Here are 100 books that Bluebeard fans have personally recommended if you like
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Right from an early age, I have always been interested in the fallibility of the human condition, being particularly conscious of my own faults. People who are too good to be true are of little interest, except that I want to know their faults or their secrets. I have found myself drawn to complex characters, those who have good and bad characteristics, and some of the novels and movies that I have enjoyed most feature such characters. In my career as a lawyer, I have met all kinds of people who have made bad decisions or suffered misfortune, and it has always been a pleasure trying to help them.
I have always loved the central premise of the book, that a human being might never age, and yet a portrait of him ages as the years go by.
I love the way that Wilde used elegant and lyrical prose, always boosted by a flamboyant irony, in describing the dissolute life of an aesthete while putting it in the context of a philosophical pursuit of beauty and art. Dorian Gray himself is a deeply flawed moral character, and that is key to the success of the novel.
'A triumph of execution ... one of the best narratives of the "double life" of a Victorian gentleman' Peter Ackroyd
Oscar Wilde's alluring novel of decadence and sin was a succes de scandale on publication. It follows Dorian Gray who, enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his depravity. This definitive edition includes a selection of…
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
At the beginning of this book, I recognized the ingredients that make up popular erotic novels. The main character, Edie, a Black woman and struggling artist, is beginning a relationship with an older, wealthy, successful white man in an open marriage. There’s a power imbalance. To a certain extent, this excites Edie, and in this way, the book fits neatly into the parameters of the genre.
However, the relationship becomes messy, and Edie’s life, both with and away from Eric, is fraught with bad decisions. Race, wealth, and gender intersect with sex in a complex and uncomfortable milieu. Through all of this, and with the guidance of Eric’s wife, Edie begins to make progressive, less destructive choices, and as she does, her art progresses.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
WINNER of the NBCC John Leonard Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020 A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The New York Times Book Review, O Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Shondaland, Boston Globe, and many more!
"So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or…
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
This posthumously published novel is the last offering from the punk rocker, poet, and writer Jim Carrol. Carrol was a friend of Patti Smith and Andy Warhol and a product of the New York City art scene in the 1970s and 1980s.
The central character is Billy, a successful painter with such deep artistic sensitivities that navigating small things like relationships, his health, and earning money is crushingly difficult. The book reads like an allegory as much novel as moving characters through action seems a secondary aim. In this way, it reminds me of Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist.
A moving, vividly rendered novel from the late author of The Basketball Diaries.
When poet, musician, and diarist Jim Carroll died in September 2009, he was putting the finishing touches on a potent work of fiction. The Petting Zoo tells the story of Billy Wolfram, an enigmatic thirty- eight-year-old artist who has become a hot star in the late-1980s New York art scene. As the novel opens, Billy, after viewing a show of Velázquez paintings, is so humbled and awed by their spiritual power that he suffers an emotional breakdown and withdraws to his Chelsea loft. In seclusion, Billy searches…
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
This fictionalized biography of Madame Tussaud is a wild blend of fact and fiction. Orphan Marie (Madame Tussaud) works as an apprentice to a physician, making wax models of body parts and organs. This progresses to full-body models and even a grisly hall of famous murderers displayed for ticket-paying patrons. As Marie’s skill grows, so does her renown. Soon, she becomes an art instructor to the princess on the eve of the French Revolution.
What makes this book great is that while it’s based on fact, it reads like a surreal fairy tale. The inclusion of Carey’s illustrations throughout is an added bonus in this art-centric story.
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2019
LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2019
LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2019
SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA CROWN AWARDS 2019
A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year, Little tells the extraordinary story of a singular, diminutive crumb of a servant girl turned entertainment mogul.
'A startlingly original novel' Times
Born in Alsace in 1761, the unsightly, diminutive Marie Grosholtz is quickly nicknamed 'Little'. Orphaned at the age of six, she finds employmet in Bern, Switzerland, under the charge of…
I'm passionate about nature, our impact on it and the people who best know how to be its companion – Indigenous peoples. I grew up on B.C.'s west coast, swimming with seals and otters. That inspires me to protect the land and to write and draw about it.
As the author/illustrator of over 70 books I've been lucky to be able to present my thoughts on many topics. I learned early on to do my research and work with rigorous editors. With P'eska, I relied on members of the community I wrote about. I know I'm speaking to young kids so honesty is paramount.
Going to the Vancouver Art Gallery when I was a kid I saw my first Emily Carr painting and it drew me in with its dark beauty.
