Books Counting Down From Ten

Happy Tuesday y’all! I hope your September is going well. It’s hard to believe that we are just about halfway through the month already. As part of Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl, the topic is Books with Numbers in Their Title this week. It’s funny because it took a bit of looking for books that weren’t part of a series. For example, the Charley Davidson series from Darynda Jones. Each book in the series has a number as part of the title. But I wanted to focus on books that weren’t necessarily a part of a series. That said, I did manage to find quite a few books that had numbers, especially 0-10. So this week, I decided to make a list of books counting down from ten.

Some of these books I have read; others are on my TBR. All blurbs are from Goodreads.

Let’s check out some numbered books.

Book 10: Zero Minus Ten by Raymond Benson

The clock is ticking for Hong Kong. On July 1, 1997, the British Crown Colony will be handed over to the People’s Republic of China. But hopes for a peaceful transition are shattered when a series of terrorist acts threaten the fragile relationship. A car bomb kills a solicitor from London; a British “officer” retaliates by assassinating two officials visiting from Beijing; an explosion eliminates the elite of a major British corporation.

With ten days of British sovereignty left, Bond is dispatched to investigate these incidents and avert a crisis that could jeopardize the upcoming event. He suspects there are connections with the nefarious Chinese underworld Triad. But the truth is difficult to uncover. Before exposing a fiendish plot of revenge, Bond must navigate a startling maze of characters – a suspicious British taipan, a sinister Triad leader, a sadistic Chinese general, and an exotic dancer with alluring, seductive skills with roots reaching back more than a century and a half.

Book 9: The Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz

Baseball is in the Schneider family’s blood. From family founder Felix Schneider in the 1800s to Snider Flint in the present day, each family member has a strong tie to the game and Brooklyn. This family has dodged bullets on a battlefield, pitched perfect games, and dealt with the devastating loss of family and the Brooklyn Dodgers through the years. Nine innings, nine generations. One game, one family. Through it all, one thing remains true: the bonds of family are as strong as a love of the game.

Book 8: Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto

This captivating novel opens in 1917 as Cymbeline Kelley surveys the charred remains of her photography studio, destroyed in a fire started by a woman hired to help take care of the house while Cymbeline pursued her photography career. This tension— between wanting and needing to be two places at once, domestic duty and ambition, public and private life, what’s seen and what’s hidden from view—echoes in the stories of the other seven women in the book.

Among them: Amadora Allesbury, who creates a world of color and whimsy in an attempt to recapture the joy lost to WWI; Clara Argento, who finds her voice working alongside socialist revolutionaries in Mexico; Lenny Van Pelt, a gorgeous model who feels more comfortable photographing the deserted towns of the French countryside after WWII than she does at a couture fashion shoot; and Miri Marx, who has traveled the world taking pictures, but also loves her quiet life as a wife and mother in her New York apartment.

Crisscrossing the world and a century, Eight Girls Taking Pictures is an affecting meditation on the conflicts women face and the choices they make. These memorable characters seek extraordinary lives through their work, yet they also find meaning and reward in the ordinary tasks of motherhood, marriage, and domesticity. Most of all, this novel is a vivid portrait of women in love—in love with men, other women, children, their careers, beauty, and freedom.

Book 7: The House of the Seven Sisters: A Novel of Food and Family by Elle Eggels

When their father abandons Martha and her six sisters following their mother’s untimely death, the family bakery becomes their only means of survival. Martha, the eldest, is forced to lead the household and take on the responsibilities of her missing father. Witnessed through Emma, Martha’s daughter, we follow the siblings as they mature and leave the bakery searching for self-fulfillment and love.

Each sister, however, will return to the fold, heartbroken and disillusioned, after her chosen man fails to stand the test of time. Together they turn heartbreak into hard work. Transforming the bakery into a bustling supermarket, but turmoil erupts just when success is near, threatening the happiness and contentment they’d long suffered to achieve.

Book 6: Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

It is a gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup.

Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the real reason why they split at the absolute height of their popularity…until now.

Book 5: Five Little Indians by Michelle Good

They were taken from their families when they were very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school. Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie, and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention.

Alone and without any skills, support, or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn’t want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission.

Book 4: The Big Four by Agatha Christie

Framed in the doorway of Poirot’s bedroom stood an uninvited guest, coated from head to foot in dust. The man’s gaunt face stared for a moment, then he swayed and fell. Who was he? Was he suffering from shock or just exhaustion? Above all, what was the significance of the figure 4, scribbled over and over again on a sheet of paper? Poirot finds himself plunged into a world of international intrigue, risking his life to uncover the truth about ‘Number Four.’

Book 3: A Three Dog Problem: The Queen Investigates a Murder at Buckingham Palace by S.J. Bennett

In the wake of a referendum that has divided the nation, the last thing the Queen needs is any more problems to worry about. But when an oil painting of the Royal Yacht Britannia shows up unexpectedly in a Royal Navy exhibition, she begins to realize that something is up.

Book 2: Tacos for Two by Becky St. Amant

Rory Perez, a food truck owner who can’t cook, struggles to keep the business she inherited from her aunt out of the red. And an upcoming contest during Modest’s annual food truck festival seems the best way to do it. The prize money could give her solid financial footing and keep her cousin with special needs paid up at her beloved assisted living home. Then maybe Rory will have enough time to meet the man she’s been talking to via an anonymous online dating site.

Jude Strong is tired of being a puppet at his manipulative father’s law firm. The food truck festival seems like the perfect opportunity to dive into his passion for cooking and finally call his life his own. But if he loses the contest, he’s back at the law firm for good. Failure is not an option.

Complications arise when Rory’s chef gets mono, and she realizes she has to cook after all. Then Jude discovers that his stiffest competition is the same woman he’s been falling for online the past month.

Will these unlikely chefs sacrifice it all for the sake of love? Or will there only ever be tacos for one?

Book 1: One for All by Lillie Lainoff

An OwnVoices, gender-bent retelling of The Three Musketeers, in which a girl with a chronic illness trains as a Musketeer and uncovers secrets, sisterhood, and self-love.

Tania de Batz is most herself with a sword in her hand. Everyone in town thinks her near-constant dizziness makes her weak, nothing but “a sick girl”; even her mother is desperate to marry her off for security. But Tania wants to be strong, independent, a fencer like her father—a former Musketeer and her greatest champion.

Then Papa is brutally, mysteriously murdered. His dying wish? For Tania to attend finishing school. But L’Académie des Mariées, Tania realizes, is no finishing school. It’s a secret training ground for a new kind of Musketeer: women who are socialites on the surface, but strap daggers under their skirts, seduce men into giving up dangerous secrets and protect France from downfall. And they don’t shy away from a swordfight.

That’s my list of books counting down from 10. In the end, a couple of these are a part of a series, but the ones I’ve read so far could be read as a standalone. What do you think? Have you read any of these? Are there any that are a surprise?

Looking for some more books to read? Check out my other bookish lists, book reviews, and monthly reading wrap-ups.