The 2019 Alphabet Soup challenge has come to an end. Actually, I finished a month ago but was so busy with Cybils that I am just now posting my results. Here are the alphabetized book titles I read during 2019 for this challenge:

All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda.  This mystery/thriller has a very surprising ending and was a most enjoyable who dun it. Although the writer was a well-known one in mystery circles, she was new to me, and I am putting her name on my TBR list. I had a copy that some kind donor left in my Little Free Library. I put it back, and in one day it was gone again.

B The Beekeeper’s Daughter by Santa Montefione.  There are several books by this title, but I was lucky enough to find this mystery/romance, “darned good read” at my local library.

Coming Home was a “find” in my church library. Themed around the Prodigal Son parable in the New Testament, it was a challenge to draw closer to God and return home to a Loving Father who is waiting with open arms.

D The Distant Hours introduced me to author Kate Morton and to one of the most enjoyable novels I’d read in a long time. It had something for everyone: dark, gloomy castles, British humor, memorable characters, and even a bog monster whose appearance unreeled a family mystery.

Eherald City by Jennifer Egan was a switch to the short story in a collection a friend grave me for Christmas. The stories were set in New York City, thus the title. This was a very readable title by the author of Manhattan Beach, Egan’s novel I interrupted my challenge to read.

F The Fortelling by Alice Hoffman. This lovely, with just the right touch of the supernatural, YA novel is by one of my favorite authors, and was one of my favorite reads in the entire challenge.

Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser was a left-turn in my reading, provided by a donation to my LFL. It was a treatise on gun control, written in the form of a novel, a highly effective, very persuasive “what if” from the point of view of a young, mass shooter.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson was a choice I bought from Half Price Books and recommended it to my book club. They felt it was strange and depressing, and a good friend and I got into a spirited discussion about the ending at the meeting. It is a good piece of contemporary literature, and that, in itself, makes the novel worth reading.

I Thought I Was the Only One (But I Wasn’t) by Brene Brown took me into the genre of non-fiction, something I don’t read enough of, and an introduction to this Houston-based professor and writer. It was an excellent read which led to several Ted Talks by Brown on shaming and other timely topics for self improvement and self-love.

Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘For I Diiie was a collection of poetry by the wonderful Maya Angelou, one of my favorite poets since undergrad days. She did not disappoint.

Kiss Her Goodbye by Wendy Cross, whom I’d read before,  was another murder-mystery that appeared in my LFL and provided a sccratch-your-head who dun it that gave me a break in my serious reading. I needed a quick page-turner and found it in this novel.

L The Last Apprentice Book II of the series, titled “Curse of the Bane” by Joseph Delaney read well as a stand-alone YA novel, thanks to the author giving just enough background from the first novel. There was plenty of witchcraft, white magic and supernatural to keep the book interesting.