Here are 100 books that Beautiful Bad fans have personally recommended if you like
Beautiful Bad.
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I adore crime fiction, especially mysteries. They make sense. In the real world, crime rarely has the resolution of fiction, and almost never has Belgian detectives with very neat moustaches, or old ladies solving a who-dunnit… I grew up reading these books, mentally inhaling everything from Christie to Rankin to McDermid, and now I spend my days writing brutal but quite silly murders solved by a woman who would really rather wear an old grey fleece and jeans than a sparkly dress, and her friends, the fictional TRASH drag family. Murder mysteries are fun – perfect escapism. In a world so messed up as ours is right now, don’t we need to escape into fiction?
I hate this book for all the reasons I love it: because it’s perfect.
It’s a perfect crime novel and a perfect mystery, with perfectly awful characters, set in a perfectly fabulous situation, and as a mystery writer I know I will never ever top Christie’s brilliance – but oh my, any chance I have, I fall into this story.
Romance. Deception. Murder. Shiny things.
Genius.
Forget the movie, pick up the real thing. Poirot at his best.
THE MOST WIDELY READ MYSTERY OF ALL TIME—NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY KENNETH BRANAGH AND PRODUCED BY RIDLEY SCOTT!
“The murderer is with us—on the train now . . .”
Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Without a shred of doubt, one of his fellow passengers is the murderer.
Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man’s…
Growing up in the South as the daughter of a single mother, I’ve always appreciated strong women, in reality and in fiction. Before I could read, I made up stories featuring me as the super heroine. Later, I devoured all the Nancy Drews I could get my hands on. I credit Ms. Drew for nurturing my fascination with mystery. I especially enjoy suspense with a psychological turn that frequently takes the form of gaslighting or manipulating someone into doubting their perception of reality. As an author of Southern suspense with heart and humor, my female characters fall victim to this device but are strong enough to persevere.
I was immediately pulled into a world of deception, greed, and murder.
Despite being traumatized, the main character stays strong. Her description of the luxury cruise ship made me feel as if I were onboard, too. The dark twists and turns throughout this novel, along with the gaslighting of the protagonist, were intense enough that I couldn’t stop reading.
Like the heroine in the story, I was determined to unravel the truth and decide who could be trusted and who might be a cold-blooded killer. For me, this wild ride was exhilarating. But it could be a few years before I consider booking my own cruise.
I worked as long-haul cabin crew for many years and I love travelling. I’ve really missed being able to travel (as many have too) and I dream of the places I’ll be able to visit again soon. The Ex-Husband was the book I wrote in lockdown so I loved being able to ‘escape’ to the sunny Caribbean. I had fond memories of a trip to Barbados, so the book is mostly set there. I also travelled a lot as a child and one of my first memories is of being on a plane.
InHe Started Ita group of siblings embarks on a road trip from hell in a warped trek down memory lane. The thought of being trapped in a car with unlikeable people or with those keeping dark secrets feels claustrophobic and full of tension. To me, travelling is supposed to be fun or an adventure. Not in this case! I raced through this tightly plotted thriller, unable to put it down.
SOMEONE ALWAYS TAKES THINGS TOO FAR . . . The gripping Sunday Times bestselling psychological thriller from the No. 1 bestselling author of My Lovely Wife
'So addictive it should come with a warning' Alice Feeney ________
No-one knows you better than your family.
They know the little things that make you smile.
They know your darkest secrets.
Sure, you haven't always been best friends. But if it seemed as though someone was after you, that you might be in danger, then you'd be on each other's side . . .
I’ve been drawn to islands ever since I was a child spending summer holidays ferry-hopping around the Inner Hebrides in Scotland. In 2017 I was lucky enough to be able to live for several months in a remote settlement called Cliff on the Atlantic coast of the Outer Hebrides. It was such a life-changing experience: the isolation, storms, abandoned villages, standing stones, and shipwreck memorials; the beauty and wonder and peace, but also the fear, how vulnerable living somewhere like that can make you feel. How vulnerable you are. My latest novel, The Blackhouse, is a gothic thriller inspired by all the wonderful and eerie islands that I have ever known or read about!
