Here are 100 books that Night Watch fans have personally recommended if you like
Night Watch.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I am a long-time journalist and have been passionate about understanding history ever since taking a wonderful AP course in European history in high school. I have read many historical books, both fiction and nonfiction, so it makes sense that my first novel, Rebecca of Ivanhoe, is historical fiction. To be a good journalist and citizen, you have to know and understand history to inform your reporting and try to prevent the bad moments of history from repeating themselves.
This book is the fascinating story of a Sephardic Jewish emigrant in London who, in the 1660s, was permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi even though she was a woman. The narration flips between Esther Velasquez’s remarkable story and an ailing historian in the 21st century who is trying to determine the identity of the mysterious scribe known to scholars only as “aleph.”
I liked this story because it revealed a fascinating window on how women, and particularly Jewish women, were treated in 17th-century Europe.
WINNER OF A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD A USA TODAY BESTSELLER "A gifted writer, astonishingly adept at nuance, narration, and the politics of passion."-Toni Morrison Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history. As the novel opens, Helen has been summoned by a former student to view a…
I am a long-time journalist and have been passionate about understanding history ever since taking a wonderful AP course in European history in high school. I have read many historical books, both fiction and nonfiction, so it makes sense that my first novel, Rebecca of Ivanhoe, is historical fiction. To be a good journalist and citizen, you have to know and understand history to inform your reporting and try to prevent the bad moments of history from repeating themselves.
The Marriage Portrait is a revisionist story of Lucrezia de Medici, the daughter of a 16th century Florentine duke who marries her off to the ruthless ruler of another region in northern Italy. Lucrezia’s husband is infertile but of course she is blamed for not being able to conceive. She overhears a plot to do away with her, so her husband can try to beget an heir on someone else. Lucrezia, who can get no help from her parents, has to figure out how to outwit her husband and escape. I’ll let you read this suspenseful and richly layered novel to find out if she manages to survive.
WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.
“I could not stop reading this incredible true story.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)
"O’Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you…
I am a long-time journalist and have been passionate about understanding history ever since taking a wonderful AP course in European history in high school. I have read many historical books, both fiction and nonfiction, so it makes sense that my first novel, Rebecca of Ivanhoe, is historical fiction. To be a good journalist and citizen, you have to know and understand history to inform your reporting and try to prevent the bad moments of history from repeating themselves.
James is an inventive retelling of the Huckleberry Finn saga from the point of view of a slave who lives on the same Virginia plantation as Huck Finn. James runs away when he learns he is about to be sold and separated from his beloved wife and daughter. Huck Finn finds James hiding in a nearby cave, and together, they embark on many adventures and close calls.
I’m not going to spoil the ending for you; suffice it to say that James divulges a startling secret to Huck as he tries to elude a massive manhunt just as the country plunges into civil war. This book kept me glued to each page.
'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha
James by Percival Everett is a profound and ferociously funny meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. From the author of The Trees, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Erasure, adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction.
The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new…
Secrets, misunderstandings, and a plethora of family conflicts abound in this historical novel set along the Brazos River in antebellum Washington County, East Texas.
It is a compelling story of two neighboring plantation families and a few of the enslaved people who serve them. These two plantations are a microcosm…
I am a long-time journalist and have been passionate about understanding history ever since taking a wonderful AP course in European history in high school. I have read many historical books, both fiction and nonfiction, so it makes sense that my first novel, Rebecca of Ivanhoe, is historical fiction. To be a good journalist and citizen, you have to know and understand history to inform your reporting and try to prevent the bad moments of history from repeating themselves.
This book has it all: humor, sparkling writing, a great cast of characters, and a fascinating dose of history (World War II history). In the book, we meet Archie and his spunky great-aunts, who are both in their 90s and enlisted in British women's service groups to help their country defeat the Germans.
