Page-Turners for All Tastes
Our reader asked us to recommend a good page turner for a long plane ride. Here are some titles you will want to read in one sitting from a variety of genres.
Biography and Memoir
In the category of Biography / Memoir I'd like to offer up Emma Forrest's Your Voice in My Head which is an account of her struggle with depression and life in Hollywood. Kirkus calls it "an intense story of madness and redemption." —Wayne Roylance, Selection Team
Classic
I remember feeling like I really understood what people meant by page-turner when I read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It is a big book and I am a slow reader but I flew through that book. In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences by Truman Capote. A classic in crime fiction and so chilling. —Lynn Lobash, Readers Services
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler is a classic in the mystery/detective category and SO good and addictive. —Lynn Lobash, Readers Services
Crime
A page turner from the crime/mystery genre: Before I Wake, by Eric Bowman. This little-known and obscure book is a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game that will have you at page one. Never heard of Eric Bowman? It's likely because it's a pseudonym. The real writer? Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost! Another Frost title that will hook you immediately: The List of Seven. Arthur Conan Doyle is the lead in this suspenseful roller-coaster ride of historical fiction. Along for the ride, but very much in command, is the mysterious Jack Sparks, the would-be inspiration for Doyle's famous detective. Are you one of those people who likes to jump to the end and read the last page of a book? DON'T DO IT! You must NOT read this book's epilogue until you have finished the book! —Billy Parrott, Mid-Manhattan Library
Fantasy
Intricately plotted, The Red Knight by Miles Cameron features a large array of characters with personal plotlines interweaving with the overall story. Each thread makes its appearance at several points, creating a colorful tapestry complete with thrilling charges on horseback as well as gruesome, down and dirty combat. —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil
Fiction
The Auschwitz Escape by Joel Rosenburg is a riveting multi-layer holocaust novel. —Jean Harripersaud, Bronx Library Center
Schroder: A Novel by Amity Gaige is positively breathtaking. The story is told through the impassioned, melancholic voice of a failed man. Gaige chronicles a father-and-daughter road trip (of sorts) and tenderly depicts the disappearance of love. —Miriam Tuliao, Selection Team
A couple of fiction titles that made me stay up far too late are Room by Emma Donoghue—This is a truly memorable and harrowing book skillfully told from the perspective of a five-year-old narrator and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, which is both gripping and moving and takes you to a life in Kabul. —Lynn Lobash, Readers Services
Graphic novel
The graphic novel adaptation of the story of the 47 Ronin in Japan (titled, oddly enough, 47 Ronin) by Sean Michael Wilson is a good adaptation of one of the most exciting (historically based) samurai legends out there. —Wayne Roylance, Selection Team
Horror
Monster by Frank Peretti will keep you awake and entertained on a long plane ride. —Jean Harripersaud, Bronx Library Center
Mystery
Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. This books gave me chills it was so suspenseful and I was completely surprised by who done it. —Lynn Lobash, Readers Services
Non-fiction
One of the books I found hardest to put down this year was Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon, the visionary creator of The Corner and The Wire. In 1989, Simon spent the year embedded in the Homicide unit of the Baltimore PD, or "Bodymore" as it was known at the time, for its horrible body count—the results of city mismanagement, an overmatched police force, and the crack epidemic. The book is 600 pages of dense police procedure, profiles of detectives, and their attempts to crack the uncrackable—the stone-cold whodunits, as the detectives call them. What brings this book to life are the the ways Simon gets inside the brains of the detectives, adding background information, personal histories, and his own opinions on how they tick, and what possesses a man or woman to take on the job. Simon is an expert chronicler of the human condition. The ways that the detectives interact, play, joke, and take aberrant paths towards solving cases makes the book fly by. For fans of The Wire, this is required reading. —Charlie Radin, Inwood Branch
Romance
The Witness by Nora Roberts is a fine example of the romance suspense hybrid. —Lynn Lobash, Readers Services
Science fiction
The Martian by Andy Weir is science-fiction and suspense-filled. —Jenny Baum, Jefferson Market
Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh: Noir infused sci-fi thriller, with a likeable psychopathic character “protagonist,” I did not want to put down. —Sherice Pagan, Grand Concourse Library
Thriller
The Dinner by Herman Koch is a page-turner in the sense that "Gone Girl" is, that is, a thriller that's hard to put down. —Jenny Baum, Jefferson Market
A psychological marriage thriller in the tradition of Gone Girl and Before I Go to Sleep, Before We Met by Lucie Whitehouse —Jean Harripersaud, Bronx Library Center