Here are 60 books that The Night Bell fans have personally recommended if you like
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I tend to see the events that affect people and countries in the shape of a narrative. Is it any wonder then that I would try my hand at literary fiction, which confers wholeness to stories of turmoil and division? I think not. Finally settling into historical fiction as if I’d found my true home came as a welcome surprise. Without sounding grandiose, it didn’t hurt to be born and raised in a magnificent American city built on seven hills on the edge of the Pacific with deep traditions in literature, music, the arts, and damn good drinking establishments. I wish you happy reading and the thrill of discovery.
City of Thieves occupies the top shelf in my library. Why? Is it because now I’m watching the people of Ukraine battle a merciless enemy or because David Benioff has packed a tale that swings between unlikely comrades, a tender courtship, and the Nazis’ siege of Leningrad in WWII? Maybe both answers. But I read this book years ago. The deep humanity of the story is also a thriller that made me laugh andshudder through its short length of 258 pages. It doesn’t hurt that Benioff is a gifted screenwriter, too.
From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour and When the Nines Roll Over and co-creator of the HBO series Game of Thrones, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival - and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime.
During the Nazis' brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in…
I read almost any genre, but fantasy is what I love most, both reading and writing. Stories are magic, but when they have actual magic in them, I’m hooked. Having studied both Film and Creative Writing at university, I love to go in-depth on storytelling and have reviews aplenty on my website if you want further recommendations. The books I’ve chosen for this list have incredibly unique worlds full of bizarre magic. When I enter a new world, I want it to be exactly that: new and exciting with a touch of the surreal. To me, these books showcase magic at its most vivid and creative.
I very nearly stopped reading this book–even though it’s so short as it starts off unbelievably abstract. I didn’t know what was going on, and the descriptions only added to the confusion. But I’m so glad I kept going.
The main character does amnesia in the most charming way, and discovering his past and the strange world he seems both lost in and totally at home in was absolutely enchanting. This has stuck with me ever since, like the most vivid fever dream.
Winner of the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction A SUNDAY TIMES & NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, 'one of our greatest living authors' NEW YORK MAGAZINE __________________________________ Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has.
In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend,…
Having taken up the brush myself, I can attest to some sort of mystical, out-of-body experience that sometimes surfaces as an artist creates. Emotions and senses become directly connected to one’s hands, releasing the unconscious, allowing the artist to bring something to life that was buried deep inside. My favorite class in art school was Aesthetics, which explored the philosophy of art – what possessed the artist to paint – and what passions and beliefs were behind some of the art movements, including Surrealism, Dadaism, and Futurism. Books that delve into the craft and passion behind great works of art are my favorite reads.
This is the last Bernie Gunther novel, in a series that is über noir, and whose protagonist is a police detective who is a member of the SS in Nazi Germany.
In Metropolis, Gunther learns that murder has become the subject of an art movement, Lustmord, or “lust murders” which focused on the brutal, sexual-tinged serial killings of women and prostitutes in 1930s Berlin.
A scene in the book of a famous German expressionist sketching a murder victim in the morgue is all the more chilling, since I know it to be true. I’ve been fascinated with the art movements of this era, and have seen the exhibits of Lustmordpaintings, which are still in museums today.
"[Metropolis is] a perfect goodbye--and first hello--to its hero...Bernie Gunther has, at last, come home."--Washington Post
New York Times-bestselling author Philip Kerr treats readers to his beloved hero's origins, exploring Bernie Gunther's first weeks on Berlin's Murder Squad.
Summer, 1928. Berlin, a city where nothing is verboten.
In the night streets, political gangs wander, looking for fights. Daylight reveals a beleaguered populace barely recovering from the postwar inflation, often jobless, reeling from the reparations imposed by the victors. At central police HQ, the Murder Commission has its hands full. A killer is on the loose and though he scatters many…
A historical thriller set in south London just after World War II, as Britain returns to civilian life and the men return home from the fight, causing the women to leave their wartime roles. The South London Hospital for Women and Children is a hospital, (based on a real place)…
Even though I have not lived in the Midwest for fifty years, I remain a Midwesterner. It is in how I speak (adding an “r” to wash), what I like to eat (Cincinnati chili), and explains my favorite smell (the inside of a barn). Both as a reader and writer, I want to know where the story is “from.” What does this place look like? Smell like? What is the cadence of the characters’ speech? All this translates into an immersive experience and that is something I look for both in a book I pick up and in one I write.
