10 books like The Recycled Citizen

Gaudy Night was recommended to me by my Aunt many years ago. I had been reading British detective novels and she said that Gaudy Night was the sweetest love story/detective novel ever written. She was right. Lord Peter Wimsey, the famous detective, meets Harriet Vane in various friends’ salons, but comes to know her and becomes quite fascinated, after she is accused of killing her lover. (This was quite a scandal in 1930s London.) He gets her off by discovering the real killer. The romance takes place over two more books – Gaudy Night is the third.

Harriet is reluctant. She is sure she is too old, too tainted by scandal and too much of a blue stocking for Peter, as he often is in the company of dancers and actresses. He convinces her with kindness and silence, letting her know that it is the real Harriet that interests him,… show more.

I love the historical drama in this book. The characters are desperately in love but are unable to express it because they believe the worst of each other. Set in Paris and London during the reign of terror, Percy believes his wife is a murderous betrayer and Margaritte believes that Percy is nothing but a vacant fop. Neither is correct and the writing and romantic tension have made this book, play and various movies classic historical romance adventure stories since its writing.

I read this book when I was a teenager, picking it up from a shelf in the hall and was immediately entranced at how Orczy pulls the reader in to a different place and time with such conviction and accuracy.

I studied with Jane Kamensky while I was working on a MA in American History. Little did I know that she had a wicked historical character hidden inside. Learning that inspired me to write good history inside a realistic and sexy historical plot. This is a story of hidden identity and unexpected love. 

The characters are a portrait artist and his apprentice. The apprentice appears to be a young man, as only young men would take such a position in 18th-century Boston, and the artist is surprised at his yearning for him. 

I began to write my own series in response to Jo Beverley’s Mallorens. These novels are set in Georgian England with its Barons, Dukes and their gambling, their rakes, and their strict inheritance laws and traditions. I invented those same rakish sons of dukes, but made them the third and fourth sons – the ones barely mentioned in classic British historical romances. I put these adventurous men on merchant vessels, and in the red uniform of the British army. Then I sent them across the Atlantic to fight a war for the King and have their adventures in America. I regret that Ms. Beverley died before I had a chance to talk to her about our connection, but her books have been a great inspiration. 

Many writers use dramatic openings to bring you into a book, and Ms. Beverely gets behind you and kicks you in. It has been very… show more.

Here’s another PI series set in Boston, and while Carlotta Carlyle is nowhere near as well-known as Spenser, Linda Barnes is every bit as readable as Robert Parker. In her first outing (an Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel), ex-cabbie and ex-cop Carlyle takes on a missing person case that has her tangling with IRA gunrunners. A Trouble of Fools is my pick because it brings the ‘80s Boston I remember to life, and because of the light, humorous voice Barnes lends the proceedings.

This is the third of Barbara Neely’s mysteries about a peppery African-American housekeeper, Blanche White, and the dirt she finds while she’s cleaning other people’s houses. It’s a different house in each of the novels – and a tough task to choose just one, I can tell you. This time, we find Blanche in Boston working for the Brahmin-ish Brindle family, who have got “too-good-to-be-true” written all over them. There’s a nifty plot, but what I love (and this can’t be a surprise after the first four books, surely) is Blanche’s take on everything from how a spice-rack is organised, to why rich people have such ugly art. She is irresistible. I wish somehow she could meet Frances Wray (from The Paying Guests) and share some of her moxie. I’d kind of love to hear her thoughts on the Mortmains too.

This is a complex young adult contemporary novel that spotlights Mini as she singlehandedly organizes the wedding-of-the-year for her older sister and her fiancé. Amidst the primary plot of Mini pulling together the wedding and falling in love with the handsome Vir Mirchandani, there is a unifying theme of family. Nandini Bajpai does an incredible job of unpacking the elements of an Indian family, specifically in how they support each other after the loss of a loved one. It was heartwarming to see Mini come into her own by the end of her story, and I highly recommend this book to anyone with a penchant for Indian weddings, Indian culture, and young love. 

Spenser is a hard-nosed private detective living and working in Boston. When his girlfriend Susan runs off to California with another man, Spenser feels betrayed but understands. She has her freedom. Then his best friend, Hawk, is falsely arrested and jailed in the new man’s town. This sets off a firestorm of murder and violence as Spenser first frees Hawk and then they both attempt to free Susan from an abusive, if consensual, relationship. And then the CIA gets involved. A Catskill Eagle is the twelfth of forty Spenser novels written by Parker.

This gripping true story of a water contamination lawsuit in Woburn, Massachusetts highlights the best our legal system can be. (Yes, I made an exception for non-fiction here, but only because it was assigned reading in law school. But it reads like a novel, I promise.) After her child is diagnosed with leukemia, Anne Anderson realizes the cancer cluster among her neighbors is caused by contamination of the town's water supply. She convinces a lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, to take on the case when he discovers that several nearby factories are responsible for the pollution. In taking on the case against the deep pockets of the corporate defendants, Schlichtmann is nearly destroyed seeking justice for the town. (John Travolta stars in a great film adaptation of this book playing Schlichtmann.)

As great as it was, Eddie Coyle didn’t leave much of a cultural footprint, at least not until the movie adaptation starring Robert Mitchum was rediscovered decades after its initial release. Robert B. Parker’s Spenser is another matter entirely, having spawned nearly 40 novels by Parker, another 10 by Ace Atkins, a popular ‘80s TV series, and a Netflix movie starring Mark Walhberg. Picking just one of the durable shamus’s adventures is a daunting task, but I’ll give the nod to Ceremony for its evocation of the seedy seventies Combat Zone (Boston’s long-gone red light district) and the murky morality of Spenser’s dealings with a teen runaway turned sex worker.