Here are 100 books that Social Creature fans have personally recommended if you like
Social Creature.
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Let me tell you a little about myself. I was born in Dublin, and being the daughter of a diplomat afforded me to experience different cultures. Since childhood my fascination with the unknown caused me to gravitate towards stories related to hauntings. I shared this interest with my maternal grandparents, who contributed to my education by telling me ghost stories (some true whilst others are fictional). Tales of haunted castles were my favorite, which is reflected in my book. In later life, my own experiences with the paranormal cemented the notion of the unexplained and the thin veil between us and those departed.
I love a clever sociopath. I felt myself strangely rooting for the main character, hoping that he would continue to evade the law and get away with his crimes. I liked the way the author built up this person, showing how smart, adaptive to changing circumstances, and manipulative he could be. I liked the backstory of social deprivation breathing life into his mysterious persona.
Ripley’s constant need for a new identity, desperate to escape from his past and humble origins, as well as grappling with his sexual identity, sustained my interest throughout the novel. It made me wonder what percent of the population would do anything to become someone else.
It's here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith's five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a "sissy." Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley's fascination with Dickie's debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie's ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game. "Sinister and strangely alluring"…
I’m a psychologist by profession and I’m fascinated by the way personalities develop and change with life events. In novels, I’m drawn towards wounded characters who are searching for something to make them feel whole. Common issues I see in my psychotherapy work include imposter syndrome, low self-esteem, feelings of not being good enough. Many people try to hide their vulnerability behind a mask, faking confidence or bravado, or pretending to be something they’re not. But these fictional characters take it up a level, one small step at a time, until the lies build and they end up in a web of deceit with no way out.
This book is aimed at a young adult audience, and it’s a fun pacey read. The author uses a ticking clock in her chapter titles – ‘(12 minutes captive) 1 lighter; no plan’ – which ups the tension. There are two stories running in parallel – the current events in a bank and the back story of Nora’s life. I enjoyed the small glimpses of the protagonist’s childhood and I was dying to know more about the relationship with her mother. Why did the mother force Nora to assume so many different identities? Who is Nora really?
Soon to be a Netflix film starring Stranger Things' Millie Bobby Brown - this must-read psychological thriller, perfect for fans of One of Us Is Lying, will leave you guessing until the final page. 'Unlike anything I've read before... immediate, gripping, incredibly tense, heart-breaking, heart-warming and FUN! ' - Holly Jackson, author of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
As an ex con artist, Nora has always got herself out of tricky situations. But the ultimate test lies in wait when she's taken hostage in a bank heist. And this time, Nora doesn't have an escape plan ...
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
At the beginning of this book, I recognized the ingredients that make up popular erotic novels. The main character, Edie, a Black woman and struggling artist, is beginning a relationship with an older, wealthy, successful white man in an open marriage. There’s a power imbalance. To a certain extent, this excites Edie, and in this way, the book fits neatly into the parameters of the genre.
However, the relationship becomes messy, and Edie’s life, both with and away from Eric, is fraught with bad decisions. Race, wealth, and gender intersect with sex in a complex and uncomfortable milieu. Through all of this, and with the guidance of Eric’s wife, Edie begins to make progressive, less destructive choices, and as she does, her art progresses.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
WINNER of the NBCC John Leonard Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020 A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The New York Times Book Review, O Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Shondaland, Boston Globe, and many more!
"So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or…
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.
I’m obsessed with obsession; with the nature of intimate relationships. If I could obsess about a topic as easily and naturally as I can about a human, I’d probably have five or six advanced degrees. As a writer I’m most frequently drawn to third-person limited because I love the marriage of intimacy and distance it can create. It's that marriage that confounds me; the dark inner spaces contained by the people we love.
Christine Snow is a therapist who has her shit together, or does she? When her girlfriend vanishes, it becomes apparent to Chris that, on an emotional level, Taylor was never really there to begin with. Anshaw’s use of a third-person limited point of view and a present tense narrative creates a sense of breathless intimacy. If you’re looking for a thriller, look elsewhere. Seven Moves is a well-observed mediation on the inherent unknowability of an intimate partner. Anshaw does obsession like no one else.
