Here are 100 books that Mr. Nobody fans have personally recommended if you like
Mr. Nobody.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Growing up in Indiana and Illinois meant that Chicago has always been, for me, the city—the place where people went to make a name for themselves and took the world by storm. From my local Carnegie Library, I read voraciously across genres—history, science, literature. They transported me out of my small town—across the universe sometimes. I learned that setting in fiction was for me a major feature of my enjoyment, and Chicago was where I set my own mystery series. These books, when I read them, explored that grand metropolis—and brought Chicago to life on and off the page. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have.
It is a book that deep dives into a historical event, in this case, the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. Check. It is a nonfiction book that reads like a gripping thriller, in this case, the serial killer H.H. Holmes, who built a three-story building featuring secret rooms, torture chambers, and a crematorium. Check. Chicago leaps off the page. By the end of the book, I was able to envision the massive exposition, its hundreds of temporary buildings, all white colored, interlaced with ponds and canals.
Much like that exposition helped raise Chicago up from its Great Fire, so I could see a Chicago of the past, in a glorious triumph of industry and innovation. Oh, and yeah, a serial killer constructing a horrific murder building.
The Chicago World Fair was the greatest fair in American history. This is the story of the men and women whose lives it irrevocably changed and of two men in particular- an architect and a serial killer. The architect is Daniel Burnham, a man of great integrity and depth. It was his vision of the fair that attracted the best minds and talents of the day. The killer is Henry H. Holmes. Intelligent as well as handsome and charming, Holmes opened a boarding house which he advertised as 'The World's Fair Hotel' Here in the neighbourhood where he was once…
I’ve loved jazz ever since I learned to play the clarinet as a child. My two great loves in life have been music and books, so it made sense to combine the two things and write novels with a link to jazz. These books are some of my favourites with a jazz theme. I promise that even if you’re not a jazz fan, these are all excellent novels, to be enjoyed with or without music playing in the background!
A young Louis Armstrong as an amateur detective – if that concept doesn’t draw you in, I’m not sure what will!
The year is 1919 and there’s a terrifying serial killer on the loose in New Orleans. This is the first installment in Celestin’s City Blues Quartet. I love all four books but The Axeman is probably my favourite because of the New Orleans vibe. You get jazz, mafia, Pinkerton detectives, crooked cops, and a taste of the macabre.
"Ray Celestin skillfully depicts the desperate revels of that idiosyncratic city and its bizarre legends in his first novel, THE AXEMAN." - The New York Times Sunday Book Review (Marilyn Stasio, Crime Columnist)
The Axeman stalks the streets of New Orleans...
In a town filled with gangsters, voodoo, and jazz trumpets sounding from the dance halls, a sense of intoxicating mystery often beckons from the back alleys. But when a serial killer roams the sultry nights, even the corrupt cops can't see the clues. That is, until a letter from the Axeman himself is published in the newspaper, proclaiming that…
Growing up in the South as the daughter of a single mother, I’ve always appreciated strong women, in reality and in fiction. Before I could read, I made up stories featuring me as the super heroine. Later, I devoured all the Nancy Drews I could get my hands on. I credit Ms. Drew for nurturing my fascination with mystery. I especially enjoy suspense with a psychological turn that frequently takes the form of gaslighting or manipulating someone into doubting their perception of reality. As an author of Southern suspense with heart and humor, my female characters fall victim to this device but are strong enough to persevere.
I was fascinated by the way the tragic protagonist uses “self-gaslighting” as a means of survival.
Anna Fox has suffered unimaginable tragedy, so she imagines it away. I felt her pain and isolation as well as her terror at discovering her neighbors have a horrifying secret.
I especially enjoy a suspense novel that moves at a pace between breathtaking and reflective.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by 20th Century Fox, starring Amy Adams, Gary Oldman and Julianne Moore
'Astounding. Thrilling. Amazing' Gillian Flynn
'One of those rare books that really is unputdownable' Stephen King
'Twisted to the power of max' Val McDermid
'A dark, twisty confection' Ruth Ware
What did she see?
It's been ten long months since Anna Fox last left her home. Ten months during which she has haunted the rooms of her old New York house like a ghost, lost in her memories, too…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
From my first foray into poetry when I was in high school, I've been creative writing for over fifty years. Poetry proceeded into writing alternative song lyrics to established songs while in college. After graduating I naively pursued a career as a professional song lyricist, achieving limited success and unable to continue. While in the midst of a long career in the landscape industry, upon realizing that I wanted to write a novel based on an idea I had, I eventually completed a supernatural thriller titled, The Poe Consequence. Years of watching detective shows and reading memorable crime thrillers provided the inspiration to write a murder mystery as well. You Say Goodbye is the result.
