Here are 100 books that The Mercies fans have personally recommended if you like
The Mercies.
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I’m an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. My work has been widely staged in London, across the UK, and internationally. I’ve had the honor of receiving the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Michael Grandage Futures Bursary Award, and I was also nominated for Political Play of the Year. Before I began writing, I worked as an anthropologist. Happy Death Club is my first nonfiction book.
The characters in Maggie O'Farrell's book are so real and compelling that they make historical figures feel like your next-door neighbors. I've always been obsessed with Shakespeare, and it's fascinating to learn more about how much Shakespeare was inspired by the death of his son Hamnet. It shows Shakespeare the man but also brings to life the other people in his life, especially the women, who history has forgotten about.
Behind every great man is an army of unseen women, and O'Farrell's novel gives those women voice and agency, showing what life (and death) was like for women in previous centuries, and showing that the experience of grief is universal.
WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021 'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times 'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell
TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.
On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?
Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.
I love the challenge of taking a headline, a photo, or a curious little footnote in someone else's history, and fleshing out all the details to make it a full-blown story. Here are five books where I think this task has been taken to entirely other levels.
Estebenico is believed to be the first Black man to be brought to the Americas. In Lalami’s telling, the small party he is with becomes separated and lost, resulting in a years-long journey through unknown lands. Against a vividly detailed backdrop of the early Americas Lalami patiently lays out how Estebanico's willingness to acquire new skills in language and medicine begins to shift the dynamic of his relationship with the master who he had been brought to serve.
In 1527 the Spanish conquistador Panfilo de Narvaez arrived on the coast of modern-day Florida with hundreds of settlers, and claimed the region for Spain. Almost immediately, the expedition was decimated by a combination of navigational errors, disease, starvation and fierce resistance from indigenous tribes. Within a year, only four survivors remained: three noblemen and a Moroccan slave called "Estebanico". The official record, set down after a reunion with Spanish forces in 1536, contains only the three freemen's accounts. The fourth, to which the title of Laila Lalami's masterful novel alludes, is Estebanico's own. Lalami gives us Estebanico as history…
I became fascinated with 16th-century and 17th-century Europe after reading Don Quixote many years ago. Since then, every novel or nonfiction book about that era has felt both ancient and contemporary. I’m always struck by how much our environment has changed—transportation, communication, housing, government—but also how little we as people have changed when it comes to ambition, love, grief, and greed. I doubled down my reading on that time period when I researched my novel, Dulcinea. Many people read in the eras of the Renaissance, World War II, or ancient Greece, so I’m hoping to introduce them to the Baroque Age.
I picked this book up, thinking it might have to do with witch trials in Europe during the 17th Century, and in a peripheral way, it does because it’s very loosely based on the life of Katharina Kepler, the mother of famous astronomer Johannes Kepler. (And really, how can you resist the title.) But the novel delivered so much more.
It’s a witty, searing meditation on community, gossip and envy, the strictures of society, the corruption of power, and a woman’s determination to be her own person. Add to that some of the funniest, most absurd situations I’ve read in a long while. Some sections of the novel are truly laugh-aloud.
The startling, witty, highly anticipated second novel from the critically acclaimed author of Atmospheric Disturbances.
The story begins in 1618, in the German duchy of Württemberg. Plague is spreading. The Thirty Years' War has begun, and fear and suspicion are in the air throughout the Holy Roman Empire. In the small town of Leonberg, Katharina Kepler is accused of being a witch.
Katharina is an illiterate widow, known by her neighbors for her herbal remedies and the success of her children, including her eldest, Johannes, who is the Imperial Mathematician and renowned author of the laws of planetary motion. It's…
Dolça Llull Prat, a wealthy Barcelona woman, is only 15 when she falls in love with an impoverished poet-solder. Theirs is a forbidden relationship, one that overcomes many obstacles until the fledgling writer renders her as the lowly Dulcinea in his bestseller.
I was the kid who always had a fantasy novel in her backpack. Fantasy required I stretch my imagination, be open to possibilities, and understand different concepts of reality. This curiosity fueled my academic career, steering me from philosophy to Jungian psychology and, eventually, many years later, to an apprenticeship with a traditional healer in Ireland where I put my hands in the dirt and learned things that touched my soul, like how the growth of plants relates to the moon, ways to alchemize medicine making, and the psycho-spiritual aspects of healing…. You know, magic. I hope reading through this list brings you as much joy as putting it together did for me.
