Here are 92 books that Apple Tree Yard fans have personally recommended if you like
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I've been writing for 20 years, and the more I learn about the craft, the less interested I am in big, bombastic thrillers about the end of the world. Now I'm more impressed by books that do a lot with a little. Some talented writers can spin a gripping story out of nothing more than two people in a room (Stephen King's Misery is one of my all-time faves). The domestic noir genre lends itself to this kind of minimalism. Sure, serial killers are scary, but not as scary as the thought that your spouse might not be who they seem.
Okay, you've almost certainly heard of this one. You might even be thinking that The Husband's Secret is a more obvious choice for this list. But I'm including BLL anyway because I couldn't believe how enthralling it was (even though I've been a Liane Moriarty fan since The Hypnotist's Love Story).
Many of the entries on this list have depicted a marriage that looks perfect from the outside but is rotten within. This book inverts this formula, or at least complicates it—Celeste thinks her marriage is perfect (or is telling herself she thinks that), but it's obvious from the reader's outside perspective that her husband is an abuser.
There are many intriguing threads woven through this story (all coming together in a showdown so satisfying that I read it several times), but the scenes with Perry are the most impressive. They left me sick with fear.
*Published as BIG LITTLE LIES in Australia and the United States*
Liane Moriarty, million copy selling author of The Husband's Secret brings us another addictive story of secrets and scandal.
Jane hasn't lived anywhere longer than six months since her son was born five years ago. She keeps moving in an attempt to escape her past. Now the idyllic seaside town of Pirriwee has pulled her to its shores and Jane finally feels like she belongs. She has friends in the feisty Madeline and the incredibly beautiful Celeste - two women with seemingly perfect lives . . . and their…
I love books about everyman/everywoman characters facing danger, puzzles, and romance with a sense of humor. I love the suspense that builds throughout a whole book and the tension that can develop in just a paragraph. It’s easier for me to imagine I’m the protagonist and lose myself in the pages if I’m not reading about a superhero or a serial killer. With so many choices out there, it’s easier to find another person who’s seen the same TV show, for instance, but books are my true love because they are limitless and offer so many choices. It’s a privilege to be able to share some favorites.
I love surprises and characters who are not what they seem, and I enjoy a high-tech backdrop when it fits the story. When a character thinks he sees evidence of a crime in what’s basically Google Street View, he will not let go of it and drags our unwilling protagonist into danger.
I loved the emotional core of a man dealing with his brother’s mental health issues and the blossoming romance in his life.
What would you do if you witnessed a murder - but no one believed you . . .?
Another masterful suspense novel from the bestselling author of the Richard & Judy summer read winner, NO TIME FOR GOODBYE and FIND YOU FIRST
Map-obsessed Thomas spends his days and nights on a virtual tour of the world through his computer screen, believing he must store the details of every town and city in his head. Then one day, while surfing a street view program, he sees something that shouldn't be there: a woman being murdered behind a window on a New…
Like the Bach sisters in my novel Things We Do For Love, my sisters and I have cared for our mother, who battles Alzheimer's. Witnessing her transformation from a vibrant powerhouse to someone resembling the Walking Dead has been heart-wrenching. Despite the emotional rollercoaster, this journey has deeply connected us with our mother. Delving into the depths of her being has been a privilege, offering profound insights into her true essence. This challenging experience has unfolded as a disguised blessing. In this journey, we've discovered the beauty of unconditional love that binds our family together. It reflects the central question of my novel: What truly makes a happy family?
This book inspired me to write my own account of dealing with my mum’s Alzheimer’s.
This darkly comic yet gripping novel reveals the humorous aspects of the disease. Maud, an eighty-year-old who grapples with forgetting even the cup of tea she just made or recognising her own daughter, surprisingly unravels a seventy-year-old mystery.
The story delicately weaves warm and uplifting moments with touches of comedy, anxiety, and sheer terror that arise when one realises the advancing years and the struggle to be heard in a society that often overlooks the elderly. The portrayal of dementia in this novel is both sympathetic and profoundly moving, capturing the emotional complexity of the experience.
Maud's character is both exasperating and compelling, embodying the kind of older protagonist I yearn to encounter more in literature.
NOW A MAJOR BBC DRAMA A SUNDAY TIMES TOP FIVE BESTSELLER
How do you solve a mystery when you can't remember the clues?
Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn't remember to drink it. She goes to the shops and forgets why she went. Sometimes her home is unrecognizable - or her daughter Helen seems a total stranger.
But there's one thing Maud is sure of: her friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going on about it, to leave it alone, to…
Buried Secrets. A web of deceit, betrayal, and danger. Can she survive her fight for justice and truth? Laura thought she knew everything about her late husband before he died. Now, her life and the lives of those she loves are in danger. As Laura delves into his previous role in Iraq, she unravels a web of lies and deceit that goes far beyond anything she could have imagined. What was he researching? And why are people willing to kill for it?
