Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

The topic this week is The topic this week is Books on My Fall 2023 To-Read List

I don’t plan what I’m going to read next, unless I have a review copy to read, so I don’t have a To-Read list. I do have many books waiting to be read – here are 10 of them, all e-books, that I may read this autumn. I’d forgotten I’d got some of these books, so it’s been good to sort through what I have in the black hole that is my Kindle.

I like to think I’ll read at least some of these, but when the time comes I could read other books instead.

Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens. I saw on Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings blog that she has started to read this book and it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to read it for years. She’s read the first four chapters and it sounds so good.

A compelling depiction of a man imprisoned by his own pride, Dombey and Son explores the devastating effects of emotional deprivation on a dysfunctional family. Paul Dombey runs his household as he runs his business: coldly, calculatingly and commercially. The only person he cares for is his little son, while his motherless daughter Florence is merely a ‘base coin that couldn’t be invested’. As Dombey’s callousness extends to others, including his defiant second wife Edith, he sows the seeds of his own destruction... (Amazon UK)

Telling Tales  by Ann Cleeves, the 2nd Vera book, crime fiction. I’ve been reading the Vera books out of order and somehow missed this one. I have just started to read it and it’s looking good.

The residents of an East Yorkshire village are revisited with the nightmare of a murder that happened 10 years before. there was some doubt about the guilty verdict passed on Jeanie Long and now it would seem that the killer is still at large. Inspector Vera Stanhope builds up a picture of a community afraid of itself and of outsiders. (Fantastic Fiction)

Children of the Revolution by Peter Robinson, the 21st DCI Banks book and the next one for me to read. Crime fiction

A disgraced college lecturer is found murdered with £5,000 in his pocket on a disused railway line near his home. Since being dismissed from his job for sexual misconduct four years previously, he has been living a poverty-stricken and hermit-like existence in this isolated spot.

The suspects range from several individuals at the college where he used to teach to a woman who knew the victim back in the early ’70s at Essex University, then a hotbed of political activism. When Banks receives a warning to step away from the case, he realises there is much more to the mystery than meets the eye – for there are plenty more skeletons to come out of the closet . . . (Amazon UK)

Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths, the 5th in the Brighton Mystery series.

Three young women have gone missing.

A girl called Rhonda has vanished from her boarding school. Maybe she ran away, but there are disturbing similarities to the disappearance of two other young women – those too thought not to be suspicious. Detective Edgar Stephens is under pressure to solve Rhonda’s disappearance, but it is his wife Emma, herself a former detective now frustrated at being just a housewife, who concludes there might be a connection between the three cases. Edgar’s friend, magician Max Mephisto, is reinventing himself as a movie star and trying not to envy his daughter Ruby’s television fame. Little do either of them know how close they are to being drawn into the deadly web of abduction and murder about to trap them all. (Amazon UK)

Exposure by Helen Dunmore, historical fiction, a Cold War spy thriller.

London, November, 1960: the Cold War is at its height. Spy fever fills the newspapers, and the political establishment knows how and where to bury its secrets. When a highly sensitive file goes missing, Simon Callington is accused of passing information to the Soviets, and arrested.

His wife, Lily, suspects that his imprisonment is part of a cover-up, and that more powerful men than Simon will do anything to prevent their own downfall. She knows that she too is in danger, and must fight to protect her children. But what she does not realise is that Simon has hidden vital truths about his past, and may be found guilty of another crime that carries with it an even greater penalty. (Goodreads)

The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley, one of the British Library Crime Classics

Graham and Joan Bendix have apparently succeeded in making that eighth wonder of the modern world, a happy marriage. And into the middle of it there drops, like a clap of thunder, a box of chocolates.Joan Bendix is killed by a poisoned box of liqueur chocolates that cannot have been intended for her to eat. The police investigation rapidly reaches a dead end. Chief Inspector Moresby calls on Roger Sheringham and his Crimes Circle – six amateur but intrepid detectives – to consider the case. The evidence is laid before the Circle and the members take it in turn to offer a solution. Each is more convincing than the last, slowly filling in the pieces of the puzzle, until the dazzling conclusion. This new edition includes an alternative ending by the Golden Age writer Christianna Brand, as well as a brand new solution devised specially for the British Library by the crime novelist and Golden Age expert Martin Edwards. (Amazon UK)

To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey, a Golden Age Mystery.

It was rumoured that Hollywood stars would go to any lengths for the privilege of being photographed by the good-looking, brilliantly talented and ultra-fashionable portrait photographer Leslie Searle. But what was such a gifted creature doing in such an English village backwater as Salcott St Mary? And why — and how — did he disappear? If a crime had been committed, was it murder…fraud…or simply some macabre practical joke? (Goodreads)

Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd, non fiction

As the UK’s top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right – and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die? (Goodreads)

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, historical fiction, set in post-WW2 London about memory, family secrets and lies.

It is 1945, and London is still reeling from the Blitz. 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are apparently abandoned by their parents, left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and grow both more convinced and less concerned as they get to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women all who seem determined to protect Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? A dozen years later, Nathaniel journeys through recollection, reality and imagination to uncover all he didn’t know or understand in that time, to piece together a story that feels something like the truth. (Amazon)

The Reckoning by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Freyja and Huldar Book 2, crime fiction.

A chilling note predicting the deaths of six people is found in a school’s time capsule, ten years after it was buried. But surely, if a thirteen-year-old wrote it, it can’t be a real threat…

Detective Huldar suspects he’s been given the investigation simply to keep him from real police work. He turns to psychologist Freyja to help understand the child who hid the message. Soon, however, they find themselves at the heart of another shocking case.

For the discovery of the letter coincides with a string of macabre events: body parts found in a garden, followed by the murder of the man who owned the house. His initials are BT, one of the names on the note. (Goodreads)

Huldar and Freyja must race to identify the writer, the victims and the murderer, before the rest of the targets are killed…