This book brings to life the story of Emily Carr, a talented painter and (although the word wouldn't have been used then) ecologist. She passionately pursued her art in ways proper young ladies of the time just didn't do. She revered the First Nations people and their cultures. The gift was returned when she received her own honourary name, Klee Wyck (Laughing One) from the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people.
I love this book because of its honesty, it is about a person and a place, firmly rooted in a love of nature.
Shortlisted for the 2005-2006 Red Cedar Book Award, Nonfiction
Selected as Honour Book by the Children's Literature Roundtable Information Book of the Year
The brilliant artist Emily Carr lived at the edge. When she was born, in 1871, Victoria, British Columbia was a small, insular place. She was at the edge of a society that expected well-bred young ladies to marry. For years, she was at the edge of the world of artists she longed to join.
Emily Carr’s life was not an easy one. She struggled against a family that did not approve of her art and against poor…
The world opened to me in a safe space when I learned to read as a child, and by 6th grade I regularly hauled home stacks of books from the library and, inspired by Jo March, hoped to be an author. I put aside my dream of writing and pursued other career goals until my marriage to Mark Buehner. It was his career as an illustrator that opened a path for me to write, and together we have created many picture books, including the Snowmen at Night series. I’ve learned that stories are told with pictures as well as words, and beautiful picture books can be savored at any age.
Local to me, I’ve been familiar with the gorgeous poster and mural art of Greg Newbold. More recently he has teamed up with his wife Amy to create a series of picture books showcasing the styles of renowned artists. This first book takes snowmen and imagines what they would look like if painted by artists such as Van Gogh, Dali, Picasso, O’Keefe, and others. An excellent introduction to the painting styles of famous artists, with informative text to reinforce the idea that “not all artists paint the same.”
From that simple premise flows this delightful, whimsical, educational picture book that shows how the artist's imagination can summon magic from a prosaic subject. Greg Newbold's chameleon-like artistry shows us Roy Lichtenstein's snow hero saving the day, Georgia O'Keefe's snowman blooming in the desert, Claude Monet's snowmen among haystacks, Grant Wood's American Gothic snowman, Jackson Pollock's snowman in ten thousand splats, Salvador Dali's snowmen dripping like melty cheese, and snowmen as they might have been rendered by J. M. W. Turner, Gustav Klimt, Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Georges Seurat, Pablita Velarde, Piet Mondrian, Sonia Delaunay, Jacob Lawrence, and Vincent van…
I’m a creative director in Vermont with a few favorite things: laughter, standard poodles, and happy endings—in life and in fiction. Romance fiction abounds with young heroines and happy endings. But I prefer reading about mature women like myself, women who have experienced their share of disappointments yet face life’s challenges with courage and humor. I like the elements of both genres in one juicy book. After much-frustrated searching, I gave up and wrote the story I wanted to read. My wise, middle-aged heroine still has lots to learn about grief and joy, and learns many of those lessons with men—in bed.
Spending is about a divorced artist and mom. It starts with a middle-aged protagonist reluctantly giving a gallery talk. She complains that male artists often have muses to do their laundry and supply sex, thereby providing practical and “therapeutic” support. A man in the audience stands up and offers to be the artist’s muse. The story is about what happens when this stubbornly independent woman takes him up on it. I totally related to the crusty heroine who has fought for everything she has and distrusts fortune when it offers abundant gifts.
Monica Szabo, a middle-aged, moderately successful painter, encounters B, a wealthy commodities broker who collects her work. B volunteers to be her muse, offering her everything that male artists have always had to produce great art: time, space, money, and sex. Passionate, provocative, and highly engaging, Spending displays Gordon's maverick feminism, her extraordinary wit, and her unique perspectives on art, money, men, sex -- and the desires of women.
I have been an avid reader from an early age and painting has been my life's work since attending art school from the age of sixteen. Having painted the largest mural in a private house in the 20th century, over a period of fourteen years since 1968, it has been a great privilege to live as part of the families in so many diverse and beautiful houses in Britain, Europe, The Middle East, and The Americas. Many of the interesting people that I have met along the way have greatly enriched my being and I am particularly intrigued by the way that chance encounter shapes one's life. Serendipity is all!
For me this is undoubtably the best biography of Francis Bacon.
It illuminates in detail the life of my mysterious and exotic neighbour, who lived only a stone's throw away over the wall from my flat in Manson Place, South Kensington, in the early 1960s.
