Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly blog hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
This week’s topic seems fairly straightforward, right? Well, for me, it’s not. Honestly, I never know what I’m going to get in the mood to read and the past few weeks have been the first time I have ever even tried to plan out what book I’m reading next. Nevertheless, I actually was able to come up with my top ten books for my Fall TBR list. Some are new releases I’m excited to read, some are because I have a few lingering challenges left this year.
1. See Me by Nicholas Sparks
See me just as I see you . . .
Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot. With a history of violence and bad decisions behind him and the threat of prison dogging his every step, he’s determined to walk a straight line. To Colin, that means applying himself single-mindedly toward his teaching degree and avoiding everything that proved destructive in his earlier life. Reminding himself daily of his hard-earned lessons, the last thing he is looking for is a serious relationship.
Maria Sanchez, the hardworking daughter of Mexican immigrants, is the picture of conventional success. With a degree from Duke Law School and a job at a prestigious firm in Wilmington, she is a dark-haired beauty with a seemingly flawless professional track record. And yet Maria has a traumatic history of her own, one that compelled her to return to her hometown and left her questioning so much of what she once believed.
A chance encounter on a rain-swept road will alter the course of both Colin and Maria’s lives, challenging deeply held assumptions about each other and ultimately, themselves. As love unexpectedly takes hold between them, they dare to envision what a future together could possibly look like . . . until menacing reminders of events in Maria’s past begin to surface.
As a series of threatening incidents wreaks chaos in Maria’s life, Maria and Colin will be tested in increasingly terrifying ways. Will demons from their past destroy the tenuous relationship they’ve begun to build, or will their love protect them, even in the darkest hour?
Rich in emotion and fueled with suspense, SEE ME reminds us that love is sometimes forged in the crises that threaten to shatter us . . . and that those who see us for who we truly are may not always be the ones easiest to recognize.
2. The Walking Dead: Invasion by Robert Kirkman
Out of the ashes of a devastated Woodbury, Georgia, two opposing camps of ragtag survivors develop – each one on a collision course with the other.
Underground, in the labyrinth of ancient tunnels and mine shafts, Lilly Caul and her motley crew of senior citizens, misfits, and children struggle to build a new life. But a secret ambition still burns in Lilly’s heart and soul. She wants her beloved town of Woodbury back from the plague of walkers, and now the only thing that stands in her way currently roams the wasted backwaters of Georgia…
Way out in the hinterlands, amidst the rising tide of walkers that seem to be pushing in from all directions, the psychotic Reverend Jeremiah Garlitz rebuilds his army of followers with a diabolical secret weapon. He has designs on the destruction of Lilly and her crew – the very people who vanquished his cultish church – and now, for the first time, he has the means to bring a special brand of hell down upon the tunnel dwellers.
The final confrontation between these two human factions unleashes an unthinkable weapon – forged from the monstrous hordes of undead, perfected by a madman, and soaked in the blood of innocents.
3. The Queen by Tiffany Reisz
Once upon a time, Nora and Søren made a fateful deal—if he gave her everything, she would give him forever.
The time has finally come to keep their promises.
Out of money and out of options after her year-long exile, Eleanor Schreiber agrees to join forces with Kingsley Edge, the king of kink. After her first taste of power as a Dominant, Eleanor buries her old submissive self and transforms into Mistress Nora, the Red Queen. With the help of a mysterious young man with a job even more illicit than her own, Nora squares off against a cunning rival in her quest to become the most respected, the most feared Dominatrix in the Underground.
While new lovers and the sweet taste of freedom intoxicate Nora, she is tempted time and time again by Søren, her only love and the one man who refuses to bow to her. But when Søren accepts a new church assignment in a dangerous country, she must make an agonizing choice—will the queen keep her throne and let her lover go, or trade in her crown for Søren’s collar?
4. The Whisper King by Wil Radcliffe (Currently Reading)
My name is David Kinder. And this is my story… every goddamn bloodstained word of it.
