Here are 100 books that Before the Fact fans have personally recommended if you like
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As someone who’s had a lifelong interest in psychology, especially abnormal psychology, I’ve always been fascinated the small destructions some people inflict on others – sometimes even on themselves. For me the greatest crime is not to kill someone but to reduce them by making their life uncomfortable or unwelcome. The ability to do this is what I would call a “negative skill.” It’s not easy, but some people do it uncannily well, and without caring. Perhaps because this is so alien to me, I remain riveted by stories that portray it, and some cases attempt to explain it. These are a few of those stories.
Vera and Eden are devoted sisters. One of them has an illegitimate baby.
The book is allegedly devoted to telling the story of how Vera came to kill Eden, but in telling this story it also attempts to determine which one of them is the baby’s mother.
In doing both of these, however, it also details the ways in which people, even people who seem to be devoted to each other, can make each other’s lives miserable, and can choose to make their own lives miserable.
Vine (aka. Ruth Rendell) is, of course the mistress of psychological suspense, and for me this is the best book she ever wrote.
"Dazzling...writing at her formidable best, Barbara Vine taps the poetry as well as the pain of her characters' clamorous declarations of their need for love." -New York Times Book Review
"When the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world launched a second byline, she actually stepped up her writing a level." -TIME
Faith Severn has grown up with the dark cloud of murder looming over her family. Her aunt Vera Hillyard, a rigidly respectable woman, was convicted and hanged for the crime, but the reason for her desperate deed died with her. Thirty years later, a probing journalist pushes Faith…
As someone who’s had a lifelong interest in psychology, especially abnormal psychology, I’ve always been fascinated the small destructions some people inflict on others – sometimes even on themselves. For me the greatest crime is not to kill someone but to reduce them by making their life uncomfortable or unwelcome. The ability to do this is what I would call a “negative skill.” It’s not easy, but some people do it uncannily well, and without caring. Perhaps because this is so alien to me, I remain riveted by stories that portray it, and some cases attempt to explain it. These are a few of those stories.
It’s criminal that Celia Dale’s books are almost all out of print.
Dale dwells in the world of people you wouldn’t look at twice – nice old ladies, sympathetic homemakers, slightly out-of-date romeos – who practice a kind of cruelty that isn’t necessarily obvious to the outside world, but that is nonetheless terrible.
Helping Hand deals with a couple who hurry old ladies to their deaths by means of kindness that’s actually cruel, and a young relative of one of those old ladies, who is herself grotesquely self-centered and uncaring.
Fortunately, the book is saved by the presence of a decent young Italian woman, who provides hope in a black world.
In the past months Mrs Fingal’s legs had grown very weak. She could move from the bed to the chair only if she held on to the furniture. ‘Be careful, dear,’ Mrs Evans would say, beating up the pillows and clearing away all the oddments hidden under them, ‘you don’t want to fall and break your leg.’
This is a tale of ruthless greed, exploitation and suffocating, skin-crawling terror.
Middle-aged Josh and Maisie Evans lead a seemingly unremarkable life. When their elderly lodger Flo dies and leaves them her Estate, they head to Italy on holiday, to take in the…
As someone who’s had a lifelong interest in psychology, especially abnormal psychology, I’ve always been fascinated the small destructions some people inflict on others – sometimes even on themselves. For me the greatest crime is not to kill someone but to reduce them by making their life uncomfortable or unwelcome. The ability to do this is what I would call a “negative skill.” It’s not easy, but some people do it uncannily well, and without caring. Perhaps because this is so alien to me, I remain riveted by stories that portray it, and some cases attempt to explain it. These are a few of those stories.
Pressburger is better known as half of the film duo Powell and Pressburger, but The Glass Pearls shows he missed a career when he went into film.
Karl Braun, the protagonist of this book, is an escaped Nazi living in London some years after the end of World War II. He attempts to have a life, but lives in constant fear of being found and rounded up (yes, the book is aware of this irony).
The “quiet cruelty” comes from the fact that, like it or not, Pressburger’s wonderful ability at portraying Braun’s interior and his fear make the reader invest in him.
You end the novel troubled to discover that you have sympathized with – even wished for the escape of – a Nazi.
For fans of The Passenger, this thrilling tale of an ex-Nazi surgeon hiding in plain sight in 1960s London by the celebrated filmmaker is a lost noir gem, introduced by Anthony Quinn and narrated on audio by Mark Gatiss.
'Stunning: incredibly good, tense and compelling and morally complex.' Ian Rankin 'This extraordinary novel had me hooked from start to finish.' Sarah Waters 'An outstanding novel: gripping, tense and darkly unsettling. ' Jonathan Freedland 'A wonderfully compelling noir thriller and audacious and challenging act of imagination.' William Boyd
Nothing is more inviting to disclose your secrets than to be told by…
I live in New York City, where I write thrillers about diamonds. My interest began when news broke of a diamond discovery in the Canadian Arctic. A reporter looking for a story, I climbed on a plane the next day. The discovery made Canada the world’s third largest diamond miner—one of the stories told in my non-fiction book, Diamond: the History of a Cold-Blooded Love Affair. I went on to write about diamonds for many publications, including Vanity Fair and the London Times, until finally, seduced by the glitter of the possibilities, I turned to fiction. The Russian Pink appeared in November 2020. The next in the series, Ice Angel, comes out in September.
