Here are 100 books that The Lottery fans have personally recommended if you like
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One of the gifts of the horror genre is that the stories use metaphor to examine human behaviors that defy understanding. My favorite horror novels, novellas, and short stories can be read again and again. While my Feral graphic novel series is for middle school readers, I wanted to provide grey areas, perhaps more than the editor always liked! I wanted the adventure, the scares, the questions, the uncertainty that would let the small town of Feral take on a larger-than-life presence for a reader and encourage revisiting it whenever the mood strikes. It's almost pleasant, the rhythm, the anticipation. A little unnerving too.
This is a short story collection I return to every few years. There are four novellas in this collection, but each of them was delivered directly to my cerebral cortex. I can recall passages from each story. And I can see the locations.
I feel King is at his best when he's twisting his way through novellas and short stories. After reading "1922", it was weeks before I stopped seeing the well. And weeks before, I stopped shaking my head at what Wilfred James did or the grit of Tess in "Big Driver" or the pettiness of Dave Streeter. This is worth reading every year.
From the master of the long story form, the Sunday Times No. 1 besteller, Full Dark, No Stars - described by the Sunday Telegraph as 'an extraordinary collection, thrillingly merciless, and a career high point' - now with a stunning new cover look.
Is it possible to fully know anyone? Even those we love the most? What tips someone over the edge to commit a crime?
In '1922', a story which was adapted into a Netflix original film, a Nebraska farmer, the turning point comes when his wife threatens to sell off the family homestead.
Iâve always been fascinated by books that explore the slow, painful unraveling of the human psyche. In part, I think because itâs something so many more of us either fear or experience (at least to some degree) than anyone really wants to admitâbut itâs also just such rich material for literary unpacking. I also love books with strong, angry female protagonists who fight back against oppression in all of its forms, so books about pissed-off madwomen are a natural go-to for me. Extra points if they teach me something I didnât know before-which is almost always the case with historical novels in this genre.
I love this book first and foremost because it is essentially the OG of madwomen narratives. Written in 1892, it is a super-creepy, sensory, trippy exploration of one womanâs sanity slowly being shredded by male medical âexpertiseââin this case, a doctorâs prescription for postpartum depression: utter isolation in a bedroom with no intellectual stimulation... in order to alleviate postpartum depression (?!). Unsurprisingly, rather than ârecovering,â the heroine drags readers down a terrifying rabbit hole of hallucination, self-destruction, andâultimatelyâmurder.
Itâs a masterful, Hitchcockian deep dive into psychosis written over a half-century before Psycho. But itâs also an extremely satisfying example of feminist revenge-writing; Perkins not only drew on her own experience after suffering this âtreatmentâ but sent a copy directly to her practitioner after its publication. Pow!
The Yellow Wallpaper (original title: "The Yellow Wall-paper. A Story") is a 6,000-word short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's health, both physical and mental.
Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. AsâŚ
I have always been drawn to the weird, fantastic, supernatural, and unexplained. Whether itâs film or TV (The Twilight Zone, the X-files, Ingmar Bergman) or gothic and speculative literature, I become mesmerized by the mysteries involved. I have written 10 books (poetry and fiction). Of the fiction, most is either speculative, as in magical realism, or somewhat gothic in nature. My newest novel, due out in 2025, is pure gothic and takes place in a haunted abbey inhabited by ghosts and the devil himself. And yet, behind it all is an exploration of human faith and frailty and a search for answers about our beliefs.
Franz Kafka is best known for this book, though he has written many others, including The Trial. The novel explores social and political topics through the use of the fantastic, in this case, a man who wakes up one morning and finds he has turned into a gigantic cockroach.
I am drawn to books that explore things in ways that have not been explored before and books that make one think. I read this one in college; it has stuck with me and influenced me through my writing career.
âWhen Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.â
With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowingâthough absurdly comicâmeditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-centuryâŚ
Artist Nilda Ricci could use a stroke of luck. She seems to get it when she inherits a shadowy Victorian, built by an architect whose houses were said to influence the mindâsupposedly, in beneficial ways. At first, Nildaâs new home delivers, with the help of its longtime housekeeper. And NildaâŚ
Iâve loved short stories since I was a young girl introduced to Edgar Allen Poe. Thereâs something especially exciting about a complete story in few words, and once I had to balance work, children, and personal relationships, stories became all the more cherished for short takes. I especially like tales about and by women, relating to our real challenges, and I review them often so other busy women discover better writers and interesting tales. There is nothing like a short story any time of day, especially in the evening, to soothe the soul.
Each one of these stories is a mini-novel, which are the sort of stories I love. Black never leaves you hanging, like some writers do, and you will feel like youâre right in there watching the story unfold. The writing has been called pitch-perfect and I agree. Every word is right, every moment fits and every character is trying to make sense of the world as we all do, every day. She deftly explores the emotional DNA passed from generations before and what that means for each of our lives going forward. So you get a great tale well told. and a lot to think about at the same time. Exactly what I love to read and what smart modern women are drawn to.
