Here are 100 books that The Big Rewind fans have personally recommended if you like
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Of course, every mystery needs a perfect crime, but what about the perfect setting? I’m fascinated by how authors manipulate time and place to add to the heightened emotions of their murders, thefts, blackmail, and frauds. It’s the juxtaposition of truth and fantasy—what we believe times were like and how they actually were—that makes setting such an essential detail of every whodunnit. Doing research on my own novel, I wrenched apart the facts and fictions of Post-War America, and grew even more ravenous for mysteries that leveraged their settings for the utmost entertainment.
Months ago, I was on Twitter, openly wishing for a Thin Man remake, with Mahershala Ali and Lupita Nyong'o as Nick and Nora. A friend immediately suggested Nekesa Afia’s Harlem Renaissance Mystery debut, Dead Dead Girls. Afia’s understanding of the tightly-knit community plays an essential role in the story, with main character Louise fighting against perceptions and a cold-blooded murderer. Couple all the expected roadblocks with glam nightlife and Prohibition antics. This entire series comes together like a perfect cocktail.
“In this terrific series opener, Afia evokes the women’s lives in all their wayward and beautiful glory, especially the abruptness with which their dreams, hopes and fears cease to exist.”--The New York Times
The start of an exciting new historical mystery series set during the Harlem Renaissance from debut author Nekesa Afia
Harlem, 1926. Young Black women like Louise Lloyd are ending up dead.
Following a harrowing kidnapping ordeal when she was in her teens, Louise is doing everything she can to maintain a normal life. She’s succeeding, too. She spends her days working at Maggie’s Café and her nights…
Of course, every mystery needs a perfect crime, but what about the perfect setting? I’m fascinated by how authors manipulate time and place to add to the heightened emotions of their murders, thefts, blackmail, and frauds. It’s the juxtaposition of truth and fantasy—what we believe times were like and how they actually were—that makes setting such an essential detail of every whodunnit. Doing research on my own novel, I wrenched apart the facts and fictions of Post-War America, and grew even more ravenous for mysteries that leveraged their settings for the utmost entertainment.
Try as I might, I can’t get into Marple. But T.E. Kinsey’s Lady Hardcastle series, beginning with the debut A Quiet Life in The Country turns the cozy genre on its head. In this case, the dithering, older busybody is Lady Emily Hardcastle, with her trusty ladies’ maid, Florence Armstrong. As the book and series progress, we find that neither woman is quite the helpless Edwardian female the neighbors believe. Come for the murder mystery and stay for the… knife throwing?
Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life.
But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...
As Lady Hardcastle and Flo delve deeper into rural rivalries…
Bad things happen to good people every day, and it seems unfair. I’ve lost friends to cancer, heart disease, and accidents, and I always wonder why it had to be someone who was decent and good and kind. At the same time, other people get away with all sorts of crimes, including murder. I can’t change the way the world works. So, in my own books and the books I like to read, the good guys might have some tough times, but in the end, they win. And the bad guys get what they deserve.
I love learning how people lived in other times via historical fiction, and Cadfael, a Benedictine monk who practiced healing arts in England in the 1100s, is one of my favorite characters.
I like hearing his opinions about the civil war that raged at that time and the church’s role in it. I like the fact that he’s a bit of a maverick who pushes beyond the bounds of his role as a monk to solve mysteries.
In the gentle Shrewsbury spring of 1140 the midnight matins at the Benedictine abbey suddenly reverberates with an unholy sound - a hunt in full cry. Pursued by a drunken mob, the quarry is running for its life. When the frantic creature bursts into the nave to claim sanctuary, Brother Cadfael finds himself fighting off armed townsmen to save a terrified young man. Accused of robbery and murder is Liliwin, a wandering minstrel who performed at the wedding of the local goldsmith's son. But his supposed victim, the miserly craftsman, is still alive, although a strongbox lies empty. Brother Cadfael…
Of course, every mystery needs a perfect crime, but what about the perfect setting? I’m fascinated by how authors manipulate time and place to add to the heightened emotions of their murders, thefts, blackmail, and frauds. It’s the juxtaposition of truth and fantasy—what we believe times were like and how they actually were—that makes setting such an essential detail of every whodunnit. Doing research on my own novel, I wrenched apart the facts and fictions of Post-War America, and grew even more ravenous for mysteries that leveraged their settings for the utmost entertainment.
