It’s that time of year again—time to join Top Ten Tuesday and list my ten favorite books read this year!

This year’s list is in many ways similar to past ones (e.g. almost absurdly eclectic of genre; showing a marked absence of living authors). It also sees a resurgence of a favorite genre that has been absent from my last few top-ten lists, and for the second year in a row features multiple appearances by a single author. The books are listed in the order I read them, not in order of favorites:

Five Windows by D.E. Stevenson

Every once in a while it’s nice to read a book about fundamentally decent, likeable people, whose problems aren’t earth-shattering and are solved by an application of sound common sense. Five Windows is just that sort of warm, comfortable book. Set in the post-WWII era, it follows the fortunes of a boy from Scotland who heads to London as a young man to earn his living. Through trial and error he learns to distinguish doubtful company from worthwhile friends, develops his talent for writing, and eventually finds true love in a very sweet and natural way. Just a very pleasant, satisfying read.

Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

I think the highest praise I can give is that this book was a tremendous help to me at a difficult period in my life. Freeing, comforting, and challenging. I wish more people would read it, because it breaks my heart to see so many, Christians especially, talk about depression as if it was something inevitable that you just have to get used to living with. I’m so glad I had guidance to treat depression primarily as a spiritual struggle, along with better understanding of how physical health and nutrition play into it; and this book was one of my biggest helps. Recommended.

The Rhodes Reader: Stories of Virgins, Villains, and Varmints by Eugene Manlove Rhodes (ed. W.H. Hutchinson)

A collection of some of the very best short fiction and essays by one of my favorite Western writers. I reviewed this on the blog after reading it.

The Unforgiven by Alan LeMay

This is something of a surprise entry on my list, both because the book turned out to be something entirely different than I thought it would be, and because it’s a bit darker and bloodier than my usual reading matter. It tells the story of a Texas family who are a target for danger from both hostile Indians and their pioneer neighbors, because their teenage daughter—unbeknownst to herself, adopted as a baby—may be part Kiowa. But rather than the one-note tirade about racism that I was expecting, The Unforgiven is much more complex—the heart of the story deals with a close, protective family relationship, the effect of secrecy and grudges, and the realities of life on the Texas frontier. (As a sidenote, after finishing the book I read the synopsis of the 1960 film adaptation and was amazed and indignant at the wholesale plot changes that totally skew the essence of the story. Now I’m curious to read LeMay’s most famous novel The Searchers and see what might have been lost in its translation to the screen.)

Letters to Julia by Meredith Allady

This is a sequel, and it’s definitely necessary to have read Friendship and Folly by the same author to have a knowledge of the characters; but this one found its way even deeper into my heart than the first book in the series. It’s a hefty epistolary novel set in Regency/Napoleonic-era England, told through four years’ worth of letters from a large and affectionate family and some of their friends to a married daughter living at a distance, dealing with both happy and difficult times in the lives of senders and recipients. I can understand how the style might not be for everyone, but it definitely was for me. It might possibly be my No. 1 favorite of the year. Review here.

Beau Geste by P.C. Wren

This checks all the boxes for a rollicking adventure novel: exotic foreign settings, battles, danger, suspense—plus an attention-grabbing opening section that sets up not one but two ingenious mystery puzzles. First, the theft of a famous jewel, the disappearance of which causes three English brothers to flee the country to join the French Foreign Legion; and secondly, the mysterious fate of a company in the Legion, which somehow also ties back to the theft of the jewel. It takes the whole rest of the novel, narrated in flashback by one of the brothers, to gradually unfold the answers (and kept me up till a quarter of midnight finishing it).

Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey

I would describe this as something more than a typical whodunit—a solid novel with mystery undercurrents. Orphan Brat Farrar is persuaded to impersonate a boy who went missing several years ago, believed to be dead, as part of a scheme to inherit the property that would have come to him. The suspense comes not only from the impersonation plot itself, but the complications that develop as Brat forms a bond with his new family…and also begins to wonder what really happened to the missing boy. While I made a correct guess about that early on, there were still plenty of questions about the how and why left to unfold, plus the overshadowing question of what the protagonist’s ultimate choices would be. It’s not often that I become so invested in a book that I find myself mentally saying “No, no! Don’t do it!” when I begin to see which way a character’s actions are tending, or read a scene of building suspense with my teeth literally chattering. It was also actually one of two books on this list (Letters to Julia was the other) that I read twice during the year. One day I’d like to write a proper full review.

The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope

I recently read a quote from none other than P.G. Wodehouse about Anthony Trollope that wonderfully describes the charm of Trollope’s books: “It is rather like listening to somebody who is long-winded telling you a story about real people.  The characters live in the most extraordinary way and you feel that the whole thing is true.” Really, I haven’t read a Trollope novel that I disliked yet. In The Small House at Allington we get complex family relationships, engagements made and broken, some appealing heroines, some young men who need a good shaking, some unexpectedly kind benefactors, and a character whose ambition gets them what they want and what they deserve in the most thorough and comprehensive way—all told with a blend of poignancy and pleasantly satirical humor. My review (of a sort) here.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

This book is truly one-of-a-kind. Tey’s detective Inspector Grant, flat on his back in the hospital and seeking a relief from boredom, becomes fascinated by a different type of murder mystery than usual, a cold case from centuries ago: was Richard III of England really responsible for the murder of the Princes in the Tower? It’s amazing how Tey crafts such a page-turning, frankly thrilling read almost entirely out of dialogue and gradual revelation—of historical events from hundreds of years ago, at that—as Grant, aided by a young American researcher, sifts through the historical record in search of evidence. Highly recommended both as a mystery, and as a thought-provoking perspective on the study of history.

Under Fire by Charles King

Having always enjoyed cavalry movies, such as John Ford’s well-known “trilogy,” I’ve long wished I could find a good older Western novel dealing with the U.S. Cavalry—I wondered if the subgenre even existed in Western fiction, as it does after a fashion in film. Well, this year I finally found one that fits the bill. I initially didn’t expect much from this 1894 novel, but it turned out be a surprisingly engrossing and even exciting read. Read my full review here on the blog.

Honorable Mention

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939-1981 by Iain H. Murray

I’m bending the rules a little and including an eleventh title, because I’m still in progress of reading this one, and if I had finished it before the Top Ten Tuesday date it would surely have bumped one of the other ten off my list. It’s the second volume of Murray’s authorized biography (I read the first volume earlier in the year), and I’ve relished every page—an excellent biography of a remarkable Christian man, as well as an informative window on church history of the 20th century.

Five Windows and The Daughter of Time were library borrows; Spiritual Depression and the Lloyd-Jones biography were already-owned titles and The Rhodes Reader a Christmas gift last year (out of print, I believe); all the rest were Kindle purchases (The Small House at Allington and Under Fire were public-domain and free) except for Brat Farrar and Beau Geste, which I (*cough*) downloaded from Project Gutenberg Australia.

(For my complete roundup of reading highlights from 2017, click here.)

Previous years’ lists: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011