Here are 97 books that Bellman & Black fans have personally recommended if you like
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For as long as I can remember I have been absolutely gripped by the stories that old clothes can tell. From visiting fashion museums as a child to collecting books on the subject, I was drawn to the shapes, the fabrics, and the tales. I can remember a curator once telling me that clothes are the closest we can get to people in the past. They are the ghostly outlines of our ancestors and that has stayed with me. We give so much away about ourselves through the clothes we choose to wear and so they really do matter.
Set in a mid-century department store, this wonderful short novel details life in a mid-20th-century frock department through the eyes of the women who worked there.
It is a book that highlights the importance of clothing in women’s lives at that time and the very specific kinds of garments. The tale follows Lisa as the news sales assistant in Cocktail Frocks and the friends she makes along the way. It is a sharply observed, funny, and tender story bringing the old department store alive.
For as long as I can remember I have been absolutely gripped by the stories that old clothes can tell. From visiting fashion museums as a child to collecting books on the subject, I was drawn to the shapes, the fabrics, and the tales. I can remember a curator once telling me that clothes are the closest we can get to people in the past. They are the ghostly outlines of our ancestors and that has stayed with me. We give so much away about ourselves through the clothes we choose to wear and so they really do matter.
I do love a novel with history and objects at the core and The Corset adds an extra layer of spine tingling to the mix as well.
Ruth is a poorly paid seamstress, awaiting trial for murder. She is visited by the well-to-do Dorothea who wants to hear her story. The object, the corset, lies at the heart of Ruth’s tale and every stitch that she made in the creation of high-end pieces for her mistress begins to carry a greater significance.
In a world of fast fashion I have become increasingly fascinated by the handmade, the art of the needle, and the skill of the maker and here it has a slightly sinister facet to it.
'Laura is a masterful writer, her deliciously gothic stories so skilfully woven that you can't get them out of your head even if you wanted to' Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars
'The Corset is a contender for my Book of the Year. Beautifully written, intricately plotted, a masterpiece' Sarah Hilary
Is prisoner Ruth Butterham mad or a murderer? Victim or villain?
Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor and awaiting trial for murder.
When Dorothea's charitable work leads her to Oakgate Prison, she finds herself drawn to Ruth, a teenage seamstress - and self-confessed…
For as long as I can remember I have been absolutely gripped by the stories that old clothes can tell. From visiting fashion museums as a child to collecting books on the subject, I was drawn to the shapes, the fabrics, and the tales. I can remember a curator once telling me that clothes are the closest we can get to people in the past. They are the ghostly outlines of our ancestors and that has stayed with me. We give so much away about ourselves through the clothes we choose to wear and so they really do matter.
I love the importance of objects that lies at the very centre of this book.
It is easy to write off the idea of fashion as superficial and unimportant but through the eyes of Mrs Harris and her ambitions to own a Dior dress from Paris, we can appreciate the beauty of a garment, the joy of its construction and the skill of its makers.
When cleaning lady Mrs. Harris sees a Dior dress hanging in the wardrobe of one of her clients, she dares to dream that she might one day own one. The quest takes her to Paris and to the atelier of Dior, with friendships emerging along the way.
For as long as I can remember I have been absolutely gripped by the stories that old clothes can tell. From visiting fashion museums as a child to collecting books on the subject, I was drawn to the shapes, the fabrics, and the tales. I can remember a curator once telling me that clothes are the closest we can get to people in the past. They are the ghostly outlines of our ancestors and that has stayed with me. We give so much away about ourselves through the clothes we choose to wear and so they really do matter.
I have long been fascinated by the stories of those people working behind the scenes of well-known historical events, the ordinary people whose tales are so often neglected.
I am an embroiderer and so found this novel about two young women in post-war London working for the famous couturier Norman Hartnell, very touching. Whilst a fictional account, the author undertook wonderful research to learn about the embroiderers who worked for Hartnell in the creation of Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding gown in 1947.
This is the story of two of them, told through fragments of fabric, something very close to my heart.
A Real Simple Best Historical Fiction novels of the year!
"The Gown is marvelous and moving, a vivid portrait of female self-reliance in a world racked by the cost of war."--Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network
From the internationally bestselling author of Somewhere in France comes an enthralling historical novel about one of the most famous wedding dresses of the twentieth century-Queen Elizabeth's wedding gown-and the fascinating women who made it.
