Here are 75 books that Liverpool fans have personally recommended if you like
Liverpool.
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I am a Fellow of Liverpool Hope University, and of the Royal Society of Arts, and have a lifetime of experience in leading and teaching in all professional sectors. I have written 18 books on the history of Liverpool and its City Region, and am currently writing two more, for publication in 2022. I have also produced a series of TV documentaries and a set of audio CDs.
However, my second qualification is that I am a Liverpudlian born and bred, and I am deeply proud of both of these facts.
I love my city and its people (and its unique history and heritage) with genuine passion but no illusions, and I take the greatest pleasure in sharing this with as many people as possible in every medium available to me.
Published originally in 1957, this is a definitive history of the Town and later City of Liverpool. It gives a detailed overview of the many facets of Liverpool’s history, in a well-researched, fully referenced, and eminently readable form.
It gives details that cannot be found in other publications, and provides the researcher, historian, or simply interested reader an exciting and informative insight into the place and its people.
I love this book because George Chandler loved and cared for the City, and yet was an unbiased observer. He writes with clarity and detail that is informed and driven by that love, and it is a joy to read.
It is also well illustrated with many unique images, maps, and sketches.
I am a Fellow of Liverpool Hope University, and of the Royal Society of Arts, and have a lifetime of experience in leading and teaching in all professional sectors. I have written 18 books on the history of Liverpool and its City Region, and am currently writing two more, for publication in 2022. I have also produced a series of TV documentaries and a set of audio CDs.
However, my second qualification is that I am a Liverpudlian born and bred, and I am deeply proud of both of these facts.
I love my city and its people (and its unique history and heritage) with genuine passion but no illusions, and I take the greatest pleasure in sharing this with as many people as possible in every medium available to me.
Liverpool in the 19th century was actually two cities; one of fabulous wealth (a powerful minority of the population) and the other of grinding poverty and deprivation (the majority of the population).
This divide, and the dreadful living and health conditions of the poorer and working classes led to a great deal of crime, often carried out by violent gangs of mostly young men.
This book tells the stories of how this came about, and of the gangs and their members.
It pulls no punches, and paints a picture of the dark underbelly of what was then ‘The Second City of The British Empire’ that people often choose to ignore.
I love this book for all these reasons!
Victorian Liverpool was a city of abundant wealth and abysmal poverty. By day the broad streets bustled with wealthy merchants making fortunes from the booming dock trade. By nightfall they were taken over by fearsome gangs from the foul courtyards and overcrowded tenements. Shrieks and screams cut the air, while brawls and brutal muggings were commonplace.
The Gangs of Liverpool is a fascinating tour through a long-forgotten netherworld where armed ruffians fought for territory or pride and no man was safe after dark. From warring Catholic and Protestant mobs of the 1850s with names like the Hibernians and the Dead…
I am a Fellow of Liverpool Hope University, and of the Royal Society of Arts, and have a lifetime of experience in leading and teaching in all professional sectors. I have written 18 books on the history of Liverpool and its City Region, and am currently writing two more, for publication in 2022. I have also produced a series of TV documentaries and a set of audio CDs.
However, my second qualification is that I am a Liverpudlian born and bred, and I am deeply proud of both of these facts.
I love my city and its people (and its unique history and heritage) with genuine passion but no illusions, and I take the greatest pleasure in sharing this with as many people as possible in every medium available to me.
It is easy to look at the history of the City of Liverpool and forget that the original town was comparatively tiny, consisting of only seven streets. The modern city is the sum of many parts ~ each of these originally townships or villages in their own right, surrounding the emerging town. As Liverpool grew in size and population it swallowed up these places, and they became the suburbs of Liverpool. This book tells brief histories of many of these and puts them all in context with their dominating conurbation.
I love this book because it is not only fascinating and informative, but it is fun. Its pictures bring the text to life.
The Illustrated History of Liverpool’s Suburbs is the first single-volume history of the development of the residential areas of the city. The author chronicles the growth of the suburbs and illuminates the lives of people who lived in them. His fascinating book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the story of Liverpool. The narrative is illustrated with more than 200 photographs, drawings and maps from Liverpool Record Office – most of which have never been published before. David Lewis shows how the countryside, farms and villages developed into the urban streets, residential areas, shopping districts and industrial estates…
I am a Fellow of Liverpool Hope University, and of the Royal Society of Arts, and have a lifetime of experience in leading and teaching in all professional sectors. I have written 18 books on the history of Liverpool and its City Region, and am currently writing two more, for publication in 2022. I have also produced a series of TV documentaries and a set of audio CDs.
