Here are 77 books that The Book of Hidden Wonders fans have personally recommended if you like
The Book of Hidden Wonders.
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As a teenager, I loved reading past my bedtime, getting lost within a story, then having it fill my dreams and leaving me on the hunt for another book just as good. The best books to read are those that draw me in with their voice and storytelling and leave me needing to turn page after page. Getting in trouble as a kid for reading too late was the best type of trouble to get into and even now, when I need to make a second pot of coffee after a night of reading, I walk away with no regrets.
I first listened to this book in audio and immediately bought the print copy. Good Me Bad Me has such a compelling voice that this is a book you will end up reading way past your bedtime.
The story is told by a fifteen-year-old girl who has gone through so much trauma, your heart breaks…but then it twists, leaving you gasping for air because you can’t believe what just happened. I have read this story over and over again and it still haunts me to this day!
How far does the apple really fall from the tree when the daughter of a serial killer is placed with a new, normal foster family? Room meets Dexter in Ali Land's Good Me Bad Me, a dark, voice-driven psychological suspense.
Fifteen year old Milly was raised by a serial killer: her mother. When she finally breaks away and tells the police everything about her mother’s crimes and years of abuse, she is given a new identity and placed in an affluent foster family and an exclusive private school. She wrestles with being the daughter of a murderer and the love…
As a teenager, I loved reading past my bedtime, getting lost within a story, then having it fill my dreams and leaving me on the hunt for another book just as good. The best books to read are those that draw me in with their voice and storytelling and leave me needing to turn page after page. Getting in trouble as a kid for reading too late was the best type of trouble to get into and even now, when I need to make a second pot of coffee after a night of reading, I walk away with no regrets.
If you happen to like the type of books that end with a gut punch, then you are going to love Sister Dear. This had an ending that I didn’t see coming, which is probably why I love it so much. I have a few authors on my ‘must read’ list and this one holds the title for #1 because of her endings. Warning: you start reading the book thinking you know where it’s headed, but trust me when I say you don’t!
When Eleanor Hardwicke’s beloved father dies, her world is further shattered by a gut-wrenching secret: the man she’s grieving isn’t really her dad. Eleanor was the product of an affair and her biological father is still out there, living blissfully with the family he chose. With her personal life spiraling, a desperate Eleanor seeks him out, leading her to uncover another branch on her family tree—an infuriatingly enviable half sister.
Perfectly perfect Victoria has everything Eleanor could ever dream of. Loving childhood, luxury home, devoted husband. All…
As a teenager, I loved reading past my bedtime, getting lost within a story, then having it fill my dreams and leaving me on the hunt for another book just as good. The best books to read are those that draw me in with their voice and storytelling and leave me needing to turn page after page. Getting in trouble as a kid for reading too late was the best type of trouble to get into and even now, when I need to make a second pot of coffee after a night of reading, I walk away with no regrets.
I love a good story about a therapist having to not only battle her own demons but also her patients – and Creep has this covered. I went to bed thinking I’d start the book and read a few chapters – I ended up finishing it with only a few hours to spare before my alarm went off.
Psychology professor Dr Sheila Tao is an expert on human behaviour, so when she begins an affair with charming graduate student Ethan Wolfe, she's well aware she's playing with fire. Consumed by lust and riddled with guilt, Sheila ends their three month fling when she becomes engaged to a kind and loving man who adores her. But Ethan has different plans...
NO ONE CAN.
When a star student is stabbed to death, it's clear someone is raising the stakes of violence, sex and blackmail on campus. Before long, Sheila is caught in a terrifying cat-and-mouse…
Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: “Are his love songs closer to heaven than dying?” Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard it…
As a teenager, I loved reading past my bedtime, getting lost within a story, then having it fill my dreams and leaving me on the hunt for another book just as good. The best books to read are those that draw me in with their voice and storytelling and leave me needing to turn page after page. Getting in trouble as a kid for reading too late was the best type of trouble to get into and even now, when I need to make a second pot of coffee after a night of reading, I walk away with no regrets.
There is something in the way this author writes that always hooks me. Every single time I read one of her novels, I’m left with a feeling of…nothing else will be as good. You know that feeling right? There are so many twists in this story, some I didn’t see coming, that not only had me reading way too late at night, but nothing else I picked up the next day grabbed my attention like this book did. To me, that’s the perfect book-hangover to have.
'Wow wow wow. Finished in one day... Twists to make me gasp out loud!... Read it, thank me later!' NetGalley reviewer, 5 stars
Don't miss the next gripping thriller from the bestselling author of Three Days Missing!