This island is a beautiful paradise that quickly becomes sinister when the surviving victims of a plane crash have to survive each other. It’s a thriller with shades of Lord of the Flies, and it has a dual narrative which I love and often use in my own stories. It also explores the ever-changing bond between sisters, something that again I personally find endlessly fascinating and wrote about in my first novel. The Castawaysis an incredibly propulsive read as you try to find out the truth – an island thriller in its truest sense.
Don't miss One of the Girls, the scorching new thriller from Lucy Clarke, available to pre-order now
*A Waterstones Thriller of the Month selection & the Sunday Times bestseller*
A SECRET BEACH.
A HOLIDAY OF A LIFETIME.
WISH YOU WERE HERE?
THINK AGAIN...
'We're tipping it as one of 2021's best reads' Marie Claire 'Totally addictive, clever and atmospheric' Erin Kelly 'Tense, unnerving and emotional' C. L. Taylor 'Packed full of intrigue' Heidi Perks
You wake on a beautiful, remote island.
Sparkling blue seas, golden sunsets, barely a footprint in the sand.
I'm professor in the Department of Eastern Christian Studies at University College Stockholm and president of The Institute for the Study of Culture and Christianity. I focus primarily on human freedom and creativity, which I explore as aesthetic, socio-political, and existentially relevant phenomena. I've been teaching and publishing in the domains of visual arts, art history and theory, but also in religion/theology and political philosophy.
Well, there’s an obvious reason, I was born in Travnik, a small town in the very heart of Bosnia and Hercegovina. Despite being a small place, it is immensely important—especially if you ask people who were born and raised there ☺
This book is a novel by one of the greatest European writers of the mid-twentieth century, Ivo Andrić, and it is one (of two) of his best novels. Apart from being written in a beautiful and unique (“Andrić’s”) style, it is also one of the best resources for understanding the cultural, social, and religious dynamic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not only during the Ottoman times. If one wishes to get an insight into the culture and “mentality” of the people who traditionally inhabited the region, Chronicles of Travnik (often, curiously enough, translated into English as Bosnian Chronicle) can serve better than most sociological studies. It’s better, of course,…
For as long as anyone can remember, the little cafe known as 'Lutvo's' has stood at the far end of the Travnik bazaar.
In the remote town of Travnik, the newly appointed French consul soon finds himself intriguing against his Austrian rival, whilst dealing with a colourful cast of Bosnian notables, Orthodox priests, Jewish merchanges and Muslim farmers.
I write in my spare time, drawing inspiration from my frequent trips to Italy, dating back to my childhood summers. I am an indie writer of noir crime fiction with an interest in uncomfortable moments, especially those created by the main characters themselves. My list journeys across a vast array of genres, but they all have that tone of something happening in the shadows or underlying truths working to achieve an outcome or fight against adversity. I like unspoken dialogue and self-made conflicts, which are both elements included in all the stories I mention in this list.
I am a fan of crime noir, and this story is one of the formats that I really appreciate–an investigation by a non-professional. Someone who can do the research and ask the questions behind the scenes without being noticed. He works within the shadows of law enforcement, getting information from both sides of the law. His curiosity leads him to intrigue.
I appreciated the man’s conflict within himself as he got closer to the danger and the temptations presented to him. All while he continues to work underneath the surface to solve a mystery he eventually becomes obsessed with himself.
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • The classic story of an ordinary man seemingly out of his depth, this is Ambler's most widely acclaimed novel, "one of the masterpieces of the genre" (The New York Times Book Review).
A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel leads Charles Latimer, the author of a handful of successful mysteries, into a world of sinister political and criminal maneuvers. At first merely curious to reconstruct the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, Latimer soon finds himself caught up…
I'm professor in the Department of Eastern Christian Studies at University College Stockholm and president of The Institute for the Study of Culture and Christianity. I focus primarily on human freedom and creativity, which I explore as aesthetic, socio-political, and existentially relevant phenomena. I've been teaching and publishing in the domains of visual arts, art history and theory, but also in religion/theology and political philosophy.
This book was written by one of the most interesting figures in the history of communist Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas. He had been a high-level official and a close collaborator of Josip Broz Tito, the leader of Yugoslav partisans (who would become marshal and president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), before he became best known Yugoslav dissident.
In this book Đilas gives a first-hand testimony of his meetings with Joseph Stalin, as a member of Yugoslav delegations sent to Moscow. Beautifully written, the book provides a rich insight into the political situation in the Balkans and in Stalin’s Soviet Union during some of the most turbulent times of modern European history. In a unique way, Đilas manages to combine personal accounts with critical perspectives on ideologies and political events that were in many ways decisive for Yugoslavia in the period to come.
