Books Read in 2012

Biographies, memoirs, letters, history

• Amy:  the world of Amy Lowell and the Imagist Movement, by Jean Gould
• Beacon Hill, Back Bay, and the building of Boston's golden age,by Ted Clarke 
• Below Stairs, by Margaret Powell
• Catherine the Great:  Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie
• Charles Dickens:  a life, by Claire Tomalin
• Clover Adams:  a gilded and heartbreaking life, by Natalie Dykstra
• Consider the fork:  a history of how we cook and eat, by Bee Wilson
• Elizabeth the Queen:  the life of a modern monarch, by Sally Bedell Smith
• Gilded Lives:  the Titanic's First-Class Passengers, by Hugh Brewster
• Great Expectations:  the sons and daughters of Charles Dickens, by Robert Gottlieb
• The Invisible Woman:  the story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, by Claire Tomalin
• Love, Fiercely:  a gilded age romance, by Jean Zimmerman
• Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace:  the private diary of a Victorian lady, by Kate Summerscale
• My Dear Governess:  the letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann, edited by Irene Goldman-Price
• The richest woman in America:  Hetty Green in the Gilded Age, by Janet Wallach
• Rose:  My Life in Service to Lady Astor, by Rosina Harrison
• That woman:  the life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, by Anne Sebba
• Virginia Woolf, by Alexandra Harris
• What Really Matters in Jane Austen:  Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved, by John Mullan

Fiction

• Abdication, by Juliet Nicolson
• The age of desire, by Jennie Fields
• Beautiful Lies, by Clare Clark
• The Children, by Edith Wharton
• A Conspiracy of friends, by Alexander McCall Smith
• Country Plot, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
• Ghastly Business, by Louise Levene
• Greenery Street, by Denis Mackail
• High Rising, by Angela Thirkell
• The House I Loved, by Tatiana de Rosnay
• The Innocents, by Francesca Segal
• A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar, by Suzanne Joinson
• Lady Fortescue Steps Out, by Marion Chesney
• The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty
• A Rather Lovely Inheritance, by C.A. Belmond
• Shadow of Night, by Deborah Harkness
• The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise, by Julia Stuart
• The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds, by Alexander McCall Smith
• An Unexpected Guest, by Anne Korkeakivi
• The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones
• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce
• The Walnut Tree, by Charles Todd

Mysteries

• The anatomist's apprentice, by Tessa Harris
• The assassin in the Marais, by Claude Izner
• Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch, by Nancy Atherton
• Anatomy of Murder, by Imogen Robertson
• Beastly Things, by Donna Leon
• Before the Poison, by Peter Robinson
• Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George
• The Beautiful Mystery, by Louise Penny
• A Bitter Truth, by Charles Todd
• Blood never dies, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
• The Body in the Boudoir, by Katharine Hall Page
• A Christmas Homecoming, by Anne Perry
• Circle of Shadows, by Imogen Robertson
• The Confession, by Charles Todd
• Death wore a diadem, by Iona McGregor
• Dorchester Terrace, by Anne Perry
• Elegy for Eddie, by Jacqueline Winspear
• Eleven pipers piping, by C.C. Bennisonbr 
• The food detective, by Judith Cutler
• Fear in the Sunlight, by Nicola Upson
• Footsteps in the dark, by Georgette Heyer
• The House at Sea's End, by Elly Griffiths
• Island of Bones, by Imogen Robertson
• The Ivy Tree, by Mary Stewart
• Jane and the Canterbury Tale, by Stephanie Barron
• The Jewels of Paradise, by Donna Leon
• Kill my darling, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
• Lady Audley's Secret. by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• Last Ditch, by Ngaio Marsh
• Miss Tonks Turns to Crime, by Marion Chesney
• Mrs. Malory and any man's death, by Hazel Holt 
• Murder in the Rue Dumas, by M.L. Longworth
• Murder on Fifth Avenue, by Victoria  Thompson
• The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers
• A question of identity, by Anthea Fraser
• A question of identity, by Susan Hill
• Robert B. Parker's Lullaby, by Ace Atkins
• A room full of bones, by Elly Griffiths
• Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, by James Runcie
• The Solitary House, by Lynn Shepherd
• Speaking from among the bones, by Alan Bradley
• Stage Struck, by Peter Lovesey
• A Sunless Sea, by Anne Perry
• The Technologists, by Matthew Pearl
• Twelve Drummers Drumming, by C.C. Benison
• A Woman of Consequence, by Anna Dean
• The Yard, by Alex Grecian

Plays

• Miss Elizabeth Bennet, by A.A. Milne

{The books highlighted in bold type are among the year's best.}

12.31.12