Here are 100 books that The Doll Factory fans have personally recommended if you like
The Doll Factory.
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I’ve loved Gothic fiction since I was a teen, though back then, I didn’t know it was Gothic. I just liked the creepiness, the often-isolated heroine, and the things-aren’t-what-they-seem murkiness of the stories. One of my first reads was Jane Eyre, which has remained a favorite. Though I didn’t like history in school (too much memorization!), I read several historical fiction books from different eras that fascinated me. These things, combined with another genre favorite—mystery/thriller, led to my first book. It turns out that all those things I’d gravitated to in my decades of reading became the things I most wanted to write about - mystery/thriller historical fiction with elements of Gothic.
Nobody does characters like Jess Kidd. Every person in this story is bizarre—a monster, misfit, or malefactor—yet not one feels contrived. I adored Bridie Devine, a small, rotund, pipe-smoking detective who begins to see the same ghost everywhere she goes.
Bridie’s quarry is a strange girl who’s been kidnapped and might (depending on who you ask) have supernatural powers or be a “lovely grotesque” who’s caught the eye of collectors. I fell in love with Kidd’s imaginative Victorian London, where nothing is as it seems, and evil lurks around every bend.
London, 1863. Bridie Devine, the finest female detective of her age, is taking on her toughest case yet. Reeling from her last job and with her reputation in tatters, a remarkable puzzle has come her way. Christabel Berwick has been kidnapped. But Christabel is no ordinary child. She is not supposed to exist.
As Bridie fights to recover the stolen child she enters a world of fanatical anatomists, crooked surgeons and mercenary showmen. Anomalies are in fashion, curiosities are the thing, and fortunes are won and lost in the name of entertainment. The public love a spectacle and Christabel may…
I’ve loved Gothic fiction since I was a teen, though back then, I didn’t know it was Gothic. I just liked the creepiness, the often-isolated heroine, and the things-aren’t-what-they-seem murkiness of the stories. One of my first reads was Jane Eyre, which has remained a favorite. Though I didn’t like history in school (too much memorization!), I read several historical fiction books from different eras that fascinated me. These things, combined with another genre favorite—mystery/thriller, led to my first book. It turns out that all those things I’d gravitated to in my decades of reading became the things I most wanted to write about - mystery/thriller historical fiction with elements of Gothic.
When I first read the back of this book I thought, "How frightening can wooden, life-sized figures tucked away in a remote mansion be?" Answer: A lot.
When the book opens, Elsie Bainbridge’s husband has died (mysteriously). When she discovers the strange totems the servants are terrified of locked away in the attic, something is definitely…not right. Once the figures’ eyes appear to move and Elsie finds them in different places in the house as if they move of their own accord, her piece of mine starts to unravel. And so did mine.
"[An] extraordinary, memorable and truly haunting book." -Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Laura Purcell's THE SHAPE OF DARKNESS is now out from Penguin!
Some doors are locked for a reason.
When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. But pregnant and widowed just weeks after their wedding, with her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has only her late husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. Inside her new home lies a locked door, beyond which is a painted wooden figure-a…
I’ve loved Gothic fiction since I was a teen, though back then, I didn’t know it was Gothic. I just liked the creepiness, the often-isolated heroine, and the things-aren’t-what-they-seem murkiness of the stories. One of my first reads was Jane Eyre, which has remained a favorite. Though I didn’t like history in school (too much memorization!), I read several historical fiction books from different eras that fascinated me. These things, combined with another genre favorite—mystery/thriller, led to my first book. It turns out that all those things I’d gravitated to in my decades of reading became the things I most wanted to write about - mystery/thriller historical fiction with elements of Gothic.
This book, quite frankly, blew my mind. That women in times past were forced into the role of sin eaters to take on the transgressions of the dying so the latter could ascend to heaven was disturbing, to say the least.
I felt for May, a fourteen-year-old girl who is newly sentenced to the fate of a sin eater—a job in which she is to remain poor, mute, and bear the ostracization of her community. But what kept me turning pages is the chilling mystery at its center. In the alternate Elizabethan court in which the book is set, someone is poisoning those close to the Queen and hiding a long-buried secret. May must stay one step ahead of the killer if she’s to navigate a corrupt, vicious court and a fiend who wants her dead.
An old adage says there are really only two stories: a man goes on a voyage, and a stranger arrives in town. This is the third: a woman breaks the rules . . .
Can you uncover the truth when you're forbidden from speaking it?
A Sin Eater's duty is a necessary evil: she hears the confessions of the dying, eats their sins as a funeral rite. Stained by these sins, she is shunned and silenced, doomed to live in exile at the edge of town.
