#TopTenTuesday Books Featuring Handwritten Documents #TuesdayBookBlog

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

  • Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
  • Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
  • Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
  • Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Books with Handwriting on the Cover. I’m pretty bad at topics featuring covers because I can never remember what’s on them without picking what seems like a hundred books off the shelf one by one. So I’ve taken a slight detour with a list of books that feature handwritten documents. Links from each title will take you to the book description on Goodreads.

  1. ‘The Red-Headed League’ in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Jabez Wilson is hired to copy out the Encyclopaedia Britannica by the mysterious Red-Headed League
  2. The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen – Set in the Dead Letters Depot where ‘letter detectives’ work to reunite letters with their intended recipients
  3. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova – A young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters in her father’s library recording a quest
  4. The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie – A series of vicious poison-pen letters destroys the calm of the village of Lymstock
  5. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans – Most mornings Sybil Van Antwerp takes up her pen to write letters to a variety of recipients
  6. Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce – Emmy Lake takes it upon herself to respond to letters sent to advice columnist Mrs Henrietta Bird
  7. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows – A young writer begins a correspondence with a man on the island of Guernsey
  8. The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain – A man finds an abandoned woman’s handbag on a Parisian street containing a red notebook with haphazard jottings
  9. The Letter Reader by Jan Casey – Connie Allinson joins the WRNS and is assigned the task of reading and altering correspondence to ensure no sensitive information crosses enemy lines.
  10. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan – Richard Hannay comes into possession of a coded notebook containing clues to a conspiracy

My Week in Books – 7th June 2026

Monday – I published my May Monthly Wrap-Up.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.

Thursday – I published my review of Prey by Graham Hurley, book 1 of my 20 Books of Summer.

Saturday – I joined other gardeners for #SixonSaturday sharing six things from my garden this week. I also took part in the #6Degrees of Separation meme forging a book chain from The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zwieg to The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly.

Deception by Alan Parks (John Murray via NetGalley)

New York, December 1941. Joseph Gunner, former soldier, is off the front lines and on the streets of New York, tasked with helping tip America into the Second World War.

Working for a section of the British Secret Service, Gunner spends his days covertly encouraging pro-war sentiment through planted news stories, radio broadcasts and even blackmail.

But when a honeytrap mission with a prominent US politician goes wrong and the young woman involved is found dead, Gunner realises he has a target on his back. Who silenced her? Who knew their plan? And who has betrayed Gunner?

As he investigates, Gunner is plunged into the secretive world of Nazis in America, the NYPD and the mobs of New York, as the body count quickly stacks up. With world events accelerating, Gunner finds himself in a race against time before he becomes the next victim. Soon, he’ll uncover a conspiracy that goes beyond what he thought was possible.

Cold Sunset by William Boyd (Viking via NetGalley)

Cold War Moscow is a place smouldering with secrets.

Gabriel Dax is on route to Russia, tasked with delivering a mysterious Blanco drawing to celebrated defector, Kit Caldwell. But Caldwell is convinced that the KGB suspects him of treachery and he wants to get out – now.

When Gabriel is ordered by his enigmatic handler Faith Green to help, he is pulled into a web of shifting loyalties and dangerous escape plans. As tensions rise and trust fractures, he is forced to confront the fine line between devotion and deception. But which will he choose?

Land by Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press)

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.

The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

Land is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.

The Wolf’s Oath by Tim Hodkinson (Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

Einar and the Wolf Coats sail back to the northern realms in order to honour a dying man’s last wish by placing his sword into the hands of his son.

As they get closer to their destination, they encounter a fearsome band of Viking mercenaries. Einar is keen to join forces, but the Wolf Coats are vehemently opposed… until a violent skirmish makes both sides realise they will be stronger together.

First though the Wolf Coats must pass a test: prove themselves to their new allies by discovering the truth behind strange tales of bloodshed in the far north.

Einar soon realises he may have signed up for more than he intended, for he must cross swords with allies of his bitter enemy: Eirik, the Serpent King.

I’m reading Country People by Daniel Mason and Deception by Alan Parks from my NetGalley shelf, both out next month. And I’m listening to the audiobook of A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie, the book chosen for me in the latest Classics Club spin.


  • Book Review: Dwell by Rue Baldry