Favorite books of 2018

By my own count and that of goodreads.com, I didn't read as many books this year as last.  But I immersed myself in several of note.  Here's my list of favorites:

• Enchantress of numbers - Jennifer Chiaverini.  The life of Ada Byron who some felt should get credit for inventing the computer along with Charles Babbage.
• The watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley.   Confusing, engrossing Steampunk.
• The secret diary of Hendrik Groen, age 83 1/4 years old.  Groen is a nom de plume but his life in a government-run nursing home in N. Amsterdam is very funny as well as sad.
• Celine - Peter Heller.   Based on the author's mother, Celine is a 60+ private eye who finds lost people.  She and her steady, Maine native husband Pete set out to find a missing photographer who may have staged his own death.
• The aviator's wife - Melanie Benjamin.  Fictionalized biography of Anne Morrow Lindbergh with, I'm told, lots of mistakes and fiction.  Still, it's very involving and quite a contrast to Reeve Lindbergh's Two Lives which I thoroughly enjoyed, too.
• Tallgrass - Sandra Dallas.  This was a re-read for me and tells of life in and around the Amache Japanese Relocation Center outside Granada, CO, which we visited in the fall of 2017.  One of Dallas' best.
• Heart Spring Mountain - Robin MacArthur.  Finalist for the VT Book Award, poetically written, and very involving story of a daughter searching for her addict mother after a major hurricane.
• Lethal white - Robert Galbraith.  #4 in the Cormoran Strike series features Robin more than in the past in a long, complex story.  Excellent surprises throughout.
• Shell game - Sara Paretsky.  Equally complex and involving installment in the VI Warshawski series.
• The Kingdom of the blind - Louise Penny.  A completely different sort of story in the Armand Gamache series but just as fulfilling.  Penny's books are always well written and thoughtful, more about family and friendship than solving a mystery.
• The woman at the window - AJ Finn.  This was a commercial success so I didn't want to like it, but I was swept away from almost the first page.    It's creepy and sad, and I still am not sure who the villain really was!

I can't say which was my favorite, but The woman at the window was the most surprising.  I guess I would have to choose Celine if I absolutely had to.  Heller's The dog stars was a favorite several years ago.