a skilled thief, and his mercenary partner, Hadrian Blackwater, are running for their lives when they’re framed for the murder of the king. Trapped in a conspiracy that goes beyond the overthrow of a tiny kingdom, their only hope is unraveling an ancient mystery before it’s too late.

Natchez Burning by Greg Iles

#1 New York Times bestselling author Greg Iles returns with his most eagerly anticipated novel yet—Natchez Burning—the first instalment in an epic trilogy that interweaves crimes, lies, and secrets past and present in a mesmerizing thriller featuring Southern lawyer and former prosecutor Penn Cage.

📖 SYNOPSIS

Growing up in the rural Southern hamlet of Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage learned everything he knows about honor and duty from his father, Tom Cage. But now the beloved family doctor is accused of murdering Viola Turner, the beautiful nurse with whom he worked in the early 1960s. A fighter who has always stood for justice, Penn is determined to save his father.

The quest for answers sends Penn deep into the past—into the heart of a conspiracy of greed and murder involving the Double Eagles, a vicious KKK crew headed by one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the state. Now Penn must follow a bloody trail that stretches back forty years, to one undeniable fact: no one—black or white, young or old, brave or not—is ever truly safe.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax.

📖 SYNOPSIS

But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery; someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets – an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her “our little genius.”

📖 SYNOPSIS

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.

Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children’s cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she’ll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn’t know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

The Girl with All the Gifts is a sensational thriller, perfect for fans of Stephen King, Justin Cronin, and Neil Gaiman.

The Watchmaker’s Daughter by C.J. Archer

India Steele is desperate. Her father is dead, her fiancé took her inheritance, and no one will employ her, despite years of working for her watchmaker father. Indeed, the other London watchmakers seem frightened of her.

📖 SYNOPSIS

Alone, poor, and at the end of her tether, India takes employment with the only person who’ll accept her – an enigmatic and mysterious man from America. A man who possesses a strange watch that rejuvenates him when he’s ill.

Matthew Glass must find a particular watchmaker, but he won’t tell India why any old one won’t do. Nor will he tell her what he does back home, and how he can afford to stay in a house in one of London’s best streets. So when she reads about an American outlaw known as the Dark Rider arriving in England, she suspects Mr. Glass is the fugitive. When danger comes to their door, she’s certain of it. But if she notifies the authorities, she’ll find herself unemployed and homeless again – and she will have betrayed the man who saved her life.

With a cast of quirky characters, an intriguing mystery, and a dash of romance, THE WATCHMAKER’S DAUGHTER is the start of a thrilling new historical fantasy series from the author of the bestselling Ministry of Curiosities, Freak House, and Emily Chambers Spirit Medium books.

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson

Near an isolated mansion lies a beautiful garden.
In this garden grow luscious flowers, shady trees…and a collection of precious “butterflies”—young women who have been kidnapped and intricately tattooed to resemble their namesakes.

📖 SYNOPSIS

Overseeing it all is the Gardener, a brutal, twisted man obsessed with capturing and preserving his lovely specimens.

When the garden is discovered, a survivor is brought in for questioning. FBI agents Victor Hanoverian and Brandon Eddison are tasked with piecing together one of the most stomach-churning cases of their careers. But the girl, known only as Maya, proves to be a puzzle herself.

As her story twists and turns, slowly shedding light on life in the Butterfly Garden, Maya reveals old grudges, new saviors, and horrific tales of a man who’d go to any length to hold beauty captive. But the more she shares, the more the agents have to wonder what she’s still hiding…

Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet by Charlie N. Holmberg

Maire is a baker with an extraordinary she can infuse her treats with emotions and abilities, which are then passed on to those who eat them. She doesn’t know why she can do this and remembers nothing of who she is or where she came from.

📖 SYNOPSIS

When marauders raid her town, Maire is captured and sold to the eccentric Allemas, who enslaves her and demands that she produce sinister confections, including a witch’s gingerbread cottage, a living cookie boy, and size-altering cakes. During her captivity, Maire is visited by Fyel, a ghostly being who is reluctant to reveal his connection to her. The more often they meet, the more her memories return, and she begins to piece together who and what she really is—as well as past mistakes that yield cosmic consequences. From the author of The Paper Magician series comes a haunting and otherworldly tale of folly and consequence, forgiveness and redemption.

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

Twenty years ago Claire Scott’s eldest sister, Julia, went missing. No one knew where she went – no note, no body. It was a mystery that was never solved and it tore her family apart.

📖 SYNOPSIS

Now another girl has disappeared, with chilling echoes of the past. And it seems that she might not be the only one.

Claire is convinced Julia’s disappearance is linked.

But when she begins to learn the truth about her sister, she is confronted with a shocking discovery, and nothing will ever be the same…

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Love isn’t an exact science – but no one told Don Tillman. A handsome thirty-nine-year-old geneticist, Don’s never had a second date. So he devises The Wife Project, a scientific test to find the perfect partner. Enter Rosie – ‘the world’s most incompatible woman’ – throwing Don’s sage, ordered life into chaos. Just what is this unsettling, alien emotion he’s feeling?

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five… In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge.

📖 SYNOPSIS

Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens — until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town’s residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state’s best witness, but she can’t remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.

Nineteen Minutes is New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult’s most raw, honest, and important novel yet. Told with the straightforward style for which she has become known, it asks simple questions that have no easy answers: Can your own child become a mystery to you? What does it mean to be different in our society? Is it ever okay for a victim to strike back? And who—if anyone—has the right to judge someone else?