As the story unfolds, weaving back and forth between the 1940s and the present, we learn both women harbor secrets from their war years, and those secrets unfold over time, climaxing in a gripping ending during which Archie and his great-aunts are held hostage by terrorists during a jewelry auction in Paris. I couldn’t put this book down!
"Irresistible...Filled with surprise, poignancy, and excitement, this is a surefire winner." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A brilliant and witty drama about two brave female World War II veterans who survived the unthinkable without ever losing their killer instinct…or their joie de vivre.
Meet the Williamson sisters, Britain’s most treasured World War II veterans. Now in their late nineties, Josephine and Penny are in huge demand, popping up at commemorative events and history festivals all over the country. Despite their age, they’re still in great form—perfectly put together, sprightly and sparky, and always in search of their next “excitement.”
I have always loved exploring, whether it is on the shelves of the library or on a car trip. Growing up, we left our sheltered home in New England and piled into our dad’s car. We explored caves in Virginia and South Dakota, the ocean in Massachusetts and Maine, and museums from Chicago to Boston. In historical fiction, I see the boundaries of human experience, knowing people and places I could never in reality experience. I learn empathy, history, natural science, and political science in these pages. For me, a good historical novel is as good as a vacation, delving into the past, sight-seeing, window-shopping, and experiencing beyond the everyday.
A horse lover, I found the story of Lexington, a thoroughbred who saves his devoted and enslaved groom Jarret during the Civil War, rich and compelling. The archivist who discovers the horse’s bones in the Smithsonian is on a thrilling journey, as we are when we explore a past event.
"Brooks' chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling." -The New York Times Book Review
"Horse isn't just an animal story-it's a moving narrative about race and art." -TIME
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an…
My mother’s death from an E. coli outbreak over a decade ago was my wake-up call to an awareness of my own mortality and was the emotional foundation of both my first novel and my latest. I’ve reached a point in my own life where advancing age is a lived experience, and I’ve read broadly about this phase of life that goes largely unexamined despite the fact that we’re all destined for it. My essays have appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. I’m a graduate of Denison University and Columbia Law School.
This novel takes an absurd premise (everyone magically receives a string whose length reflects how long they will live) and spins it into a profound thought experiment. I loved it for its complete indifference to the scientific credibility that I tried to build into my novel, which is in part about knowing (if you want) exactly how long you have to live.
I found it liberating to learn that, as a writer, I could have it both ways: be extremely thoughtful and nuanced about the consequences of your premise while being completely arbitrary and absurdist about the premise itself. I don’t have that kind of nerve, so I fell back on mere science for my premise, but I love Erlich’s gall.
The 19th century women's rights movement and the rise of public education intertwine with one woman's story of struggle, perseverance, and love.
Alice Harris is pressed to marry a Civil War veteran twice her age when her family’s inn fails in 1882 in western North Carolina. She remakes herself by…
I came to writing later in life – at age forty-two. Writing was something I had always wanted to do. Still, it wasn’t until I experienced something that was in some ways extraordinary and in some ways prevalent–the inadequate treatment of maternal mental health and maternal health in general–that I felt my story had to be told. While maternal mental illnesses are expected, there is a shortage of books on the topic. When I was deep inside my illness, I searched for any story that might mirror my own and had difficulty finding one. With this list, I hope to help anyone who needs a hand to reach out to.
I picked this book up at 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and didn’t put it down until I finished the last page at 1 o’clock on a Sunday morning.
This unique thriller explores what happens when you don’t become the mother you expected to be and struggle to connect with your child. It is all at once brilliant, nuanced, and propulsive.
Audrain lays bare the complexities of the nature of maternal love, generational trauma, and skirting the fine line between sanity and madness.
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | A New York Times bestseller!
"Utterly addictive." -Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
"Hooks you from the very first page and will have you racing to get to the end."-Good Morning America
A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family-and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for-and everything she feared
Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had.