However, my second qualification is that I am a Liverpudlian born and bred, and I am deeply proud of both of these facts.
I love my city and its people (and its unique history and heritage) with genuine passion but no illusions, and I take the greatest pleasure in sharing this with as many people as possible in every medium available to me.
Beautifully and fully illustrated with photographs, sketches, charts, and maps, this tells the triumphant yet tragic tale of a genuine unsung hero of Liverpool and British architecture. Ellis was a many genuinely ahead of his time who built the first building with a steel frame and skeleton, encased in stone cladding. This enabled the creation of the first ‘skyscrapers. His work inspired this major development in building construction, yet he was scorned, castigated, and drummed out of his profession by fellow architects.
I love this book because it tells Ellis’s story fully, and celebrates his work, skill, craftsmanship, and inspiration.
When I started writing mysteries, beginning with St. Martin’s Malice Award-winning Southern Fried,I wanted to get the medical, investigative, and courtroom details right. What better resource than good first-hand accounts from professionals who do those things every day? I must admit that, over several decades now, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. Real life is full of stories that, if told as fiction, would leave readers rolling their eyes in disbelief. The gruesome and cruel don’t interest me. I’m drawn to the storytellers who can capture the worst moments and turn them into finely written, compelling, accurate stories, showing us the complexity of life.
This collection features a range of stories, a range of time and places, written by many of the best true-crime writers. Goodman, himself a master storyteller, has pulled together a wide sampling of all manner of crimes stories, all well-told. Goodman wisely included his own likely solution to one of my favorite unsolved crimes, the Liverpool case of Julia Wallace, which has fascinated novelists from Raymond Chandler to Dorothy L. Sayers and P.D. James.
More than 32 accounts of murder by crime historians and fiction writers as well as analyses of how criminals are brought to justice, of how others get away with it, a section on executions and executioners, the perils of eye-witness evidence and a discussion of what makes a good murder.
I grew up addicted to portal stories, where fantastical lands full of magic and adventure are accessible from our mundane world if you just know where to look. Stories like The Neverending Story, Labyrinth, Alice in Wonderland, and The Chronicles of Narnia. My first novel, The Between, is a portal story like those but written more for adults–at least, for adults who are still young at heart. If you, too, like to daydream about slipping from your work cubicle into someplace strange and weird–and perhaps a little dangerous–here are books I think you might love.
That antique rug on the floor over there. What if a secret world is hidden within its countless knots and dyed threads? What if a fraying corner lets lose a creature trapped within? What if you step on it just so… and slip into a hidden world?
I read Weaveworld back in high school, shortly after it came out. It was my first Clive Barker novel and first adult, Alice in Wonderland-style, hidden world novel. I picked it up on a whim, and that whim changed the course of my life in many ways. I began writing in my spare time, inspired by Barker’s brilliant twists of words and by his surreal and haunting worlds.
Originally published in 1988. Set in contemporary England, two friends discover a secret magical world and are drawn into a battle between good and evil. From the author of EVERVILLE.
There’s a saying in England: It’s grim up north! Largely used pejoratively (by the south), it’s true to say it is generally colder and wetter, the landscape more unforgiving, the people – friendlier in my opinion – are more outspoken and candid. The cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, with their declining industries and rising unemployment, provide fertile ground for crime writers. So when I started my own series following the investigations of DS Adam Tyler and his cold case team it didn’t take long to settle on my adopted home of Sheffield as the setting. Be warned: we’re a long way from the sleepy villages of Agatha Christie here.
The first book in Rob Parker’s excellent Thirty Miles Trilogy sees twenty-seven bodies discovered, vacuum-packed, and buried in a woodland trench. DI Brendan Foley and his newly established police force are the ones tasked with cracking the case but is it a coincidence that these bodies have been buried in Foley’s hometown? Set in the historic town of Warrington, located midway between Manchester and Liverpool, the book explores the murky underworlds of the two cities and the consequences of a war between two drug-dealing gangs as it spills out into the surrounding area.
Brendan Foley has worked to balance the responsibilities of a demanding job and a troublesome family. He's managed to keep these two worlds separate, until the discovery of a mass grave sends them into a headlong collision. When one of the dead turns out to be a familiar face, he's taken off the case.
