Here are 73 books that Lush Life fans have personally recommended if you like
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While I appreciate a variety of genres, my love of psychological suspense and thriller novels has only intensified over time. I often devour these books in one sitting—eyes darting across each page as my mind tries to guess the next pivotal twist! As an author, I aspire to create the same electrifying rush for my readers that my favorite stories give me. My debut novel, Swearing Off Stars, was inspired by my travels and received an Independent Press Award, a Benjamin Franklin Award, and an International Book Award. My writing has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, HuffPost, PopSugar, and Writer’s Digest. I hope you enjoy the recommendations on this list!
While this novel is a suspenseful psychological thriller in its own right, the story also tackles racial tensions and contemporary family dynamics. I admire the way Steph Cha explores grief, revenge, violence, racism, and justice over the course of Your House Will Pay’s fast-paced plot. This is absolutely a must-read.
Two families. One desperate to remember, the other to forget.
Winner of the LA Times Book Prize, Best Mystery/Thriller Winner of the California Book Awards' Gold Medal for Fiction Shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Shortlisted for the Macavity Awards, Best Mystery Novel Shortlisted for the Anthony Awards, Best Novel Finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award
'Masterful.' Ruth Ware
'A searing examination of racial and family politics that is also an immaculately constructed whodunit.' Daily Telegraph, Summer Reads
'Writing a page-turner about racial politics in the U.S. is a delicate enterprise fraught with pitfalls, but Cha…
I love crime fiction—mysteries, thrillers, espionage, you name it, plots and puzzles that excite and confound and ultimately gratify. I also love the non-genre called literary fiction, sharply observed and beautifully written books that move me, and leave me with a slightly better understanding of humanity. And I think the sweetest spot of all is the intersection of the two, with sparkling prose, fully realized characters, and interesting settings combined with an insistent, credible plot that makes it a matter of urgency to turn the page, presenting the exquisite dilemma of wanting to race through the excitement but also the opposite urge to slow down and enjoy it all.
This bighearted, heartbreaking story about the abortion wars is also paradoxically one of the funniest books I’ve ever read; there’s a page in the middle that I’ll reread again and again whenever I need a smile. The plot revolves around Claudia, a longtime employee of a Boston clinic that’s besieged by protesters who threaten the sort of political violence that’s become all too commonplace in polarized America, creating an insistent drumbeat of menace. But Mercy Streetis not a polemic, and the antagonists are treated with deep empathy and humanity. Possibly my favorite novel of the past few years.
"Ms. Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention. Her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive, akin to that of writers as different as Richard Price, Richard Ford, and Richard Russo."-Janet Maslin, New York Times
The highly praised, "extraordinary" (New York Times Book Review) novel about the disparate lives that intersect at a women's clinic in Boston, by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh
For almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. The work is consuming, the unending dramas of women in…
My usual answer, when someone asks me where I live in Philadelphia, is: “Have you seen the Rocky movies, where he’s running through that open fruit/vegetable market? I’m three blocks from there.”I’ve called Philadelphia home for more than 20 years. I’m clearly a big fan, having now written four books about the city. I include a reference to the city’s most famous fictional character in my children’s alphabet book Philadelphia A to Z. In More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell, I got to tell stories about the country’s largest public art program. In This Used To Be Philadelphia, I told the then and now stories of dozens of city locations.
I can’t even tell you how many times in many years working for newspapers that I rushed out after hearing a body had been found in an empty house or neglected alley. In almost every case, I would arrive to have police officers tell me, “No story here. No homicide. Just another overdose.” The newspaper didn’t tally overdose deaths as it did murders, even if many fatalities are linked to heroin that has been mixed with fentanyl without the users’ knowledge. It’s very rare for those who sell the killer substance to face homicide charges.
The city is basically another character in this book. While the opioid epidemic had touched communities across the country, Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood is widely acknowledged as a disaster zone. A 2018 New York Times article called Kensington is the largest open-air narcotics market on the east coast.
The plot centers on Philadelphia police officer Mickey…
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, PARADE, REAL SIMPLE, and BUZZFEED
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
"[Moore’s] careful balance of the hard-bitten with the heartfelt is what elevates Long Bright River from entertaining page-turner to a book that makes you want to call someone you love.” – The New York Times Book Review
"This is police procedural and a thriller par excellence, one in which the city of Philadelphia itself is a character (think Boston and Mystic River). But it’s…
I love crime fiction—mysteries, thrillers, espionage, you name it, plots and puzzles that excite and confound and ultimately gratify. I also love the non-genre called literary fiction, sharply observed and beautifully written books that move me, and leave me with a slightly better understanding of humanity. And I think the sweetest spot of all is the intersection of the two, with sparkling prose, fully realized characters, and interesting settings combined with an insistent, credible plot that makes it a matter of urgency to turn the page, presenting the exquisite dilemma of wanting to race through the excitement but also the opposite urge to slow down and enjoy it all.