FINALIST FOR THE FRANK OâCONNOR SHORT STORY AWARD
NOW WITH AN ADDITIONAL STORY.
Heralding the arrival of a stunning new voice in American fiction, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This takes readers into the minds and hearts of people navigating the unsettling transitions that life presents to us all: A father struggles to forge an independent identity as his blind daughter prepares for college. A mother comes to terms with her adult daughterâs infidelity. An artist mourns the end of a romance while painting the portrait of a dying man. Brilliant, hopeful, and fearlessly honest, If IâŚ
Iâve always been fascinated by the everyday lives of people from early New England; I want to understand how they experienced their world, made choices, and participated in changing history. Most of these people left no memoirs, so Iâve spent years in all manner of archives, piecing together clues to individual lives. Iâve found extraordinary insights on how and why people farmed in tax valuations, deeper knowledge of their material world in probate court inventories, evidence of neighborly interdependence in old account books, etc. Iâve spent my career as a public historian sharing these stories through museum research and exhibits, public programs, lectures, and writing. I love the hunt â and the story!
Joseph Wood creatively uses landscape, settlement patterns, and the built environment to challenge a fabled view of the Currier and Ives New England village. The compact village center, with a steepled church, tidy white homes, and quaint shops surrounding the village green has too long colored our historical imaginings about an idealized New England past. But these forms, Wood convincingly argues, do not describe our colonial past. They are a 19th c invention that both romanticizes and obscures the actual colonial landscape of scattered farmsteads, meadows, and pastures. Early New England was shaped by a land-hungry people who sought competency & security in an expansive countryside. Richly illustrated with maps and images, this book is a model of how to use unusual evidence to recover the past.
The New England village, with its white-painted, black-shuttered, classical-revival buildings surrounding a tree-shaded green, is one of the enduring icons of the American historical imagination. Associated in the popular mind with a time of strong community values, discipline, and economic stability, the village of New England is for many the archetypal "city on a hill." Yet in The New England Village, Joseph S. Wood argues that this village is a nineteenth-century place and its association with the colonial past a nineteenth-century romantic invention.
New England colonists brought with them a cultural predisposition toward dispersed settlements within agricultural spaces called "towns"âŚ
Iâve always been fascinated by the everyday lives of people from early New England; I want to understand how they experienced their world, made choices, and participated in changing history. Most of these people left no memoirs, so Iâve spent years in all manner of archives, piecing together clues to individual lives. Iâve found extraordinary insights on how and why people farmed in tax valuations, deeper knowledge of their material world in probate court inventories, evidence of neighborly interdependence in old account books, etc. Iâve spent my career as a public historian sharing these stories through museum research and exhibits, public programs, lectures, and writing. I love the hunt â and the story!
Jack Larkin, former historian of Old Sturbridge Village, befriended me when I was a research fellow at the Village years ago. He was one of the most generous and original scholars Iâve ever known. Though deeply versed in the primary sources of the Villageâs rich research library, Jackâs understanding of the past was richly informed by his immersion in the living history of the Village. He knew the past intimately â how it felt, looked, smelled. For Jack, being âin the room where it happenedâ had a different meaning: he knew their homes, barns, workshops, meetinghouses. He married this rich evidence with his knowledge of village life â family and neighborly dynamics, the growth of material desires, popular politics, and religious revivalism. This book engagingly preserves Jackâs rare understanding of daily life in the early Republic.
"Compact and insightful. "--New York Times Book Review "Jack Larkin has retrieved the irretrievable; the intimate facts of everyday life that defined what people were really like."--American Heritage
15-year-old James McCafferty is about to board an old junk-rigged boat on a summer adventure therapy for problem teens. James' problem is he hears voices and sometimes sees people others don't see. He believes the boat to be possessed by malicious spirits intent on sinking the ship. Once at sea,âŚ
Iâve been captivated by interesting people since I was a kid. Family
members always thought I asked too many questions of people, trying to
learn more about who they are. For that reason, when I started reading
fiction, I looked for characters with originality who opened new
horizons and who I wanted to hang out with. (Thatâs also why I host the
Novelist Spotlight podcast.) I agree 100 percent with novelist Larry
McMurtry, who said: âFor me, the novel is character creation. Unless the
characters convince and live, the bookâs got no chance.â The books I
placed on my list reflect this belief. I hope you dig them.
The sheer command of the English language displayed by John Updike is something I marvel at, but he is at the height of his powers in this novel. Whatâs more, itâs a sexy book in the old-fashioned sense of men desiring women and women wanting to be desired by men.
