87 books like A Far Cry from Kensington

A tale of labor unrest in the hardscrabble frontier of northwestern America sounds anything but fun or funny, but Walter explores the lives of miners, railroad workers, and Vaudeville performers with surprising verve and a glint of humor on nearly every page.

Set mostly in and around Spokane in the years between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, this sweeping, satisfying story follows a pair of working-class brothers as they confront corrupt lawmen, scheming actresses, and violent union-busters.

Set in Moscow on the eve of the Russian Revolution, this novel’s plot does not scream “funny,” but it’s one of the most deeply funny books I’ve ever read.

An English printer living in Russia wakes up one day to find that his wife has left him and taken their children away, and revolutionaries have broken into his shop to print manifestoes.

From this unlikely setup, Fitzgerald spins a hilarious tale of loss, love, and redemption.

Actually a collection of nine novellas set in the fictional town of Babbington, in an alternative-reality version of 1950s New York, this collection is historical fiction at its funniest and strangest, satirizing not only 1950s American culture but also our literary traditions.

Each novella chronicles a coming-of-age adventure of Peter Leroy (the author’s alter ego) in the style of a different classic-fiction genre, from a Huck Finn-style river journey to a Proustian moment at a family outing to a send-up of Aesop’s fables.

Wonderfully warm and filled with sly asides.

Stella Bradshaw, an aspiring teenage actor in 1950s Liverpool, joins a local theater company for its Christmas production of Peter Pan, and everyone gets more than they bargained for. Stella is a willful working-class ingenue desperate to escape her broken home life, and her enthusiasm and fearlessness force a collection of dissolute, jaded theater actors and directors to confront their own career and life choices.

The revelation on the last page makes you reconsider everything that went before in a surprise ending that’s far from a gimmick.

A thoroughly researched visual study of two brothers, close and highly imaginative playmates as children, but then gradually divergent adults as they came to terms with their war experiences. John had a tougher war, yet seems to have been able to leave the horror behind as he embarked on a brighter, more decorative illustrative style. Paul would be haunted his entire life by shadows of death and depression, but would become one of this country's most important and powerful artists.

This is a gorgeous book to be savoured slowly.

It is suffused with music throughout (and the nerd within me loves the reoccurring literary motifs and phrases that definitely lend a musical quality to the book) and took me back to lazy summer days as a teenager when I first moved to London and the city felt wide open with excitement and possibility.

This is another love story, but one about community, family and the first loves that we learn from our parents.

Leaving Piccadilly for the moment, we have the adult western. As if the name of the genre and the name that starts every book title isn’t enough, it’s published by Playboy. And as you might have guessed from there being four hundred of these books, put out damn near monthly since the seventies, it’s a bit of a fool’s errand to single out any one book. They’re somewhere between the formulaic nature of needing to be a Western with literally obligatory sex and violence, and the author being a house name that’ll change with any given volume, who by necessity will have his own idiosyncratic take on the material. 

One book, you might get a writer that’s really into delivering the sex appeal promised by the cover. Another time, you’ll get someone who just wants to write a Western (if that: people weren’t writing these things for their health,… show more.

Dominic wrote two very good crime books in a short series before publishing Vine Street.

I am including Vine Street on my list because, although it’s set in London and is therefore not ‘regional’, it was one of the great crime novels of 2021-22 and deserves to become a classic. I read this book before it was published, and I knew, like everyone else, that it was something special.

The story spans almost a century, from the seedy streets of London’s Soho in the 1930s, until the present day. There are some really well-researched and vividly depicted descriptions of police investigations in the 30s, and just for that it’s worth a read. But there’s also a twisting, mesmerizing plot that takes us all the way to the present.

What really distinguishes Vine Street, though, is the writing itself, which seems to echo the rhythms of the 1930s jazz clubs, and… show more.

Jewel thieves, undercover investigation, and - a fake engagement? I seriously could not predict the twists and turns aplenty in this book from Erin Swann which made me gasp several times, and then frantically keep reading.

I adored the clever descriptions that Erin crafted, and it became impossible not to fall in love with her characters. Grab it now.

With Charles Dickens investigating, I had to check this out. The author’s imaginative use of Dickens as a sleuth is rooted in facts new to me. I didn’t know he had set up a sanctuary for fallen women, for example. Having read much Dickens, I found the voice authentic. His Victorian world, so intense in his novels, was equally immersive here – the poverty, the dirt, the inequality – and I became thoroughly involved in the story and the unfolding investigation. If an author can draw me into their world and hold me… this did, due to impressive detailed research. I was particularly struck by the compassion visible in this Dickens which made me realise how much his books also demonstrate this aspect of his character.