Not a traditional Whodunnit, this queer, YA retelling of Shakespeare’sJulius Caesarleaves the reader wondering what happened to class alpha-lesbian, Jude Cuthbert, when she goes missing under mysterious circumstances. Set just after the 2016 election, this brilliant satire pulls apart the thoughts of each conspirator – Brutus becomes Bronwyn; Cassius, Cass; and Portia is gender-flipped to Bronwyn’s boyfriend, Porter – as well as Jude/Julius’s own perspective on her fall from power.
In this queer YA retelling of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,stakes at Augustus Magnet School are cutthroat, scheming is creative, and loyalty is ever-changing.
Overnight, Bronwyn St. James goes from junior class queen to daughter of an imprisoned felon, and she lands in the care of her aunt and younger cousin Cass, a competitive cheerleader who Bronwyn barely knows. Life gets worse when her ex-best friend, the always-cool Jude Cuthbert, ostracizes Bronwyn from the queer social elite for dating a boy, Porter Kendrick.
Bronwyn and Jude are both running for student body president, and that means war. But after Bronwyn, Porter, and…
A missing child is every parent’s worst nightmare. Emotionally driven, tense, full of despair and hope, these stories captivate me. When I decided to include a cold case mystery of a toddler’s disappearance in my debut novel, I dove deep into both true crime and fictional novels on the subject. These books represent a range of gripping mysteries about not only finding missing children, but the scrutiny and heartache their mothers face. I hope you find these stories as absorbing, powerful, and suspenseful as I do!
Remember Mia is dark, emotional, and twisty. What I liked most about this book is how much the main character riled me up!
She’s an unsympathetic and unreliable narrator, and it propels the story forward. As this story unravelled, I questioned everything: Is the mother’s postpartum psychosis to blame for the missing child? Why didn’t she report the baby missing? Is there even a missing baby in the first place?
I enjoy when a novel makes me question what I thought I knew.
Like Girl on the Train and Gone Girl, Remember Mia is a riveting psychological suspense, exploring what happens when a young mother’s worst nightmare becomes devastatingly real…
First I remember the darkness. Then I remember the blood. I don’t know where my daughter is.
Estelle Paradise wakes up in a hospital after being found near dead at the bottom of a ravine with a fragmented memory and a vague sense of loss. Then a terrifying reality sets in: her daughter is missing.
Days earlier, Estelle discovered her baby’s crib empty in their Brooklyn apartment. There was no sign of a…
I've lived in Brooklyn for over 30 years now. I've always had a weakness for fun, snarky urban fantasy where the city is always a supporting character—and sometimes a major one. One day I decided to write a short story in the style of Simon R. Green's Nightside books, only instead of London, it'd feature New York City. And thus, the Conradverse was born. I tend to combine action, humor, real Brooklyn and NYC locations and history, and copious pop culture references when writing in this setting, and I seek out other books that do a great job at handling some or all of these elements.
If Indiana Jones was based in Brooklyn and was also an expert at magic and arcane lore, you'd have Piers Knight, the titular character of this book. Although a bit lighter on humor than the other entries here, I found this book to be fun and snappy, and as an additional bonus delves into the real (and weird!) historical factoids about New York City.
Professor Piers Knight, an esteemed curator at the Brooklyn Museum, is regarded by many on the staff as a revered institution of his own, if not an outright curiosity. Knight's portfolio includes lost civilizations; arcane cultures, languages, and belief; and, more than a little bit of the history of magic and mysticism. His colleagues don't know that, in addition to being a scholar of all things ancient, he is schooled in the uses of magical artefacts, the teachings of forgotten deities, and the threats of unseen dangers. If a mysterious object surfaces, Professor Knight makes it his job to figure…
I love book club.If I could make it a requirement for everyone in the universe to give it a try, I would. I was an English major in college, so that feeling of ending an amazing story and needing someone to discuss it with never fully went away. All book club books should be thought-provoking, but the best add that intricate and wholehearted understanding, I think, that only literature can. Why do the characters you least understood or felt a kinship with suddenly have your heart, what do they want, need, feel, think? I hope these novels help you better understand. The who and what are beside the point.
This book has everything a book club could ask for. Characters that you love, even when maybe you shouldn’t. Relationships that seem both familiar and endlessly fascinating. An epic dilemma that resonates and flourishes until the very end.It’ll definitely have you wondering,what would I do? At the end of the day, that question is all you really need for a lively book club discussion.
Brooklyn, 1947: in the midst of a blizzard, in a two-family brownstone, two babies are born minutes apart to two women. They are sisters by marriage with an impenetrable bond forged before and during that dramatic night; but as the years progress, small cracks start to appear and their once deep friendship begins to unravel. No one knows why, and no one can stop it. One misguided choice; one moment of tragedy. Heartbreak wars with happiness and almost but not quite wins.
