Here are 69 books that Shaky Town fans have personally recommended if you like
Shaky Town.
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I’ve only ever lived in small Midwestern towns. I grew up there, raised my kids there, recovered from a divorce there, remarried there. I’ve had the same best friends for 40 years. I’ve paid and bartered for my classmates’ trade services. I’ve argued with them in churches and cafes, rooted for and against their kids at high school basketball and football games all over the state. We’ve celebrated and buried each other’s loved ones. I’ve run hundreds of miles of Wisconsin trail, soaked in her waters, marveled at her sunsets. It’s as home to me as my own body, and I’ll never tire of reading about it.
I’ve lived in Wisconsin since 1985, and somehow I had no idea there used to be a thriving Playboy resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
After the book came out I learned I even have a family member who worked security there—that’s how little people around here talk about this juicy history. Christina Clancy’s book is set in the 1980s in both Lake Geneva and the smaller community of East Troy, and she does an excellent job of balancing the celebrity and historical elements with the young Wisconsin women themselves and the complex relationship so many of them had with the seedy perception of Playboy. A lot of them were from farms and rural towns, and their families didn’t even know they worked there.
This particular Playboy resort was even known as a family-friendly destination. I loved learning about a world I had no idea existed, set against one I thought…
The small town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin is an unlikely location for a Playboy Resort, and nineteen-year old Sherri Taylor is an unlikely bunny. Growing up in neighbouring East Troy, Sherri plays the organ at the local church and has never felt comfortable in her own skin. But when her parents die in quick succession, she leaves the only home she's ever known for the chance to be part of a glamorous slice of history. In the winter of 1981, in a costume two sizes too small, her toes pinched by stilettos, Sherri joins the daughters of dairy farmers and…
When my children were 1, 3, and 5, my husband and I adopted two teenage boys. Suddenly, I was a mom to five, trying to keep my head above water. I turned to other women for advice, friendship, and compassion. While bonding over our chaotic lives, I found stories. My friends offered new perspectives on my world. I learned that every woman is living life on her own terms, and no two tales are the same. This is the magic of listening to another woman. I'm passionate about telling these stories so we can all see the world from a unique perspective and look at our situations with new understanding.
I loved the similarities between this book and the book Little Women. The layers of the relationships between the four sisters attributed to an unexpected family drama. There were times I wanted to crawl inside the pages and give the girls a good “talkin’ to” as some of the choices they made were indeed cringe-worthy.
But this is the mark of a truly talented writer, evoking such emotion in the reader that you think about the book well after finishing the final pages.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes a poignant and engrossing family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?
“Hello Beautiful is exactly that: beautiful, perceptive, wistful. It’s a story of family and friendship, of how the people we are bound to can also set us free. I loved it.”—Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman…
I was born and raised in Minnesota, and attended college in Illinois, and even though I’ve spent the last two decades in California, I feel like a Midwesterner to my core, and it will always be my home. As a teenager, I was a voracious reader, and while I especially craved novels set in my home state, I had a difficult time finding ones that described the settings I knew and the kinds of people I recognized and loved. I write for that reader now, and I adore any novel that has an unmistakable sense of place.
Hilarious, ingenious, and moving, this wonder of a novel is the funniest book of the last few years, and takes place in a realm unknown to most—the world of cowboy poetry. It won’t matter if you weren’t aware such a thing existed, because a few chapters in, you’ll be eagerly lost in the world, its stakes, and its dreamers. Set across varying venues and states, this isn’t so much about nailing a certain place so much as an incredibly specific scene. It’s a ride you’ll be grateful you took, even if some horses expire along the way.
On May 1, 1982, eighteen-year-old Martin Oliphant watches a horse drown off the shore of Lake Michigan—the first of four equine corpses marking the trail that will lead Martin out of the small-minded small town of Pierre, Michigan, onto the open ranges of Elko, Nevada, and into the open arms, or at least open mics, of the cowboy poets who gather there to perform. Along the way, he nurtures a dying mother, who insists the only thing wrong with her is tennis elbow; corrals a demented father, who believes he's Father Christmas; assists the dissolute local newspaper editor; and serves…
I was born and raised in Minnesota, and attended college in Illinois, and even though I’ve spent the last two decades in California, I feel like a Midwesterner to my core, and it will always be my home. As a teenager, I was a voracious reader, and while I especially craved novels set in my home state, I had a difficult time finding ones that described the settings I knew and the kinds of people I recognized and loved. I write for that reader now, and I adore any novel that has an unmistakable sense of place.
Perhaps it says something about where I live now that the best novel I’ve read that takes place in the San Fernando Valley is largely told through an unreliable and chemically addled narrator. Through a self-medicating veteran named Shep and the people he encounters – from a convenience store clerk to an actress he believes to be his daughter – Kinney conjures an often bleak but never hopeless vision of the Valley. In her hands, familiar sights to us Valley residents take on unnerving new contexts, and for any readers unfamiliar with the 818, her brilliant, hypnotic, and compassionate writing will be an exemplary guide.