"Millions will welcome this joyous event as a flash of color on the long road we have to travel."
I write as Robert J. Lloyd, but my friends call me Rob. Having studied Fine Art at a BA degree level (starting as a landscape painter but becoming a sculpture/photography/installation/performance generalist), I then moved to writing. During my MA degree in The History of Ideas, I happened to read Robert Hooke’s diary, detailing the life and experiments of this extraordinary and fascinating man. My MA thesis and my Hooke & Hunt series of historical thrillers are all about him. I’m fascinated by early science, which was the initial ‘pull’ into writing these stories, but the political background of the times (The Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis, for example) is just as enticing.
Actually, two novellas, it’s the first, "Morpho Eugenia," that’s always stayed in my mind. I loved how it handles discussions on such subjects as teleology, determinism/personal freedom, the nature of life after death, and so on, the post-On the Origin of the Species mindset.
I particularly like the ending, which, if you’re reasonably alert, you’ll work out well before our protagonist. I don’t think this is a weakness; observing the main character, Adamson (note the surname), flailing towards an inevitable ‘reveal’ is part of the book’s point, I think.
The prose imitates Victorian literature, very post-Modern, but don’t let that put you off. I found its style immersive, making me feel closer to the time.
In these two “astonishing” novellas (The New Yorker), the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession returns to the landscape of Victorian England, where science and spiritualism are popular manias, and domestic decorum coexists with brutality and perversion.
"At once quirky and deep, brimming with generosity, imagination, and intelligence." —The New Yorker
In Morpho Eugenia, an explorer realises that the behaviour of the people around him is alarmingly similar to that of the insects he studies. In The Conjugal Angel, curious individuals – some fictional, others drawn from history – gather to connect with the spirit world. Throughout both, Byatt examines the…
Since I was a child, Halloween and Christmas have held equally hallowed positions in my heart. When I learned of Krampus folklore in my teens, I was immediately fascinated. Krampus offered the best of both worlds—a dose of Halloween creepiness to counterbalance the bright jubilation of the winter holidays. Krampus Confidential, a middle-grade mystery, and adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, is my second children’s book that aims to introduce this magnificent creature to children in a way that doesn’t inspire nightmares. My first, Goodnight Krampus, is a board book for young readers that reimagines the monster as a rambunctious toddler who gives Santa a hard time by refusing to go to sleep on Christmas Eve.
Though the stories in this collection aren’t likely to scare you silly, they will almost certainly give you the creeps. The Victorians loved spending their cold, dark winter evenings with eerie tales of the unsettling, the uncanny, and the unholy. And who could blame them? The 13 tales collected here are diverse in content and tone, but they all offer an ideal candlelit escape when the days grow dark and the cold wind wails.
The first-ever collection of Victorian Christmas ghost stories, culled from rare 19th-century periodicals
During the Victorian era, it became traditional for publishers of newspapers and magazines to print ghost stories during the Christmas season for chilling winter reading by the fireside or candlelight. Now for the first time thirteen of these tales are collected here, including a wide range of stories from a diverse group of authors, some well-known, others anonymous or forgotten. Readers whose only previous experience with Victorian Christmas ghost stories has been Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” will be surprised and delighted at the astonishing variety of…
I've always been a fan of ghost stories. As a kid, I loved horror movies and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and H. P. Lovecraft; later on, I discovered movies like The Innocents (based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw) and The Haunting (adapted from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House). As a ghost historian and editor, I've discovered dozens of brilliant tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; these are stories that remain relevant, entertaining, and frightening.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) may not be known by most contemporary readers...and that's a shame because her stories often include pointed observations about human nature that remain as relevant today as they were when first published. This wonderful collection, part of the superb British Library Tales of the Weird series, begins with an eerie and tragic ghost story, "The Cold Embrace," and ends with the lengthy "Good Lady Ducayne," which is often classified as an early vampire tale.
