100 books like The Paris Apartment

Having lived as an expat for thirteen years, the title immediately grabbed me. I’ve since read all of Chris Pavone’s books.

Kate moved to Luxembourg for her husband’s job and is trying to settle into her role as a housewife, but a series of strange events make her wonder whether her past life in an unconventional career is catching up with her.

I related to Kate’s struggles of leaving a job she loved to focus on family, both the positives and negatives (minus the life-threatening danger). When I left my career, I started writing to create a portable job I could take with me as we traveled the world for my husband’s work, so I completely understood Kate’s need to find purpose in her life.

I am Australian, and while I haven’t been to Newcastle, the atmospheric bushland, venomous snakes, and stunning but treacherous coastline made me feel right at home. This is Lee Christine’s hometown, and her love and respect for the land are right there on the page.

Layer in a detective with a complicated past, a journalist with a connection to the case, a dead judge, and missing lawyers, and Lee has created a wonderful blend of intrigue, scandal, and budding romance.

I enjoy mysteries with well-developed characters who make me care about their personal lives as well as wanting to solve the case, and Lee achieved this.

This book combines two of my greatest loves: ballroom dance and mystery novels. The ballroom dance world is designed for drama, especially when the competition is at Blackpool, the Mecca of ballroom dance.

I was fascinated to see this novel was co-written. Shirley Ballas brings the wealth of her ballroom dance experience to the party, including being head judge of Strictly Come Dancing. Her partner, author Sheila McClure, delivers the literary skills. A fabulous partnership.

Book two is out soon, and I can’t wait.

I lived in Lagos for four and a half years, so a mystery in Nigeria grabbed my attention right away. Vanessa’s descriptions are so vivid that I was transported back there on the page.

I loved the insight into the lives of the Nigerwives—women from other countries married to Nigerian men. The power dynamics within the family were fascinating, and even as I wanted to know what happened to the missing Nigerwife, I was just as intrigued by the cultural insights.

This is a complex and overwhelming book. It covers the detailed contents and history of the rooms and characters in a large apartment block in Paris. Some of the rooms and characters interact in a complex, sometimes dark way. It is a long book, but I found it enthralling all the way through. If you like a detailed, complex, baroque book where you have to read carefully and make connections, this is for you.

Renée is the concierge in an elegant Paris hotel. Widowed and in her 50s, she calls herself “short, ugly and plump,” a working-class nobody. She takes refuge in aesthetics and ideas but refuses to let her knowledge show. Renée’s friend in the building is 12-year-old Paloma, beyond precocious, who feels so let down by the meaningless in the world that she plans to commit suicide. Both characters are philosophers of sorts.  “Beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it,” says Paloma. In the end, they rescue one another from despair and loneliness. The experience of the book that was so satisfying for me, is the exchange of ideas about life and happiness, which are expressed more as a kind of philosophical discourse rather than a traditionally plotted novel. The ideas, expressed so intelligently and poetically, kept me going.

I can still remember so much from this book. A great stat Hawes included was that in the year 1870, 90 percent of upper-class New Yorkers lived in townhouses or other types of single-family homes. By 1930, 90 percent lived in apartment buildings or “French flats,” as they were sometimes called. Basically, almost alone among American cities, New York chose to emulate Paris in its model of urbanism rather than London.

New York developers built and sold “French flats” that were large and ostentatious, like the Ansonia and the Dakota, which are still there today. These iconic apartment buildings were built along the streetcar and subway lines. Hawes was a writer for The New Yorker, so this is very readable.

This book has so much detail to keep the reader fascinated. It’s like looking inside a doll’s house with its constant activity from all the families and residents living there and what they get up to over the course of a day. Each page is a gem and the intricate detail keeps you engrossed in their lives. Adults would enjoy this book too. I still have my well-loved copy from 1995.

Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman books will make you long for some scrumptious whole-grain bread and a crock of creamery butter.

Not only do you get descriptions of Corinna’s bakery and its products, there are also the delectable meals she prepares for herself and her beloved. And, of course, the mysteries she solves along the way. That’s not to mention Corinna herself, a former lawyer and accountant, now happily baking bread in Melbourne as an unashamedly full-figured woman and resident of a delightfully quirky apartment building.

On New Year's Eve, four Londoners climb to the top of a high rise with the same intention. They've all come for different reasons, but their plan is the same. Instead of ending their lives, however, they save each other. 

I love this novel, which is perhaps the truest and most hopeful story about suicide I’ve read. The final scene, which takes place on the one-year anniversary of the opening scene, is something I think of at least once a year, and I am always shaken by its insight. At times, side-splittingly funny and heart-rendingly sad, this is a must-read for anyone recovering from a mental illness.