100 books like The Lioness

This novel was an immersive journey through the English countryside, from Cornwall to the Cotswolds. I was so deep into this setting and story that I was always stunned to look up and see that I was at home in my own living room. Rosamunde Pilcher is from Scotland, and she knows this landscape so well. She takes us there with deft prose and page-turning skill. 

The story is about a woman named Penelope Keeling and her extended family. It is a novel of connections—mothers, daughters, husbands, and lovers—all revolving around a famous painting called The Shell Seekers. Through a bohemian childhood and a wartime romance, we come to love the complicated Keeling family. 

I’ve only been to Paris one time, but I feel as if I’ve been many times because I toured this city with Paula McLain and the story of Hadley Hemingway, Ernest’s first and most beloved wife. From the cafes to the cobbled streets to the parlors and apartments, I was engrossed. 

This is the wild story of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife. Hadley was a quiet twenty-eight-year-old woman who had given up on love until she met Ernest. Their whirlwind romance was ill-prepared for the fast living of Jazz Age Paris. It is a beautiful portrayal of love and loyalty, of art and heartbreak. 

Julia Whalen is also a renowned audiobook narrator, and I listened to this book in her melodic voice, being carried to Oxford. Julia attended Oxford for a year, and she takes us there in this beautiful story.

The story is about a young American woman named Ella Durran who has made it to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. Through twists and turns, Ella must decide whether to turn her back on the man she’s falling in love with or follow her political dreams, which are coming true. Can we change our dreams? Read to find out. 

This gorgeous and page-turning novel is mostly set in Australia, a place I’ve never been in real life, but Kate’s novel transported me there through imagery and language. I feel like I could walk straight into that setting and feel as if I’d been there before. 

The story is about a young journalist named Jess who is in search of a story. Jess is summoned back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother is ill in the hospital. What Jess discovers there about a baffling murder in the small town of Tambilla will upend her life. 

As a cross-genre “mystery writer,” I’m not big on fiction classifications. This book, like most great books, defies pigeonholing. Some would say “crime novel,” some “western,” others “thriller,” others still, “adventure.”  

Regardless, if the first sentence of this book doesn’t hook you, nothing will. It is nothing short of mastery. Character-driven story-telling at its finest, running a reader through a gauntlet of gut-wrenching emotions with ease—poignant, gritty, tongue-in-cheek, and often horrific. Perfectly seasoned with Texas cornpone, this coming-of-age western tale is a fist full. I loved it.

As much as I love foreign-set thrillers, I love cross-genre thrillers even more. And horror thrillers top the list. This book grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go until the last page. 

I love how the woods in the book are a sinister place with teeth and a creeping sense of dread every time Liz enters it. Although there were times I wanted to slap Liz for her poor decisions, I breathlessly followed her investigation to uncover her own connection to what lurks in the woods and the mystery of decades of missing and murdered black girls in her hometown.

This book is a thought-provoking exploration of evil and just how easy it is for fear and hatred to grow into something truly terrifying.

This book came at a time when publishing was receiving a lot of flack for its treatment of editors. This book touches on themes such as the toxic work environment for editors, again, how editors from marginalised backgrounds can barely survive in the recent publishing ecosphere.

But also, it's got a very Get Out—esque twist that readers will never see coming!

I am a fan of crime noir, and this story is one of the formats that I really appreciate–an investigation by a non-professional. Someone who can do the research and ask the questions behind the scenes without being noticed. He works within the shadows of law enforcement, getting information from both sides of the law. His curiosity leads him to intrigue.

I appreciated the man’s conflict within himself as he got closer to the danger and the temptations presented to him. All while he continues to work underneath the surface to solve a mystery he eventually becomes obsessed with himself. 

I am a huge fan of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, and this book is an homage to that film—but in the form of a domestic thriller.

A mysterious stranger on the train, a wife troubled by her husband’s infidelity, a missing nanny: each has her own story to tell that eventually intersects with the others and kept me guessing until the end.

A savage, icepick of a hitman novel that will bury itself in your cerebellum. It’s a slippery, sexy book about the making and subsequent unmaking of a contract killer, complete with all the usual trappings and a few resolutely unusual ones. halfway through this novel, I realized that there weren't any rules to this. That you just built humans from scratch and turned them loose in your world and whatever they did, they did.  A guy stabs someone with his own fibula in this book. Eat that Macgyver.