Fans pick 100 books like The Fell

By Sarah Moss,

Here are 100 books that The Fell fans have personally recommended if you like The Fell. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Creative Resilience and COVID-19: Figuring the Everyday in a Pandemic

Deborah Lupton Author Of COVID Societies: Theorising the Coronavirus Crisis

From my list on everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a sociologist with a longstanding interest in the social aspects of medicine and public health. I started with research on HIV/AIDS. Since then, I have written many books and conducted a multitude of studies on how people understand and experience health and illness and how they seek help when they are sick or feel at risk from disease. When COVID-19 hit the world in early 2020, it was not long before I started to think about what my research training and expertise could offer to understanding the social impacts of this new pandemic. I started to write about COVID and research on people’s everyday experiences.

Deborah's book list on everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic

Deborah Lupton Why did Deborah love this book?

This edited volume, by academics Irene Gammel and Jason Wang from Ryerson University, Canada, includes contributions from authors living across the world. The chapters focus on how the arts and culture can both express and document people’s thoughts, practices, and feelings about living through the COVID pandemic. There are discussions on the role of drawing, graphic fiction, cinema, diary writing, urban space, music, streaming services, film, and video conferencing platforms in helping people cope with COVID life. Reading the book provides insights into the different social, cultural, and geographical contexts in which the pandemic has been experienced and how people adjusted to the often very stressful conditions of lockdown, restrictions on movements, fear about their health and grief.

By Irene Gammel (editor), Jason Wang (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Creative Resilience and COVID-19 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Creative Resilience and COVID-19 examines arts, culture, and everyday life as a way of navigating through and past COVID-19. Drawing together the voices of international experts and emerging scholars, this volume explores themes of creativity and resilience in relation to the crisis, trauma, cultural alterity, and social change wrought by the pandemic.

The cultural, social, and political concerns that have arisen due to COVID-19 are inextricably intertwined with the ways the pandemic has been discussed, represented, and visualized in global media. The essays included in this volume are concerned with how artists, writers, and advocates uncover the hope, plasticity, and…


Book cover of Life Without Children: Stories

Deborah Lupton Author Of COVID Societies: Theorising the Coronavirus Crisis

From my list on everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a sociologist with a longstanding interest in the social aspects of medicine and public health. I started with research on HIV/AIDS. Since then, I have written many books and conducted a multitude of studies on how people understand and experience health and illness and how they seek help when they are sick or feel at risk from disease. When COVID-19 hit the world in early 2020, it was not long before I started to think about what my research training and expertise could offer to understanding the social impacts of this new pandemic. I started to write about COVID and research on people’s everyday experiences.

Deborah's book list on everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic

Deborah Lupton Why did Deborah love this book?

Life Without Children is a collection of ten short stories by Irish author Roddy Doyle. Nearly all the stories are set in Dublin and feature characters who are middle-aged or older men who are struggling to find a sense of purpose in their lives while confined to their homes during lockdowns. Some men lash out in anger at their partners. Others make the best of things, finding moments of intimacy and connection and forging stronger relationships with their adult children and wives. One of the few stories to be written from the perspective of a woman features a nurse who is shattered by the deaths from COVID of her patients. The stories in this collection are often bleak, but there are many poignant and even droll moments.

By Roddy Doyle,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Life Without Children as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"[Doyle] imparts a sense of poignancy and glimpses of happiness, of grief and loss and small moments of connection . . . you're left feeling close to dazzled." -Daphne Merkin, New York Times Book Review

A brilliantly warm and witty portrait of our pandemic lives, told in ten heartrending short stories, from the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief. Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown, it changes us alone.

In these ten beautifully moving short stories written mostly over the last year, Booker Prize winner…


Book cover of Covid Chronicles: A Comics Anthology

Deborah Lupton Author Of COVID Societies: Theorising the Coronavirus Crisis

From my list on everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a sociologist with a longstanding interest in the social aspects of medicine and public health. I started with research on HIV/AIDS. Since then, I have written many books and conducted a multitude of studies on how people understand and experience health and illness and how they seek help when they are sick or feel at risk from disease. When COVID-19 hit the world in early 2020, it was not long before I started to think about what my research training and expertise could offer to understanding the social impacts of this new pandemic. I started to write about COVID and research on people’s everyday experiences.

Deborah's book list on everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic

Deborah Lupton Why did Deborah love this book?