Laura turns amateur sleuth. At fifty-nine, she must summon every ounce of strength to expose the truth and…
Buried Secrets. A web of deceit, betrayal, and danger. Can she survive her fight for justice and truth?
Laura thought she knew everything about her late husband before he died. Now, her life and the lives of those she loves are in danger.
As Laura delves into his previous role in Iraq, she begins to unravel a web of lies and deceit that goes far beyond anything she could have imagined. What was he researching? And why are people willing to kill for it?
Laura turns amateur sleuth. At fifty-nine, she must summon every ounce of strength and relentless determination…
These books aren't just the best in their field–they're the best at pinpointing the place I am from. Tartan Noir is a rich world, and I'm just about to join it. These books give a sense of place and people and sometimes bring a little laughter in the dark. To me, that's Scotland, in its magnificence, grandeur, and polar opposite of these things. Scotland is a country with two faces, as everyone from James Hogg onwards knew well... Let's see which side you prefer!
Rilke, the auctioneer, finds a collection of photographs that show the death of a young woman. He journeys into the dark heart of Glasgow–and his own desires–to find out who she is.
An amazing debut, looking at the subcultures and twisted alleyways that stitch together every big city. I was compelled by how far Welsh was prepared to go, depicting a city I thought I knew.
'Unputdownable' Sunday Times 'I was hooked from page one' Guardian
When Rilke, a dissolute auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing photographs, he feels compelled to discover more about the deceased owner who coveted them. Soon he finds himself sucked into an underworld of crime, depravity and secret desire, fighting for his life.
As a long-time reader of mysteries, thrillers, and pulp fiction, I’ve lived a double life. By day, a scholar and a serious biographer, tackling heavyweight literary subjects, fighting the good feminist fight. By night, I devoured crime writing as a secret pleasure. Writing my book confirmed my belief that there have always been authors who transform genre fiction into literary magic – and that I could have fun telling their stories. Whether in my writing or mentoring, I want to celebrate neglected creators and explore how literary magic is made. The authors in this list are brave, authentic, and a damn good read. I wish you the joy of them all!
One of the best things about teaching English at Oxford University is that students sometimes get to choose their own topics. Years ago, one of those students introduced me to Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, and (to my shame) I didn’t even know the author. Yet Braddon sold more novels than Dickens in the nineteenth century.
Indeed, Lady Audley went head-to-head with Great Expectations, and Braddon won! On first reading, I loved the novel’s raw energy, its crazy plot twists, and its honesty: there’s little or no sentimentality in Braddon. On the second or third reading (yes, Lady Audley can cope with multiple reads even though it’s a murder mystery), I discovered complexities, contradictions, and challenges that just made me more intrigued.
Put simply, Victorian Braddon is the original and best Queen of Pulp.
Originally published in Robin Goodfellow magazine, Lady Audley's Secret is the essential work of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and is considered a staple of sensation fiction. The story centers on a mysterious woman, whose dark past slowly comes to light.
Lady Audley is a former governess who marries the wealthy widower, Sir Michael Audley. She thoroughly enjoys the life of privilege and status associated with her new husband. Although she appears beautiful and polished, Lady Audley is more than meets the eye. She has a dark secret that could jeopardize everything she's worked for. To maintain her facade, she plots and…
I have obsessed with maps my whole life, but I guess the main drive for studying them is my enjoyment of outdoor spaces, as a hiker, a mountaineer, and as a sailor: always with a paper map at hand. If you use GPS (a wonderful innovation) you will not only lose some of your precious orientation abilities but above all you will look less at the environment around you. I feel that paper maps do a great favor to my brain and to my enjoyment of places. The books below are a great tribute to maps; they helped me understand them better, and this affected the way I use them.
Maps lie. In the standard visualization you have on Google Maps, for instance, Greenland is shown as bigger than the whole South American continent, while it is, in fact, smaller than Argentina.
Monmonier did an incredible job unpacking the many surprising ways in which maps lie. My favorite case is the sneaky introduction, by publishing houses, of fake towns in US road maps to track plagiarists (as plagiarists just copy, they do not care about checking). There are so many fun examples in this profound book.
An instant classic when first published in 1991, How to Lie with Maps revealed how the choices mapmakers make--consciously or unconsciously--mean that every map inevitably presents only one of many possible stories about the places it depicts. The principles Mark Monmonier outlined back then remain true today, despite significant technological changes in the making and use of maps. The introduction and spread of digital maps and mapping software, however, have added new wrinkles to the ever-evolving landscape of modern mapmaking. Fully updated for the digital age, this new edition of How to Lie with Maps examines the myriad ways that…
I’m a historian of early modern Europe. I have a particular interest in the history of violence and social relations and how and why ordinary people came into conflict with each other and how they made peace, that’s the subject of my most recent book Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe, which compares the entanglement of everyday animosities and how these were resolved in Italy, Germany, France and England. I’m also passionate about understanding Europe’s contribution to world history. As editor of The Cambridge World History of Violence, I explored the dark side of this. But my next book, The Invention of Civil Society, will demonstrate Europe’s more positive achievements.
