100 books like From Dust to Stardust

This book stands out from other historical mysteries near the sea because it is about a mystery on the high seas. On a steamship, to be exact, on its way to New York harbor. My mom was once a young Italian woman on a steamship sailing to Halifax, and while she was nothing like Fen Churche, the heroine in this story, I’ve always imagined my mom having lots of wild adventures on that Atlantic crossing. The way the author has woven this twisty, tricky tale, I could almost believe mom had an alter ego.

When I really need to recharge, I go to the sea, which is why I instantly gravitated to this book. As a busy amateur detective, Lady Swift seeks some downtime, too, but it doesn’t last. Not only does a body turn up almost as soon as she lets out a big exhale at the resort where she’s staying, but her husband whom she thought was dead six years ago, is the victim. Of all the people that had to “die” while she was on vacation, it had to be him, and that’s just where this storyteller’s mastery begins. Add humor, Englishness, and the interwar years—things I often gravitate toward in my beach reads—and I had a great whodunnit on my hands.

Even if there’s just a hint of something Italian in a story by the sea, I’m smiling. When you first meet Miss Posie Parker in this story, she’s wearing a scent reminiscent of Parma Violet, first distilled by the second wife of Napoleon I. For the next 300 pages, I couldn’t stop thinking about how wonderful Posie smells and how she must leave behind a whiff of her violet-scented perfume everywhere she goes a-sleuthing. Such a telling detail about a character and one that stayed with me as I tried in vain to solve the mystery.

This novel is hilarious. When I first read it, I was jealous that I hadn't written it—which is a silly feeling to have about a book that came out in the 1920s, I admit. It's a diary written by a blonde showgirl named Lorelei Lee, who uses her feminine wiles to get wealth from the gentlemen callers who want to "educate" her. Loralei isn't very smart—the diary is riddled with misspellings and confused assumptions—but she has a kind of innocence and practicality that keeps you rooting for her throughout. With her friend Dorothy, a brunette, she arranges it so that everything always works out in her favor, which usually includes lots and lots of diamond jewelry. 

Probably the biggest tragedy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life was his wife Zelda’s descent into mental illness.

This magnificent biography chronicles their tumultuous relationship as well as Zelda’s upbringing, and how she became the perfect flapper, independent and even a little wild. While the story is drenched in sadness as we all know its ending, this book reveals the struggles of creative women to be respected and seen as individuals, not just appendages to their famous husbands.

It also illuminates Scott’s enduring love for Zelda. Even as he had an affair at the end of his life, he never abandoned his wife to public institutions, insisting she have the best care, no matter the expense, at private ones.

I have so many reasons why this is one of my all-time favorite books. Berton’s descriptions of music, specifically jazz or music in general, are superb. Ralph Berton describes himself as a precocious 13-year-old (an understatement!), when in 1924 he meets Bix Beiderbecke, seven years his senior, and idolizes him. This relationship is a great part of the book’s charm. The Berton family—with its vaudeville background, two famous musical brothers (besides the child genius Ralph), and a Jewish mother—is another part of the appeal. But the heart of the book is his affectionate, penetrating portrait of Bix, derived from personal experience. He examines the myths and legends, sometimes debunking and sometimes reinforcing them. A magical, bittersweet book that often brought me to tears. Exceptional writing.

This is a terrific coffee table-sized book with wonderful photographs of the sundry characters and vivid reproductions of paintings and other images. Here you’ll find a young, muscular Pablo Picasso with hair—on the beach in his bathing suit in front of Gerald & Sara Murphy’s villa on the Côte d’Azur. This privileged couple—he a fine avant-garde artist in his own right, and she, who became Picasso’s muse, a refined and elegant hostess—were patrons of the arts who surrounded themselves at their home with the young luminaries of the Jazz Age. Chapter headings in this stunning volume tell the tale.

At 174 large pages, this is a beautifully rendered and specific encapsulation of les années folles, from start to finish.

Technically a novel, but rooted so specifically in the details of Zelda’s life that her family members all recognized themselves and their town in her writing. A surrealist and poetic coming-of-age story written by the wife of Jazz Age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald during an eight-week period when she was living in a mental hospital. An imperfect and fascinating way to narrate a life.

This is a fun-filled mystery set in 1920s London. Cozies are not usually my thing, but I recently gave this a go as I am also writing a series in that exact time period and thought I’d see how Kinsey set about it. The historical beautifully captures the exuberance of the time period after World War I. Women have emerged from behind closed doors to interact on equal status as men, jazz music parades the pages with wild abandon, and the slang of the characters is spot on. The twists, turns, and action are blended in with the rich description to make this a delightful read.  

Today, one of the most prominent visual media in which Shakespeare’s plays are recreated is cinema. Judith Buchanan’s work exposes the role of Shakespeare in building intellectual credibility for the early film industry and addresses the paradox of adapting plays celebrated for their language in a medium with no spoken words. She shows how early films were shaped by the visual conventions of the Victorian stage and by popular technologies such as the magic lantern. The book demonstrates some of the techniques used by silent films to remake familiar images and adapt Shakespeare’s long speeches to visual storytelling.