I consider this Updikeâs best novel because the story moves ahead at a great pace and is filled with tension between its characters. If someone told me it is largely about the computer revolution, I would have been suspicious. No need to be. Owen, the main character, starts as a young boy, goes into the computer business, finds success, has seemingly endless dalliances with women, and eventually meets his end. I found it to be a great ride.
Owen Mackenzie's life story abounds with sin and seduction, domesticity and debauchery. His marriage to his college sweetheart is quickly followed by his first betrayal and he embarks upon a series of affairs. His pursuit of happiness, in a succession of small towns from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, brings him to the edge of chaos, from which he is saved by a rescue that carries its own fatal price.
I love mysteries, especially series with a female sleuth. I discovered Miss Marple when I was a midwifery student and was instantly hooked. Over the years, I have sought out mysteries with women Sherlocks and am always thrilled to find a series. I was so enchanted that I wanted to add to the genre and now write the Modern Midwife Mysteries featuring Maeve OâReilly Kensington, a modern nurse midwife. Try any of the books Iâve recommended. Youâre in for a treat!
I love a New England mystery, especially one that includes recipes.
Katherine Hall Page fills the bill with her twenty-six delightful Faith Fairchild mysteries. Faith is a high-end New York City caterer who falls in love and marries a minister from a New England village. Will she be bored? Can love conquer all?
It turns out that this sleepy New England town has murders aplenty, but luckily, Faith is on the scene. I have tried her recipes, and they are wonderful!
The Body in the Belfry, the first volume in Katherine Hall Page's cozy mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Faith Fairchild
During her years spent in New York City, Faith Fairchild was convinced she had seen pretty much everything. But the transplanted caterer/minister's wife was unprepared for the surprises awaiting her in the sleepy Massachusetts village of Aleford. And she is especially taken aback by the dead body of a pretty young thing she discovers stashed in the church's belfry. The victim, Cindy Shepherd, was well-known locally for her acid tongue and her jilted beaux, which created a lot of badâŚ
Iâve always been fascinated by the everyday lives of people from early New England; I want to understand how they experienced their world, made choices, and participated in changing history. Most of these people left no memoirs, so Iâve spent years in all manner of archives, piecing together clues to individual lives. Iâve found extraordinary insights on how and why people farmed in tax valuations, deeper knowledge of their material world in probate court inventories, evidence of neighborly interdependence in old account books, etc. Iâve spent my career as a public historian sharing these stories through museum research and exhibits, public programs, lectures, and writing. I love the hunt â and the story!
Quabbin is a relic of a lost world â both figuratively and literally. In his old age, Francis Underwood remembered his childhood village, the buildings, the personalities, their dress, manners, and speech, their faith and their passions for reform, their old social customs and their emerging middle-class sensibilities â and most of all their stories. But it is a world, as Underwood knew, that was passing away. His secluded old New England village was opening to the world, and its agrarian ways were soon to be eclipsed by the industrial village. What Underwood did not know, but we do, is that his childhood home has literally disappeared, under the flooding waters of the Quabbin Reservoir. This is an extraordinary testimonial to that lost world!
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy andâŚ
On Draakensky Windmill Estate, magick and mystery rule. Sketch artist Charlotte Knight is hired to live on the estate while illustrating poetry under the direction of the reclusive spinster, and wind witch, Jaa Morlandâwho believes in ghosts. Charlotte quickly encounters the voiceâŚ
I was born and raised in New England, growing up along the seacoast of New Hampshire. I went to college in Massachusetts and graduated with a degree in gender and sexuality. I live in Tucson, Arizona with my sweet yellow lab and even sweeter boyfriend. Iâm a hybrid author. My debut novel, Monsoon Season, was traditionally published along with A Long Thaw, which I later rereleased on my own. Finding Charlie was chosen for publication by KindleScout in 2015. My fourth book, Blood & Water launched in 2017. I write the kind of fiction I like to read: character-driven, relationship-focused, and emotionally complex.
Jennifer Haigh's novel is a family saga that reads like a post-mortem. With alternating narration, each of the five family members gives their perspective on what led to the family's demise and current state. The novel's title, The Condition, seems to refer specifically to one child in the family who has been diagnosed with a rare medical condition called Turner's Syndrome. But throughout the book, it becomes clear that each family member has developed their own "condition" or way of existing that is just as much a part of their identity.
In the summer of 1976, during their annual retreat on Cape Cod, the McKotch family came apart. Now, twenty years after daughter Gwen was diagnosed with Turner's syndromeâa rare genetic condition that keeps her trapped forever in the body of a childâeminent scientist Frank McKotch is divorced from his pedigreed wife, Paulette. Eldest son Billy, a successful cardiologist, lives a life built on secrets and compromise. His brother Scott awakened from a pot-addled adolescence to a soul-killing job and a regrettable marriage. And Gwenâbright and accomplished but hermetic and emotionally aloofâspurns all social interaction until, well into her thirties, sheâŚ