The COVID Chronicles is an anthology of graphic fiction about COVID life. The dozens of contributors are mostly based in the US but also come from Australia, Canada, the UK, Europe, and Asia. There are a dizzying array of art styles and tones across the collection, from humorous to darkly grim. Together, all the graphic narratives reveal the ups and downs of pandemic life in the early months of COVID: from dealing with loneliness, unemployment, illness, and death, transitioning to working from home, racism, and the Black Lives Matter protests to seeking opportunities to show love, care, connection, and hope.

By Kendra Boileau (editor), Rich Johnson (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Covid Chronicles as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to its knees. When we weren't sheltering in place, we were advised to wear masks, wash our hands, and practice social distancing. We watched in horror as medical personnel worked around the clock to care for the sick and dying. Businesses were shuttered, travel stopped, workers were furloughed, and markets dropped. And people continued to die.

Amid all this uncertainty, writers and artists from around the world continued to create comics, commenting directly on how individuals, societies, governments, and markets reacted to the worldwide crisis. COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology collects more…


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest By Mimi Zieman,

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.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of The Year That Changed Our World: A Photographic History of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Deborah Lupton Author Of COVID Societies: Theorising the Coronavirus Crisis

From my list on everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a sociologist with a longstanding interest in the social aspects of medicine and public health. I started with research on HIV/AIDS. Since then, I have written many books and conducted a multitude of studies on how people understand and experience health and illness and how they seek help when they are sick or feel at risk from disease. When COVID-19 hit the world in early 2020, it was not long before I started to think about what my research training and expertise could offer to understanding the social impacts of this new pandemic. I started to write about COVID and research on people’s everyday experiences.

Deborah's book list on everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic

Deborah Lupton Why did Deborah love this book?

This book presents hundreds of photographs taken by Agence France Presse around the world in the first 18 months of the COVID pandemic. The images span the full range from the mundane (people exercising at home) to the bizarre (weird home-made face masks) to those that are frightening and tragic (mass coffins and graves). Over 150 countries are represented in these images, which are arranged chronologically, thereby presenting a visual global timeline of the major events occurring during this crucial early period of the continuing pandemic, when this disease was still a mysterious threat. This book helps us to remember the feelings of urgency, confusion, panic, and fear that were part of this period, as people came to terms with the upheavals wrought by the pandemic.

By Agence France Presse,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Year That Changed Our World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Year That Changed Our World is the definitive, visual history of the Covid-19 Pandemic. With more than 400 photographs, this ambitious publication traces the arc of the Pandemic from China in early 2020 through to the vaccine breakthroughs of Spring 2021.

Behind the relentless nature of the daily news since the events on Wuhan in early 2020 first broke, and the sense of fear and trepidation that the rapidly developing events provoked, what have we seen of the real stories of the world during the Pandemic? What can be told of how we lived through the pandemic and of…


Book cover of After Alice Fell

Diane C. McPhail Author Of The Abolitionist's Daughter

From my list on little-known Civil War era history.

Why am I passionate about this?

Diane C. McPhail is the award-winning author of The Abolitionist’s Daughter, her debut novel based on family history and little-known impediments to Southern Abolitionism and anti-slavery. Her yet-to-be-titled second novel, a historical 1900 Chicago & New Orleans psychological mystery, is due for release in the spring of 2022. As an experienced therapist, Diane has a passionate interest in the complex, sometimes conflicting, qualities of character and culture, and how those intricacies complicate the plot. Diane holds an M.F.A., M.A., and Doctor of Ministry.

Diane's book list on little-known Civil War era history

Diane C. McPhail Why did Diane love this book?

This riveting American Gothic novel, set in 1865, follows a widowed Civil War Army nurse home to New Hampshire after her bloody stint of tending the wounded and sick, only to find that her beloved, but unstable, sister is dead in a fall from the roof of the asylum. The cause is ruled a suicide, but she is not convinced and determines to find the truth at all costs. The period is synchronic with that of The Abolitionist’s Daughter and the depth of research fascinated me. Blakemore’s writing and extensive attention to sensual detail is exceptional. Since I have my own yet-to-be-titled historical mystery due for release in the Spring of 2022, I loved delving into this twisting page-turner with a woman of determination in an equivalent period of history.

By Kim Taylor Blakemore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked After Alice Fell as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Until she discovers the truth of her sister's death, no one will rest in peace.