Iona Madison keeps everything under control. She works hard as a detective sergeant and trains harder as a boxer. But when her superior, DI Foley, is removed from the case, her certainties are tested like never before.
With stories of the Warrington 27 plastered over the…
We all know Little Richard’s great hits like "Long Tall, Sally", "Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly Miss Molly" and Little Richard’s life was as wild as his records. It’s excess all areas as Spencer Leigh tells the story of Little Richard in Send Me Some Lovin. It is a biography of someone who transformed popular music. Spencer Leigh was born in 1945 and hearing Little Richard for the first time in 1956 changed his life. He is a world expert on the Beatles and he has written a series of music-based biographies – Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel – all of which are full of facts and opinions.
A mammoth tome about all the locations around the young Beatles in Liverpool.
Wonderful details and some very good recommended walks by someone who really knows the area and what he is writing about. Only trouble is, the book is so heavy you can’t take it with you on those walks.
Liddypool, The Birthplace of The Beatles, the critically acclaimed book to concentrate solely on the history of The Beatles from their experience of living and growing up in Liverpool, has been released in its third and expanded edition. Covering their rise from childhood in the 1940s and obscurity to their triumphant civic reception at Liverpool Town Hall on 10th July 1964, when the city said goodbye to the Fab Four, author David Bedford uses local knowledge and eyewitness testimony to chart every band member and name-change and lineup, from The Quarrymen to The Beatles: the real story of the "Fab…
I’ve always loved satire. In college, I wrote and performed comedy sketches as part of a two-man team, and most of my work features at least some comic elements. For example, my novel The Whale: A Love Story is a serious historical novel about the relationship between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne that also offers moments of comedy to honor Melville's comic spirit (Moby-Dick, while ultimately tragic, is a very funny book). The most serious subjects usually contain elements of the absurd, and the books I love find humor in even the gravest situations.
Stella Bradshaw, an aspiring teenage actor in 1950s Liverpool, joins a local theater company for its Christmas production of Peter Pan, and everyone gets more than they bargained for. Stella is a willful working-class ingenue desperate to escape her broken home life, and her enthusiasm and fearlessness force a collection of dissolute, jaded theater actors and directors to confront their own career and life choices.
The revelation on the last page makes you reconsider everything that went before in a surprise ending that’s far from a gimmick.
'This is one of Bainbridge's best books. The close observation and hilarity are underlain by a sense of tragedy as deep as any in fiction' The Times
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE IN 1990
It is 1950 and the Liverpool repertory theatre company is rehearsing its Christmas production of Peter Pan, a story of childhood innocence and loss. Stella has been taken on as assistant stage manager and quickly becomes obsessed with Meredith, the dissolute director. But it is only when the celebrated O'Hara arrives to take the lead, that a different drama unfolds. In it, he and Stella are…
I am a writer and academic based at Loughborough University specialising in the lives, works, and afterlives of the Brontës. As a Lecturer in English, I teach and research different aspects of the Brontës writings. Alongside my own biography of Emily, I have published widely on the Brontës, including material on Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Emily Brontë’s poetry, and Charlotte's letters. I have also written about how the Brontës inspire contemporary authors, poets, and screenwriters. As well as rereading the siblings’ novels (I love Charlotte’s Shirley!), I’m fascinated by the many biographies and bio-fictions generated about this great Yorkshire family. I hope you enjoy these recommendations!
Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Childis a poignant novel that brings together a rewriting of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights with a reimagining of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, as well as a quick visit to the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth. In a bookended narrative, Philips gives us the backstory of how Heathcliff came to be in Liverpool before being taken to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw. In the centre, however, is the story of Monica Johnson, a young woman living in Windrush Britain whose marriage to Julius, an African-Caribbean graduate with whom she has two children, causes a fracture with her family. An outcast like Heathcliff, The Lost Child examines Monica’s struggle to raise her sons in the north of England, showing her family’s experience with racism, trauma, and mental ill-health. Philips’s storytelling gets to the heart of what it means to be an outcast in society.
Caryl Phillips's The Lost Child is a sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves from it. At its center is Monica Johnson—cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner—and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the north of England. Phillips intertwines her modern narrative with the childhood of one of literature's most enigmatic lost boys, as he deftly conjures young Heathcliff, the anti-hero of Wuthering Heights, and his ragged existence before Mr. Earnshaw…
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