Shep has been dealt a bad hand in life. Halfheartedly raised by a cold grandmother and chronically ill following his deployment in Desert Storm, he self-medicates with alcohol and daydreams of salvation at the hands of women—ultimately landing on one woman in particular: Lila, the young actress he believes is his daughter despite all evidence to the contrary. As Shep navigates the mystically rendered streets and strip malls of the San Fernando Valley with his only companion, his dog Lionel, he takes increasingly desperate measures to insinuate himself into her life. Kinney’s precise and considered prose examines the insistence on…
Mark Derr is an independent scholar and author of three books on dogs, a biography of Davy Crockett, and a social and environmental history of Florida, as well as a co-author with photographer Cameron Davidson of Over Florida. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American, Audubon, Smithsonian, Natural History, The New York Times, and other publications. His poems have appeared in Kansas Quarterly, Partisan Review, and other journals. He has had a lifelong relationship with dogs. Having known and mourned a number of outstanding dogs, he has told friends, "They are always with me in my thoughts, and I miss them very much." He and his wife currently share their domicile with a Jack Russell Terrier and a Miami Beach street cat.
Nearly a century earlier, people relied on their own feet to travel long distances. These often solo efforts were known as “vagabonding”. A classic from this era was the transcontinental walk of Charles Fletcher Lummis, recounted in his A Tramp Across the Continent. Lummis, who eventually became the first City Editor at the Los Angeles Times, took up with an abused greyhound named Shadow, whom he had rescued from a group of immigrant miners in Colorado. Shadow and he had a number of adventures on the way to California. Unfortunately, the dog, whom Lummis loved dearly, contracted rabies, and Lummis had to shoot him. Lummis’s account of the shipment of Apache from their homes in the southwestern desert to the swampy morass of Florida is particularly wrenching and the mindless slaughter of Apache dogs by white settlers is deeply disturbing.
Charles F. Lummis tells of an America long departed, when the western and southern frontiers were wilderness, nature untrammeled and settlers rugged in the face of unforgiving conditions.
Written as a retrospective of the adventurer's youth, A Tramp Across the Continent, through its varied events and encounters, transports the reader to an era lost to time. The tale begins in 1884, when the author - disgruntled and unhappy with the tedium of everyday life - sets off from Ohio with the intention of reaching California on foot. His trek, spanning some 3,500 miles and 144 days, is filled with joy,…
From the beginning of my writing journey in 2000, all my girls have been full of spunk and sass and fighting every day to figure out life in the present while also dealing with the past, all while solving murders and mysteries and navigating relationships; oh my! The books I chose are all about that sass and spunk, those main characters in The Cozies (or RomCozies as I call mine since they have both murder and a budding romance) that not only make you snicker in the right places but also sigh when they’re over, you close the book, and hold it to your heart hoping the next is coming soon.
Last but certainly not least, I can’t have a list of sass and spunk without mentioning a cat with both! Jennifer J. Chow’s book Mimi Lee Cracks the Code is not only highly entertaining, but it also takes place on Catalina Island, where my very own Whit and Whiskers live. I wonder what they’d do if they met each other?
I laughed, and then I sighed, and then I laughed some more at this book. It’s a delightful tale with twists and turns that I absolutely loved. And that cat is quite the character.
One of BookRiot's Best Upcoming Cozy Mysteries for the Second Half of 2021!
When murder follows Mimi Lee to her romantic island getaway, she puts on her best sleuthing hat with her sassy cat in tow in this adventurous cozy mystery by Jennifer J. Chow.
Mimi Lee just found an extra perk to being a pet groomer at Hollywoof (other than cuddling animals all day long, that is). Pixie St. James, one of Mimi’s clients and the investor behind Hollywoof, has offered her and her boyfriend, Josh, a getaway at her vacation home, nestled on beautiful Catalina Island. With the…
I am an international bestselling author of Strays and a London-based journalist for The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, and other publications. I've written about animals, conservation, and volunteered at sanctuaries around the world, from tending big cats and baboons in Namibia to wild mustangs in Nevada—a labour of love that has inspired features for The Guardian, The Independent, and Condé Nast Traveller. I've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for many charities through my investigative animal-cruelty stories; as an activist, I helped shut down controversial breeders of laboratory animals in the UK. I also created Catfestlondon, a sell-out boutique festival that rescues and rehomes Moroccan street kittens in the UK.
I absolutely loved this book. One of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever read, it’s heartfelt and hilarious. After running his own bookshop in Seattle, Andrew Bloomfield moves to Hollywood to become a screenwriter and discovers a colony of feral cats living in his backyard. He was not a cat person. After witnessing one too many raccoon and coyote attacks and hungry, crying kittens, he and his two female housemates intervene and start caring for these wild yet vulnerable cats who transform his life. With his sharp wit and keen eye for detail, Bloomfield is a brilliant storyteller. I got completely caught up in the soap-opera dramas and death-defying moments of these cats, along with the heartaches and triumphs of rescuing them.