About 25 years ago when I was six my parents died in a car crash. I was bounced around a few state homes until they finally settled me at Meripitt Hill, an orphanage just outside of Lansing, Michigan. It was there that the shadows started visiting me. Not normal shadows. These shadows moved on their own accord, and whispered strange, alien things to me. Scared the piss out of me.
Wasn’t until Donna Elizondo moved to Meripitt Hill that my life started to actually become bearable. She became my best friend. Taught me to love music and to dance. That kept the shadows away. That kept me safe.
That year we were an epic story of two. We danced. We laughed. Hell, I suspect I was falling in love with her, if kids could really know what love is.
But then she was taken away from me. Adopted.
That’s when the shadows returned for me. That’s when they took me to the Shadow Mountains to serve the Whisper King.
For years I learned how to fight. How to kill. I even learned how to transform myself into a Cuthach…a monster. There were thousands of us being trained there. Thousands of us learning to reach deep inside and unleash the monsters in our guts.
When a spot opened in the Whisper King’s elite guard, the Silent Heart, I was chosen to fill it. But first I had to take one final test. A test that would determine once and for all if I was destined to be man or monster.
5. Soundless by Richelle Mead
For as long as Fei can remember, there has been no sound in her village, where rocky terrain and frequent avalanches prevent residents from self-sustaining. Fei and her people are at the mercy of a zipline that carries food up the treacherous cliffs from Beiguo, a mysterious faraway kingdom.
When villagers begin to lose their sight, deliveries from the zipline shrink and many go hungry. Fei’s home, the people she loves, and her entire existence is plunged into crisis, under threat of darkness and starvation.
But soon Fei is awoken in the night by a searing noise, and sound becomes her weapon.
6. Cross Justice by James Patterson
The toughest cases are the ones that hit close to home.
When his cousin is accused of a heinous crime, Alex Cross returns to his North Carolina hometown for the first time in over three decades. As he tries to prove his cousin’s innocence in a town where everyone seems to be on the take, Cross unearths a family secret that forces him to question everything he’s ever known.
Chasing a ghost he believed was long dead, Cross gets pulled into a case that has local cops scratching their heads and needing his help: a grisly string of socialite murders. Now he’s hot on the trail of both a brutal killer, and the truth about his own past–and the answers he finds might be fatal.
7. The Murder House by James Patterson
The large house on the beach front in Bridgehampton has an infamous history. An elderly couple died in a fire that destroyed the building, but everyone in town knows that the fire was no accident, it was murder.
The house was rebuilt, but the horror of the events that took place there still remains. And now two more dead bodies have been found in the ill-fated house – a young couple brutally killed.
The police arrest local resident Noah Walker, but have they got the right man? What other secrets could the murder house be hiding?
8. Under the Dome by Stephen King
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away.
Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens — town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing — even murder — to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.
9. Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke
Hannah Swensen already has her hands full, between dodging her mother’s attempts to marry her off, and running Lake Eden, Minnesota’s most popular bakery, The Cookie Jar. But when the Cozy Cow Dairy’s beloved deliveryman is found murdered behind Hannah’s bakery with her famous Chocolate Chip Crunchies scattered around him, Hannah sets out to track down a killer. The more Hannah snoops, the more suspects turn up. This is one murder that’s starting to leave a very bad taste in Hannah’s mouth, and if she doesn’t watch her back, her sweet life may get burned to a crisp.
10. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Reread)
Classic novel of 19th-century family life during and after the Civil War, in a household with four sisters. Alcott based the March family largely on her own real-life family.
Leave me a link to your Top Ten in the comments below. I can’t wait to see what you’re planning on reading this Fall!
The Writer's Inkwell 
I liked Chocolate Chip Cookie murder! I always get hungry while reading that series though… 🙂 Here’s my TTT post.
My mom has read a lot of the books and one of the challenges on my list is to read something she loves. LMAO.
Hi! I love Little Women 🙂 Great list!
My TTT
Leslie