Recently orphaned May Owens is just fourteen, only concerned with where her next meal…
I’ve loved Gothic fiction since I was a teen, though back then, I didn’t know it was Gothic. I just liked the creepiness, the often-isolated heroine, and the things-aren’t-what-they-seem murkiness of the stories. One of my first reads was Jane Eyre, which has remained a favorite. Though I didn’t like history in school (too much memorization!), I read several historical fiction books from different eras that fascinated me. These things, combined with another genre favorite—mystery/thriller, led to my first book. It turns out that all those things I’d gravitated to in my decades of reading became the things I most wanted to write about - mystery/thriller historical fiction with elements of Gothic.
This book checked a lot of boxes for me from the jump: a decrepit infirmary, the grisliness of 19th-century medicine, a soot-filled London that seethes with filth, secrets, and evil.
This book is the first in a series featuring one of the best protagonists I’ve encountered: Jem Flockhart, an intelligent young woman who must disguise herself as a boy to continue her work at St. Saviour’s Infirmary as an apothecary. The mystery at its heart was every bit as Gothic as I’d hoped.
I have been an avid reader from an early age and painting has been my life's work since attending art school from the age of sixteen. Having painted the largest mural in a private house in the 20th century, over a period of fourteen years since 1968, it has been a great privilege to live as part of the families in so many diverse and beautiful houses in Britain, Europe, The Middle East, and The Americas. Many of the interesting people that I have met along the way have greatly enriched my being and I am particularly intrigued by the way that chance encounter shapes one's life. Serendipity is all!
For me this is undoubtably the best biography of Francis Bacon.
It illuminates in detail the life of my mysterious and exotic neighbour, who lived only a stone's throw away over the wall from my flat in Manson Place, South Kensington, in the early 1960s.
Bacon's early struggles, to eventually becoming the lauded and celebrated genius in later life, encompass in this fascinating account, a plethora of characters from both high and low life, a cavalcade of lovers, an addiction to gambling and drinking spanning Soho to Tangier, with sojourns in Paris and the South of France on the way. He religiously painted in the mornings.
Many of the episodes and vignettes are unforgettable and a valuable insight into the machinations of the 'art world' in the 20th century.
This compelling and exhausting portrait of the artist, born in Dublin to Anglo-Irish gentry in 1909 and living to the age…
The Times Art Book of the Year 2021
FINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022
'Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon ... A biography that no Bacon fan - or indeed foe - can afford to overlook ... Mesmerising' THE TIMES
'A magnificent triumph ... I was captivated by every line' OBSERVER
A decade in the making, based upon hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Pulitzer Prize winners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have written a startlingly original portrait - rich, complex, and subtle - of a commanding modern figure.
Like many readers, I am fascinated by strong creative women in the past and how their lives can inspire women today. As an academic, before my Creative Writing Diploma and transformation into a creative writer, I taught historical novels of many kinds. I now enjoy devising fascinating women whose lives have significance for today’s issues. To talk about my favourite writer Virginia Woolf and favourite artist Gwen John, I have enjoyed invitations from book festivals, galleries, and universities from around the world, including several in the US and Europe as well as Brazil, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, and Norway. BBC Radio, France Culture, and Turkey TRT television also featured my writing.
Letters to Gwen John is the artist’s mixture of memoir and fictional letters to Gwen John the artist.
Once a partner of the much older artist Lucian Freud, Paul’s life resembles Gwen’s love for the older French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Paul’s fictional letters provide moving insights into Paul’s life, Gwen’s life, and the role of art.
Uncannily Paul’s letters resemble Gwen’s to Rodin in their shared simplicity and devotion to art.
I just wish Paul’s book had been published before I wrote my book because Paul has so many insights into art techniques. 2023 is definitely Gwen’s year with the opening of the major exhibition of Gwen’s work at Pallant House Gallery, UK.
With original artworks throughout, an extraordinary fusion of memoir and artistic biography from the acclaimed artist and author of Self-Portrait.
Dearest Gwen, I know this letter to you is an artifice. I know you are dead and that I’m alive and that no usual communication is possible between us but, as my mother used to say, “Time is a strange substance” and who knows really, with our time-bound comprehension of the world, whether there might be some channel by which we can speak to each other, if we only knew how.
As a Gen X kid growing up in a very conservative place, I struggled with gender, not feeling like the girl I was supposed to be. I knew I wasn’t a boy, and that just led to uncertainty and perpetual emotional discomfort. When I first heard about the concept of nonbinary gender a few years ago, my mind was blown. I knew if I were young, I would have immediately come out as nonbinary. But as an older person, it felt weird and pointless. Writing and reading books about people struggling with gender gave me the courage to finally be true to myself, and acknowledge that I am agender.
I love stories about artists, and I loved the creativity of the whole idea behind this adult fantasy set against an Asian-inspired backdrop, where art is magic and can be used to make things happen in the physical world.