This is another great diamond yarn where the movie by Alfred Hitchcock is better known than the book. A series of high-end robberies is plaguing the French Riviera. Police suspect that retired jewel thief John “The Cat” Robie may not be as retired as he claims. They come to arrest him. Robie escapes. To prove his innocence, he persuades an insurance broker to give him a list of the wealthiest diamond owners on the Cote d’Azur, so he can intercept and apprehend the new “Cat” committing the robberies, and thus clear his name. On the list is a wealthy American, with whose daughter, played by Grace Kelly, Robie develops a romance. The plot plays out in the ravishing landscape, but the real message is the diamond industry’s favorite—that owning diamonds makes you part of a glamorous world.
TO CATCH A THIEF is David Dodge's most famous novel, and rightly so. Alfred Hitchcock firmly cinched its place in the annals of crime fiction by adapting it into an Academy Award winning film starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. The story centers on John Robie, American expatriate and skilled gymnast, who once-upon-a-time was Le Chat, the famous and elusive cat burglar who worked the South of France. The legend of Le Chat grew with each crime. Following the war, Robie retires to a quiet life in France and vows to leave his past behind. His retirement is shattered when…
I’ve always had a passion for cinema, especially gritty British
productions of the 1940s and 50s. The voices of Kathleen Harrison,
Robert Beatty, Kenneth More, Dirk Bogarde, Jack Warner, and Susan Shaw
can be heard nightly radiating from my TV. I’m also a huge fan of radio,
in particular classic BBC shows. As a biographer, I’m known for shining
a light on personalities of yesteryear – those we might recognize by
name and face but know little about. My recent books include
biographies on Erich Honecker (OK, he wasn’t a movie star), Jack Hawkins,
and David Tomlinson (they were).
Recently, during a visit to Filmstaden studios near Stockholm (yes, where Ingrid and Ingmar Bergman worked) I was given a copy of this book. It is, without a doubt, the definitive biography of Hitchcock, with a thrilling opening on his life in Britain and formative years.
A fresh and definitive portrait of the Master of Suspense by acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan Full of fresh revelations, dark humour and cliff hanging suspense, this new biography of Alfred Hitchcock follows his life from its humble beginnings, as the son of an East End greengrocer, through an extraordinary career in which his films set new standards for cinematic invention, to his death as a Hollywood legend in Beverley Hills. * Gives a uniquely comprehensive and balanced view of Hitchcock's life, uncovering details not just of his work but also his personal life, and with an insight into how they…
I am the author of the cozy mystery series Samantha Davies Mysteries. Before beginning to write my series, I read hundreds of cozies and loved each one, especially those featuring a small-town setting, an amateur sleuth, and a dog. Since I live in a small upstate New York town, am married to a retired state trooper, and am the mom to a lovable dachshund, what better than to feature all this in a cozy mystery series. So, the Samantha Davies Mystery series was born.
“It’s game on when the longtime organizer of the annual Game Supper is murdered right in front of the diners. Readers who enjoy mysteries set in colorful rural settings will love Game Over at Guild Hall.” —Sue Ann Jaffarian, author of the Odelia Grey and Ghost of Granny Apples mysteries
In rural Vermont, where hunting and trapping are a way of life, nothing is bigger than the annual wild game supper at Guild Hall. Stella can’t wait to sample the exotic dishes prepared by her neighbors, but when the longtime organizer of the supper falls dead, a victim of poisoning,…
Riley Masterson has moved to Greenbrier, SC, anxious to escape the chaos that has overwhelmed her life.
Questioned in a murder in Alabama, she has spent eighteen months under suspicion by a sheriff’s office, unable to make an arrest. But things in gentrifying Greenbrier are not as they seem. As…
Born and raised in Los Angeles, I’ve been obsessed with the romance and “bygone world” of Manhattan in the 40s and 50s since I was a kid. Working in bookstores through high school and college, I quickly gravitated towards The New Yorker magazine which introduced me to John Cheever, Irwin Shaw, and many wonderful authors. Whether it was books or magazines, I couldn’t imagine a more interesting career than working in the New York publishing world - until I went there for job interviews and heard how little they paid. Back in Los Angeles, I figured out how to join from afar without having to live with six roommates on the Lower East Side.
I’m not going to lie: this is not for everyone. You really have to be interested - and conversant - in the cultural world of post-war Manhattan (and beyond) for this to sink in. Lerman, who was features editor at Vogue and editor at Vanity Fair among other jobs, was at the center of it all. I could name drop from the book for days, but trust me, everyone from Marlene Dietrich to William Faulkner were regular guests at his parties. More importantly, his position allowed him to champion the careers of artists in every field - writers, singers, painters, etc. An astute social critic, the book offers a dazzling look at a very specific time and place in American culture. Surprisingly, I found that passages regarding his adolescence to be among the most lyrical and moving.
