Here are 64 books that An Unfinished Story fans have personally recommended if you like
An Unfinished Story.
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I'm an author of fiction and nonfiction books, focusing on how women are positioned in society. Under my real name, Susan Shapiro Barash, I have written thirteen nonfiction titles. As a fiction writer, I've published four novels, written under my pen name, Susannah Marren. For more than twenty years I taught in the Writing Department at Marymount Manhattan College and have guest taught creative nonfiction at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. I served as a literary panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, as a judge for the International Emmys, and as Vice Chair of the Mentoring Committee of the Women’s Leadership Board at the JFK School of Government, Harvard.
Lisey Landon, the widow of a well-known author, struggles to know who her husband really was.
In real time, which is one of two storylines, Lisey’s sister, Amanda comes to visit and they search magazines and books to find where Lisey is written up. Amanda is troubled, becomes catatonic and Lisey has to care for her. The other storyline is about Scott Landon, his rough past and how he hovers over Lisey’s life, although he is deceased.
What is striking about this novel is the writing and Lisey’s journey. The reader is drawn in at once. When Lisey is able to enter another world called Boo’ya, as her husband did, she is able to save her sister. And by the end of the novel, Lisey herself is set free of her demons. This novel has stayed with me for years.
*Soon to be an Apple TV+ limited series starring Julianne Moore and Clive Owen*
Every marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark.
Lisey knew it when she first fell for Scott. And now he's dead, she knows it for sure.
Lisey was the light to Scott Landon's dark for twenty-five years. As his wife, only she saw the truth behind the public face of the famous author - that he was a haunted man whose bestselling novels were based on a terrifying reality.
Now Scott has gone, Lisey wants to lock herself away with her memories. But the…
I’m a historian who recently started writing historical fiction. A few years ago, while writing my most recent academic book about 19th C Dublin, I became frustrated with the limitations of what I felt I could write about. I had a lot of sense of the atmosphere of the city that didn’t really fit into the way an academic book is constructed. So, I ended up trying my hand at historical fiction, wanting to give a real sense of place that I felt to be true but which was also a product of my imagination. One of my favorite things about reading novels has always been this sense of place.
I love the central female character in this book, Cora Seaborne, who can swing between admirable and ridiculous over the course of a page. I love the dark atmosphere created by the marshes of the Blackwater, where Cora is determined to find evidence of a mysterious creature presumed by locals to be malevolent.
The estuary is a menacing presence in reality (people and animals are sucked in and lost in times of bad weather) and in the imaginations of the villagers. I also love the way that this provides a backdrop for various tumults of the soul experienced by the characters as Cora crashes into the settled lives of a local minister and his family, wreaking accidental havoc.
Now a major Apple TV series starring Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston
THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER
'A blissful novel of unapologetic appetites ... here is a writer who understands life' JESSIE BURTON, author of THE MINIATURIST
London, 1893. When Cora Seaborne's controlling husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness. Along with her son Francis - a curious, obsessive boy - she leaves town for Essex, in the hope that fresh air and open space will provide refuge.
On arrival, rumours reach them that the mythical Essex Serpent, once…
I’ve been reading romance novels since I was a teenager. Love is a universal feeling, and there is no better emotion in the world than falling in love. While I read a variety of novels in different genres, I always come back to read romance. I write romance as I believe we all deal with different things in our daily lives, but an emotional connection and love bring us all together and make the world a better place to live in.
I loved this "later in life" romance with the main characters being in their fifties and early sixties.
A novel filled with plenty of steam, humor, and passion. Widow Andi McDermott retreats to her mountain cabin at Christmas and runs into her grumpy neighbor, Wolf Enders. An instant attraction sparks between them neither can ignore.
Wolf is a military veteran who is intimidating and has a soft spot for the widowed Andy, as well as an aversion to committing to a woman. Intensely emotional, this novel focuses on family issues, love, and learning to trust again. A well-written novel I recommend.
A woman expecting to spend the holidays alone finds warmth in the iciest man she knows in this steamy and charming later-in-life romance by New York Times bestselling author Jane Porter.
It’s been five years since Andi McDermott lost her husband, and she's finally starting to feel like herself again, ready to live fully—she’s even started dating again. But when her holiday plans with her stepson and his fiancée fall through, she refuses to spend another Christmas alone while everyone is celebrating with their families. Impulsively, she decides to go up to her cabin in Lake Arrowhead, a place she…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The stars aligned to ignite my passion for magic-realism romance after a few things had happened. 1) I got heavily into the idea of the multiverse and alternate realities in high school, having been inspired by my physics teacher. 2) I read and fell in love with The Time Traveler’s Wife (see list!). 3) I binge-watched the incredible sci-fi show Fringe, which deals with parallel universes and time jumps. 4) I decided to write my first multiverse romance, inspired by all the above factors and more besides. Since then, I’ve focused most of my reading on romantic novels, with those that share a magic realism twist being auto-reads—of course!
