100 books like A Year of Marvellous Ways

I have always loved literary thriller queen Daphne Du Maurier's complex and resilient characters, and Mary Yellan is no exception. Everything’s looking pretty miserable for her after her mother’s death forces her to give up the family farm and her hometown to live in a creepy inn with her miserable aunt and aggressive drunk of an uncle.

So I really enjoy how brave and resourceful she is in getting past violence, danger, miserable living conditions, a desolate setting, and bad taste in men to find out whether something more sinister than smuggling is going on at the empty inn.   

Cornish Folk Tales takes the reader on a journey into the heart of Cornish Storytelling.

I have listened to Mike O’Connor many times and he is a master storyteller. I love the Cornish Droll telling tradition; droll tellers went from place to place telling tales for a bed and a bite to eat. The narrators of Cornish Folk Tales, blind droll teller Anthony James and his guide young Jamie are a perfect combination.

Mike O’Connor, through Anthony tells the tales with anecdotes, music, history, and Cornish language. This book taught me how to approach folklore retelling in an accessible way.

Reading I felt myself beside the firesides of Cornwall, listening to tales of dragons, mermaids, giants, and saints; puzzling over riddles, and learning about Cornish traditions and music

Charles Causley’s poems celebrate every turn of Cornwall’s stride. He writes of the sea, towns, moors, and people with incredible imagery humor, and tragedy.

The poems ask questions of love and nature. "And careless, like tide-marks, the hedges / Are bursting with Almond and May." Causley sings the magic of Cornwall, ‘Its anchor is glittering granite," "His smile was sharp as tin."

My favorites are the ballads, I was inspired to write the Caradoc ballads by reading Causley’s ballads over and over. Folklore underpins many of his poems, there are mermaids, giants, saints, and even a baby devil.

Enys Tregarthen’s tales have bought Cornish magic into every home for a hundred years.

I have spent a lot of time with her books and retold many tales in my book. North Cornwall Fairies and Legends is a basket full of piskeys, (the Cornish fairy folk.) One of my favourites is the Piskey’s Revenge, which I retold for Cornish storytelling project Mazed. It is illustrated by Steven Lambert, and used in Cornishibai street storytelling.

It tells how Granfer accidentally digs up the piskey beds, in revenge, the piskeys eat all Granfer’s birthday biscuits. Enys writes about the children of Cornwall and what they encounter: they meet piskey friends up on the moors, little stone figures come alive in towns and aways there is an excuse for piskey mischief.

I often write about the Second World War, particularly the roles of women in it. Cornwall is another love, my father being Cornish.

The landscape and the culture have made a huge impression on me and when I read Coming Home I thought, yes, this novel was written for me.

It’s the coming-of-age story of Judith Dunbar. When still a young girl her mother leaves her with an elderly relative near Penzance in order to join Judith’s father in Singapore. After this relative dies Judith has to fend for herself, but is increasingly drawn into the orbit of the charismatic Carey-Lewis family of Nancherrow House. Through her relationship with them she experiences passionate love and betrayal as the storms of war are gathering on the horizon.

This novel completely absorbed me. 

This novel was an immersive journey through the English countryside, from Cornwall to the Cotswolds. I was so deep into this setting and story that I was always stunned to look up and see that I was at home in my own living room. Rosamunde Pilcher is from Scotland, and she knows this landscape so well. She takes us there with deft prose and page-turning skill. 

The story is about a woman named Penelope Keeling and her extended family. It is a novel of connections—mothers, daughters, husbands, and lovers—all revolving around a famous painting called The Shell Seekers. Through a bohemian childhood and a wartime romance, we come to love the complicated Keeling family. 

An admirable sense of rebellion and freedom that the Second World War brought young people is encapsulated in this book by the author, who herself lived through those times. Mary Wesley’s novels are quirky and unexpected, and peopled with eccentric, sympathetic, and lovable characters who face the dangers of the Blitz and all the uncertainty of war with a certain poise. I love the concepts of escaping convention and the kindness of strangers. To read this novel—which I have done at least five times—is like stepping into a warm bath. It’s my go-to when I need a dose of familiarity and comfort.

Okay, so this one is a cheat, because the ghost isn’t actually dead, only wishes he was dead. When I was a teenager I borrowed this one from one of my mother's friends, not long after it was published, and “forgot” to give it back I liked it so much.

Regency romances can be a little overwrought, but I read it again recently, and it holds up to the passage of time. But, it tells us, that no matter how bad things seem, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. Life is what you make it, even if it takes all your courage, you have to keep adjusting and moving forwards. 

The Cornish Captive makes a powerful portrayal of abduction and imprisonment, as well as describing the forces of mental stress under the elemental pressures of Cornish life of that time. Cornish society then was unbelievably brutal. I identify so strongly with the sufferings of any sensitive soul under those conditions.