Ten top titles in maternity leave noir

Molly Odintz is the Senior Editor for CrimeReads. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller at BookPeople for years before her recent move up to New York City for a life in crime. She likes cats, crime novels, and coffee.

At CrimeReads, Odintz tagged ten titles that "were begun, polished, imagined, or perfected during the short window allotted to their authors to bond with their newborns." One title on the list:

Call After Midnight, Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen was on maternity leave from her job as a doctor in Hawaii (#goals) when she penned her first intricate thriller, Call After Midnight, in which a newlywed, refusing to believe her husband has been killed in a fire, goes on a dramatic search for him across Europe and encounters dangerous forces along the way. Gerritsen now writes full-time and incorporates her medical knowledge into some of the most fiendishly clever medical thrillers ever plotted.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue