Fans pick 100 books like Far from the Madding Crowd

I return to this book time and again because of the captivating connection Elizabeth and Darcy share. It’s not just the tension on the surface, but it’s what goes on emotionally and psychologically with them that has me enchanted.

Austen does a fantastic job of portraying how love will sneak up on you when you’re not even looking for it, how it will push you to face the parts of yourself you’ve been avoiding for too long and to stand boldly in your authentic character while holding compassion for another’s perspective.

Every time I read this book, I feel I know the characters at a more intimate level as new fractals of their personalities and behaviors shine through.

Jane Austen would have made such a great therapist! Her razor-sharp observations, combined with profound insights into people and relationships, make this book an all-time favorite of mine. I love her descriptions of falling in (and out of) love and how fallible each of her characters is, reminding us of our humanity–especially when it comes to matters of the heart.

What also strikes me is how true it is that pride, image, and status can still play out in our more modern relationships today. This book feels very old-fashioned in places, but it warns us how easily we can hurt other people and damage relationships, sometimes irrevocably. There’s a lot to learn from Emma, and I enjoy seeing relationships depicted in fiction, where so much can be explored through a fascinating and absorbing story, too.

When I was younger, I stayed overnight in a haunted house, or at least a house that felt haunted. I was in a big, creepy room by myself, and sleep was impossible. Instead, I sat up through the night, feeling very alone. During that long wait for dawn, this book was there for me.

It’s a satire that’s now more famous than many of the grim rural novels that inspired it; more important to me then, it’s the very funny story of Flora Poste, a modern young woman who goes to stay at a remote country farm with her relatives, the dramatic Starkadders, ruled over by Aunt Ada Doom, who once saw something nasty in the woodshed. Flora’s story is a glorious triumph of common sense over an ominous atmosphere.

Alright, this one isn’t a Regency, and it’s not technically a romance, but it is a love story. It’s set during the Restoration period, so it’s much earlier, but it showcases how a love story can also be an adventure story and a journey of self-discovery.

The heroine, Lady Dona St. Columb, retreats to her estate in Cornwall only to find that a pirate is using her cove as a secret hideaway and her house as his own retreat. They set out on a madcap adventure and fall in love until her husband arrives and attempts to capture her lover, forcing Dona to choose between the life she has and the life she wants.

This is one of my favorite stories because the themes in it are timeless—who among us has not grappled with the same dilemma in the 21st century? I think that makes a book strong—regardless of time… show more.

This book was published in 2018 and yet it already feels like a true classic.

It is the beautiful, poignant, and often poetic story of a rural community as one world war ends but the threat of an unsettled nation still lies heavily in the air.

Told through the eyes of a child on the brink of adulthood, there are moments of such naïve tenderness it pulled hard at my maternal senses. 

The early part of the twentieth century saw so much change in the lives of small communities and I found this investigation of how the shifting world affected the way farmers lived and worked deeply fascinating. This resonated with me and the research I’ve done into the current issues of change farmers are facing now. 

Mothering Sunday takes place on a single day in March 1924, a day off for all the servants, including Jane Fairchild, although as a foundling she has no mother to go home to. The novella revolves around the affair Jane has with soon-to-be-married Paul Sheringham, the only remaining son of the neighbouring family, and heir to their estate. The writing is imbued with a sense of loss, of time warping and wavering, of what-would-have-beens, and conveys the difficulties faced by those who had to carry on in the wake of the Great War. 

It is impossible to separate Cather’s heroine Alexandra Bergson from the Nebraska prairie she farms.

Alexandra’s character mirrors the land she, as the eldest child, inherited from her father and which she devotes her life to working. When other families give up, sell off, and move on, she doggedly remains through harsh winters and, against all likelihood, prospers as an unmarried woman managing a vast expanse of land.

Like the land, she remains both knowable and unknowable, at once harsh and majestic.

Possessing an external manner that is reticent, internally hers is an indomitable spirit. She is among the most inimitable of women to have ever appeared in print.

Is Undine Spragg Edith Wharton’s least admiral protagonist? Perhaps. But as well, she is her most beguiling.

With her modest mid-western roots and her hunger for something more, she personifies the American dream, only she incarnates its less noble form. Cunning and beautiful, she uses her every charm exclusively in service to her ambition.

There is something thoroughly modern about her self-belief, her perpetual reinvention. It’s impossible to look away as she ruthlessly forges her own future, defying expectations and conventions time and again. 

They say what goes around comes around; but when it comes to Undine Spragg we are constantly left wondering if the truism can hold.

This novel is sometimes described as the Victorian Pride and Prejudice, and it’s true there are many similarities.

Margaret Hale moves with her parents from rural southern England to a northern manufacturing town and experiences profound culture shock. She spars with John Thornton, the wealthy owner of a cotton mill, whose outlook and opinions are very different from her own.

In time their antagonism gives way to mutual understanding, and finally to love. But North and South isn’t only a love story.

There’s the ongoing conflict between the mill workers and the owners, and Margaret’s discoveries about herself as she begins to find ways to help the downtrodden. Gaskell was a minister’s wife in Manchester and interested in social reforms.

In this novel she explores many issues that are still relevant today. The book delves more deeply into the spiritual lives of the characters than does the BBC mini-series… show more.

Having watched shepherdess Emma Gray on the BBC, I was so taken by her farming passion and charismatic personality that I was keen to read her memoirs.

One Girl and Her Dogs is the first of two installments and it’s a wonderful mix of wit, grit, and refreshing honesty. Whilst reading it I was totally immersed in her world and found myself in awe of her gumption and determination to make the best out of whatever her farm, her animals, and Mother Nature decided to throw at her.

When casting characters for my own murder series, I decided to lend Jude, my female farmer, Emma’s surname to try and channel some of her tenacity and drive.