I love this book because it’s a story about ordinary people. But it’s a true story.
It reads like a fairytale: a peasant, Arnaud du Tilh, is accused of impersonating another man who had abandoned his wife several years before. Arnaud seems to have outwitted the judges until the errant husband returns condemning the impostor to death.
I like this story because it helps to identify with men and women in the past, who in many respects, are just like us. It’s also a piece of great history reconstructed from original trial records. Davis is a great writer.
The clever peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse when, on a summer's day in 1560, a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the continent. Told and retold over the centuries, the story of Martin Guerre became a legend, still remembered in the Pyrenean village where the impostor was executed more than 400 years ago.
Now a noted historian, who served as consultant for a new French…
I’ve become a bit of a Hamlet geek in my adult years, including having a framed poster in my house that features the entire text. The passion, for me, comes from the depth and complexity of the story. It sounds like hyperbole, but there really is always something new to discover. Some years ago, I taught Hamlet in a college writing class. That experience really allowed me to dive into the text and much of the attendant criticism. The academic approach opened up whole new worlds of opinions and perspectives for which I’m very grateful.
I know, I know—the same author. But wait–there’s more! Same protagonist, too! Lear’s Fool Pocket is back in this hilarious revenge sequel that features not only characters and plot from The Merchant of Venice but also Othello. (There’s also a sizeable nod to a Poe story with which I’m not familiar.) The craft of piecing this all together and making it work as a funny, engaging tale is impressive, to say the least.
Moore is a different, escapist type of read for me, and his embracing of Shakespeare in multiple books keeps me curious. Some feel this book has too much going on at the cost of depth, but I didn’t mind riding closer to the surface on this one.
New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore channels William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe in The Serpent of Venice, a satiric Venetian gothic that brings back the Pocket of Dog Snogging, the eponymous hero of Fool, along with his sidekick, Drool, and pet monkey, Jeff. Venice, a long time ago. Three prominent Venetians await their most loathsome and foul dinner guest, the erstwhile envoy of Britain and France, and widower of the murdered Queen Cordelia: the rascal Fool Pocket. This trio of cunning plotters-the merchant, Antonio; the senator, Montressor Brabantio; and the naval officer, Iago-have lured Pocket to a dark…
I am an economist who came to realize that the marketplace of ideas was a political doctrine, and not an empirical description of how we came to know what we think we know. Science has never functioned in the same manner across centuries; it was only during my lifetime that it became recast as a subset of market reality. I have spent a fair amount of effort exploring how economics sought to attain the status of a science; but now the tables have turned. It is now scientists who are trained to become first and foremost market actors, finally elevating the political dominance of the economists.
If Oreskes & Conway documented the historical trend, Michaels shows what the daily battle over the implications of science for governance is like from within. As former Assistant Secretary for Labor for OSHA, he recounts the never-ending combat over how science is generated and interpreted when it comes to the safety and comprehension of the American public. From dark money to hired guns to compromised scientists, he puts names and faces to the war on science, with truth as the first casualty.
America is a country of everyday crises - big, long-spanning problems that persist, mostly unregulated, despite their toll on the country's health and vitality. And for every case of government inaction on one of these issues, there is a set of familiar, doubtful refrains: The science is unclear. The data is inconclusive. Regulation is unjustified. It's a slippery slope.
Is it?
The Triumph of Doubt traces the ascendance of science-for-hire in American life and government, from its origins in the tobacco industry in the 1950s to its current manifestations across government, public policy, and even…
As a licensed mental health professional, I once had a client claiming to be demonically possessed, and requested that I get an exorcist to drive the evil spirits out of her body. Instead, I utilized a therapeutic approach to challenge “irrational” beliefs. The problem was gone. I realized that people were prone to strange beliefs and started to read and listen to “experts” who were skeptical in nature. To my surprise, I saw Carl Sagan distinguishing astrology (pseudoscience) from astronomy (science). His talk was clear, convincing, and logical. I was hooked.
Instead of “writing” this book on each subject myself, chapters are written by the most noted experts in the field of the subject matter. Some of the topics include claims of astrology, psychic ability, alternative medicine, after-death communication, psychotherapy, and pseudoscience. Mostly, I’ve never seen people so excited to study critical thinking as when the subject matter involves the paranormal.
Pseudoscience and Deception is a compilation of some of the most eye-opening skeptical articles pertaining to extraordinary claims and pseudoscience. The articles explore paranormal, extraordinary, or fringe-science claims and reveal logical explanations or outline the deceptive tactics involved in convincing the vulnerable. Topics include claims of astrology, psychic ability, alternative medicine, after-death communication, psychotherapy, and pseudoscience. The contributors to this book are among the most accomplished critical thinkers, scientists, and educators in the world and tackle their respective topics from a rational, logical, and skeptical perspective. Most students are seldom excited to study "critical thinking"-with the exception of allegedly paranormal…