Bacon's early struggles, to eventually becoming the lauded and celebrated genius in later life, encompass in this fascinating account, a plethora of characters from both high and low life, a cavalcade of lovers, an addiction to gambling and drinking spanning Soho to Tangier, with sojourns in Paris and the South of France on the way. He religiously painted in the mornings.
Many of the episodes and vignettes are unforgettable and a valuable insight into the machinations of the 'art world' in the 20th century.
This compelling and exhausting portrait of the artist, born in Dublin to Anglo-Irish gentry in 1909 and living to the age…
The Times Art Book of the Year 2021
FINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022
'Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon ... A biography that no Bacon fan - or indeed foe - can afford to overlook ... Mesmerising' THE TIMES
'A magnificent triumph ... I was captivated by every line' OBSERVER
A decade in the making, based upon hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Pulitzer Prize winners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have written a startlingly original portrait - rich, complex, and subtle - of a commanding modern figure.
I am the author of 180 books for children, including the classic (30 plus years in print) picture book The Big Green Pocketbook. As a kid, I checked out more nonfiction books than novels. I read about stars, dinosaurs, ice age mammals, rocks, animals, and birds. I wanted to combine all those interests into one job: astronomer-paleontologist-geologist-zoologist-ornithologist, but I couldn’t even afford community college. I became a writer of children’s books, where I could be involved in all of those occupations and more. I’ve written 50 nonfiction books for children and believe the very best books being published for kids today are in the area of children’s narrative nonfiction.
Picture book biographies need to narrow their focus on a subject, and I love the way the author achieves this. She could have written about Van Gogh’s life in general, but she used the refrain “Vincent can’t sleep” to describe his childhood, schooling, boring jobs, and finally becoming an artist. Insomnia led to his most well-known painting, “The Starry Night.”
I also admire how gently she portrayed his mental illness by emphasizing his quest to find the colors of the night. Lean prose contrasts neatly with Van Gogh’s free-wheeling brushstrokes, richly illuminated by Grandpré’s sweeping illustrations.
A gorgeous, lyrical picture-book biography of Vincent van Gogh by the Caldecott Honor team behind The Noisy Paint Box.
Vincent can’t sleep . . . out, out, out he runs! flying through the garden—marigold, geranium, blackberry, raspberry— past the church with its tall steeple, down rolling hills and sandy paths meant for sheep, He dives at last into the velvety, violet heath, snuggles under a blanket of sapphire sky, and looks up, up, up . . . to visit with the stars.
Vincent van Gogh often found himself unable to sleep and wandered under starlit skies. Those nighttime experiences provided…
My training is in Classics (especially Greek drama), which has given me an appreciation for clever writers who tweak conventional themes to surprise readers, foil expectations, and explore new ideas—or new sides of old ideas. Greek epic and tragedy also exhibit fairly rigid expectations about personal responsibility: even if a god made you do it, it’s still your responsibility. Agamemnon has to pay for sacrificing his daughter; Heracles has to perform his labors. Madness and possession are vivid ways to explore where one’s autonomy leaves off and another power takes over. They’re excellent tools for poking at humans to see how a thinking, feeling individual deals with unintended disaster.
The brand of possession is fairly standard: a Drakhaoul possesses a man, enabling him to transform into a dragon—but the man must replenish his strength vampirically.
I like the interplay of personal responsibility and victimization, the use of supernatural powers to protect one’s friends at the cost of innocent suffering.
The Drakhaoul has a name and personality; it’s definitely a discrete being, but it’s also a part of the hero.
But then the hero successfully exorcises his demon.
But the demon’s memories are left behind, and the hero starts to wonder if he’s going mad.
The demon’s absence, not its presence, drives the hero to madness and despair (even though he hates the demon).
The hero simultaneously hates and longs for a dark power, which is and is not uniquely his.
A weaver of tales, a caster of spells, and a writer of rare imagination, Sarah Ash lends her unique vision to epic fantasy. In this captivating continuation to her story, the author of Lord of Snow and Shadows revisits a realm filled with spirits and singers, daemons and kings.
Gavril Nagarian has finally cast out the dragon-daemon from deep within himself. The Drakhaoul is gone—and with it all of Gavril’s fearsome powers. Though no longer besieged by the Drakhaoul’s unnatural lusts and desires, Gavril has betrayed his birthright and his people. He has put the ice-bound princedom of Azhkendir at…