A rumor about teenage sexual assault has long-term repercussions on a handful of characters in this superb novel that toggles among different genres—thriller, mystery, women’s fiction, coming-of-age literary, even screenplays—with voices in first, second, and third person, a fascinating way of looking at a single event from every angle. The characters are astoundingly well-drawn, in particular the spot-on portraits of teenaged boys, which are a master class on how to write credible, realistic, and true characters that are well beyond the novelist’s own experience. Even the title itself is a clever subversion.
"Spellbinding." -Megan Abbott, The New York Times Book Review
Tracing the fifteen-year fallout of a toxic high school rumor, a riveting, astonishingly original debut novel about the power of stories-and who gets to tell them
2015. A gifted and reclusive ghostwriter, Alice Lovett makes a living helping other people tell their stories. But she is haunted by the one story she can't tell: the story of, as she puts it, "the things that happened while I was asleep."
1999. Nick Brothers and his lacrosse teammates return for their senior year at their wealthy Maryland high…
My first book was Quiver, a collection of erotic short stories. I wrote it to immortalize the hedonism of Sydney in the 1990s, wanting to show a nonjudgmental, joyful side. The fact that it touched a lot of people compelled me to write two more collections Tremble and Yearn – each exploring different themes: Tremble is an erotic re-imagining of various root myths, whilst Yearn has more historical and fantastical elements. I interweave all the characters in the stories throughout the whole collections. Humor is also important to me when it comes to the ironies and emotions around sex, the other aspect is gender power play and all the sublime reversals that can encapsulate.
This collection of short stories is really about how sexual desire and social ambition can lead to all sorts of compromising and bizarre situations. I originally was drawn to it because I’d loved the filmSecretarybased on one of the short stories in the collection. I related to it because it is nearly all from a young female P.O.V – a kind of potpourri of trying to make it in NY in the 1980s. It's the perfect illustration of how powerful short story as a form can be in terms encapsulate an event, mood, and era – It also showed me how fictionalized memoir can be a good source of material and that if the book is really well-observed it never dates.
Mary Gaitskill's tales of desire and dislocation in 1980s New York caused a sensation with their frank, caustic portrayals of men and women's inner lives. As her characters have sex, try and fail to connect, play power games and inflict myriad cruelties on each other, she skewers urban life with precision and candour.
'Stubbornly original, with a sort of rhythm and fine moments that flatten you out when you don't expect it, these stories are a pleasure to read' Alice Munro
'An air of Pinteresque menace hangs over these people's social exchanges like black funereal bunting ... Gaitskill writes with…
I am a professor of history and Jewish studies at American University and author of America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today, winner of the National Jewish Book Award – 2019 Jewish Book of the Year. Since childhood I have been reading stories of women’s lives and tales set in Jewish communities across time and space. Yet, the voices that so often best evoke the past are those captured on the pages of great memoirs.
In 1951, Sydney Taylor invented the memorable Brenners—papa, mama, five sisters, and baby brother—a Jewish family on the Lower East Side in turn-of-the-century New York. Taylor’s words and Helen John’s illustrations in this book, the first in a series, set the scene. A calendar in the parlor announced that it was 1912. Tenements lined city streets. When I read these novels as a child, I did not yet know that they were closely based on Taylor’s own life. When the entire series was republished in 2014, I quipped: I became a Jewish historian because of these books.
Meet the All-of-a-Kind Family -- Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie -- who live with their parents in New York City at the turn of the century.
Together they share adventures that find them searching for hidden buttons while dusting Mama's front parlor and visiting with the peddlers in Papa's shop on rainy days. The girls enjoy doing everything together, especially when it involves holidays and surprises.
But no one could have prepared them for the biggest surprise of all!
I ardently began research and writing on Jean-Michel Basquiat in grad school (2004), before his paintings demolished sales records and when he was still somewhat misunderstood and marginalized by perplexed art historians. Since then, his potency and intrigue have blazed a global pop culture inferno. I’ve conducted dozens of interviews, befriended those close to him, memorized his lines, colors, words, and spaces in books and real life, and re-read countless pages. Currently I’m writing and compiling a field guide to his work. All Basquiat publications are imperfect. I hope with sensitivity and intellectual intent, fans can move through their initial impressions to better understand his meaningful motives, inclinations, and artwork.