Beth Murphy is on the run...
For nearly a year, Beth has been planning for this day. A day some people might call any other Wednesday, but Beth prefers to see it as her new beginning-one with a new look, new name and new city. Beth has given her plan significant thought, because one small slip and her violent husband will find her.…
My mixed media journey began as a kid growing up in a family of scientists and artists. I always loved to combine things, adding unusual objects to my mud sculptures and later mixing things up as a chemistry student. I created some wild concoctions as a bartender and then eventually as an acrylic painter. I began as a traditional oil painter, but I moved on to painting murals on walls, and cutting stones and metalwork. I introduced the other art students to some great construction sites where we would scavenge materials and give them new life. This passion led me to write six books on mixed media.
Jean’s book has a novel format for teaching that I love.
She does begin with an introduction to acrylics but then she breaks down various components with examples and then a featured artist to explore that technique. She shows how collage, texture, drawing, and different styles can turn out so different using the same materials.
Jean is a brilliant figurative mixed media artist and she abstracts the figure in a way that invites even nonobjective painters to want to try a new subject manner. She has some fun composition ideas and even a roadmap of when to add other materials.
A visually beautiful book that will inspire your work no matter what your genre.
Are you interested in adding a bit of mixed media to your artwork but unsure exactly how? Mixed Media Painting Workshop takes the fear out of artistic experimentation and instead celebrates the journey, step by step!
With Mixed Media Painting Workshop, you'll learn a variety of techniques and use a unique selection of materials to express yourself and your style! From backgrounds to sketching, from painting to collage, from the elements of design to subject matter, you'll find it all right here!
I’ve lived in cities all my adult life and currently divide my time between Paris and Philadelphia. And while those two cities are strikingly different places, they have in common the fact that they are both great walking cities –- urban centers that can be explored on foot and easily enjoyed by pedestrians. Walking cities, I believe, provide not only an ideal context for today’s tourists but also a model for a future in which urban dwellers become less reliant on automobiles and urban centers more open to foot traffic than to vehicular pollution and congestion. The books I’ll recommend deal in various ways with the building and rebuilding of visionary cities, and of Paris in particular.
After the literature of Paris, the painting of Paris. T. J. Clark’s The Painting of Modern Life studies the ways in which the artists he calls “painters of modern life” created canvases that attempted to focus attention on a subsequent transformation of Paris, in the nineteenth century. Clark considers the depictions by painters such as Manet, Degas, and Seurat of Paris as it evolved and of Parisians interacting with their changing city. The depictions of Parisians experiencing the boulevards, cafés, and parks of Paris that Clark analyzes are perhaps the greatest tradition ever of city painting. No one has ever attempted such a study of the many paintings of Paris as it was transformed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When they do so, Clark’s book can provide a model.
The Paris of the 1860s and 1870s was supposedly a brand-new city, equipped with boulevards, cafes, parks, and suburban pleasure grounds--the birthplace of those habits of commerce and leisure that constitute "modern life." Questioning those who view Impressionism solely in terms of artistic technique, T. J. Clark describes the painting of Manet, Degas, Seurat, and others as an attempt to give form to that modernity and seek out its typical representatives--be they bar-maids, boaters, prostitutes, sightseers, or petits bourgeois lunching on the grass. The central question of The Painting of Modern Life is this: did modern painting as it came…
Neuroscience PhD student Frankie Conner has finally gotten her life together—she’s determined to discover the cause of her depression and find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But the first day of her program, she meets a group of talking animals who have an urgent message they refuse…
My name is James Gurney and I've been a professional illustrator for National Geographic and Scientific American for over 40 years. Although I went to art school, everything I know about drawing and painting comes from studying art instruction books, and from sketching directly from nature. I'm best known for writing and illustrating the New York Times bestselling Dinotopia book series, published in 32 countries and 18 languages. I designed 15 dinosaur stamps for USPS and a set of five dinosaur stamps for Australia Post. My originals have been shown in over 35 solo museum exhibitions. My book Color and Light has sold over 200k copies and was Amazon's #1 bestselling book on painting for over a year.
The book covers basic principles, such as variety, shape, silhouette, edges, unity, rhythm, color, and texture. But his coverage of these familiar ideas is fresh and original, and he provides lots of examples. He avoids laying down rules or laws, because one generation of artists breaks the rules of the previous generation. All of the basic principles are universal enough to have remained in place despite the changing styles throughout history.
