Have you ever discovered a new author that has been around for a while unbeknownst to you? Isn’t it wonderful when you find an author you just love and then find out there are all these other books to read? Of course, that is, until it sets your TBR pile to teetering. But that’s a topic for another time.
I discovered two new-to-me authors last year. Tom Threadgill writes mystery/suspense. I read Collision of Lies thinking it was a debut. Nope. He has three thrillers published before Collision of Lies. And of course Roseanna M. White is a new novelist only to me. She has several series under her belt and more books to be published. So what to do?
I generally have a very full reading schedule between review books and book club selections. Working in an author’s backlist is almost impossible, but I am trying my best to get caught up. That’s where audiobooks come in. I am on book 2 of Threadgill’s Jeremy Winter Thriller series. Fortunately for me the first two books in the series are included in my Audible membership. These books are decidedly different from my first foray into Threadgill’s writing. Darker — they involve serial killers — they are still riveting reads (or listens).
So that leads to my first question:
What do you think about an author’s writing evolution? Change of tone, structure, or subject matter.
I had only read 2 of Threadgill’s novels, Collision of Lies and Network of Deceit, before heading to his backlist. I think that helped in becoming comfortable with the change in style and tone. Although comfortable is probably not the word I would describe while reading one of his thrillers. Think Steven James and Criminal Minds.
With Roseanna White, I read The Number of Love first because it was a Christy Award nominee in 2020. Although it is the first book in a series, it has secondary characters that had their own books in a previous series. (I have the first book of two of her other series already on my shelves.)
Hence question #2:
After discovering a new author, do you immediately go back and read their backlist in chronological order or do you just proceed forward?
With White, I haven’t done either. I’m still trying to decide if I want to go all the way back to her first book or finish The Codebreakers series first. Oh what hard reading dilemmas! 😉
So what do you think about authors’ backlists?
I usually tend to just keep going forward with an author. I guess there are just too many good books to read!
That’s what I usually do. I have finally accepted that I may not read all the books in my lifetime. 😉