Its prose channels the powerful yet painful relationship of Suzanne Mallouk and Jean-Michel Basquiat as seen through Suzanne’s wise sensitivity, artistic nature, and unconditionally honest heart. Clement is a rich, sentient, masterful poet, and close friend of Suzanne.
I love that the story reads with mysterious, potent fluidity and is peppered with odd, lesser-realized personality traits and historic Basquiat facts.
Widow Basquiat is the unfiltered story of lovers living amidst an 80s NYC cultural renaissance. Their small joys and quirky character traits feel heroically familiar while the poetic style traverses select, revealing content that strikes chords.
Having personally known Suzanne for many years as a scholar and friend, this book generously and deeply shares her authentic human experience.
The beautifully written, deeply affecting story of Jean-Michel Basquiat's partner, her past, and their life together
An NPR Best Book of the Year Selection
New York City in the 1980s was a mesmerizing, wild place. A hotbed for hip hop, underground culture, and unmatched creative energy, it spawned some of the most significant art of the 20th century. It was where Jean-Michel Basquiat became an avant-garde street artist and painter, swiftly achieving worldwide fame. During the years before his death at the age of 27, he shared his life with his lover and muse, Suzanne Mallouk.
Two things are true about me: I’m fascinated by the early twentieth century and I'm a diehard feminist. My grandfather nurtured my love of the 1920s and 1930s by introducing me to Dorothy Parker, John O’Hara, Ella Fitzgerald, and The New Yorker. My mother, a petite woman who can wield a welder like few others, encouraged the development of my feminist sensibilities. These two parts came together when my father offhandedly mentioned that his grandmother had an unplanned pregnancy during the Great Depression. As I researched reproductive issues through the years, my fascination for the topic grew. Each of the books here takes a different view of how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.
No graphic novel has ever blown me away like Unterzakhn(which means “underthings” in Yiddish). The story takes place in the early 1900s on the Lower East Side of New York, and the black-and-white bold strokes illustrate the bleakness of the lives of the new immigrants. Twin sisters find themselves taking roaringly divergent paths: one works in a whorehouse before becoming a star of the stage; the other assists the “lady-doctor,” from whom she learns about birth control and abortion. With strong feminist themes, I found it impossible not to root for both sisters. This is the only graphic novel whose ending made me cry.
A mesmerizing, heartbreaking graphic novel of immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths.
For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York’s Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings”) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing…
I started my career writing about rock music. Rock stars dated models, and I soon started writing about them, too, which led me to cover the fashion world, where I was often seated near the rich and famous at runway shows in London, Paris, Milan, and New York, and began to study them. Thus began years of reading and writing about Society, first for The New York Times and New York magazine, and later in a series of books on the worlds of the rich and the famous. The latest, Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America's Original Ruling Class, will be published this fall.
After the WASPs of The Social Register, the next great wave of American wealth was generated by the German-Jewish upper class that rose at the end of the 19th Century. Weaving together the stories of the Loeb, Lehman, Lewisohn, Schiff, Seligman, Goldman, Straus, Warburg, and Guggenheim families, Birmingham created a classic of the kind of group biography I aspire to write.
They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of "the 400," a register of New York's most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds. In response, they created their own elite "100," a privileged society as opulent and exclusive…
I write books and newspaper columns on criminal justice and criminal defense. As an investigator for criminal defense attorneys, I spent years in the jails and prisons of Florida and Georgia interviewing felony defendants—murderers, child molesters, con men, robbers, drug dealers, whores, wife beaters, and shooters for hire. Some were insane; most weren’t. My interest is personal as well as professional. I live in Police Zone 1, the most dangerous area of my city. It’s a place where kids and church ladies can distinguish a Chinese AK from a Glock nine by sound alone. It’s a place where I carry an extra-large can of pepper spray and a combat knife, just to walk the dog!
Maple was the architect of the tactics that allowed the NYPD to lower homicides by 60% in two miraculous years from 1990–1992. This book is easy to read and often funny, which doesn’t obscure Maple’s tactical genius. The story of how a lowly transit cop who fancied suits, vests, bow ties, and homburgs became Assistant Commissioner of Police in New York is astonishing. You can only regret that Maple was never able to use his fake “Gun-Sniffing Dog” ploy to flush suspects with concealed firearms. It was sheer genius.
Former NYPD Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple was a man in a bow tie and homburg--he was also on a mission to revolutionize the way crime is fought: how cops go after crooks, and how they prevent crime in the first place. And he succeeded.
But Maple is not satisfied. In The Crime Fighter, he shows how crime can be attacked all across America. Laced with fascinating, incredible, and often very funny tales of Maple's adventures as a cop, the book is as entertaining as it is informative. Anyone interested in how criminals think and act, and how the police should…
