Here are 79 books that Second Place fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a poet, novelist, and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Teesside University in the UK. I like to write and read about particularly gender power dynamics, and how those come to play in domestic situations. I love lyrical novels and books that explore characters’ interiority, and I’m interested in how, generally speaking, ‘toxic’ and ‘abusive’ relationships have become synonymous – even though they are quite different. These novels helped me write my own, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I did!
This novel is a masterclass in unreliable narration. It follows Will, a young man estranged from his family and religion, as he attends college and falls in love with Phoebe.
As Will takes over and narrates his recollections of their relationship, Phoebe’s friendship with a man named John Leal, and her inculcation into a religious cult, he becomes increasingly untrustworthy. Will rails against John Leal, his lies, and the damage he has done to Phoebe, revealing his complicity in toxic masculinity and his own harmful actions.
Kwon renders her characters as entirely believable, frightening people, in lyrical and considered prose.
'Absolutely electric . . . Everyone should read this book' GARTH GREENWELL'Every explosive requires a fuse. That's R. O. Kwon's novel, a straight, slow-burning fuse' VIET THANH NGUYEN'In dazzlingly acrobatic prose, R. O. Kwon explores the lines between faith and fanaticism, passion and violence, the rational and the unknowable' CELESTE NG'A sharp, little novel as hard to ignore as a splinter in your eye' WASHINGTON POST'Raw and finely wrought' NEW YORK TIMES'The Incendiaries packs a disruptive charge, and introduces R. O. Kwon as a major talent'…
I’m a poet, novelist, and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Teesside University in the UK. I like to write and read about particularly gender power dynamics, and how those come to play in domestic situations. I love lyrical novels and books that explore characters’ interiority, and I’m interested in how, generally speaking, ‘toxic’ and ‘abusive’ relationships have become synonymous – even though they are quite different. These novels helped me write my own, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I did!
This might be one of my favourite books of all time.
Riley’s prose is exquisite – pared back, yet lyrical – and her dialogue is unmatched. Neve has married Edwyn, an older and more financially stable man. As Neve thinks about all the decisions and circumstances that led to her marriage – including trying to escape her bully of a father and her intense and naïve mother – Riley deftly and subtly details cycles of abuse and neglect.
Edwyn has terrible moods, which Neve excuses, and for which she blames herself. Riley truly understands and captures the psychology of loving and making excuses for an abusive partner or family member.
'A singular, devastating journey into the ungovernable reaches of the heart' Observer
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017
Neve is a writer in her mid-30s married to an older man, Edwyn. For now they are in a place of relative peace, but their past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that led her to this marriage, she tells of other loves and other debts, from her bullying father and her self-involved mother to a musician who played her and a series of lonely flights from place to place.
I’m a poet, novelist, and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Teesside University in the UK. I like to write and read about particularly gender power dynamics, and how those come to play in domestic situations. I love lyrical novels and books that explore characters’ interiority, and I’m interested in how, generally speaking, ‘toxic’ and ‘abusive’ relationships have become synonymous – even though they are quite different. These novels helped me write my own, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I did!
When I Hit You is a shattering and visceral account of a woman’s short-lived but harrowing abusive marriage, her family’s determination that she stay in that marriage, and her family’s way of understanding her ordeal once she has escaped.
Kandasamy writes with brutal detail of the husband’s total control of the narrator, who tries again and again to understand her experiences – and escape from them – through her writing. It is a powerful novel about resilience, courage, and determination, which, despite its subject matter, avoids sensationalism.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2018
Guardian's Best Books of 2017 Daily Telegraph's Best Books of 2017 Observer Best Books of 2017 Financial Times Best Books of 2017
"Meena Kandasamy's vivid, sharp and precise writing makes a triumph of When I Hit You: Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife(Atlantic)"- Guardian
Seduced by politics, poetry and an enduring dream of building a better world together, the unnamed narrator falls in love with a university professor. Moving with him to a rain-washed coastal…
I’m a poet, novelist, and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Teesside University in the UK. I like to write and read about particularly gender power dynamics, and how those come to play in domestic situations. I love lyrical novels and books that explore characters’ interiority, and I’m interested in how, generally speaking, ‘toxic’ and ‘abusive’ relationships have become synonymous – even though they are quite different. These novels helped me write my own, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I did!
Anya and Luke like to listen to true crime podcasts together, but they refuse to share much else: Anya tries to hide her body hair, her family, how she escaped from Sarajevo, and her concern that Luke will leave her.
Luke is stoical, difficult to read, and Anya feels isolated from his wealthy, middle-class English family. When they get engaged, it seems as though Anya might finally be able to settle, but the declaration of commitment only sets off a series of events, estrangements, and secrets that will unravel Anya’s world.