A young girl whose love for her fiance continues even after her death; a sinister old lady with claw-like hands who cares little for the qualities of her companions provided they are young and full of life; and a haunted mirror that foretells of approaching death for those who gaze into its depths. These are just some of the haunting tales gathered together in this macabre collection of short stories. Reissued in the Tales of the Weird series and introduced by British Library curator Greg Buzwell, The Face in the Glass is the first selection of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's supernatural…
I’ve loved Gothic fiction since I was a teen, though back then, I didn’t know it was Gothic. I just liked the creepiness, the often-isolated heroine, and the things-aren’t-what-they-seem murkiness of the stories. One of my first reads was Jane Eyre, which has remained a favorite. Though I didn’t like history in school (too much memorization!), I read several historical fiction books from different eras that fascinated me. These things, combined with another genre favorite—mystery/thriller, led to my first book. It turns out that all those things I’d gravitated to in my decades of reading became the things I most wanted to write about - mystery/thriller historical fiction with elements of Gothic.
When I first read the back of this book I thought, "How frightening can wooden, life-sized figures tucked away in a remote mansion be?" Answer: A lot.
When the book opens, Elsie Bainbridge’s husband has died (mysteriously). When she discovers the strange totems the servants are terrified of locked away in the attic, something is definitely…not right. Once the figures’ eyes appear to move and Elsie finds them in different places in the house as if they move of their own accord, her piece of mine starts to unravel. And so did mine.
"[An] extraordinary, memorable and truly haunting book." -Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Laura Purcell's THE SHAPE OF DARKNESS is now out from Penguin!
Some doors are locked for a reason.
When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. But pregnant and widowed just weeks after their wedding, with her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has only her late husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. Inside her new home lies a locked door, beyond which is a painted wooden figure-a…
I’ve written and published one hundred very short ghost stories, plus a handful of longer ones, and have spent a lifetime reading and watching and thinking about stories of ghosts and the afterlife. My expertise, such as it is, involves ghosts as beings of narrative and metaphor. I’ve encountered great numbers of them on the page and on the screen—nowhere else—but I confess that I would love someday (though don’t expect) to encounter them in the flesh. My flesh, that is to say; their fleshlessness.
One of the most inventive novels of recent years, Leanne Shapton’s Guestbook uses prose, photographs, and illustrations to find thirty-three ways of approaching the ghost story. The book moves swiftly and exhilaratingly through its pages, which are knit together by a sense of what it means for spirits to fasten themselves unexpectedly to people and what it means for people to feel haunted. Recommended if you like your ghosts both abundantly imagined and abundantly pictured.
'Shapton has created a mystical territory - a performance, an exhibition, a guestbook - in which I felt the ghost within myself; the thing that will outlive me. A fearless and exquisite book' Miranda July
Guestbook explores the glimmering, unsettling things that haunt us in the midst of life, combining stories, vignettes and an evocative curiosity cabinet of artifacts and images - found photographs, original paintings, Instagram-style portraits - to transform the traditional ghost story into something else entirely.
'Leanne Shapton has a way of making books entirely new, surreal, and uncanny ... Guestbook contains ghost stories for a world…
Born in Poland, I have fond memories of sitting on my Grandma’s lap listening to stories and poems. A favorite poem was about a crow who ate Swiss cheese and only left the holes. The concept made my noggin spin and spurred my imagination. When I immigrated to the U.S. at age seven, I learned English by reading a Mother Goose collection. Captivated by the fun rhyming sounds and art, I dreamed of making children’s books someday. Years later, my dream came true, I became an author/illustrator, with the majority of my books being extensions of the nursery rhymes which inspired me when I was a child.
This book features the cutest little ghost, who goes out to frighten someone with her Boo. But, unfortunately, she loses her Boo. Boohoo, what will she do? There are plenty of “oo” sounds in the verses, which could help early readers. The surprise ending engages the reader as well. It’s a very sweet story with lovely illustrations and is not at all scary, Little ones are sure to giggle and participate in making the numerous “oo” sounds.
'I've lost my boo! I've lost my boo!Where has it gone? What will I do?'Little Ghost has lost her boo, but she is determined to get it back, so she heads out to look for it. On her night-time hunt she meets a number of her friends, Owl, Pigeon, Rooster and Cow, and asks each of them if they've heard her boo. None of them have but they are all very kind and offer Little Ghost their own sound instead. But none are as good as her own scary boo so she keeps on looking. In the end, it's the…