Here are 100 books that The Poison Keeper fans have personally recommended if you like
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I recall my younger self looking at the reading lists on Oxford University history courses, and asking, “Where are all the women?” I have always wanted to know what it was like to be there, in any century up to the present. How did families form and pass on their values, what did people wear and eat, when (and if) children learned to read, and what were people’s daily routines? Political, military, and economic history is important, but I have flourished in the social history trenches. I discovered women writers and historians have more acute antennae for the details I wanted, even when writing about wars and dynasties.
Yes, I know this is a novel, but Mantel’s historical research is impeccable and no one has done more to bring to light the shadowy, intrigue-filled court of Henry VIII. Mantel explores the intersection of political power and personal ambition as she traces the career of Thomas Cromwell, a rags-to-riches courtier.
I could almost taste the food, smell the decay, and touch the damp walls of the buildings. She took me deep into the consciousness of the unlikeable yet sympathetic and lonely main character, as he serves his monarch and defeats his enemies.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize
Shortlisted for the the Orange Prize
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award
`Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good'
Daily Mail
'Our most brilliant English writer'
Guardian
England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor.
Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with…
I’m fascinated by stories from the past. I worked for many years in museums and heritage, telling Scotland’s stories through exhibitions and nonfiction publications, but I was always drawn to the question best answered through historical fiction – what did that feel like? Well-researched historical fiction can take us right into the lives of people who lived through the dramatic events we read about in academic books. I found that each of the novels on my list transported me to a different time and place, and I hope you enjoy them, too.
Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, right? Yes, but why? This wonderful book manages to tell the story of the writing of perhaps the world’s most famous play without mentioning the playwright by name once.
I loved the way the writer focused on his wife and children, and through their stories shows us not only the world that Shakespeare came from but how he became the writer he was. Oh, and if you like a book that will make you cry this really is the one. I’ve rarely read such a powerful description of grief.
WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021 'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times 'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell
TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.
On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?
Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.
I love the novels of Charles Dickens and when I found out that he did go out with the London Police to research the criminal underworld for his magazine, I thought what a good detective he would make. He has all the talents a detective needs: remarkable powers of observation, a shrewd understanding of human nature and of motive, and the ability to mix with all ranks of Victorian society from the street urchin to the lord and lady. I love Victorian London, too, and creating the foggy, gas-lit alleys we all know from Dickens the novelist.
Miss Austen is Cassandra, sister of the more famous Jane, who takes centre stage in this story, though Jane is there, too, as the beloved missed sister, not the novelist. The year is 1840, Jane has been dead for twenty years, Cassandra is in her sixties and though frail is on a quest to find some missing letters which may reveal secrets about Jane and Cassandra which must not be known. It’s a mystery and we want to know if Cassandra will find those letters, but it is also a touching portrait of sisterly devotion. Cassandra makes an admirable heroine, determined and resourceful despite her frailty. It also tells much about the way in which spinsters, usually ignored by society, have a rich and complex inner life.
The Sunday Times bestselling novel, set to be a major TV drama ________________________ 'You can't help feeling that Jane would have approved.' OBSERVER
'So good, so intelligent, so clever, so entertaining - I adored it.' CLAIRE TOMALIN ________________________ Throughout her lifetime, Jane Austen wrote countless letters to her sister. But why did Cassandra burn them all?
1840: twenty three years after the death of her famous sister Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury, and the home of her family's friends, the Fowles.
She knows that, in some dusty corner of the sprawling vicarage, there is a cache…
I’ve always been besotted with crime fiction. As a journalist in Scotland, I got to experience real-life crime on a daily basis. And the world of cozy crime fiction became a very valuable, indispensable escape for me. So, when it came to coming up with my characters for The Bingo Hall Detectives, I knew that I had to create a cast, a setting, a mystery even, that would take me out of the relentlessness of the real world and into the confines of a bloody good read. And I’m so glad I did. The Bingo Hall Detectives series is very dear to me and I’m very lucky to be able to bring it to readers.
And when I first learned of the wonderful SJ Bennett’s series where her lead detective is Queen Elizabeth II, I was completely sold.
What I love most about this novel, and the series as a whole, is that there’s a wonderful story, cast of supporting characters, and everything, really, that support that simply brilliant concept. Look beyond the fact that the Queen is your protagonist and it’s a completely brilliant novel.
The fantastic, unique, and utterly compelling twist on the sleuth, however, is the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake.