I am a total sucker for crime books that include blueprints of the house where a murder took place… and specifically for books about Lizzie Borden and what she did (or did not do) on August 4, 1892. I really can’t explain my preoccupation. A Private Disgrace delivers on the blueprints and much more. I have read it many times over. The author was born twelve years after the murders in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lincoln heard from her parents how Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted for butchering her father and stepmother with an axe. The author knows the town intimately and uses her insider knowledge to formulate plausible answers as to who committed the murders and why. And Lincoln thrusts us directly into the murder house with her vivid depictions. The stifling heat of the August day, the family’s three consecutive meals of left-over mutton, the stink of the…
~Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Fact True Crime Novel of the Year, 1967~
A Private Disgrace is the single best account of the ghastly murders which took place in Fall River, Massachusetts on August 14, 1892.
Lizzie Andrew Borden (b.1860 – d.1927) was tried and acquitted in the 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. Media coverage of the case created a furor throughout the United States reminiscent of the Rosenberg, Claus von Bulow and O.J. Simpson trials. No other suspect was ever charged with the double homicide, and…
I don’t consider myself specifically a horror reader (or writer for that matter!) any more than I consider myself a fantasy, mystery, or science fiction reader. As a writer (under my real name John Mantooth as well as my pseudonym, Hank Early), much of my work has been classified as horror, though I take pride in my novels appealing to people who aren’t typically well-versed in the genre. So, it got me thinking… what are some novels that may or may not be classified as horror that will appeal to a wide range of readers? I call these books horror-adjacent, and no matter what you typically read, I think you’ll enjoy them.
This one is truly unique. It’s a true crime story operating under the guise of a horror story that is really neither. Instead, it grapples with teenage alienation and the way stories transform the truth, while offering an insightful meditation on empathy. Darnielle is one of the most unique and stylistically adventurous writers we have. And this may be his best.
“It’s never quite the book you think it is. It’s better.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
From John Darnielle, the New York Times bestselling author and the singer-songwriter of the Mountain Goats, comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling.
Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success—and a movie adaptation—to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the…
As a child, finding reality both overwhelming and boring, I was drawn to movies. My father, a New York City disc jockey also at odds with reality, had contacts at a sixteen-millimeter movie rental company. He often brought films home, shown in a makeshift screening room he set up in our basement. Singin’ in the Rain, the classic musical, made a great impression there. Its funny first scene at a movie premiere featured a pompous star’s ennobling account of his early days, comically contradicted by the tacky, scrounging, painfully undignified truth. What lay behind Hollywood's glamor, smiles, and success soon became as interesting to me as what was on the screen.
An excellent nonfiction account of an actual Hollywood killing, this is a well-written and researched investigation of the (as yet) unsolved 1922 shooting of director William Desmond Taylor. The murder was committed right when scandals, including Fatty Arbuckle’s, besieged an ascendant Hollywood.
Also of interest: A Murder in Hollywood by Casey Sherman, which recaps the killing of Johnny Stompanato, Lana Turner’s gangster boyfriend, supposedly by her teenage daughter, Cheryl. This crime inspired entertainment from Harold Robbin’s potboiler, Where Love Has Gone, to Woody Allen’s self-serious movie, September.
New York Times Bestseller Edgar Award winner for Best Fact Crime The Day of the Locust meets The Devil in the White City and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in this juicy, untold Hollywood story: an addictive true tale of ambition, scandal, intrigue, murder, and the creation of the modern film industry. By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime, and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence. Yet Hollywood's glittering ascendency was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies-including the murder of William Desmond…
After solving her first case, private eye Siobhan O’Brien is hired by Phillip Ahn, an octogenarian billionaire with his own personal island in the Pacific Northwest. Ahn, a genius in artificial intelligence, swears that Duke, his youngest child and only son, is an impostor. Is Ahn crazy, or is Duke…
I’m the Edgar and Barry Award nominated author of twenty novels, sixteen in my Joe DeMarco series, three in my Kay Hamilton Series, and my standalone, Redemption. Prior to becoming a writer, I was a senior civilian executive working in the U.S. Navy’s nuclear propulsion program. My books are mostly set in and involve characters in Washington, D.C., because Washington is a target-rich environment for a writer—and now more so than ever.
Richard Price, in my opinion, is one of today’s best writers in any genre. The Whites, a book about five detectives finally getting the criminal that always eluded them, was just the most recent book of his I’ve read. His classics—Clockers, Freedomland, The Night of, Sea of Love—were all adapted for the big screen. His prose is cliché free, no one captures New York City and its denizens the way Price does, and the dialogue in his books is pitch perfect and realistic.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE 2015 IN THE MYSTERY/THRILLER CATEGORY
Every cop has a personal 'White': a criminal who got away with murder - or worse - and was able to slip back into life, leaving the victim's family still seeking justice, the cop plagued by guilt.