New Hampshire, 1865. Marion Abbott is summoned to Brawders House asylum to collect the body of her sister, Alice. She'd been found dead after falling four stories from a steep-pitched roof. Officially: an accident. Confidentially: suicide. But Marion believes a third option: murder.

Returning to her family home to stay with her brother and his second wife, the recently widowed Marion is expected to quiet her feelings of guilt and grief-to let go of the dead and embrace the living. But that's not easy in…


Book cover of Two Girls Fat and Thin

Laura Elizabeth Woollett Author Of The Love of a Bad Man

From my list on badly behaved women.

Why am I passionate about this?

In my reading and writing, I’m drawn to complex characters, who embody the unpleasant impulses and mixed motivations we all have. I especially love well-drawn antiheroines, as women tend to be judged more harshly for being badly behaved, in life. All my books revolve around women who fit this description, from the wives and girlfriends of notorious serial killers in The Love of a Bad Man to the inner-circle of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple in Beautiful Revolutionary to Paulina Novak, the reckless, alcoholic murder victim at the heart of The Newcomer. To me, fiction is a playground for exploring the extremes of human thought and behaviour. 

Laura's book list on badly behaved women

Laura Elizabeth Woollett Why did Laura love this book?

Almost any of Mary Gaitskill’s books would have suited this theme (and her short story collection Bad Behavior is the obvious choice), but Two Girls, Fat and Thin is a recent discovery and new favourite of mine. Dorothy Never is the titular fat girl, and a former acolyte of an Ayn Rand-like guru, Anna Granite. Thin girl Justine Shade is a journalist who tracks her down while writing a takedown of Granite. From this setup, the novel backtracks to tell the girls’ life stories, in parallel, building up to Justine’s journalistic betrayal of Dorothy, and its surprising aftermath.  

By Mary Gaitskill,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Two Girls Fat and Thin as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This captivating novel shimmers with dark intensity and wicked wit. In a stunning synthesis of eroticism, rage, pathos, and humor, Gaitskill's "fine storyteller's pace and brilliant metaphors" (The New York Times Book Review) create a haunting and unforgettable journey into the dark side of contemporary life and the deepest recesses of the soul.


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Book cover of Through Any Window

Through Any Window By Deb Richardson-Moore,

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…

Book cover of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Portraits of Women

Kirsty Stonell Walker Author Of Pre-Raphaelite Girl Gang: Fifty Makers, Shakers and Heartbreakers from the Victorian Era

From my list on aspiring Pre-Raphaelite women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I absolutely love the Pre-Raphaelites, they are my utter passion and these books are the fuel for that fire. Who wouldn't want to be a Pre-Raphaelite woman? Smart, talented, resourceful, these women define what it is to make a mark and great some of the most ground-breaking art in history. I'm particularly obsessed with Pre-Raphaelite women, the artists and muses who created the art we love so much today. After spending almost 30 years researching their lives and loves, it's now my absolute pleasure in telling everyone about these astonishing women, and why we should love them and learn from them.

Kirsty's book list on aspiring Pre-Raphaelite women

Kirsty Stonell Walker Why did Kirsty love this book?

One of the founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is inextricably linked to the women in his life. His beautiful portraits of his sister, wife, and lovers are some of the most recognisable images of the Pre-Raphaelite movement but this wonderful book goes further, uncovering the lives of these women and the context behind these iconic images. 

By Debra Mancoff,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dante Gabriel Rossetti as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), best known and admired for his striking and seductive portraits of women, was one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of artists whose work is inspired by the art of the early Italian Renaissance. Rossetti's powerful and unconventional portraits, with their sumptuous, jewel-like colours, are explored in this beautiful gift book. Examples have been drawn from the full range of Rossetti's work - including paintings, drawings, print illustrations, decorative designs and staged photographs - and chart the artist's lively engagement with mythology, history, literature, biblical subjects and modern life.

Rossetti defined his…


Book cover of Emergency: Stories

Sue Mell Author Of A New Day: Stories

From my list on short story love, loss, and starting over.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in an intellectual household with a New Yorker subscription, I became a fan of the short story early on, with J.D. Salinger, Ann Beattie, and Raymond Carver forming a baseline of personal taste and inspiration. I especially love stories that resonate with my own sense of yearning for life and love—and the deep losses that inevitably come our way. Decades of reading would pass before I began writing stories myself, and I’m thrilled to have a chance to recommend these moving and beautifully written collections.