For fans of The Crown and The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. On a perfect Spring morning at Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II will enjoy a cup of tea, carry out all her royal duties . . . and solve a murder.
'Like an episode of The Crown - but with a spicy dish of murder on the side' (DAILY MAIL) ______________________
The morning after a dinner party at Windsor Castle, eighty-nine-year-old Queen Elizabeth is shocked to discover that one of her guests has been found murdered in his room, with a rope around his neck.
As a kid, Joseph D’Agnese did not feel quite normal unless he’d devoured at least two mystery novels in a weekend. Today he’s a journalist and author. His mystery fiction has appeared in Shotgun Honey, Plots with Guns, Beat to a Pulp,Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. He’s a past recipient of the Derringer Award for Short Mystery Fiction, and a contributor to the prestigious annual anthology, Best American Mystery Stories. D’Agnese lives in North Carolina with his wife, the New York Times Bestselling author Denise Kiernan.
Can a mystery novel have supernatural elements and still be considered a mystery? I obsessed on this question when I was writing my book. (You’ll know why if you check it out.) Then, out of the blue, I stumbled across de Giovanni’s astonishing novels. His detective, Commissario Ricciardi, suffers from a bizarre affliction. He sees dead people. Specifically, he sees visions of murder victims just before their death. Naturally, this makes him the greatest cop ever, and the most tortured. If you can stand to read a little on the wild side, you will enjoy these historical mysteries, set in 1930s Naples. Currently 10 books in the series.
Introducing Italy’s Commissario Ricciardi. “De Giovanni’s distinct brand of noir . . . will appeal to Agatha Christie and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán fans” (Publishers Weekly).
Commissario Ricciardi has visions. He sees the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths. It is both a gift and a curse. It has helped him become one of the most successful homicide detectives on the Naples police front. But the horror of his visions has hollowed him out emotionally. He drinks too much and sleeps too little. Other than his loyal partner, Brigadier Maione, he has no friends. Naples, March 1931.…
I am grateful to my maternal grandparents, immigrants from southern Italy, who instilled in me a love for the Bel Paese that has inspired me all my life. I began to travel to Italy 45 years ago, and after writing for television—on the staff of Everybody Loves Raymond—I turned to travel writing. I’ve written 4 books about Italian travel, along with many stories for magazines. I also design and host Golden Weeks in Italy: For Women Only tours, to give female travelers an insider’s experience of this extraordinary country.
I have always loved visiting the city of Naples – for the great food, the rich history, and the warm locals who remind me of my southern Italian relatives. Ferrante’s novels go deep into the complexities of a female friendship that spans many decades, while also bringing to life a wide range of characters who I grew to love and truly care about, while devouring this extraordinary series.
The complete four-volume boxed set of the New York Times–bestselling epic about hardship and female friendship in postwar Naples that has sold over five million copies.
Beginning with My Brilliant Friend, the four Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante follow Elena and Lila, from their rough-edged upbringing in Naples, Italy, not long after WWII, through the many stages of their lives―and along paths that diverge wildly. Sometimes they are separated by jealousy or hostility or physical distance, but the bond between them is unbreakable, for better or for worse.
This volume includes all four novels: My Brilliant Friend; The Story of…
War is perhaps the most extreme human activity. I have seen firsthand some of these extremes in Iraq and Afghanistan. I now write about the philosophy and ethics of war and geopolitics, exploring some of the impacts and enduring truths that war and its conduct tell us about ourselves that might be hidden under the surface of our everyday lives. The books I have chosen here explore, with elegance, sensitivity, and sometimes brutal and unflinching honesty, what the battlefield exposes, showing us that there is both tragedy and comedy at the extremities of human nature, and without one, you cannot really truly appreciate the other.
Out of all the war fiction and nonfiction I have read, this is the one book I wish I had read before deploying to Iraq as a soldier.
Lewis captures the post-invasion chaos, as the war-fighting military struggles to define its new mission as an occupying force, the farcical situations that arise through deep cultural misunderstandings between occupier and occupied, and the suffering and resourcefulness of the local population.
He is also an elegant writer who, like many of the best war writers, finds humour and intense tragedy in the extremes between the absurd and the sublime he encounters.