Scientific cloning fears come to life and the possible consequences of that dynamic?The protagonist, a geneticist, makes a startling and extremely consequential discovery and away we go. The story is a combination of science, crime drama, and bad guy intrigue that keeps the reader wondering how things will play out in terms of experiments and mysterious, secretive plots. Follett offers an array of engaging characters that left me pulling for some and proverbially punching others. As with the other Ken Follett novels I’ve read, the man does his research which offers educational elements as a bonus without it interfering with the flow.And the ending is a beauty.
Questions about who we really are in terms of ourselves and maybe, just maybe, a cloned twin ‘out there’ who apparently isn’t the nice person you are?Why and how could that be? Creative ideas such as this, from the imagination…
A thrilling, chilling story of hidden evil, The Third Twin is a heart-stopping, spine-tingling story from master of suspense, Ken Follett.
An Impossible Result Jeannie Ferrami, a scientific researcher investigating the behaviour of identical twins who have been raised separately, uncovers a perplexing mystery; identical twins who were born on different days, to different mothers, in different places.
A Blossoming Love One, Steve, is a law student and the other, Dennis, a convicted murderer. As Jeannie works with Steve on her project she finds herself falling in love with him, but their world is shattered when he is accused of…
I write novels for adults, young adults (My Life as a Bench won the International Rubery Book of the Year), and children. Using my experience as an art student in Nottingham, I wanted to look at the dark side of Sex in the City. The sexual revolution of the 60s gave women freedom, but at what cost? Conviction rates for sexual assault remain depressingly low and our streets remain unsafe for women at night.
Privilege, entitlement, politics, and sleaze, it’s all here, along with the disturbing sense that many perpetrators get away with far too many misdeeds for most of their lives, while their victims’ lives are instantly thrown into crisis. It’s a solid, twisty psychological thriller with hints of the Bullingdon Club and Westminster bad behaviour.
“A nuanced story line perfectly in tune with our #metoo times.” —People, Book of the Week
“One of the season’s most buzzed-about thrillers.” —Bookish
“A strong choice for book clubs. Former political correspondent Vaughan makes an impressive debut with this savvy, propulsive courtroom drama.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Vaughan offers gripping insight into a political scandal’s hidden machinations and the tension between justice and privilege…Absorbing, polished.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Skillfully interweaving the story of the unfolding scandal, Vaughan gradually reveals just how shockingly high the stakes are…Sinewy…engrossing, twist-filled.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)…
I was born in England to Australian parents and have lived most of my life in Australia. My family all live there, and I grew up in Sydney. Most of my books have been about Australian-related themes or historical figures. I don’t think enough is known about Australian history outside Australia. Australian writers have always struggled for recognition outside Australia. Publishing can be an unfair business. I’m more interested in reading nonfiction than fiction. True stories are much harder to write and get right, and there’s a bigger responsibility involved. You’re dealing with real people. The dead ones also have families.
One of the original Aussie literary expats in the 1940s, Kershaw penned this slim but sparkling memoir of his time in Paris and rural France before his death in 1995.
It is superbly written and completely unknown. Grab a copy if you’re lucky enough to find it. It proves that books don’t have to be long to stick in the memory. Sometimes, the shortest ones are the best.
In this witty and entertaining illustrated memoir, Alister Kershaw describes the pleasures of his prolonged residence in France - a country of villages - from 1948, when even Paris was a series of villages. In post-war Paris, Kershaw lived a penniless but joyous existence and captures a Paris long gone. The author conjures Paris prior to the triumph of the technocrats and town planners. It also traces the author's move into the Berry, two hours south of Paris, where he lives in a hamlet of six houses and finds a rural life amongst a small group of traditional Sancerre winemakers.…
Riley Masterson has moved to Greenbrier, SC, anxious to escape the chaos that has overwhelmed her life.
Questioned in a murder in Alabama, she has spent eighteen months under suspicion by a sheriff’s office, unable to make an arrest. But things in gentrifying Greenbrier are not as they seem. As…
I’ve always been attracted to the Gothic before I even knew the term. From watching The Munstersas a child to wanting to live in a haunted house and devouring classic Gothic novels like The Mysteries of Udolpho and Dracula, I’ve never been able to get enough of the Gothic. After fully exploring British Gothic in my book The Gothic Wanderer, I discovered the French Gothic tradition, which made me realize how universal the genre is. Everyone can relate to its themes of fear, death, loss, guilt, forgiveness, and redemption. On some level, we are all Gothic wanderers, trying to find meaning in what is too often a nightmarish world.
You may know this book as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but you probably don’t really know it. Films, most notably the Disney cartoon, have grossly distorted this novel, often having Esmeralda ride off into the sunset with Phoebus. But the novel is really a very dark, Gothic story of love and lust, and one of the first existential novels. Frollo and Quasimodo both love Esmeralda, but she loves Phoebus, and he only loves himself. In the end, everyone dies, allowing their lust to destroy their common sense. Hugo wrote it to help popularize and save Notre-Dame Cathedral from falling into further disrepair. It influenced British author William Harrison Ainsworth to writeThe Tower of London, thus revitalizing British Gothic in a new way just as it did French Gothic.