This is the ENGLISH edition. To buy this book in Russian: https://www.amazon.com/dp/5904957076. | The only textbook on composition approved and recommended by the Russian Academy of Fine Arts. Written by a Head of the Drawing Department and a leading professor of drawing, Vladimir Mogilevtsev. Description: This is the 3rd and last textbook in the series of "Fundamentals of Art". The previous two editions are dedicated to Fundamentals of Drawing and Fundamentals of Painting. In the book Fundamentals of Composition, the author, on the basis of his own creative work and experience working with students, tried to show and explain how…
What makes me passionate about this topic is my love of art, encouraged by my parents and developed when I was completing an undergraduate degree in architecture. I’m also addicted to mysteries, preferably ones with history thrown into the mix. Born in Australia, I lived for some years in the UK before moving to Canberra. I hold a PhD from the London School of Economics and I’m a professor at the Australian National University. I do hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I have.
I first read this book when I was going through a bad period in my life when I felt my work as an academic was going nowhere.
The sprawling, absorbing plot of The Improbability of Love took me to another place. The novel is set in London, a city that I know well, and it has a huge variety of characters from all walks of life. Some of writing is very funny, which cheered me enormously.
The painting in question is by Antoine Watteau, and it was found by our heroine Annie in a junk shop.
WINNER OF THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE FOR COMIC FICTION 2016
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016
A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK
'an ingenious meditation on the true value of art' Daily Mail
'A deliciously wicked satire ... It's exquisitely written, shimmering with eye-catching detail ... a masterpiece' Mail on Sunday
When lovelorn Annie McDee stumbles across a dirty painting in a junk shop while looking for a present for an unsuitable man, she has no idea what she has discovered. Soon she finds herself drawn unwillingly into the tumultuous London art world, populated by…
In the “meme-ification” of the world, the long-form version of learning and practicing skills is getting lost. True discovery happens after a thorough and deep understanding of the subject. Truth is a multilayered, complex exploration that is hard to sum up in a single sentence.
This book offers the technical breakdown of painting in grisaille. I only know of a few books that cover it and this one was written by an amazing painter! This was the common practice of Bouguereau and Gerome and is thoroughly explained in this particular volume as well and the rendering of planar “facets.” The practice of grisaille is an important phase in painting. The separation of color and form is partly why so many of the “masters” had such control over form and value.
This instructive volume introduces not only the techniques of oil painting but also the underlying principles of figure drawing. Written by a distinguished Pre-Raphaelite painter, portraitist, and book illustrator, the treatment begins by explaining the construction of the figure, head, and limbs. Succeeding chapters illustrate these teachings with examples of images by the Old Masters, including paintings from the Italian, Dutch, Spanish, French, and British schools. The Birmingham Daily Post pronounced this volume "probably the most useful handbook for art students that has yet been published." Students at every level of expertise will benefit from its discourses on light and…
Resting Places follows one woman’s journey after the devastating news of her son’s death. Elizabeth ekes out a lonely and strained relationship with her husband while trying to lose her grief in alcohol. A chance meeting with a man on the side of the road spurs her to travel cross-country…
When I was nine years old, I saved enough allowance money to buy a big box of oil pastels. I was mesmerized by its amazing display of gorgeous colors. Never could figure out why my girlfriends played with dolls when it was more exciting to paint. It wasn’t until high school, and time to apply to colleges that I made the decision to go to art school. Another key moment for me was after graduating from art school and landing in New York City. It was then that I made a brave decision to never waitress again, and instead do whatever it takes to stay in the arts.
This book is an absolute must-read for all painters. Kandinsky is known as the father of modern art who brought abstract painting into the realms of art history. As an important aside, there is now controversy over his title, as new information has come up about a woman painter Hilma af Klint, that preceded Kandinsky for abstract painting ideas. Even so, Kandinsky was the first to write about spirituality and art for painters. His ideas still feel fresh on how color plays an integral role to express emotion in painting. He originally wrote this book in German, and so the translation to English along with his determination to express inner motivation for painters, makes this read a bit of a challenge. A worthy task guaranteed to surprise even the savviest painter, on how Kandinsky points out our inner thoughts as contemporary painters, but more than a century ago.
A pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, this book is one of the most important documents in the history of modern art. Written by the famous nonobjective painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), it explains Kandinsky's own theory of painting and crystallizes the ideas that were influencing many other modern artists of the period. Along with his own groundbreaking paintings, this book had a tremendous impact on the development of modern art. Kandinsky's ideas are presented in two parts. The first part, called "About General Aesthetic," issues a call for a spiritual revolution…
