Fans pick 100 books like A Flame in Byzantium

British writer Tanith Lee has been one of the most important influences on my writing and this book is classic Lee. Set on Nova Mars, it is the story of Sabella - difficult, damaged, and deadly -  and Jace, who has come to avenge his brother’s death at her hands. Their conflict leads them to an unexpected truth.  Lee’s language is brilliant and baroque, her characters are sinister and sexy, and the novel plays with both gothic and science fiction tropes. And Sabella has a wonderful wardrobe, which is always a plus for me. 

Gilda begins her life as a runaway slave in pre-Civil War Louisiana and this beautifully-written novel explores her life over the next two hundred years as she faces danger, love, and loss. It’s memorable not only for the lens of Black and LGBTQ history that it brings to the vampire myth, but for the main character’s commitment to maintaining her connection to community, both vampire and mortal, and her openness to the world that transforms around her. 

Just when I thought I was done with vampires, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Certain Dark Things came along.

I was burned out on the genre. Most of the characters in vampire stories are rich, privileged, and frankly, not that interesting. Atl, the main character in Certain Dark Things, is the exception.

A descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, she finds herself caught between the rival vampire clans that dominate Mexico City. When she develops an unexpected attachment to a street kid named Domingo, her life gets even more complicated. 

Domingo could have been nothing but a Renfield, a plaything for her vampire lead. But Moreno-Garcia explores the tender bond that develops between them, a connection that puts both in jeopardy. An engrossing new spin on the vampire tale.

Jane has grown up as the town outcast, caring for a dying mother who has never shown her any affection. She’s counting the days until she can leave when she meets new girl Sabrina, who pushes her to investigate the mysteries of her mother’s past, including the identity of her unknown father. What Jane discovers upends everything she thought she knew about her life and herself. Sensual, moving, and sometimes grim, I love this book for the way it explores tough questions. What would you do for love? What would you do for need? Who would you betray to survive?

I happened upon this gem of an anthology in a library book sale a couple of years back, and I highly recommend trying to get your hands on a copy if you’re looking for wide-ranging inspiration and guidance on the traveler’s path. With a focus on the spiritual element of women’s journeys, and featuring literary powerhouses like Maya Angelou and Anne Lamott, this collection is an ode to feminine courage, power, and transformation. Each essay is a masterpiece, and can be a guide to a specific kind of journey. You’ll want to carry a dog-eared copy with you to come back to again and again.

Julia Cherry Spruill is herself a fascinating character, one who worked in her husband’s shadow most of her life, an academic wife, as it were, creating research methods for the decade-long project of examining women’s experiences in the New World. The book, after being published, was largely ignored for thirty years, until it was published in paperback at a time when women’s history was attaining status as an academic field. Women’s Life and Work is overflowing with details concerning women’s activities, clothing, food and drink, childbearing, and death, with personal anecdotes of their feelings about it all. 

I read this 1963 novel in college, adored it, and have re-read it many times since.

The book opens in 1933, as a group of eight women are graduating from Vassar during the Great Depression, and one announces her engagement. From there, the book functions almost like a work of journalism, following their lives until they gather again for the bride’s funeral in 1940, just as America is on the verge of war. In between, their stories demonstrate the different possibilities for women during a time of enormous social change (the period parallels the Makioka Sisters).

McCarthy’s writing has great range: while describing some figures, she’s biting and acerbic; with others, she’s empathetic, and they all seem very real, even today. I’m still looking for a love story like Polly’s.

In classical detective fiction, the story of the crime is like a puzzle, and piece by piece, clue by clue, we arrive at the big picture. Subdivision is, in some ways, a classic puzzle mystery (it even involves a puzzle!)—except it doesn’t start at a crime scene. It starts with a woman arriving at a guesthouse in the surreal and Kafkaesque Subdivision where she now lives. She can’t remember why she is there or really anything from her past.
Unlike more classical detective fiction, she is not a guide; I followed her—tracking, assembling, interpreting—but when certain elements of the real (maybe) slid into focus, they did so mostly despite her. I couldn’t put it down, and notwithstanding its fairly cerebral tone, I cried at the end.

This book gave me the inspiration that I could release the people-pleasing effect and learned to say yes to myself.

This book helped me to examine my belief system of how I approach my self-image and how that affected the people around me including my family and friends.

If you are a creative person, an entrepreneur, a mom, or someone struggling with balancing your life and tend to put yourself last, this book will help you shift your mindset and perspective to show up authentically for yourself first.

Having a list of demands on your neck can feel overwhelming and Shonda shows us how to handle it all from her mishaps all while looking amazingly stunning in the process. For me, it was allowing myself to relinquish control and say yes to the things that light me up.

Shonda’s journey of navigating Hollywood lets us know that we all have… show more.

Sure, you could say con artist Meg Williams, or any of the aliases this woman goes by, is a vigilante, determined to right the wrongs done to her by society through the many lies she tells. Or you could see her as a sociopathic opportunist.

Kara Roberts is out to catch Williams and bring her to justice for being instrumental in both destroying Roberts’ career and her personal life. But once Roberts gets close to Williams, she falters…and falls under her spell. See a pattern yet? Yep, that’s right. The sociopath always charms the victim.

While the book skews toward a Machiavellian “the ends justify the means” philosophy, the characters are duplicitous and amoral at best, sociopathic and self-serving at worst.