Summer Reading Challenge: Bingeworthy Series

Discovering a good series is like finding a hidden treasure! Below you’ll find a little of everything — from the engrossing mysteries set in Norfolk, England, to the Seven Seas. Great for hot summer days when all you want to do is escape to a different world.


If a good mystery with a strong female central character set in a remote and atmospheric part of England — with some juicy romance thrown in — then the Ruth Galloway series is for you. There are 14 novels in the series.

The Crossing Places: The First Ruth Galloway Mystery - Griffiths, Elly

The first entry in the acclaimed Ruth Galloway series follows the forensic archaeologist as she investigates a child’s bones found on a nearby beach, thought to be the remains of a little girl who went missing ten years before. Dr. Ruth Galloway is in her late thirties. She lives happily alone with her two cats in a bleak, remote area near Norfolk, land that was sacred to its Iron Age inhabitants–not quite earth, not quite sea. But her routine days of digging up bones and other ancient objects are harshly upended when a child’s bones are found on a desolate beach. Detective Chief Inspector Nelson calls Galloway for help, believing they are the remains of Lucy Downey, a little girl who went missing a decade ago and whose abductor continues to taunt him with bizarre letters containing references to ritual sacrifice, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Then a second girl goes missing and Nelson receives a new letter–exactly like the ones about Lucy. Is it the same killer? Or a copycat murderer, linked in some way to the site near Ruth’s remote home?


Richard Osman has created a 4-volume mystery series following a band of sleuthing retirees and their assorted acquaintances. The plots are fun, and the characters are drawn with wonderfully authentic voices.

The Thursday Murder Club - Osman, Richard

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it’s too late?


Set on the fictional Scottish island of Mure, the 6 book series evokes the landscapes and lives of the inhabitants of the remote Outer Hebrides. The books follow Flora MacKenzie and her family — with a wealth of well-rounded supporting characters.

Years ago, Flora fled the quiet Scottish island where she grew up — and she hasn’t looked back. What would she have done on Mure? It’s a place where everyone has known her all her life, where no one will let her forget the past. In bright, bustling London, she can be anonymous, ambitious… and hopelessly in love with her boss.

But when fate brings Flora back to the island, she’s suddenly swept once more into life with her brothers — all strapping, loud, and seemingly incapable of basic housework — and her father. Yet even amid the chaos of their reunion, Flora discovers a passion for cooking — and find herself restoring dusty little pink-fronted shop on the harbour: a café by the sea.


“Suspense doesn’t get smarter than this,” raves Lee Child—and countless readers agree. The inspiration behind TNT’s hit show Rizzoli & Isles, Tess Gerritsen’s New York Times bestselling thrillers featuring Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles just keep getting better, leading William Landay to praise her recent work as “Gerritsen at her dark, addictive best.”

The Surgeon: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel by Tess Gerritsen

He slips into homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, about to awaken to a living nightmare. The precision of his methods suggests that he is a deranged man of medicine, prompting the Boston newspapers to dub him “The Surgeon.” Led by Detectives Thomas Moore and Jane Rizzoli, the cops must consult the victim of a nearly identical crime: Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and filled an attacker before he could complete his assault. Now this new killer is re-creating, with chilling accuracy, the details of Cordell’s ordeal. With every new murder he seems to be taunting her, cutting ever closer, from her hospital to her home. And neither Moore nor Rizzoli can protect Cordell from a ruthless hunter who somehow understands—and savors—the secret fears of every woman he kills.


If historical adventures set on the high seas, featuring thrilling naval battles, compelling characters, and all you ever wanted to know about the British navy during the Napoleonic era, this beloved series is for you. There are 21 books in the series!

Ardent, gregarious British naval officer Jack Aubrey is elated to be given his first appointment as commander: the fourteen-gun ship HMS Sophie. Meanwhile—after a heated first encounter that nearly comes to a duel—Aubrey and a brilliant but down-on-his-luck physician, Stephen Maturin, strike up an unlikely rapport. On a whim, Aubrey invites Maturin to join his crew as the Sophie’s surgeon. And so begins the legendary friendship that anchors this beloved saga set against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.

Through every ensuing adventure on which Aubrey and Maturin embark, from the witty parley of their lovers and enemies to the roar of broadsides as great ships close in battle around them, O’Brian “provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises—comic, grim, farcical and tragic.… [A] whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit” (A. S. Byatt).