Christine Snow, a Chicago therapist, has at last returned from the margins of her past - a card-sharp father, too many wrong lovers - into comfortable urban domesticity with Taylor Hayes, a travel photographer. The two women share a house, a dog, a life. And then one morning after a minor argument, Taylor disappears, Chris's anger turns to alarm as time passes and still she hears nothing, until she falls across a clue as unsettling in itself as Taylor's disappearance. Following a trail that leads to Morocco and home again, Seven Moves tracks Chris's gradual realisation that one can never…
I’m obsessed with obsession; with the nature of intimate relationships. If I could obsess about a topic as easily and naturally as I can about a human, I’d probably have five or six advanced degrees. As a writer I’m most frequently drawn to third-person limited because I love the marriage of intimacy and distance it can create. It's that marriage that confounds me; the dark inner spaces contained by the people we love.
Gender takes a backseat to obsession when college student Regina becomes enamored with Professor Nicholas Brodeur, before finding a deeper romantic connection with his volatile wife. Choi nails the mix of awe and attraction that can characterize the relationship between a young person and an older counterpart. Lyrical and emotionally immersive, this academic novel depicts a regular young woman who believes (as we all do) that the strength of her passion is unique.
An intimately charged novel of desire and disaster from the National Book Award-winning author of Trust Exercise and A Person of Interest
Regina Gottlieb had been warned about Professor Nicholas Brodeur long before arriving as a graduate student at his prestigious university high on a pastoral hill. He's said to lie in the dark in his office while undergraduate women read couplets to him. He's condemned on the walls of the women's restroom, and enjoys films by Roman Polanski. But no one has warned Regina about his exceptional physical beauty-or his charismatic, volatile wife.
I’m obsessed with obsession; with the nature of intimate relationships. If I could obsess about a topic as easily and naturally as I can about a human, I’d probably have five or six advanced degrees. As a writer I’m most frequently drawn to third-person limited because I love the marriage of intimacy and distance it can create. It's that marriage that confounds me; the dark inner spaces contained by the people we love.
This book was ahead of its time. This YA novel was written in 1978 but I found it on a shelf in my local library in 1992 when I was a queer preteen. An elliptical narrative about the burgeoning romantic relationship between two teenage girls, the novel captures a nameless yearning I understood without knowing why. Though the narrative felt to me illicit, it wasn’t prurient but rather deeply felt and authentic to the experience of a teenager coming to understand her sexuality as it crystalizes around one compelling friend.
Val and Chloe don't fit in at their fancy private school in Manhattan. Together, they ditch school, visit cemeteries and thrift shops and have sleepovers during which they confide all their secret thoughts. Lately, Val has all kinds of questions. Especially about sex. So Val turns to the two people who have always given her the most honest answers possible: her mother and Chloe. Unfortunately, not even Val's mother-an adult!-has all the answers. Val starts to think that maybe she's not "normal" at all. Because she has some other feelings for Chloe. Feelings that she never expected to have. Would…
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’m a psychologist by profession and I’m fascinated by the way personalities develop and change with life events. In novels, I’m drawn towards wounded characters who are searching for something to make them feel whole. Common issues I see in my psychotherapy work include imposter syndrome, low self-esteem, feelings of not being good enough. Many people try to hide their vulnerability behind a mask, faking confidence or bravado, or pretending to be something they’re not. But these fictional characters take it up a level, one small step at a time, until the lies build and they end up in a web of deceit with no way out.
From the opening sentence I was hooked. Whatmight have started earlier? Why was the protagonist scratching on his forearm rather than using pen and paper? From the first page we are deep inside the head of the lead character, Paul Morris, and it’s not always a pretty place. He is a cynical manipulative liar, a deeply unpleasant man, but I was intrigued by how far he would go and whether he would get caught out.
It’s a slow burn as we watch the deceit unfold. We experience the lead character’s tension as he realises the mess he’s got himself into with his lies, then witness his struggle to backtrack and make things good. By the end I felt quite sorry for him. It had me gripped!
The truth is, we all tell lies... take a deep breath and dive into the book everyone's raving about.
'If you've had a hole in your literary life since finishing Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, this is the book to fill it' Grazia
It starts with a lie. The kind we've all told - to a former acquaintance we can't quite place but still, for some reason, feel the need to impress. The story of our life, embellished for the benefit of the happily married lawyer with the kids and the lovely home.