This book is everything a magic-realism romance should be—captivating, romantic, ethereal, and satisfying. As a total sucker for parallel worlds, I love the alternate-reality element of this novel. Each night, our protagonist Lydia has lifelike dreams of an alternate path in which her boyfriend Freddie didn’t just die in a tragic accident. The potent pills her doctor prescribed to help her sleep after his death are taking her into this magical dream world in which she would much rather live than reality.
I love how this seemingly ideal dream world is juxtaposed with the reality Lydia is forced to live while awake and her gradual awakening from grief into a new world of love. It’s moving, tender, sweet, and totally dreamy—literally!
Two lives. Two loves. One impossible choice. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club Pick One Day in December . . .
“I read The Two Lives of Lydia Bird in a single sitting. What a beautiful, emotional gift Josie Silver has given us.”—Jodi Picoult
Written with Josie Silver’s trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life’s crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them.
Since 2012, when I was fortunate to be a companion to my dying father, I have gained a deep appreciation for the topics of death, dying, grief and bereavement. Being with him during his final moments was a vitally transformative event in my life, and subsequent developments led me to become a writer and curator of content in this field. I am now an end-of-life educator and preparedness facilitator, whose role it is to assist others to prepare for their inevitable, eventual death. Being prepared, by making informed choices and documenting them, can be one of the greatest gifts we give to our loved ones. I coach my End-of-Life Matters clients to do just that.
Mansfield’s poignant story of her beloved husband’s journey through cancer and his eventual death is a heartfelt telling of the intimate story of how she becomes a widow and how she meets that event with courage and spiritual exploration. She rises from the ashes of her grief and soars like a phoenix to give back to others, a brilliantly told tale.
Gold Medal Winner, Independent Publisher Book Award in Category Aging, Death and Dying
"Magnificent, profoundly moving . . . gives encouragement and solace to all." —Naomi Shihab Nye
"I'll find a way to be all right," Elaine promised Vic, her dying husband and best friend of 42 years. Leaving the hospital after he passed, she had no idea how. Her uplifting story of love, hope, determination, and triumph is a gift to the half million women who lose spouses each year.
Leaning into Love captures the heart--from the extraordinary closeness of Elaine's marriage to how she and Vic transform their…
I will die on this hill: a knowledge of human history is essential. If we refuse to examine our past, we are truly doomed to repeat it. What we call “history,” however, is told from only one viewpoint: that of the victor, or whatever party lived to record the tale. Since childhood, I’ve been intrigued by the lives of our forebears even as I longed for proof of the uncanny in the waking world. But I’ve only ever encountered the fantastical—not to mention the historical—in texts like those on this list, where the two can commingle, enriching and refining one another for the enlightenment, and the pleasure, of their readers.
The frame-tale—also known as a “story within a story”—is one of my favorite fictional devices, and Margaret Atwood’s deft handling of three separate storylines makes this book a truly astonishing read.
Though her characters are fictional, their story is set against a backdrop of major Canadian historical events of the 1930s and 1940s. The exterior tale carries Iris Chase, an unhappily married upper-class woman, from childhood to death, while the real author of the interior story—a novel about a pair of illicit lovers that contains an embedded science fiction tale (the eponymous Blind Assassin)—is one of the story’s biggest mysteries.
This novel is ambitious, engaging, and wholly surprising.
By the author of The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace
Laura Chase's older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor and eighty-two, is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by their once-prosperous family before the First War. While coping with her unreliable body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death. Chief among these was the publication of The Blind Assassin, a novel which earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following.…
Return to Hope Creek is a second-chance rural romance set in Australia.
Stella Simpson's career and engagement are over. She returns to the rural community of Hope Creek to heal, unaware her high school and college sweetheart, Mitchell Scott, has also moved back to town to do some healing of…
I grew up dreaming of other worlds, both real and imagined. I’ve since had the great fortune of living in Angola, Bangladesh, Gambia, Italy, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Tanzania—each country as fascinating to me as the next. Yet there’s so much more of the world I want to experience! This is why I love novels that immerse me in the history and culture of foreign lands. By entering the hearts and minds of characters with different life experiences than myself, I feel a sense of connection that expands my own worldview. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
I found this novel about a young, widowed mother living through Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War both eye-opening and deeply touching. Having recently moved to Bangladesh myself, I welcomed the chance to learn more about my host country’s history while at the same time being transported into the fictional lives of Rehana and her two adolescent children, Maya and Sohail.
Tahmima Anam’s expert storytelling and razor-sharp observation made me feel as if I were right there with the characters, facing the same impossible choices but also experiencing the same unexpected moments of passion and beauty.