As a young intelligence officer stationed in Naples following its liberation from Nazi forces, Norman Lewis recorded the lives of a proud and vibrant people forced to survive on prostitution, thievery, and a desperate belief in miracles and cures. The most popular of Lewis's twenty-seven books, Naples'44 is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature. In prose both heartrending and comic, Lewis describes an era of disillusionment, escapism, and hysteria in which the Allied occupiers mete out justice unfairly and fail to…
Growing up queer and Italian in suburban New Jersey in the late 1960s and early 70s, it was the passionate love of food and family that got me through the tough times. I learned to cook from my mother and my grandmothers. I gardened and picked tomatoes with my grandfathers. There was always a pot of simmering tomato gravy and magic meatballs on the stove. My mother’s chicken parmigiana, my paternal grandmother’s homemade ravioli, my maternal grandmother’s stuffed clams, my great aunt’s baked chicken. As a writer, it became my mission to share these secret family recipes and the loving life lessons that saved me.
Set in Naples, Italy, this culturally rich book is the first in a series of four connected novels that tell the complete story of a profound and intense friendship between two women who are opposites in almost every way.
It is a friendship-love story that illustrates how a deep and abiding love can help and hurt two people. My Italian ancestors are from Naples, and Elena Ferrante’s books capture the spirit of their passions while delivering complex and emotional life lessons.
OVER 14 MILLION COPIES OF THE NEAPOLITAN QUARTET SOLD WORLDWIDE
NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES
GUARDIAN 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY
58 WEEKS ON THE BOOKSELLER'S TOP 20 ORIGINAL FICTION BESTSELLERS LIST
SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2015
43 INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS DEALS
Now in B-format Paperback
From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, comes this ravishing and generous-hearted novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but…
My memoir, Circling Home: What I Learned by Living Elsewhere, details my own trajectory in trying to find my voice and métier as a writer. I’ve kept a journal since I was a teenager, trained to be a journalist in college, and worked as an investigative reporter on a newspaper column and a news show in my twenties. When my husband and I moved abroad, I got a book contract for my PhD thesis and also published my research in academic journals. I wrote travel articles and profiles of people I met while living in East and West Africa. Working with a writing group of friends, I finished two novels before embarking on my memoir.
The second of Ferrante’s four Neopolitan Novels is a gripping portrayal of the hardships faced by women who grew up in Italy in the 1950s and ‘60s.
The novel is packed with romantic liaisons, incidences of family violence, and the many hurdles that Italian women had to face in forging careers independent of their families. The detailed rendering of a complicated friendship between two women who disappointed each other at times shows how hard women in working-class Naples had to struggle to find their paths.
Being from a big family myself and facing many hurdles before finding my voice, I could relate to the characters in this book and Ferrante’s subsequent novel, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay Behind.
The Story of a New Name, the second book of the Neapolitan Quartet, picks up the story where My Brilliant Friend left off.
Lila has recently married and made her entree into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighbourhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times…
Writing a mystery novel is no small task. You have to craft a clever plot, stay true to your characters, and bewilder, but ultimately satisfy, your readers, all the while not mixing up your theirs and your there’s. Maybe that’s why we writers like to saddle our heroes with even heavier burdens, forcing them to sort through complex webs of deceit, and fight against deeply rooted cultures full of corruption. When they win, we share their victories… even more so because it means we’ve finished writing the darn book! Enjoy this list of detectives facing long odds, and let it inspire you in whatever creative endeavors are closest to your heart.
I love when authors mix genres. Dibdin’s Cosi Fan Tutti is a combination of mystery and a Mozart opera!
Combining the farcical elements of corruption, romantic longing, and mistaken identity, Dibdin pulls us through the beautiful streets of Naples, Italy, where everyone is thoughtful and earnest, and still, somehow, nothing like they appear.
His detective Aurelio Zen is supposed to be keeping the peace, but he’s not up for the job, much more interested in untying romantic entanglements and enjoying the countryside. A solid plan until the Italian sanitation department decides they’re going to clean up the streets for him.
Lighthearted and breezy but with a genuine emotional core, you’ll get through Cosi Fan Tutte in a single sitting and be happier for it.
At this point there is a welcome touch of comedy as the man's feet appear above the tail-gate of the garbage truck. Clad in highly polished brogues and red-and-black chequered socks below which a length of bare white leg is just visible, they proceed to execute a furious little dance, jerking this way and that like puppets at a Punch and Judy show - possibly a knowing allusion to the commedia dell'arte, which of course originated in this city.
Inspector Zen has been posted to Naples in disgrace, where he is asked to oversee the clean-up of the city's corrupt…
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