Do you like reading backlist books or do you mostly read newer releases? Have you read any of these books? What are some of your favourite backlist titles?

42 thoughts on “#TopTenTuesday: Shouting Out the Backlist!”

  2. Charlie N. Holmberg is popping up on lists all over the place! Yours sounds so interesting too. Uuuuugh, my poor TBR is about to fill right back up. 😭 Great list!

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    • I don’t know if you have Kindle Unlimited but her books are all on there (at least for KU UK!). I started with her Paper Magicians series and really enjoyed it 🙂 Hehe, I love and hate TTT posts cos I always end up adding at least three new titles to my TBR each time, lol.

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      • I do but I only had the 3 month trial that came with my Kindle when I got it back in May! So I only have a few days left… 😭 I discovered all these awesome books way too late because all that was front-loaded to me was like… self-published romances I’d never heard of.

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    • I actually haven’t read the sequel yet cos it wasn’t out when I had finished reading this and well, little time, many books and all that. 😂 But I do want to though I haven’t heard much about it. Have you read it?

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      • Yes, I’ve read it. It was actually better than the first book in some ways, believe it or not. No pressure to read it, of course, but it was such a satisfying conclusion. 🙂

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  4. Jodi Picoult books were (are?) so popular for a while! I think I’ve seen a movie adapted from one of her novels, but never read one! It’s so fun to look back at things we once read. 🙂

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    • Yeah, I discovered her on a random browse at my high school’s library and immediately got sucked into her full catalogue. I don’t know if she’s still as popular now but I do still enjoy her books 🙂 And yes, it is fun to look back on books we’ve read before. Kinda makes me want to do re-reads a lot though I never end up doing them 😂

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  5. I remember when Carey’s book came out and it was everywhere. I read it because Maggie Stiefvater was shouting about loving it. It got a movie and everything. Now, I don’t see it show up on lists very often.
    You read Butterfly Garden? I read that one for a book club and it disturbed me so much. I know a lot of my book club friends went on to read more of the series, but I couldn’t after that one.

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    • I think I picked it up cos I saw something about the movie coming out and I was like “I need to read this before watching that” and I ended up reading it but never watching it 😂 It was outside my comfort zone but I loved it! And YES, Butterly Garden is definitely *SUPER* disturbing but as much as it feels weird to say, I loved it! 😂 I was simultaneously thinking this is so messed up but also, I can’t put this book down I need to keep reading! I do have some of the other books in the series on my TBR but I haven’t read them yet… I hope to one day though (maybe, lol) but I totally get why you couldn’t! They’re nowhere near lighthearted!

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  6. I remember a lot of buzz for Girl with All the Gifts, Bitter Sweet, and the Slaughter book when they came out, but I don’t see them around these days. I loved The Rosie Project. That definitely enjoyed its day in the sun, but its also been long absent.

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    • I think when I picked up Girl with All the Gifts I had seen buzz for the upcoming movie and was curious about it. It’s something that’s a little outside my comfort zone but I remember being so engaged in it! It’s been a minute since I’ve seen hype for any of these books too but I know they had their moment in the sun 😂

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    • I didn’t continue on with the series and tbh, I don’t even remember if I felt like I needed to or not? It’s a bummer to hear the second book didn’t hold up and now I don’t feel like I missed out on anything. I’ve read the trilogy of the Natchez Burning books and they are seriously chonky but I was immediately sucked in and devoured the books. I want to try more by this author at some point! Have you read anything else of his before?

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  8. Great list, Dini. I have read a few of these and enjoyed them. I have Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet on my NG backlist shelf, so I think I will move it up and let you know if I liked it or not.

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    • Oh, I’d be so curious to know what you think of it, Carla! I read it so long ago that I remember close to nothing about it now BUT it was one of those books that combined baking and magic and I love that combination so that, I think, is what made me love it so much then. I think I might have to re-read it at some point! I hope you do enjoy it 🙂

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    • I wasn’t part of the book community or any bookish things back when I read Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet so I don’t know how I came across it. It’s not one of Holmberg’s talked about titles, I think. I might need to re-read it 😂

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    • I don’t even remember how I first stumbled upon the Riyria books but I’m so glad that I did cos I remember *loving* the story. The MCs are also fantastic! I’ve actually been thinking about a re-read so… If you’re up for reading the series too, we can plan a buddy read for it? Let me know if you’re keen! 😂

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    • I don’t know how it came onto my radar but I had zero expectations going into it and was SUPER surprised by it (in a positive way, obviously, lol). I remember I was reading it at the airport during one of my work trips and I was so engrossed in it that I narrowly missed my boarding time! 😂 It was a time!

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    • I found The Rosie Project was such a delightful surprise. It was oddly ‘feel good’ and I definitely agree on the laugh-out-loud part! 😂 I’ve only read this trilogy by Iles but I devoured them so quickly and they’re pretty chonky! I definitely want to give his other books a try. I hope you enjoy his books if you do pick them up!

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  16. I still need to read Shadow of the Wind, it’s waiting on my physical bookshelf, and I also loved The Rosie Project! Great list, Dini. ❤

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  20. The Riyria Revelations have been on my TBR for ages, but I never got around to them! I definitely should but I suffer from ‘distraction-by-the-new-and-shiny’ a bit too often unfortunately… Something to work on, because there are so many amazing backlist books out there too!

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