Victor Hugo's great story of Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer of Notre Dame and his unrequited love for the dancer, Esmeralda. Classics Illustrated tells this wonderful tale in colourful comic strip form, offering an excellent introduction for younger readers. This edition also includes theme discussions and study questions, which can be used both in the classroom and at home to further engage the reader in the story.
I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s watching Alfred Hitchcock movies and reading Dashiell Hammett—I’m from San Francisco. Then opera got hold of me. So, I dropped out of my PhD program, left Dante’s Inferno behind, and moved to Paris to live a modern-day La Bohème. Because I’m half-Italian, I decided I had to divide my life between Paris and Italy. Mystery, murder, romance, longing, and betrayal were what fueled my passions and still do. To earn a living, I became a travel, food, and arts reporter. These interests and the locales of my life come together in my own crime and mystery novels.
Do you want the gritty, pungent beauty of Paris during the heyday of the Romantics—the 1830s? You want perversion, decadence, a crazy, kinky plot revolving around sex, dominance, Sapphic passion, murder, and intrigue, set in the Trocadero neighborhood? Only Honoré de Balzac could dream up something this wild and get away with it. One of the wonders of this short novel is how, through casual descriptions, Paris comes to life. It’s not a picture-postcard version of the city. Au contraire. It’s a seamy, real place I recognize after 35 years living there. While I was reading The Girl with the Golden Eyes, I actually went out and found the locations. The city has changed less than you’d think in 190 years. Above all, the seamy, perverse side remains.
Beginning with a visceral description of the society and politics of Paris, The Girl with the Golden Eyes considers the sex life of the upper class by its raw depiction of the underside of Parisian life. Henri de Marsay is a young, rich man who is nearly devoid of morals and virtue. After he meets Paquita Valdes, a mysterious and beautiful woman, he becomes infested with a deviant lust for her. When his plan to seduce her succeeds, Henri and Paquita maintain an intensely sexual relationship. However, when Henri starts to suspect Paquita is involved with another lover, he becomes…
The most important formative experiences of my life were contained in the years I spent living and traveling with Brenin, a wolfdog. I can safely say that just about every worthwhile idea I have had – I am a professor of philosophy and ideas are supposed to be my thing – stemmed from those years. I have written many books since Brenin died, all of them, in one way or another, concerned with the question of what it is to be human. I am convinced that we can only understand this if we begin with the idea that we are animals and work from there.
Commonly thought to be about death, and our fear thereof, what I find most striking about this book is its piercing and utterly haunting analysis of the role of memories in making us who we are. The most important memories are the ones that are lost, and then return in a new form, deeply woven into our bodies, emotions, and feelings – as blood, as glance and gesture, as Rilke puts it. Rilke was a poet; this was his only excursion into the art form of the novel. So, the book falls apart after a while. But if anyone has written anything better than the first fifty pages or so, I am unacquainted with it.
First published in 1910, Rilke's "Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" is one the first great modernist novels, the account of poet-aspirant Brigge in his exploration of poetic individuality and his reflections on the experience of time as death approaches. This new translation by Burton Pike is a reaction to overly stylized previous translations, and aims to capture not only the beauty but also the strangeness, the spirit, of Rilke's German.
Liveaboard sailor Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived when she blags her way into skippering a Viking longship for a Hollywood film. However, this means returning to the Shetland Islands, the place she fled as a teenager. When a corpse unexpectedly appears onboard the longship, she can…
I worked in high-tech electronics for thirty years, specialising in the design of radio communication equipment. My first love, though, has always been books, particularly exciting page-turners about spies and assassins. Eavesdrop – my first thriller – brought those two worlds together, and “what-if” ideas from my professional life engendered the plot’s high-tech angle. I wrote the early drafts largely while on planes and in airport lounges during business trips, and in snatched moments before starting work each morning. It was exciting when Assent Publishing took it on and did such a great job of producing the thriller ready for you to read. I hope you enjoy it.
Tom Wood immediately swept to the top of my list of great thriller writers when I read this book. It’s the first in the Victor Assassin series and its adrenaline-fuelled excitement gripped me from the first sentence to the final full stop.
Victor is hired to kill a man in Paris and to take the memory stick he is carrying, but Victor’s paymasters aren’t all they seem, and Victor quickly finds himself at the wrong end of a gun barrel when a hit squad is sent to eliminate him.
But Victor won’t be taken out that easily. He shoots his way free of the ambush and fights to stay alive long enough to work out who’s behind what’s happening. The underlying plot is slowly revealed and leads to a great dramatic conclusion.
His name is a cover He has no home And he kills for a living
Victor is an assassin, a man with no past and no surname. His world is one of paranoia and obsessive attention to detail; his morality lies either dead or dying. No one knows what truly motivates the hunter. No one gets close enough to ask.
When a Paris job goes spectacularly wrong, Victor finds himself running for his life across four continents, pursued by a kill squad and investigated by secret services from more than one country. With meticulous style, Victor plans his escape .…