Back in the 1990s, Billy Graves was one of the Wild Geese: a tight-knit crew of young mavericks, fresh to police work and hungry for justice, looking out for each other and their 'family' of neighbourhood locals. But then Billy made some bad headlines by accidentally shooting…
I grew up on farms, and have experienced the undercurrents that exist in small villages, which is why I like crime novels with rural settings. I worked as a couple counsellor for a while, which taught me that no fictional character can quite equal the real quirks and inconsistencies of real people—but I love those books which get close. Charles Dickens probably does it best! In my own novels I try to achieve something approaching this, in characters who break away from stereotypes and behave unpredictably. I like to think I manage to be witty sometimes, too—I really love humour, especially when it’s wordplay or subtly ironic.
Another murder mystery set in a small peaceful community—this time near San Francisco. It is the first featuring Kate Martinelli as the detective, who is new to the job. I found the characters totally credible and appealing, and the theme of portrait painting as a way of revealing the depths of someone’s personality was powerfully well done. It stayed with me long after I finished, and is wonderfully original. Laurie R. King is very prolific, and I find the quality of her work quite variable. But when she’s good, she’s fantastic.
THE EDGAR AWARD-WINNING NOVEL THE FIRST KATE MARTINELLI MYSTERY
In Laurie R. King's Grave Talent, the unthinkable has happened in a small community outside of San Francisco. A series of shocking murders has occurred, the victims far too innocent and defenseless. For lesbian Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to Homicide and paired with a seasoned cop who's less than thrilled to be handed a green partner, it's a difficult case that just keeps getting harder.
Then the police receive what appears to be a case-breaking lead: it seems that one of the residents of this odd colony is Vaun Adams,…
As an Anishinaabe writer, my award-winning/nominated books, Murder on the Red River andGirl Gone Missing, feature Cash Blackbear; a young, Native woman, who solves crimes for the county sheriff. Oprah Magazine 2020 listed me as a Native American Author to read. I received Minnesota's 2020 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award. My script, Say Their Names, had a staged reading with Out of Hand Theater, Atlanta, 2021. Vazquez and I received the Loft’s 2017 Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship for work with incarcerated women. I have been a friend, colleague, and peer with the authors recommended. We might currently be a small crew writing but we are a mighty, award-winning crew.
Linda Rodriquez, Cherokee, is the second Native American woman I met who writes crime. Before we even met in person she was supportive of my ambition to write in this genre. She not only encouraged me to keep writing but to also join Sisters In Crime, the organization founded to support women mystery/crime writers. Every Last Secret is the #1 book in Rodriquez’s Skeet Bannion series. "Skeet" Bannion fled the stress of being the highest-ranking woman in the Kansas City Police Department, and moved to a small town to work on the local college police force. She thinks she has run away from stress until she needs to track down a killer while dealing with a vulnerable teen and the return of her ex-husband and her ailing father. So much for small town stress relief!
Half-Cherokee Marquitta "Skeet" Bannion thought she was leaving her troubles behind when she fled the stress of being the highest ranking woman in the Kansas City Police Department. Moving to a small town to be chief of the campus police force, she builds a life outside of police work. She might even begin a new relationship with the amiable Brewster police chief. All of this is threatened when the student editor of the college newspaper is found murdered on campus. Skeet must track down the killer, following trails that lead to some of the most powerful people in the university.…
What Happened to Frank? is the first book in the Meg Sheppard Mystery Series. Meg is an amateur sleuth who owns racehorses and lives on a horse farm. Her beloved border collie, Kelly, is usually at Meg's side as she investigates murders and solves other mysteries. The books are action-packed…
I’d always known about the Lady of the Dunes. I’d read about how she was found in the dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, on July 26, 1974. I didn’t know about the tens of thousands of other unidentified victims like her, stowed around the US in the back rooms of morgues and unmarked graves. As a journalist who has always given a voice to those who struggle to be heard, I feel compelled to research and write about these Jane and John Does and the people who work to keep their cases in the public eye. I share a unique bond with writers who do the same.
Hikers stumbled upon the body of a young woman near Boulder, Colorado, in 1954. Buried in an anonymous grave, for decades she was yet another Jane Doe, abandoned and unidentified.
Decades later, historian Silvia Pettem joined forces with law enforcement and forensic experts. Together, they exhume the Jane Doe and achieve the seemingly impossible: they identify her andher probable killer.
In 1954, two college students were hiking along a creek outside of Boulder, Colorado, when they stumbled upon the body of a murdered young woman. Who was this woman? What had happened to her? The initial investigation turned up nothing, and the girl was buried in a local cemetery with a gravestone that read, "Jane Doe, April 1954, Age About 20 Years."
Decades later, historian Silvia Pettem formed a partnership with law enforcement and forensic experts and set in motion the events that led to Jane Doe's exhumation and eventual identification, as well as the identity of her probable killer.…