With the tension and pacing of a thriller, and the introspection of a woman who has only known precarity, Sudjic’s novel is terrifying and gripping.
'An eerily familiar reflection of our current moment ... It continues to haunt me' NATASHA BROWN, I PAPER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'I will go wherever she takes me. A phenomenal book' DAISY JOHNSON 'A brilliant, scalding novel ... sharp, intricately layered, impossible to forget' MEGAN HUNTER 'Stunning ... beautifully written and deeply unsettling' BOOKSELLER, EDITOR'S CHOICE
CHOSEN AS A 2021 BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR BY OBSERVER, INDEPENDENT, FINANCIAL TIMES, EVENING STANDARD, GRAZIA, STYLIST, ELLE THE NATIONAL, FIVE BOOKS AND BURO
A couple drive from London to coastal Provence. Anya is preoccupied with what she feels is a relationship…
I've been studying people at work for over 40 years, starting as an undergraduate at Cornell’s School of Labor Relations. As a student, I got involved with the trade union movement in the US, and worked as an assembly-line worker and fruit picker on kibbutzim in Israel. These hands-on experiences made me want to understand and have an impact on the way people spend most of their working hours. I’ve collected survey data from literally thousands of workers in dozens of studies conducted around the world. I’ve published more articles in scholarly journals than I ever imagined possible. And while I’m still passionate about the study of work, I’ve yet to really understand it.
Aside from my research on rewards management, pro-social organizational behavior, and employee substance misuse, I’ve focused a lot of my attention on workplace incivility.
Bob Sutton’s book was one of the factors leading me to look at this topic. We’ve all encountered incivility at work and all know – at least implicitly – how it impacts us. Sutton’s book was one of the first to make sense – at least for me – of such behavior, not only by identify the “dirty dozen” (12 highly prevalent manifestations of workplace incivility), but also by detailing how damaging such behavior can be to individuals and the organizations employing them.
Aside from giving me insight into the prevalence and nature of employee MIS-management, this book was the start of a personal journey to discover some of the less obvious (but potentially more robust) implications of such problematic organizational behavior.
When the Harvard Business Review asked Robert Sutton for suggestions for its annual list of Breakthrough Ideas, he told them that the best business practice he knew of was 'the no asshole rule'. Sutton's piece became one of the most popular articles ever to appear in the HBR. Spurred on by the fear and despair that people expressed, the tricks they used to survive with dignity in asshole-infested places, the revenge stories that made him laugh out loud and the other small wins that they celebrated against mean-spirited people, Sutton was persuaded to write THE NO ASSHOLE RULE. He believes…
I am a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I also have my Ph.D. in somatic psychotherapy. In my clinical practice, I noticed how many smart, kind women were trapped in trauma bonds. So, I researched the topic and decided to write a book to help women understand the complex psychological process of trauma bonds and how to recover from coercive control and abuse. Also, my ex-husband is the "Wolf of Wall Street", so I have personal experience of a trauma bond as well.
I loved this book by Dr. Carnes because he presents an in-depth study of toxic relationships, why they form, who is most susceptible, and how they become so powerful.
The book kept my interest with how Dr. Carnes gave a clear explanation of the bond that compels people to tolerate the intolerable.
I also respected how the author provides practical steps to identify compulsive attachment patterns and ultimately to change or end them for good.
For seventeen years The Betrayal Bond has been the primary source for therapists and patients wrestling the effects of emotional pain and harm caused by exploitation from someone they trusted.
Divorce, litigation, incest and child abuse, domestic violence, kidnapping, professional exploitation and religious abuse are all areas of trauma bonding. These are situations and relationships of incredible intensity or importance lend themselves more easily to an exploitation of trust or power.
In The Betrayal Bond, Dr. Carnes presents an in-depth study of these relationships; why they form, who is most susceptible, and…
I am a writer and a sociologist of money. I am passionate about money, relationships, and family violence, because I know from my research that talking about money opens up intimate conversations about the way people see themselves, their aspirations and hopes. Sometimes through hearing other people’s stories I have found mine. I realised while researching family violence that I too had suffered economic abuse. For me too economic abuse was ‘hidden in plain sight’. One of the most meaningful things for me is to help women and men overcome family violence and empower themselves to live with freedom.
Evan Stark’s book introduced me to the concept of ‘coercive control’.
It is a continued and malevolent pattern of domination and entrapment that makes family violence a human rights crime. He also noted that the perpetrator, often a man, uses gendered stereotypes to control the woman, to convince her that it is she who is at fault.
Evan Stark’s insights helped me connect the gendered cultural practices of money with family violence. When these cultural ways of dealing with money were used for entrapment and abuse, money as a medium of care became a medium of coercive control.
