The Q’s, U’s, & Vs Have It: Ten Titles Starting with Q, U, or V

Happy Tuesday, y’all! This week, Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl is asking us to share buzzwords that make us want to read a book or avoid the book. I did something similar a few years ago, which you can find here. I don’t think much has changed. So instead, I’m going to continue working through the alphabet. So far, I’ve covered A-T (which you can find here). This week, the Q’s, U’s, and V’s have it.

Ten book titles starting with the letters Q, U, and V. You would think this would be an easy challenge, right? Of course, I had to make it a bit more difficult on myself! I am not including any books that are part of a series. If they are in a series, they are the first book.

All titles will lead to Goodreads.

Now, let’s see if the Q’s, U’s, and V’s have it!

Quantum of Solace by Ian Fleming

Bringing together all of the James Bond short stories in one volume for the first time, this is the ultimate celebration of suave and deadly secret agent 007. Whether he’s making an unexpected discovery in the Bahamas, hunting down a Cuban hit man in wild country, smashing an international drug ring in Rome, or on the trail of a murderous assassin in Berlin’s sniper alley, dangerous missions and beautiful women come with the job for James Bond. And this agent is always a consummate professional.

The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France, who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour?

Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

A Question Mark Is Half a Heart by Sofia Lundberg

By age fifty, Elin Boals has created a perfect life for her wildly successful business, as Manhattan’s preeminent fashion photographer is flourishing. Her handsome, patient husband is devoted to her; her teenage daughter, Alice, has been accepted to the ballet academy of her dreams. But then Elin receives an innocuous-looking envelope. Folded inside is a star chart, with an address written by a familiar hand.

Shaken, Elin begins to have startling flashbacks to a life very different from the childhood in a Paris bookstore that she has so lovingly recounted to Alice. In these memories, a poverty-stricken little girl cares for her two ragged baby brothers, laughing with her family on the good days, sheltering them from her mother’s sadness and her father’s wrath on the bad days. Elin also remembers vivid walks with a young classmate, Fredrik, whose steadfast friendship and starlit confidences shaped her young life.

As Elin becomes consumed by these memories, her New York life begins to crumble dramatically. Finally, her family’s troubling questions drive her to face, at last, the brutal secret from her past.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

Led by her yapping corgis to the Westminster traveling library outside Buckingham Palace, the Queen finds herself taking out a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett. Duff read though it is, the following week her choice proves more enjoyable and awakens in Her Majesty a passion for reading so great that her public duties begin to suffer. And so, as she devours work by everyone from Hardy to Brookner to Proust to Beckett, her equerries conspire to bring the Queen’s literary odyssey to a close.

The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal

The British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters—Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirina—were never close and barely got along growing up, and now as adults, have grown even further apart. Rajni, a school principal, is a stickler for order. Jezmeen, a thirty-year-old struggling actress, fears her big break may never come. Shirina, the peacemaking “good” sister, married into wealth and enjoys a picture-perfect life.

On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish: that her daughters will make a pilgrimage together to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to carry out her final rites. After a trip to India with her mother long ago, Rajni vowed never to return. But she’s always been a dutiful daughter, and cannot, even now, refuse her mother’s request. Jezmeen has just been publicly fired from her television job, so the trip to India is a welcome break to help her pick up the pieces of her broken career. Shirina’s in-laws are pushing her to make a pivotal decision about her married life; time away will help her decide whether to meekly obey or to bravely stand up for herself for the first time.

Arriving in India, these sisters will make unexpected discoveries about themselves, their mother, and their lives—and learn the real story behind the trip Rajni took with their Mother long ago—a momentous journey that resulted in Mum never being able to return to India again.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.

Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage. Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.

Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest across the countryside. Along the way, he meets one character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise. Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day, his joy in fatherhood, come rushing back to him – allowing him to also reconcile the losses and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself missing Harold for the first time in years.

And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy.

