This list doesn’t have to be huge, for me. I was really looking for classic detective fiction after teaching Victorian Gothic to my students and Poe twice. I’m also a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and covered The Hound of the Baskervilles. Then with a new Agatha Christie movie just around the corner, I decided to make a list of mysteries/detective novels/crime fiction. That might be mashing a bit much together, but like I said, I don’t need this to be a huge list. I imagine, though, that I will enjoy the best of the best.

• And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
• Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie
• The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
• The Alienist, Caleb Carr
• Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie
• Mr. Mercedes, Stephen King
• The Yard, Alec Grecian
• In Cold Blood, Truman Capote (true crime novel) *
• Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers
• The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
• Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn *
• The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
• Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
• Anatomy of a Murder, Robert Traver
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John la Carre
• The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larrson
• The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
• Rebecca, Daphne de Maurier
• The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
• The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
• In the Woods, Tana French
• The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris
• The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ***
• The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
• The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
• Eye of the Needle, Ken Follett
• Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn
• “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Edgar Allan Poe
• My Sister, the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite
• Case Histories, Kate Atkinson
• The Detective, Roderick Thorp
• Shutter Island, Dennis Lehane
• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley
• The Deep Blue Good-By, John D. MacDonald
• Killing Floor, Lee Child
• The Kind Worth Killing, Peter Swanson
• An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, P. D. James
• House of Silk, Anthony Horowitz
• The Firm, John Grisham