A mesmerising, chilling close-up portrayal of Stalin from Milovan Djilas, a Communist insider - with an introduction from Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag and Iron Curtain
This extraordinarily vivid and unnerving book three meetings held with Stalin during and after the Second World War. Djilas brilliantly describes the dictator in his lair - cunning, cruel, enormously talented. Few books give as clear a sense of what made Stalin such a compelling figure and how he was able to hypnotise and terrify those around him. Djilas also describes the key members of Stalin's court: Beria, Malenkov, Zhukov, Molotov and Khruschchev. The…
I'm professor in the Department of Eastern Christian Studies at University College Stockholm and president of The Institute for the Study of Culture and Christianity. I focus primarily on human freedom and creativity, which I explore as aesthetic, socio-political, and existentially relevant phenomena. I've been teaching and publishing in the domains of visual arts, art history and theory, but also in religion/theology and political philosophy.
This is an extraordinary book that gives a broad understanding of the Balkan region in its cultural and historical contexts. The book explores the concept of the Balkans and its changing meaning which far surpasses its geographical connotations, becoming some kind of a concept-container capable of containing all sorts of fantasies and political aspirations. The book does an excellent job of depicting how various imperialisms managed to determine, to a very significant extent, the fate of peoples in the Balkans, while creating a certain image of the region whose significance extends far beyond its physical boundaries.
"If the Balkans hadn't existed, they would have been invented" was the verdict of Count Hermann Keyserling in his famous 1928 publication, Europe. Over ten years ago, Maria Todorova traced the relationship between the reality and the invention. Based on a rich selection of travelogues, diplomatic accounts, academic surveys, journalism, and belles-lettres in many languages, Imagining the Balkans explored the ontology of the Balkans from the sixteenth century to the present day, uncovering the ways in which an insidious intellectual tradition was constructed, became mythologized, and is still being transmitted as discourse.
I'm professor in the Department of Eastern Christian Studies at University College Stockholm and president of The Institute for the Study of Culture and Christianity. I focus primarily on human freedom and creativity, which I explore as aesthetic, socio-political, and existentially relevant phenomena. I've been teaching and publishing in the domains of visual arts, art history and theory, but also in religion/theology and political philosophy.
The book challenges the well-established and dominant narratives about the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s that have been promoted both in the mainstream media and in academic publications over the past decades. Written by a pre-eminent contemporary American political philosopher, Michael Parenti, the book in many ways compliments Noam Chomsky’s perspectives on the region and the broader imperial policies toward it.
Drawing on a wide range of unpublished material and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999, Michael Parenti challenges mainstream media coverage of the war and uncovers hidden agendas behind the Western talk of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and democracy.
When I published Orphan, Agent, Prima, Pawn, in which Soviet-era psychological warfare plays a heavy role, I happily washed my hands of Russian intrigue and turned to more benign, pastoral inspirations – my life-long relationship with an idyllic cathedral town in Wiltshire, for example. Just days later, the world learned that a certain Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov shared my fondness for Salisbury’s “world-famous 123-metre spire,” the glories of which prompted their 72-hour visit from Moscow (and overlapped with the botched poisoning of a KGB defector living down the road). Since then, I find myself drawn to works that explore the interstices of morality, criminality, and great construction projects.
Another parable, another legend, another work of manual labour turned mystical. In this tale of a bridge-building gone wrong, Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare considers the harms and inevitabilities that come from spanning disparate cultures. This book features a human sacrifice at the altar of erection; it feels antique and yet timeless; it explores the boundaries of human endeavor. Notes the narrator, a silenced sceptic, “all great building works resemble crimes.” It is a recognisable concern from Kadare, an exile of Hoxha’s totalitarian regime.
In the Balkan Peninsula, history’s long-disputed bridge between Asia and Europe, the receding Byzantine empire has left behind a patchwork of warring peoples who fight over everything, from their pastures of sheep to the authorship of their countless legends.
One such gruesome tale declares that a castle under construction cannot be finished until a young mason’s bride has been walled up alive, one breast left exposed to suckle her growing infant even after her death. Myth becomes perverse reality when a mason is plastered into a bridge over a strategically important river, where his will not be the last human…