Despite its great achievements, the domestic violence revolution is stalled, Evan Stark argues, a provocative conclusion he documents by showing that interventions have failed to improve women's long-term safety in relationships or to hold perpetrators accountable. Stark traces this failure to a startling paradox, that the singular focus on violence against women masks an even more devastating reality. In millions of abusive relationships, men use a largely unidentified form of subjugation that more closely resembles kidnapping or indentured servitude than assault. He calls this pattern "coercive control". Drawing on sources that range from FBI statistics and film to dozens of…
I was in an emotionally abusive marriage for 20 years but didn’t realize what was happening to me. I tried to twist myself into a perfectly shaped pretzel to make my husband happy. It didn’t work. Reading some of these books gave me the courage to seek a restraining order and divorce my husband. Since then, I became a domestic violence advocate, author, blogger, and mental health counselor.
When I was in my emotionally abusive marriage, I didn’t fully realize I was being abused. I finally called the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and they recommended this book. It does an excellent job of explaining what verbal/ emotional abuse is, and how to recognize it. Reading this book set me on the path to finally getting the help I needed and getting free from my abuser.
In this fully expanded and updated third edition of the bestselling classic, you learn why verbal abuse is more widespread than ever, and how you can deal with it. You'll get more of the answers you need to recognize abuse when it happens, respond to abusers safely and appropriately, and most important, lead a happier, healthier life.
In two all-new chapters, Evans reveals the Outside Stresses driving the rise in verbal abuse - and shows you how you can mitigate the devastating effects on your relationships. She also outlines the Levels of Abuse that characterize this kind…
I have always been obsessed with the idea of other worlds I can’t sense but can somehow contrive to glimpse, whether with a magic amulet or some fabulous technology. As a kid growing up in the woods and devouring fantasy novels and biology texts alike, I couldn’t decide between science or writing as a way of exploring the unknown, and ultimately, I ended up doing both: becoming a writer specializing in marine and coastal environments, one of the many places in our world where the deeper we look at the senses of the creatures living there, the more we realize just how limited our own perceptions are.
I blame a 90’s childhood spent devouring Bruce Coville and O.R. Melling, but I am obsessed with stories where our hero tumbles, slides, or wanders into another world. That’s why, even as an adult, I drink up the scene(s) in a speculative book where I get that first delicious glimmer of an uncanny separate world beneath “normal” life.
When it’s done well, it’s everything, and Sasha’s way-too-early morning swims in Vita Nostra evoke that feeling pitch-perfectly. I love how the authors describe the visceral discomfort of cold water, I love the industrial incongruity of the buoy she swims to, and mostly I love how they use the disorienting sensation of sneaking out to swim in wild and dangerous waters, to set the mood for the weirdness to come.
This made me feel like I was watching Sailor Moon and reading The Dark Tower again for the first time.
The definitive English language translation of the internationally bestselling Russian novel - a brilliant dark fantasy combining psychological suspense, enchantment, and terror that makes us consider human existence in a fresh and provocative way.
'A book that has the potential to become a modern classic.' - Lev Grossman, bestselling author of The Magicians
Our life is brief . . .
Sasha Samokhina has just met Farit Kozhenikov and her life will never be the same again.
Whilst on holiday, Sasha is asked by the mysterious Farit to undertake a strange task for him. Reluctantly, she obliges, and is rewarded with…
Sonia Frontera is a divorce lawyer with a heart. She is the survivor of a toxic marriage who is now happily remarried. Sonia integrates the wisdom acquired through her personal journey, her professional experience and the lessons of the world’s leading transformational teachers and translates it into guidance that is insightful and practical. Through the years, Sonia has supported domestic violence survivors as an advocate, speaker, and empowerment trainer.
Divorce is a devastating experience, especially where ending a marriage is viewed as a separation, not only from your spouse, but from your church as well. In God, the Devil and Divorce, Linda M. Kurth shares her personal divorce journey in spite of the opposition of her community of faith to escape the pain of an abusive marriage. She emerges triumphantly as a trailblazer for Christian women enduring spousal abuse, offering hope and reassuring them that life goes on—and happily.
God, The Devil, and Divorce tells the story of a Christian woman's marriage and divorce recovery from her "crazymaking" spouse; and how she learned to trust God along the way.
How could Linda Moore Kurth's marriage that once seemed so right become so wrong? Put-downs, shaming, and distancing grow into habitual emotional abuse. Counseling provides glimmers of hope, only for that hope to fade. She is shocked when her latest Christian counselor tells her, "If you divorce, Satan wins."
Linda receives a dichotomy of reactions from other Christians for her ultimate decision to leave her marriage. Betrayal and heartache bring…
