The 10 Best Adult Authors I Discovered in 2017

This past year, 2017, was the first year since I started blogging that I relaxed my reading schedule a little bit to scale back the number of new kids' books I was reading and to make room for more adult books. I expected to read just a handful, so I'm really surprised that the final total was nearly 70! Of those books, titles by the following new-to-me authors proved to be my favorites. (I will be linking up this post for today's Top Ten Tuesday topic, Top Ten New-To-Me Authors I Read In 2017.)

James Herriot

I read and re-read The Christmas Day Kitten as a kid, so I did know a little bit about James Herriot prior to this year, but it wasn't until I read All Creatures Great and Small that I realized how funny he is, and that his anecdotes about his life as a young veterinarian are more than a series of dead dog stories.

Shirley Jackson

I read "The Lottery" when I was in high school and have always associated Jackson with creepy short stories and nothing else. This past year, though, I read her parenting memoirs and discovered her deadpan, self-deprecating sense of humor. I wish she lived next door to me so we could be mom friends.

Louise Penny

I have seen Penny's books in bookstores and libraries and on Goodreads but didn't realize she wrote mysteries until I happened to see some reviews of her newest book on some blogs and social media pages that I frequent. Once I knew she was a mystery writer, I had to give her a try, and it turns out that her books are deeply descriptive and beautifully written in addition to having compelling plots and characters.

Julie Mulhern

I kept seeing posts about this author's Country Club Mystery series in the Save Our Cozies Facebook group. At first I was worried the books would not be as well-put-together as the covers, which I love, but I took a chance and was not disappointed. The books look good and are well-written too! I also love that they are set in the '70s and reference a lot of pop culture from the time period.

Charlaine Harris

I didn't know that Charlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Stackhouse series that inspired True Blood)  had written any non-supernatural mysteries until I kept seeing Candace Cameron Bure's Instagram posts about the Aurora Teagarden mystery movies. Once I realized these films were based on a series of reality-based mysteries I was hooked. The titles in this series are a little uneven in terms of quality, but my love for Roe as a character keeps me reading even the less-good books.

Karen MacInerney

Karen MacInerney is another author whose books I kept seeing mentioned in cozy mystery groups, but her books weren't available in my local libraries, and they're published by an imprint of Amazon, so I worried that maybe they just weren't that good. In the end, though, I borrowed her first Dewberry Farm mystery through inter-library loan, and it wound up being a great, well-plotted murder mystery.

Ann Kidd Taylor

I took a chance on Ann Kidd Taylor's first novel, Shark Club, because it sounded like a different kind of story for me - not quite a mystery, not quite a romance, but a more mainstream novel with hints of both of those genres, along with an interesting look at marine biology. Its family connections and believable friendship between the protagonist and her ex-boyfriend's little girl really hit a sweet spot for me, and I'm hoping to read more from this author in the future.

Mary Higgins Clark

I'm not sure how I made it to age 35 without reading anything at all by Mary Higgins Clark, but I finally got around to it this Fall and read her first book, Where Are the Children? This was a little bit more of a thriller than the other mysteries I've been reading but it was one of only a few adult books that I gave a five-star rating this year.

Julie Hyzy

I spent the year collecting Hyzy's White House Chef mysteries at used book sales. Each book is centered on the unlikely crime-solving adventures of  the White House's chief chef, whose boyfriend is in the secret service. I don't have all the books yet, but I really love the author's writing style and all the references to places I have been in DC.

Paige Shelton

The first time I heard them, I loved the titles for this author's Dangerous Type mysteries (To Helvetica and Back, Bookman Dead Style, and Comic Sans Murder.) I was a little skeptical of how well-written they would be, since some of these niche-centered cozy mysteries tend to be tedious, but I was pleasantly surprised by the appealing characters and not-too-easy-to-solve mysteries. I haven't tried her other series (yet), but this one is a keeper.