From my early days of reading Fire and Hemlock and various books of mythology, I’ve loved traditional tales from all around the world. In college I didn’t aim to major in things that would be useful to me as a fantasy writer, but anthropology and folklore made a great background for that job. Nowadays, I actively seek out books based on traditional stories, especially those that go beyond the most well-known European fairy tales and myths. Sometimes, they inspire me, in turn, to write my own stories!
I’m used to contemporary fantasies where magic is either hidden or open and acknowledged, and this book blew my mind by blowing that dichotomy out of the water.
It retells the Russian folktale of “Vassilisa the Beautiful” but adds a lot of complicated family dynamics that made me like the source narrative even more than I already did. I also loved the utter weirdness of how Baba Yaga and her hut on fowl’s legs neither fits into the ordinary world nor stands apart from it.
In Vassa's neighbourhood, where she lives with her stepmother and bickering stepsisters, one might stumble onto magic, but stumbling out again could become an issue. Babs Yagg, the owner of the local convenience store, has a policy of beheading shoplifters and sometimes innocent shoppers as well. So when Vassa's stepsister sends her out for light bulbs in the middle of night, she knows it could easily become a suicide mission. But Vassa has a bit of luck hidden in her pocket, a gift from her dead mother. Erg is a tough talking wooden doll with sticky fingers, a bottomless stomach,…
As a past award-winning weekly newspaper columnist turned business owner, I eventually embraced the love of writing following an auto accident that necessitated more than eight years of rehabilitative therapy. Scripting my first novel proved more of a therapeutic undertaking and it was released in 2020 to moderate success. That experience then compelled me to learn more about the craft of being a novelist. Two years later, the original work was modified and Revised Edition Family Ties: Thicker Than Blood was launched in June of 2022.
This novel is an invigorating thrill ride along the streets of “Old Brooklyn” in a modern-day setting. As a former New Yorker who once listed Brooklyn as a hangout, it is rather easy to empathize with Sydney Green while she witnesses her cherished neighborhood being overtaken by invader investors perusing the streets in the guise of tourists. Something strikes her as peculiar when For Sale signs continue popping up at the existing homes with long-time neighbors suspiciously relocating to the suburbs.
Ironically, Sydney encounters an unlikely helpmate in the form of someone whom she considers one of the intruders; Theo, a new neighbor. There’s a mutual distrust between them but it is not enough to override their suspicions about the things that are taking place. Is it overly accentuated paranoia or a genuine fear that compels the unlikely pair of sleuths to discover what is actually happening? Will their homes…
An instant NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
"I was knocked over by the momentum of an intense psychological thriller that doesn't let go until the final page. This is a terrific read." - Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author
*Marie Claire's September Book Club Pick*
Rear Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller from a critically acclaimed and New York Times Notable author, in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning...
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos…
Dostoevsky wrote that the opposite of love is not hatred, it is indifference. That’s why I have always been fascinated by the topic of love hate. They are not opposed, they are somehow connected, and when I started writing romance I spent an insane amount of time trying to understand how people cross the bridge from hate to love. It makes for incredible stories of seduction, corruption, resilience, and ultimately happiness. As a ‘villain writer’ who enjoys writing about passionate characters going the extra mile, burning the world down to keep their love warm, I am familiar with the tropes and my imagination knows no bounds.
Daniel doesn’t care about life anymore. He only cares about finding the hitman who killed his wife, the only person he ever loved. Unfortunately, when he does find him, his hatred and contempt for the man are only matched by their fiery attraction. Can he betray his wife? With the very man who killed her? This is true love/hate, starting very much on the hate side, and remaining so for a long time, even when the passion is burning high and they have to hide from other Mafiosi. Very much a violent read, I am a fan of the guilt and of the bi trope. This very desperate, very edgy MM mafia love/hate romance will blow your mind, the darkness and the hotness are unforgettable.
From the AWARD-WINNING author of the bestselling BROOKLYN SINNERS series comes a dark, twisted tale of pain, revenge, and the deadliest emotion of all...love.
A clash of wills between predators…
He’s been living underground for a long time, but the only thing guaranteed to bring Daniel Nieto back to the surface is the identity of his wife’s killer. With the whisper of one name, he puts it all on the line for vengeance. He’s got plans for Stavros Konstantinou.
The title of monster fits too well for Stavros to want to be anything other than what he is. Time spent…