Spring, 1971, East Pakistan. Rehana Haque is throwing a party for her beloved children, Sohail and Maya. Her young family is growing up fast, and Rehana wants to remember this day forever. But out on the hot city streets, something violent is brewing. As the civil war develops, a war which will eventually see the birth of Bangladesh, Rehana struggles to keep her children safe and finds herself facing a heartbreaking dilemma.
I am a man of principles. I have suffered from life's hardships and enjoyed its beauty. I have always been patient, modest, peaceful, and conscientious. I have written seventeen books, including fiction and nonfiction. My writings reflect social injustice, political corruption, and psychological dilemmas, focusing on aesthetic phenomena and universal qualities such as truth, justice, humanity, morality, freedom, beauty, and more. With this background, I am recommending the following five books because they display conspiratorial relationships between individuals, resulting in a heavy toll that impacts the relationships.
This book is an amalgam of different experiences. DuBoi Blanch, from an elite upbringing, comes to stay with his sister Stella, who criticizes him as “sub-human” and “coarse.” The book exposes distinct cultures, attitudes, and conflicts, displaying aristocratic and ordinary lifestyles.
I love the book because it delves deeplyinto emotional conspiracies, introducing desire, which is the most conspicuous and established component of emotion and has been presented both physically and mentally. Suspense is hanging in the air as we see the initial sexual assault being perpetrated by Blanche’s brother-in-law.
The story's conclusion serves to underscore the theme that unchecked desire can lead to downfall or suffering, highlighting the inherent risks and moral dilemmas associated with pursuing one's ambitions without considering the broader implications. It provides a moral lesson or insight into the human condition, showing how the choices driven by desire can shape the course of our lives and…
It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared-57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that…
While I taught Shakespeare’s plays all my teaching career, I stayed in my lanes: Hamlet, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear. As a poetry teacher, I used his sonnets as examples of metaphor and form, but never did I consider myself an expert. However, when the idea for my novel popped into my head, I realized I had some serious reading to do. Not only did I study the facts, I delved into the fiction. While some of these books came out during my writing and others after, I didn’t lose my interest, picking up whatever new Shakespeare book appeared. These are some of my favorites.
With this piece of historical fiction, we are back to “Who is Shakespeare,” and did he write all those plays? We are asked to consider parts of Shakespeare’s life where there is no historical record at all. In this novel, he did pen his plays and poems, but he had a lot of help from a smart, learned woman. Yes, another great woman behind the man story. And yet, we are allowed into not only Will’s and Katherine’s collaborative writing process but into their love story. Thus we end this list as we started with Shakespeare in love.
A bold and captivating novel about love, passion, and ambition that imagines the muse of William Shakespeare and the tumultuous year they spend together.
The year is 1590, and Queen Elizabeth’s Spanish Armada victory has done nothing to quell her brutal persecution of the English Catholics. Katharine de L’Isle is living at Lufanwal Hall, the manor of her uncle, Sir Edward. Taught by her cherished uncle to read when a child, Katharine is now a thirty-one-year-old widow. She has resigned herself to a life of reading and keeping company with her cousins and their children. But all that changes when…
Ava Winston likes her life of routine in Lexington, Kentucky. Then a tornado blows it away. Ava is safe in the basement, but when she emerges, only one corner of her home stands. Rather than crumbling under the loss, she feels a load lifted. Maybe something beyond the familiar is…
The first memoir I ever read—Road Song by Natalie Kusz—pierced me in ways I did not know were possible. Kusz had written, in this elegantly crafted book, of an Alaskan childhood, a life-changing accident, early motherhood, and family love. She had written, I mean to say, of transcending truths. I have spent much of my life ever since deconstructing the ways in which true stories get told, and writing them myself. I’ve taught memoir to five-year-olds, Ivy League students, master’s level writers, and retirees. I co-founded Juncture Workshops, write a monthly newsletter on the form, and today create blank books into which other writers might begin to tell their stories.
Abigail Thomas likes to say that she didn’t know what she was doing when she set out to write Safekeeping. Memories returned and she wrote them down. Sometimes she wrote of herself in first person. Sometimes in second. Sometimes in third. Sometimes she wrote of apple cake, and of people she loved, and of unsustainable loss. No one remembers their entire life in systematic order. Few lives conform to outlines. That is why Thomas needed to invent the shape of her memoir in essays—to arrange all of its idiosyncratic pieces into an utterly compelling idiosyncratic whole.
A beautifully crafted and inviting account of one woman’s life, Safekeeping offers a sublimely different kind of autobiography. Setting aside a straightforward narrative in favor of brief passages of vivid prose, Abigail Thomas revisits the pivotal moments and the tiny incidents that have shaped her life: pregnancy at 18; single motherhood (of three!) by the age of 26; the joys and frustrations of three marriages; and the death of her second husband, who was her best friend. The stories made of these incidents are startling in their clarity and reassuring in their wisdom.