But even better is the fact that the main character—a skilled artist roped into working for a corrupt entity—is nonbinary, and this is nothing more than a mundane fact. It’s a clear reminder that gender is just one part of a person’s existence—and probably not the most important one.
Gyen Jebi isn't a fighter, or a subversive. They just want to paint.
One day they're jobless and desperate; the next, Jebi finds themself recruited by the Ministry of Armor to paint the mystical sigils that animate the occupying government's automaton soldiers.
But when Jebi discovers the depths of the Razanei government's horrifying crimes-and the awful source of the magical pigments they use-they find they can no longer stay out of politics.
What they can do is steal Arazi, the ministry's mighty dragon automaton, and find a way to fight...
The bottom has fallen out of my world several times now, but it’s much worse watching disaster strike someone you love. When my husband suffered a near-fatal stroke, it was inevitable I’d end up writing about his road to rehab. Grit and humour were what they said he’d need, and Scousers like me laugh at anything. We also cry and argue a lot. I’m on a mission to cheer people on and hand them arms as they battle through hard times. A life, or a state of mind, can change in a moment, and that’s what I read and write about.
I was hungry for a great piece of comic writing when a friend handed me this book, and it delivered so much more than laughter.
Once I’d tuned in to the language, I ended up shambling through 30s London alongside impecunious painter Gulley Jimson. A humble man, driven by a holy need to make the sort of art which, it turns out, nobody wants, he encounters a world of squalor and beauty, both physical and moral.
I grew to love him and his daily observations on the play of weather and light on the Thames, which form a sort of sketchbook. As Jimson’s physical health declines, he grips beauty wherever he finds it. Theroux, Lessing, and Updike all rated this author.
The Horse's Mouth, famously filmed with Alec Guinness in the central role, is a searing portrait of the artistic temperament.
Gulley Jimson is the charming, impoverished painter who cares little about the conventional values of his day. His unfailing belief that he must live and paint according to his intuition without regard for the cost to himself or to others, makes him a man of great, if sometimes flawed, vision.
But with an admirable drive for creation comes an astonishing hunger for destruction. Is he a great artist? A has-been? Or an exhausted, drunken ne'er-do-well?
I’m a creative director in Vermont with a few favorite things: laughter, standard poodles, and happy endings—in life and in fiction. Romance fiction abounds with young heroines and happy endings. But I prefer reading about mature women like myself, women who have experienced their share of disappointments yet face life’s challenges with courage and humor. I like the elements of both genres in one juicy book. After much-frustrated searching, I gave up and wrote the story I wanted to read. My wise, middle-aged heroine still has lots to learn about grief and joy, and learns many of those lessons with men—in bed.
Spending is about a divorced artist and mom. It starts with a middle-aged protagonist reluctantly giving a gallery talk. She complains that male artists often have muses to do their laundry and supply sex, thereby providing practical and “therapeutic” support. A man in the audience stands up and offers to be the artist’s muse. The story is about what happens when this stubbornly independent woman takes him up on it. I totally related to the crusty heroine who has fought for everything she has and distrusts fortune when it offers abundant gifts.
Monica Szabo, a middle-aged, moderately successful painter, encounters B, a wealthy commodities broker who collects her work. B volunteers to be her muse, offering her everything that male artists have always had to produce great art: time, space, money, and sex. Passionate, provocative, and highly engaging, Spending displays Gordon's maverick feminism, her extraordinary wit, and her unique perspectives on art, money, men, sex -- and the desires of women.
I'm passionate about nature, our impact on it and the people who best know how to be its companion – Indigenous peoples. I grew up on B.C.'s west coast, swimming with seals and otters. That inspires me to protect the land and to write and draw about it.
As the author/illustrator of over 70 books I've been lucky to be able to present my thoughts on many topics. I learned early on to do my research and work with rigorous editors. With P'eska, I relied on members of the community I wrote about. I know I'm speaking to young kids so honesty is paramount.
Going to the Vancouver Art Gallery when I was a kid I saw my first Emily Carr painting and it drew me in with its dark beauty.
This book brings to life the story of Emily Carr, a talented painter and (although the word wouldn't have been used then) ecologist. She passionately pursued her art in ways proper young ladies of the time just didn't do. She revered the First Nations people and their cultures. The gift was returned when she received her own honourary name, Klee Wyck (Laughing One) from the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people.
I love this book because of its honesty, it is about a person and a place, firmly rooted in a love of nature.
Shortlisted for the 2005-2006 Red Cedar Book Award, Nonfiction
Selected as Honour Book by the Children's Literature Roundtable Information Book of the Year
The brilliant artist Emily Carr lived at the edge. When she was born, in 1871, Victoria, British Columbia was a small, insular place. She was at the edge of a society that expected well-bred young ladies to marry. For years, she was at the edge of the world of artists she longed to join.
Emily Carr’s life was not an easy one. She struggled against a family that did not approve of her art and against poor…
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