Sue's book list on short story love, loss, and starting over

Sue Mell Why did Sue love this book?

Alcott’s prose is stunning, and I found these stories haunting in the best possible way. Her vivid descriptions of place add authenticity to these stories of women seeking a modicum of happiness in their struggle for personal and financial freedom. To pick up the pieces, or finally be rid of what’s best left behind. For me, every complicated relationship, every aspiration and self-destructive choice, rang true.

By Kathleen Alcott,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Emergency as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A professor finds a photograph of her deceased mother in a compromising position on the wall of a museum. A twenty-something's lucrative remote work sparks paranoia and bigotry. A transplant to a new city must make a choice about who she trusts when her partner reveals a violent history. The summer after her divorce from an older man, an exiled painter's former friends grapple with rumors that she attempted to pass as a teenager.

In this long-awaited debut collection, Kathleen Alcott turns her skills as a stylist on the unfreedoms of American life-as well as the guilt that stalks those…


Book cover of Jane Austen: A Life

Sue Wilkes Author Of A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

From my list on understanding Jane Austen’s England.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was a little girl, my parents bought me a children’s edition of Pride and Prejudice. Ever since, I have loved Jane Austen’s works. As I grew older, I really enjoyed learning about her, and researching the history of her times. I hope you will enjoy reading these books as much as I did!

Sue's book list on understanding Jane Austen’s England

Sue Wilkes Why did Sue love this book?

Hundreds (possibly thousands) of biographies of Austen have been written, but Tomalin’s work has long been a favourite of mine.

Her sympathetic portrait of Jane digs deep into her early family life, schooldays, literary influences, and early authorship. Jane’s relationship with her mother; her family’s encouragement of her writings; the fear of poverty after her father’s death; the disastrous (rejected) marriage proposal, and her literary legacy are all detailed with warmth and energy. 

By Claire Tomalin,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Jane Austen as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The novels of Jane Austen depict a world of civility, reassuring stability and continuity, which generations of readers have supposed was the world she herself inhabited. Claire Tomalin's biography paints a surprisingly different picture of the Austen family and their Hampshire neighbours, and of Jane's progress through a difficult childhood, an unhappy love affair, her experiences as a poor relation and her decision to reject a marriage that would solve all her problems - except that of continuing as a writer. Both the woman and the novels are radically reassessed in this biography.


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Book cover of Lethal Legacy

Lethal Legacy By H.R. Kemp,

Buried Secrets. A web of deceit, betrayal, and danger. Can she survive her fight for justice and truth? Laura thought she knew everything about her late husband before he died. Now, her life and the lives of those she loves are in danger. As Laura delves into his previous role…

Book cover of Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest

Lynn Downey Author Of Dudes Rush In

From my list on the women of the American West.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have loved the history of the West since I was a child, as my family has lived here for over a century. I devoured historical fiction about pioneer girls in grammar school (including the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder), and as I got into college, I expanded my reading universe to include books about women’s roles in the West, and the meaning of this region in overall American history. This concept is what drew me to study the cultural influence of dude ranching, where women have always been able to shine -- and where I placed the protagonist of my first novel.

Lynn's book list on the women of the American West

Lynn Downey Why did Lynn love this book?

The title of this marvelous group biography is a play on the title of the film and comic book series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and suits the characters perfectly. Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright left their safe and secure lives and found a calling in the Southwest in the early 20th century. Along the way, they met important Hopi and Navajo leaders, as well as western enthusiasts like Theodore Roosevelt. This book is a marvelous read because the author weaves their lives together in ways that show how much they had in common, as well as how individual each woman was.

By Lesley Poling-Kempes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ladies of the Canyons as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WILLA Literary Award, 2016Reading the West Book Award for Nonfiction, MPIBASilver Medal, US History, 2016 IPPY AwardsWestern Writers of America Spur Award finalistLadies of the Canyons is the true story of remarkable women who left the security and comforts of genteel Victorian society and journeyed to the American Southwest in search of a wider view of themselves and their world.

Educated, restless, and inquisitive, Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright were plucky, intrepid women whose lives were transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century by the people and the landscape of the American Southwest.…


Book cover of Creative Resilience and COVID-19: Figuring the Everyday in a Pandemic
Book cover of Life Without Children: Stories
Book cover of Covid Chronicles: A Comics Anthology

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