As well as featuring kick-ass female lead characters, all the books listed delve into why people do what they do – and this has always fascinated me; it’s why I became a journalist. Talking to victims of crime, I was always struck by their strength (and that was never more true than when I fronted an award-winning campaign for victims of domestic abuse). Prior to that, I worked at a high-security men’s prison, and getting to know the prisoners had a profound impact on me. Now, whether reading or writing a book, I love to get under the skin of characters and find their ‘why.’
What’s better than a strong female lead character? A whole cast of them! A group of servants gang together to pull off the ultimate heist, clearing an entire house during a party. How audacious is that?! As soon as I read that premise, I had to find out how on earth they would pull it off.
Rather like an Edwardian, all-women Ocean’s Eleven, the plot has clever twists and turns that kept me turning the pages. I really enjoyed getting to know each one of the gang, too, as they’re all so different, and the book as a whole was such a refreshing take on both historical fiction and the heist genre.
The night of London's grandest ball, a bold group of women downstairs plot a daring revenge heist against Mayfair society in this dazzling historical novel about power, gender, and class
Named a Best Book of Summer by The Washington Post * Good Housekeeping * Harper's Bazaar * Reader's Digest
“Rollicking fun and entirely original... Anyone who relishes a good party gone wrong will devour this.” —Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary
Mrs. King is no ordinary housekeeper. Born into a world of con artists and thieves, she’s made herself respectable, running the grandest home in…
Starting at age ten, I loved everything about Superman. I loved his origin story—who wouldn’t root for an alien baby arriving on Earth with superpowers that are eventually used to fight evil? Superman comics were a place for me to escape for entertainment and to dream about becoming something more…maybe something super. I hope kids today will dream about superheroes and, in the end, realize they have superpowers they can use to make their lives and the world a better place. This explains why I connect with the following five books.
I’m a huge Alan Gratz fan, and this book did not disappoint. Like the creators of Superman, Siegel and Schuster, in Heroes, we have a tween writer, Frank, and a tween artist, Stanley, who talk non-stop about superhero comics as they set out to write their own. But this day is December 7, 1947, and the Japanese military attacks the boys’ Pearl Harbor home.
Gratz brings history to life with the stories of life-like characters. Frank was already riddled with fears, even fear of flip flops (you’ll have to read the book), and now the situation is beyond his worst fears. Not many of us will be tested as these boys are tested, but Gratz has the power in his writing to put us in perilous situations in order to examine our own lives.
As a young doctor, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the death of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the War, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is…
I’ve been the dorky bookworm, the party girl who laughs too loud, the gamer-tomboy, and the doting mother of two kids who is now in a happy, loving marriage. Through all my shifts and changes, the one constant thread in my life was love. But not the rough, I-have-to-hurt-someone-to-get-it kind of love you might find in dark romance novels (although I enjoy those too sometimes). My kind of experience with love is that it’s at its best when it’s fun and when it’s easy. If you can find your most authentic you in the pages of a rom-com, you’re guaranteed an escape from reality that’ll pull you deeper into yourself.
There’s something so inexplicably enticing about forbidden romance. Even these days, when a man knows they can’t have a certain woman for all sorts of reasons, the moment where that man breaks, the moment where he loses control, that’s exactly the kind of magic I want in an all-consuming romance novel.
If you’re looking for that added spice of a hilarious, sexy nanny and older, grumpy cowboy, you’ll find that, as well as unforgettable forbidden romance elements in this spicy cowboy romcom.
If you’re going to read only one Elsie Silver book, make it this one.
Working as a nanny for the world's grumpiest single dad should be simple…except she can't keep her eyes off him. And he can't keep his hands off her.
Cade Eaton is thirteen years older than Willa Grant, and he barely looks her way, even though she's living in his house for the summer. That is, until she gets him into the hot tub one night for a game of truth or dare. Then, all bets are off―and so are their clothes.
Cade is gruff, a little rough around the edges, but broad-shouldered ranchers with calloused hands and filthy mouths are…
