10 books like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

This is a beautiful novel, and I fell in love with Marie-Laure, the twelve-year-old girl who, despite being blind, manages, with the help of her father, to learn how to navigate her way around the dangerous neighborhood of Saint-Malo as the war gets closer and closer.

Eventually, so close that the echo of German boots can be heard in the house where she is alone and hiding. I was especially in awe of Anthony Doerr’s magical storytelling and his ability to seamlessly converge the stories of Marie-Laure and Werner, a German orphan and an expert in fixing radios. This is the story of a different kind of love—innocent, selfless, and heartwarming amidst the horrors of war. 

The novel Anxious People is a mostly-comic novel that helped me, as a writer, think through how comedy is delivered.

Frederik Backman has a background as a standup comic and you can see it in the writing of the novel—and sometimes Backman’s clever quips get in the way of the story.

The situation is of a robbery gone wrong with a range of weird and wacky characters, but they are developed in a way that helps us care about them as their stories are revealed and common touchpoints emerge.

The father-son police team, the robber’s pains, the fractured relationships. In the end, I found myself caring about these people.

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s characters live and breathe in my heart. 

In Anne of Green Gables, orphaned Anne Shirley is taken in by Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of quaint Avonlea on beautiful Prince Edward Island. Anne’s many social challenges, her antics—well-meaning but with frequent disastrous (and humorous) results, her close friendship with neighboring Diana Barry, and her many hopes and longings and dreams warm and delight my heart. 

Like Anne, several characters in my own stories—as well as I—longed from childhood to become a writer. In my book, my heroine, also an orphan from Prince Edward Island, strikes up a correspondence with the author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. 

Anne of Green Gables is a book rich in characters that will never grow old—a perfect pleasure.

I picked this book up in a second-hand bookstore for 50p when I was a teenager, and this was the story that really ignited my love of old movies.

Although some might say that the ideals in the story are dated (and they are, there’s no argument from me there!) this novel is rich in history and is so well-written that it makes it easy to visualise life in the South. While Scarlett O’Hara can be perceived as a bit of a spoilt brat, to me she is the epitome of a strong female character – even when things don’t go as she’s planned.

Lolita isn’t usually thought of as a crime novel but it is.

Thirty-seven-year-old Humbert Humbert stalks 12-year-old Lolita, then breaks all kinds of laws, moral, ethical, and legal, as he transports her across state lines.

The first time I read Lolita, I was dazzled by Nabokov’s stunning use of language—and remember, English was not his native tongue—word-play, and his ability to create full-blooded characters that leap off the page.

Nabokov pulls off this morally compromised tale with wit and humor, while dealing with the serious topic of pedophilia.

Reading Lolita gave me license to create morally challenged characters like Francis Hoyt, one of the protagonists in my novels.

Nabokov proved you don’t have to like, admire, or even feel a kinship with a character, so long as that character is interesting and compelling enough that readers are fascinated about him or her without being turned off.

Sometimes as a writer you read books that make you think, ‘I wish I’d thought of that’ and so it is with The Book Thief.

For me, the idea of casting death as a character is brilliant but to portray him as the narrator, and one with a sense of humour too is genius. Through his eyes we are able to see not just the horror but the humanity of the people living in Nazi Germany and particularly the main character, Liesel. She is a smart young girl reeling from personal tragedy and fascinated by words.

She steals books that are threatened with destruction to read with Max, the Jewish man hidden by her foster parents. Powerful and original, it tells you everything you need to know about love, death, and humanity.

Atonement is a historical novel by McEwan, also made into a very fine movie with James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. Before you watch the film though (and even if you have), try the book as it’s a different experience (as books to films often are).

This book is really all about stories, narratives, and lies. Set in 1935 and beyond, the protagonist is a young girl Briony – a budding writer from a wealthy family and highly observant kid – who becomes fascinated by her older sister Cecilia’s relationship with local working-class lad Robbie.

The central romance between Cecilia and Robbie is beautifully wrought, passionate, and sexy, especially with its taboo across-the-class-divide vibe. Prepare for some tears though…

The dialogue and immersion into Southwestern culture is so immediate and authentic, one might as well have signed up for a secret journey into the heart of the borderlands.

Every paragraph reads like a masterpiece of literature, and taken together they comprise the kind of story that the reader wants never to end. McCarthy has the rare ability to entertain and edify at the same time. 

The war in Africa, where Rommel’s tanks seem unstoppable, sets the stage for this novel of intrigue and spies, with Egypt and The Suez Canal the prize. Follett is a master of suspense and he makes great use of it here as two secret agents lock horns. The German agent with a wonderfully appropriate name, The Spinx, enlists the wiles of a belly dancer and the British agent, seeks the help of a beautiful young Jewish woman, who plays a key role in unmasking the German agent and the final defeat of Rommel. I always love reading Follett. You’re never sure what.

The author clearly did a great deal of research for this book, and this is certainly something I truly love in this World War 2 novel: it provides that solid and rich actual background against which the story is set. It is fascinating to see how both the Nazis and the Allies were playing a game of deception, trying to outmanoeuvre and outsmart each other. The writing is very good, the characters are complex, all with their flaws, all very interesting indeed, all feeling very credible, real. An engaging spy thriller that remains one of my favourite in this genre.