My Favorite Books of 2006

Each year I pick five books that I enjoyed most during the year. I try to choose books that represent the various genres that I like to read (mysteries, women's lives and relationships, and suspense/thriller).

In alphabetical order:

• The Ex-Wife's Survival Guide by Debby Holt
  I love novels about women's lives set in England (Katie Fforde, Joanna Trollope). The main character Sarah finds herself at loose ends when her husband leaves her and her twin sons go on an extended trip before university. Sarah joins the local drama troupe and struggles to find a new life for herself, with sometimes humorous results. To find a new author, packaged as a chick lit paperback no less, who seems to have been overlooked is fabulous. Let's hope she continues writing....
  
  
• The Kindness of Strangers by Katrina Kittle
  Sarah Laden is a caterer with two sons whose life is getting back to normal after the death of her husband a few years ago. One day she finds her younger son's best friend, Jordan, walking in the rain. After she picks him up, he appears sick and she pulls over to let him use a port-a-potty. When he doesn't come out, she goes to him and finds him attempting suicide. This event sends Sarah and her family's world into a tailspin . This is an absorbing novel about a difficult topic. I could not put it down. Recommended for book clubs.
  
  
• The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell
  Knowing that this is probably the last Inspector Wallender mystery ever to be published in English makes reading this book all the more bittersweet. I love the character of Wallender, a Swedish police detective, and the way Mankell builds the story and investigation in each of his books.



• Nightlife by Thomas Perry
  Perry has been writing novels for twenty-five years, yet this is the first book that I've read by him. Nightlife is the best suspense novel I read all year. The cat and mouse game between police detective Catherine Hobbes and a female serial killer is first rate. Perry's details of how the killer continues to change identities as she moves from city to city with the bodies piling up behind her was fascinating reading.
  


• Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear
  This is a mystery series that I really enjoy. Maisie Dobbs owns her own detective agency in post-World War I London. Winspear's descriptions of life in London after the war and especially of women's lives at that time keep me coming back book after book.