This book is a glorious exhortation to live, even when—especially when!—death is lurking. It takes place in the plague of 1666. I used to have a bizarre fear of the bubonic plague (like I imagined it was in my closet and, if I opened the door, it would escape out into the world), so it’s strange how much I love this book.
I think it’s because Anna, the main character, is such a force. She repeatedly reminds me to connect with the natural world and myself and then to stretch and reach beyond what I thought I was and who I thought I could be. It's magic.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'March' and 'People of the Book'.
A young woman's struggle to save her family and her soul during the extraordinary year of 1666, when plague suddenly struck a small Derbyshire village.
In 1666, plague swept through London, driving the King and his court to Oxford, and Samuel Pepys to Greenwich, in an attempt to escape contagion. The north of England remained untouched until, in a small community of leadminers and hill farmers, a bolt of cloth arrived from the capital. The tailor who cut the cloth had no way of knowing that the damp…
I love the challenge of taking a headline, a photo, or a curious little footnote in someone else's history, and fleshing out all the details to make it a full-blown story. Here are five books where I think this task has been taken to entirely other levels.
Mishima’s personal story is as dramatic as any of his fiction – on the day that he completed the final novel of his “Sea of Fertility” tetralogy he printed the novel out, laid it on his desk, then he and a band of supporters took a military leader hostage and demanded that the Emperor be restored to power in Japan. The ill-fated coup attempt ended with Mishima committing seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment). While the tetralogy is likely his most famous work, his best in my opinion, is Temple of the Golden Pavillion, a novel loosely based on the burning of the Golden Pavillion of Kinkaku-Ji by a disturbed Buddhist acolyte in 1950. Mishima’s harrowing depiction of the young acolyte’s slow descent into madness will have you disturbed as well.
Generally regarded both in Japan and in the West as his most successful novel, THE TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN PAVILION brings together all Mishima's preoccupations with violence, desire, religious life and the history of his own nation. Based on actual incident, the burning of a celebrated temple, the novel is both a vivid narrative and a meditation on the state of Japan in the post-war period.
I read and write to better understand people. Why do we do what we do, feel what we feel, hide what we hide? Any book that illuminates these questions and their answers draws me in. Reading and writing are ways that I can attempt to walk in someone else’s shoes and see the world through their eyes, expanding my own understanding of the world. Perhaps the books on this list will offer you the same opportunity.
This is one of my long-time favorite books because of the relationships of these sisters and the way they react to a vicious dictatorship in their home country, the Dominican Republic.
Birthed from a true story, this author deftly weaves the tensions of the times with the real impact the violence has on each character. The bravery of these woman calls me to reread the dramatic, beautifully crafted book from time-to-time.
"A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time.” --St. Petersburg Times
It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas--the Butterflies. In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all…
Serendipity is a magical story told by a grandmother to a granddaughter, introducing us to the traditional way of living of the Scottish Travellers and their Cant language.
A fantasy tale for children of 8 years old and older inspired by three real places in Scotland. Serendipity takes us to…
I love the challenge of taking a headline, a photo, or a curious little footnote in someone else's history, and fleshing out all the details to make it a full-blown story. Here are five books where I think this task has been taken to entirely other levels.
George Mallory’s disputed ascent of Everest hardly qualifies as “little known history,” but I couldn’t do a top 5 list on historical fiction and not include it. You can tell from the details that Ridout is obsessed with this story. Mallory’s efforts on the climb are perfectly juxtapositioned against his wife’s less glamourous but no less difficult task of holding the family together in his absence. The novel thrives as an exploration of the intense pressure that Mallory’s final Everest attempt placed on both.
Above All Things is a heart-wrenching novel about George Mallory's fatal attempt to conquer Everest, from debut author Tanis Rideout.
In the Himalayas two climbers strike out for the summit of the Earth's highest mountain - aiming to be the first to the top.
In Cambridge, a wife collects the milk, gets three children out of bed and waits for a letter, a telegram - for news of her husband.
It is 1924 and George Mallory and Andrew Irvine are attempting to be the first to conquer Everest. They face inhuman cold and wind, but putting one foot falteringly after…
I became fascinated with 16th-century and 17th-century Europe after reading Don Quixote many years ago. Since then, every novel or nonfiction book about that era has felt both ancient and contemporary. I’m always struck by how much our environment has changed—transportation, communication, housing, government—but also how little we as people have changed when it comes to ambition, love, grief, and greed. I doubled down my reading on that time period when I researched my novel, Dulcinea. Many people read in the eras of the Renaissance, World War II, or ancient Greece, so I’m hoping to introduce them to the Baroque Age.