When aspiring screenwriter Andrew Bloomfield moved into a bungalow in Southern California he soon discovered that he shared the property with a large colony of feral cats — untamed, uninterested in human touch, not purring pets in waiting. But after a midnight attack by predators that decimated yet another litter of kittens, Bloomfield decided to intervene. He began to name and nurse, feed and house, rescue and neuter. Drawing on his time living in Asia among spiritual teachers, he takes us on the contemplative, humorous, and poignant journey of saving these cats, only to find it was they who saved…
I have been fascinated by James Ellroy’s life and writing since I first discovered it as a lonely teenager on a rainswept family holiday. He went through dark times; the unsolved murder of his mother and his subsequent struggles with addiction. But how he overcame this to become one of America’s greatest writers is an inspiring story and has inspired me to get through my own personal turmoil. Indeed, many Ellroy readers will attest to how his life story and writing helped them overcome their struggles. Now as Ellroy’s biographer, I am continually drawn back to his work. Reading just a few pages allows me to contemplate what Ellroy calls ‘the Wonder’.
This is a personal favourite as it’s the Ellroy novel that carries the biggest emotional punch. Although it didn’t match the sales of its predecessorThe Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere is a more accomplished novel. The setting is LA, 1950. A murder plot is interweaved with the politics of the Red Scare, and a Hollywood milieu at the height of the film noir age. This is the novel that proved Ellroy was a literary writer, and not just a genre one.
The D. A.'s brass, a sheriff's deputy, and a rough-and-tumble bagman are unknowingly chasing a nightmare in this thrilling novel from the author of "some of the most powerful crime novels ever written" (New York Times). Los Angeles, 1950 Red crosscurrents: the Commie Scare and a string of brutal mutilation killings. Gangland intrigue and Hollywood sleaze. Three cops caught in a hellish web of ambition, perversion, and deceit. Danny Upshaw is a Sheriff's deputy stuck with a bunch of snuffs nobody cares about; they're his chance to make his name as a cop...and to sate his darkest curiosities. Mal Considine…
My father estranged himself from his sister because she was an alcoholic. I never met my aunt. However, when looking for a strong character for my Lilian Dove Mystery Series, I decided this aunt was a good mentoring character. Fictionally, I gave my aunt sobriety, but her recovery is not so much from drinking as it is recovering from the past to take on life anew. The mysteries Lillian Dove becomes involved her help her see how to do this. And first, she needs to learn to admit life is full of mayhem. Small-town Iowa amateur sleuth who ends up owning a liquor store.
Joyce Carol Oates is
genuinely an extraordinary author, known for her prolific
output. While some writers focus on series, Oats dedicates her time to
crafting numerous standalone books, each a gem in its own right.
The
plot may appear simple at first glance—a missing sister, and a
protagonist who must piece together the clues to find
her. However, as the story unfolds, the reader becomes immersed in a
web of subtle evidence that gradually weaves together, resulting in a
rich and suspenseful novel. Put the book down.
When a woman mysteriously vanishes from her small town home, her sister must tally up the clues to uncover the truth behind the mystery.
Beautiful sculptor Marguerite has disappeared from her small town in upstate New York. But was foul play involved? Did she merely get away for some fun? Or did she finally make the decision to leave behind her claustrophobic life of limited opportunities?
Younger sister Gigi wonders if the flimsy silk Dior dress, so casually abandoned on the floor, is a clue to Marguerite's vanishing. The police puzzle over the footprints made by her Ferragamo boots, which…
I’m a contemporary mystery junkie. Realistic tales, set in the modern world always grab my attention. In a creative writing course in college, one professor suggested the old ‘write what you know’ approach. I don’t know everything, but I know what I like. Mysteries! I thrive on distinctive characters, those who are willing to put every effort into getting to the bottom of the situation. Sharp, tight dialogue and descriptions are essential. Give me that, and I’ll be back for more. This is my passion. Come along if you want a thrill and a surprise or two.
I love the way Parker weaves a bit of legend into this story about a modern-day version of Robin Hood running wild through Los Angeles. Allison Murietta may be following in the footsteps of her ancestors, stealing from whoever strikes her fancy, and giving the spoils to charity. The action is fast-paced.
This is the first Charlie Hood mystery and Parker does a wonderful job, bringing the rookie detective along. The interactions between Hood and Murietta are perfect. There’s plenty of action to draw the reader in, and more twists than I expected.
Investigating the latest crime scene of a celebrity thief who has been staging lucrative heists and donating the spoils to charity, rookie deputy Charlie Hood embarks on an affair with a key witness and is forced to make an ethics-testing decision when the thief is targeted by a professional killer. 100,000 first printing.