Unsinkable by Gordon Korman

The Titanic is meant to be unsinkable, but as it begins its maiden voyage, there’s plenty of danger waiting for four of its young passengers. Paddy is a stowaway, escaping a deadly past. Sophie’s mother is delivered to the ship by the police–after she and Sophie have been arrested. Juliana’s father is an eccentric whose riches can barely hide his madness. And Alfie is hiding a secret that could get him kicked off the ship immediately. The lives of these four passengers will be forever linked with the fate of the Titanic. And the farther they get from shore, the more the danger looms.

VenCo by Cherie Dimaline

Lucky St. James, orphaned daughter of a bad-ass Métis good-times girl, is barely hanging on to her nowhere life when she finds out that she and her grandmother, Stella, are about to be evicted from their apartment. Bad to worse in a heartbeat. Then one night, doing laundry in the building’s dank basement, Lucky feels an irresistible something calling to her. Crawling through a hidden hole in the wall, she finds a tarnished silver spoon depicting a story-book hag over letters that spell out S-A-L-E-M.

Which alerts Salem-born Meena Good, finder of a matching spoon, to Lucky’s existence. One of the most powerful witches in North America, Meena has been called to bring together seven special witches and seven special spoons–infused with magic and scattered to the four directions more than a century ago–to form a magic circle that will restore women to their rightful power. Under the wing of the international headhunting firm VenCo, devoted to placing exceptional women in roles where they can influence business, politics, and the arts, Meena has spent years searching out witches hiding in plain sight wherever women gather: suburban book clubs, Mommy & Me groups, temp agencies. Lucky and her spoon are number six.

With only one more spoon to find, a very powerful adversary has Meena’s coven in his sights–Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself. As the clock ticks toward a now-or-never deadline, Meena sends Lucky and her grandmother on a dangerous, sometimes hilarious, road trip through the United States in search of the seventh spoon. The trail leads them at last to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where Lucky’s final showdown with Jay Christos will determine whether the coven will be completed, ushering in a new beginning, or whether witches will be forced to remain forever underground.

The Victoria in My Head by Janelle Milanes

Victoria Cruz inhabits two worlds: In one, she is a rock star, thrashing the stage with her husky voice and purple-streaked hair. In the other, currently serving as her reality, Victoria is a shy teenager with overprotective Cuban parents, who sleepwalks through her life at the prestigious Evanston Academy. Unable to overcome the whole paralyzing-stage-fright thing, Victoria settles for living inside her fantasies, where nothing can go wrong, and everything is set to her expertly crafted music playlists.

But after a chance encounter with an unattainably gorgeous boy named Strand, whose band seeks a lead singer, Victoria is tempted to turn her fevered daydreams into reality. To do that, she must confront her insecurities and break away from the treadmill that is her life. Suddenly, Victoria is faced with the choice of staying on the path she’s always known and straying off-course to find love, adventure, and danger.

The Vinyl Cafe Celebrates by Stuart McLean

From the unforgettable Christmas classic “Dave Cooks the Turkey” to the tender tribute to ice-cream-loving, potato-sitting Arthur the dog in “Morte d’Arthur”; from the joys and challenges of marriage in “The Canoe Trip” to the celebration of childhood adventure in “The Waterslide.” From the beginning of life (the hilarious “Labour Pains”) to the end (the touching “Love Never Ends”) and all the moments–big and small–in between, these stories remind us that there are occasions to celebrate every day. For more than two decades, Stuart McLean entered the hearts and homes of Canadians via The Vinyl Cafe radio show, his many tours across the country, and multiple nationally bestselling books. His charming, humane, and side-splitting stories brought the trials and triumphs of Dave, Morley, Sam, and Stephanie to life, and made their memorable circle of friends, family, and neighbours as real as our own.

That is a list of ten book titles starting with the letters Q, U, or V. Have you read any of these? Do you think the Q’s, Us, and Vs have it? Are there any you think I should read?

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