I bought this book for novel research but ended up devouring it. So many interesting details about religion, politics, urban and rural life, festivals, and religious processions!
I especially enjoyed the chapter on domestic life. Not surprisingly, the women of that time were very limited by certain expectations, but it didn’t mean they didn’t show some individuality. For example, wearing spectacles became very fashionable at the beginning of the 17th Century, regardless of whether women needed glasses or not. (It still happens today!)
In "Daily Life in Spain in the Golden Age", distinguished French historian Marcelin Defourneaux gives us an account of life in Spain during the period starting from the succession of Philip II (1556) to the death of Philip IV (1665). In this fascinating scholarly account, the author relies upon literary works and travel accounts written during this 'golden age' to present an overall picture of Spanish society of that time. Rich accounts of political and economic developments are woven into the narrative, and the author also covers the importance of Catholic faith and the emphasis upon personal honor.
Thirteen years ago, when my partner and I started our family, we didn’t know any other LGBTQ+ parents. We decided to learn all we could about the experiences of LGBTQ+ families. Our interviews with more than 70 families grew into an LGBTQ+ parenting guide called Pride and Joy. These real-life stories blew us away with their diversity; made us laugh, cry and gasp as we saw how families thrived, often against the odds. Yet we rarely saw families like these in the books our children read, so I started writing stories of my own. Thankfully, there are now many more - you’ll find some of my favourites on this list.
I wasn’t sure whether to include this book at first. It’s over twenty years old now - probably one of the first middle-grade titles where a character has same-sex parents. But while some attitudes feel dated, the story is still gripping and relevant. There are still many kids, like Holly, who love their families but feel like they have to keep them hidden to fit in with their friends. Holly learns that keeping secrets leads to bigger problems than the ones she was trying to avoid. Nancy Garden is a pioneer in writing for young adults about LGBTQ+ themes. She is one of my inspirations in becoming a writer. I hope each generation will continue to discover and be inspired by her work, just like I was.
A new town and new classmates, but the same family -- with two moms
Dear Diary, ...Until today I was Holly Lawrence-Jones. But starting tomorrow I'm going to be Yvette Lawrence-Jones. My family doesn't know that yet, but I'll tell them tomorrow, and that's the name I'll tell the people at school, too. Yvette's going to be sophisticated and grownup-feminine enough to have white ruffled curtains, and maybe even a boyfriend. She's also going to have a NORMAL family. Kids are not going to make jokes about her and say mean things, because there won't be any reason for them…
As a historical romance reader, I’m a sucker for stories about the glamorous aristocracy falling in love. While Regency and Victorian romances have explored feminism for at least the last two decades, the genre often falls short of asking more of itself. Of course the debutante shouldn’t need a man – but while the story liberates her, it doesn’t take any notice of the non-aristocratic, non-Anglican, non-White, less-abled, and/or non-cishet straight characters around her. I yearned for stories that required my favorite aristocrats to acknowledge, examine, and leverage their privilege. All five of these authors deliver – without forgetting our favorite tropes and genre conventions!
When I want a historical romance that knows exactly what it is and how to hit the right notes with each of its tropes, I turn to Erica Ridley.
Take the opening conceit of The Perks of Loving a Wallflower: It felt so familiar to read about a shy heroine who has a secret group of bluestocking friends and who is trying to avoid her parents’ matchmaking schemes.
From there, however, Ridley uses the conceit of a missing cipher to match Philippa with Tommy, a master of disguises and rejecter of labels.
Through a very fun, comforting historical romance plot, we get to explore gender roles, identity, and class snobbery.
As a master of disguise, Thomasina Wynchester can be a polite young lady-or a bawdy old man. She'll do whatever it takes to solve the cases her family takes on. But when Tommy's beautiful new client turns out to be the highborn lady she's secretly smitten with, more than her mission is at stake . . .
Bluestocking Miss Philippa York doesn't believe in love. Her heart didn't pitter-patter when she was betrothed to a duke, nor did it break when he married someone else. All Philippa desires is to decode a centuries-old manuscript to keep a modern-day villain from…