A remarkable life and a remarkable voice emerge from the journals, letters, and memoirs of Leo Lerman: writer, critic, editor at Condé Nast, and man about town at the center of New York’s artistic and social circles from the 1940s until his death in 1994.
Lerman’s contributions to the world of the arts were large and varied: he wrote on theater, dance, music, art, books, and movies for publications as diverse as Mademoiselle and The New York Times. He was features editor at Vogue and editor in chief of Vanity Fair. He launched careers and trends, exposing the American public…
I am professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. Although I’ve written more than twenty books on a variety of subjects, I was trained as an architect and I’ve designed and built houses, researched low cost housing, and taught budding architects for four decades. I was architecture critic for Wigwag and Slate and I’ve written for numerous national magazines and newspapers. Perhaps more important, my wife and I built our own house, mixing concrete, sawing wood, and hammering nails. I wrote a book about that, too.
Kidder’s book is non-fiction, but Eric Hodgins’s 1946 architectural account, although influenced by his own experience of building a house, is fictional; the novel was later made into a hit movie starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. It’s a very funny story that exaggerates—but only slightly—the travails faced by anyone undertaking this challenging task. Weathering the challenge, as Mr. Blandings discovers, requires fortitude, patience, and yes, a sense of humor.
The classic tale of leaving the city and building a house in the country, only to find country life isn't so simple. But it is hilarious. Mr. Blandings, a successful New York advertising executive, and his wife want to escape the confines of their tiny midtown apartment. They design the perfect home in the idyllic country, but soon they are beset by construction troubles, temperamental workmen, skyrocketing bills, threatening lawyers, and difficult neighbors. Mr. Blandings' dream house soon threatens to be the nightmare that undoes him. This internationally bestselling book by Eric Hodgins is illustrated by William Steig and was…
I’ve always loved movies. In my 20s, I went to film school – perhaps you can still find a couple of the short films I wrote with animator Matthew Hood on Vimeo (Hourglass and Metalstasis) – and I worked a little in the UK film industry reading scripts for Film4, among others. I’ve also interviewed filmmakers, including Nicolas Winding Refn, Christopher Hampton, Life of Brian producer John Goldstone and editor Anne V. Coates. And I’ve always found a romance, despite the seedy aspects, of Tinseltown being developed out in Hollywoodland, a place of orange groves and pepper trees where people from the Midwest went to retire in the sun.
Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard… Billy Wilder is my favourite filmmaker. I like the elegance of his storytelling and his bittersweet wit. In Wilder’s final years, Cameron Crowe conducted a series of interviews with the writer-director. From fleeing Nazi Germany to his admiration for Ernest Lubitsch, from the trials of working with Marilyn Monroe or Raymond Chandler to the joys of collaborating with Barbara Stanwyck, Jack Lemmon, and Charles Laughton, from his successes to his failures and on to the secret of what makes a good writing partner, Wilder needs little prodding to tell movie-making tales from Berlin to Paris to Hollywood.
In Conversations with Wilder, Hollywood's legendary and famously elusive director Billy Wilder agrees for the first time to talk extensively about his life and work.
Here, in an extraordinary book with more than 650 black-and-white photographs -- including film posters, stills, grabs, and never-before-seen pictures from Wilder's own collection -- the ninety-three-year-old icon talks to Cameron Crowe, one of today's best-known writer-directors, about thirty years at the very heart of Hollywood, and about screenwriting and camera work, set design and stars, his peers and their movies, the studio system and films today. In his distinct voice we hear Wilder's inside…
Willem and Jurriaan have a miserable childhood thanks to their cruel, controlling mother—Louisa Veldkamp, a world-renowned pianist. Dad turns a blind eye. One day, Louisa vanishes without a trace during a family vacation.
Adoptee Anneliese Bakker survives a toxic childhood and leaves home, vowing never to return. While searching for…
I'm a journalist and a historian who writes about how American evangelicals are complicated. I was trying to explain Left Behind in graduate school and I talked and talked about the theology in the book—all about the doctrines of the rapture, the antichrist, and the millennium. Then my professor said, “But it’s fiction, right? Why is it fiction? What are people doing when they read a novel instead, of say, a theological treatise?” I had no idea. But it seemed like a good question. That was the spark of Reading Evangelicals. But first, I had to read everything I could find about how readers read and what happens when they do.
I’m cheating a little here, but I made the rules and there’s a little clause in the rules I made that says I can break them as long as I announce that I am breaking them. Herewith, I announce.
This isn’t a book about readers. It’s a book about watchers—specifically the Dutch audience for the soap opera Dallas. But this book is so good and so wild, it changed forever the way I think about “reception,” including reading. I recommend this book all the time and if you want to understand the freedom and creativity of readers, you have to read it.
Dallas, one of the great internationally-screened soap operas, offers us first and foremost entertainment. But what is it about Dallas that makes that entertainment so successful, and how exactly is its entertainment constructed?