I’m a psychologist by profession and I’m fascinated by the way personalities develop and change with life events. In novels, I’m drawn towards wounded characters who are searching for something to make them feel whole. Common issues I see in my psychotherapy work include imposter syndrome, low self-esteem, feelings of not being good enough. Many people try to hide their vulnerability behind a mask, faking confidence or bravado, or pretending to be something they’re not. But these fictional characters take it up a level, one small step at a time, until the lies build and they end up in a web of deceit with no way out.
Published in 1990, this book reflects the era in which it was written and may be slightly over-written for modern tastes. The short chapters draw you through the story as we see inside the heads of different characters, so the reader is often one step ahead of Allie, the protagonist. As Allie’s subdued flatmate starts to idolise her, I was keen to discover whether easy-going Allie would realise something was wrong. When their roles start to change halfway through the novel, it seemed things could only go one way and I started turning the pages faster. This is an interesting early example of the genre and I can see why it was made into a film.
After a messy break-up, Allie Jones finds herself living alone in her New York City apartment, no one to share her bed with--and more urgently, no one to share her rent. The solution seems clear: she needs a roommate. And Hedra Carlson seems perfect--she's shy, quiet. . .safe. But soon Hedra's disturbing envy of Allie's looks and social life becomes unsettling. She wears Allie's clothes, even buys a wig in Allie's color and style. Then the obscene phone calls begin, Allie's credit cards vanish, and she discovers Hedra is living a…
I grew up around a lot of suffering over status. I didn’t want to suffer, so I kept trying to understand why everyone plays a game that they insist they don’t want to play. I found my answer when I studied evolutionary psychology. This answer really hit home when I watched David Attenborough’s wildlife documentaries. I saw the social rivalry among our mammalian ancestors, and it motivated me to research the biology behind it. I took early retirement from a career as a Professor of Management and started writing books about the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals. I’m so glad I found my power over my inner mammal!
A thick science book on envy is just what we need to help us release this feeling. The author looks at “Man the Envier” in an anthropological way. He shows how diverse cultures have struggled to manage this natural impulse, even using “black magic.” That may sound crazy, but my Italian ancestors did this. They believed that suffering is caused by malocchio—the evil eye from a person who envies you.
I like this book because it shows how humans create envy inside themselves. You may not want to see inside yourself. It’s easier to dream that the perfect society that will relieve your envy. But you make yourself powerless when you do that because you can’t control society. You are better off building your power over your emotions, as my books explain.
This classic study is one of the few books to explore extensively the many facets of envy—“a drive which lies at the core of man’s life as a social being.” Ranging widely over literature, philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences, Professor Schoeck— a distinguished sociologist and anthropologist—elucidates both the constructive and destructive consequences of envy in social life. Perhaps most important, he demonstrates that not only the impetus toward a totalitarian regime but also the egalitarian impulse in democratic societies are alike in being rooted in envy.
This book is set in Montauk, under looming threat from a warming climate and overdevelopment. Now outsider Clancy, a thirty-six-year-old claims adjuster scarred by his orphan childhood, has inherited an unexpected legacy: the power to decide the fate of Montauk’s last parcel of undeveloped land. Everyone in town has a…
I’m absolutely passionate about suspense stories, especially ones with killer twists. Maybe it’s all the crime shows I watch, but the motives for crimes are so wide and varied, and I love when the unexpected is explored in fiction. I’m also intrigued by stories about missing people and the myriad of reasons behind why they go missing–especially when things aren’t always what they seem. Whether it’s the missing who return years later or hints of them suddenly appear, I can’t help but get wrapped up in a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat guessing what might happen next! I try for great twists in my novels.
I don’t even remember everything about this book, except that this was the book that made me an instant Sandra Brown fan. In Envy, a NY book editor is riveted by the tale of an unsolicited manuscript and begins working with the author…only to learn along the way that this story reveals a long-concealed crime. I’ve read it twice, years apart, and I’m due for another reading. It’s that good. Explosive is the only way to describe this suspenseful story with an amazing twist at the end! One of my absolute favs!
In this explosive New York Times bestselling thriller, a New York City-based book editor travels to a Southern island to meet a mysterious author -- but she's about to uncover a shocking truth about a carefully concealed crime. Maris Matherly-Reed is a renowned New York book editor, the daughter of a publisher and the wife of a bestselling author. It's rare for an unsolicited manuscript to pique her interest, but a new submission with blockbuster potential inspires her to search for the book's elusive author. On an obscure island off the Georgia coast, amidst the ruins of an eerie cotton…
