Among my favorite authors who released new books in 2013: Jonathon Kellerman, Sue Grafton, Jeffery Deaver, John Sandford, Carl Hiaasen, and John Gresham. None of these offerings disappointed.
One non-fiction book from 2013 that I would recommend to anyone is this one....
Hugh Aynesworth was a young reporter for a Dallas newspaper who was in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963 when President Kennedy was shot. He immediately went to work reporting and covering this story, and he has been doing that pretty much for the last fifty years. This book was published in connection with the 50th Anniversary of the JFK assassination. If you lived through it, this is a great book to read, but it might be an even better book to read if you are under than age of fifty and your only knowledge of the Kennedy assassination is an Oliver Stone movie, Cyril Wecht, or a bunch of goofball conspiracy theories (none of which, by the way, have ever been proven!).
As far as fiction is concerned, and in addition to the offerings of the authors listed above, I want to touch upon the work of Max Allen Collins, a writer that I had the good fortune to "discover" in 2013.
Collins has been writing mystery and detective fiction, in one form or another (he wrote the Dick Tracy comic strip for a number of years, for example) , for over thirty years and he is incredibly prolific. This past year, I read nine of his novels and two collections of short stories. My favorites concern a series character of his, private investigator Nathan Heller. The stories are told in the form of Heller's memoirs, and begin in 1930's and lead up to, most recently, the 1960's. The hook to these stories is that they involve real historical figures like Al Capone, Elliot Ness, Frank Nitti, Sally Rand, John Dillinger, Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Hefner, Jack Ruby, and Jack and Bobby Kennedy. In an introduction to one of the short story collections, even Collins says that one must suspend disbelief a bit to think that Nate Heller was involved in EVERY major crime investigation of the twentieth century! I have read five novels of the Heller series, and I plan on reading more.
Collins has also written a series of historical mysteries that he calls his "disaster series". I have read three of those that have taken place on board the ship Titanic, in London during the Blitz in WWII, and in Pearl Harbor in the days leading up to December 7, 1941. Like the Heller stories, real historical people (Jacques Futrelle, Agatha Christie, Edgar Rice Burrougsh) are characters in these fictional novels. As with the Heller stories, the research that Collins puts into these stories is incredible. And even if you don't buy the premise of some of the stories (for example, Collins is big into JFK Assassination conspiracy theories), they are very entertaining reading.
Collins is also a disciple of the late Mickey Spillane, and he has another series of books involving a hit man named Quarry that is written in the same style as Spillane's hard boiled stories from the 1950's. Now Spillane was never my particular cup of tea, so I probably will not be reading any other Quarry stories, but they're out there for you if that is what you are into.
One problem is that Collins is not real "mainstream" so his books are not always available at your local Barnes & Noble, but you might find them at used paperback stores, and you can definitely find them at the library and at Amazon, where they are relatively inexpensive if you buy them for your Kindle.
So, if you are looking for some entertaining reads, check out any number of the works of Max Allen Collins. Start with the Nate Heller stories. "True Detective" was the first of the Heller novels. I don't think you will be disappointed.
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