This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Book Titles Featuring Ordinal Numbers (Ordinal numbers are numbers that define an item’s place in a series. For example: first, second, third, fourth, tenth, fourteenth, thirty-third, one hundredth, etc.) (submitted by Joanne @ Portobello Book Blog)”.

I was hoping I could find a book that I’d read with each of the ordinal numbers from first to tenth, but I was a few short so had to use some higher numbers as well.

1. First of the Tudors by Joanna Hickson – Historical fiction exploring the beginnings of the Tudor dynasty through the story of Jasper Tudor, uncle of the future Henry VII.

2. The Second Sleep by Robert Harris – At first this seems like a straightforward historical mystery set in the 15th century, but it soon becomes clear that what you’re reading is actually something completely different!

3. Third Girl by Agatha Christie – A Poirot mystery from 1966, which has a strong sixties feel, making it quite different from her earlier novels. One of my favourite Christie characters, Ariadne Oliver, plays a big part in this one too.

4. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies – The first book in Davies’ Deptford Trilogy. This one is set in a small Canadian town and follows the sequence of events triggered by the innocent act of a boy throwing a snowball.

5. Katharine Parr, the Sixth Wife by Alison Weir – As the title suggests, this is the story of Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Katharine Parr. It’s the final book in Alison Weir’s Six Tudor Queens series and probably my favourite.

6. The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff – A wonderfully vivid and gripping novel set in Roman Britain and telling the story of a young centurion whose father disappeared with the Ninth Legion.

7. The Tenth Gift by Jane Johnson – A dual timeline novel with the historical thread set in the 17th century and following the story of a woman sold into slavery in Morocco after being captured during a raid by Barbary pirates on the coast of Cornwall.

8. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield – A Gothic novel about family secrets and the power of books and storytelling. I enjoyed this one.

9. The Fourteenth Letter by Claire Evans – A mystery set in Victorian London. I was disappointed because I felt there was no real sense of time and place, but the plot was interesting.

10. The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan – The first in a trilogy of novels set in Mughal India and describing the events that lead to the construction of the Taj Mahal. I still haven’t read the other two books.

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Have you read any of these? Which other books with ordinal numbers in the title can you think of?