Here are 98 books that The Secret History of Us fans have personally recommended if you like
The Secret History of Us.
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I love studying the ins/outs of humanity and our interactions, but especially, EI (emotional intelligence). A lot of emphasis is put on being “smart” and analytical (think IQ), but EI is largely ignored.
Relationships thrive (and die) on EI! In the novels I write, I explore the emotional side of relationships and how, if we pay attention to this other side of intelligence, beautiful interactions happen.
Typically, I don’t find riveting EI in books—and so when I do, I gobble the book up once, then twice, and possibly a third time, then tell everyone I know to GO READ THAT BOOK!
Again, the amnesia thing! Imagine waking up in class and realizing six months have lapsed—and you have no idea what happened. Six Months Later reminds me of the high-school version of The Bourne series—suspects are everywhere, people know too much but say too little…you don’t know who to trust but something is majorly off and you have to figure it out—despite not being able to remember…
I think adult readers often write off (pun intended) Young Adult fiction as being juvenile, but some of the best thrillers I’ve read have had high-school/college-age characters. I adore reading books where characters are not merely analytical—they are deeply emotionally intelligent.
From the New York Times bestselling author of teen suspense books, Natalie D. Richards, comes a psychological thriller about a girl who wakes up with everything she's ever wanted, but can't remember the last six months of her life, perfect for fans of One of Us Is Lying and If I Stay. When Chloe fell asleep in study hall, it was the middle of May. But when she wakes up, snow is on the ground, and she can't remember the last six months. Before, she'd been a mediocre student. Now, she's on track for valedictorian and being recruited by Ivy…
I love studying the ins/outs of humanity and our interactions, but especially, EI (emotional intelligence). A lot of emphasis is put on being “smart” and analytical (think IQ), but EI is largely ignored.
Relationships thrive (and die) on EI! In the novels I write, I explore the emotional side of relationships and how, if we pay attention to this other side of intelligence, beautiful interactions happen.
Typically, I don’t find riveting EI in books—and so when I do, I gobble the book up once, then twice, and possibly a third time, then tell everyone I know to GO READ THAT BOOK!
Who else loves a good “Fall-guy + I’ve-been-framed-for-murder” suspense novel? Kinda like The Fugitive movie with Harrison Ford?
Casey Cox has been framed for the murder of her boyfriend and is made the target of a national manhunt. I finished reading If I Run at almost three in the morning—it was that riveting. Though the main plot deals with highly emotional elements (PTSD, living on the run, etc.), the subplots are equally as gut-wrenching. Read this book and you will be left with wide eyes and—possibly—a gaping mouth.
Casey Cox's DNA is all over the crime scene. There's no use talking to police; they've failed her abysmally before. She has to flee before she's arrested . . . or worse. The truth doesn't matter anymore.
But what is the truth? That's the question haunting Dylan Roberts, the war-weary veteran hired to find Casey. PTSD has marked him damaged goods, but bringing Casey back can redeem him. Though the crime scene seems to tell the whole story, details of the murder aren't adding up.…
I once thought I was broken, because I became so invested in the characters I read about. I carried them with me out into the real world, where their struggles kept me from focusing on my own tasks. Then I learned this connection is a feature of reading, not a bug. While some people collect book boy/girl-friends–and I do enjoy swooning over a love interest–I am more drawn to those characters I’d want to share a rum with or meet for a beer. Authentic characters show us we’re not alone and inspire us to grow. They become so much more to us than mere words on the page.
The Discarded Heroes series holds a special place for me, as these books gave me the push I needed to face my fears and finally pursue publishing my writing. The entire Nightshade team was written so authentically, they feel like part of my extended family. I’m recommending book three specifically, because of Canyon and Dani. Their ability to acknowledge their weaknesses, take responsibility for their mistakes, and push through anything to finish their mission still inspires me.
A Rapid-Fire Rewrite of the 2012 Christy Award Winner--Expanded & Updated--with 100 new pages!Army demolitions expert Danielle Roark narrowly escaped a brutal guerrilla general. Months later, she’s charged with espionage and forced to return to the very jungle where her nightmares began. Her only hope rests in the former Special Forces operator who escorts her down and vows they’ll both come back alive.Disgusted with the suits on Capitol Hill, Canyon Metcalfe is still wrestling with memories of a mission gone bad. But taking the role of protector, he’s determined to make this endeavor end in victory. What he isn’t expecting…
I love studying the ins/outs of humanity and our interactions, but especially, EI (emotional intelligence). A lot of emphasis is put on being “smart” and analytical (think IQ), but EI is largely ignored.
Relationships thrive (and die) on EI! In the novels I write, I explore the emotional side of relationships and how, if we pay attention to this other side of intelligence, beautiful interactions happen.
Typically, I don’t find riveting EI in books—and so when I do, I gobble the book up once, then twice, and possibly a third time, then tell everyone I know to GO READ THAT BOOK!
The sole survivor of a train wreck, Autumn Manning lives crippled with guilt. When she meets the husband of one of the women who died in the wreck, sparks fly, and Autumn’s guilt only increases. And, while very likely the saddest book I’ve recommended thus far, Life After paints a beautiful, cathartic picture of grief that few authors have. Grief is part of life, but people don’t like to talk about what happens to our hearts/psyches when it descends. While Life After may elicit a few tears, it is a stunning, beautiful book that I highly recommend.
Snow whirls around an elevated train platform in Chicago. A distracted woman boards the train, takes her seat, and moments later a fiery explosion rips through the frigid air, tearing the car apart in a horrific attack on the city’s transit system. One life is spared. Twenty-two are lost.
A year later, Autumn Manning can’t remember the day of the bombing and she is tormented by grief—by guilt. Twelve months of the question constantly echoing. Why? Why? Why? Searching for answers, she haunts the lives of the victims, unable to rest.
The books I’ve recommended here range from scholarship, young adult historical fiction, literary fiction, and a good spy mystery—all set in World War II. I’ve read widely in the field since I’ve written several nonfiction books for young readers and teens about World War II. Along with We Must Not Forget, these include Courage & Defiance, about the Danish resistance, Dive!, about the submarine war in the Pacific, D-Day: The World War II Invasion that Changed History, and We Had to Be Brave: Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport. I’m currently working on a book about a 1945 POW rescue in the Philippines.
Chris Cleave’s fourth novel was inspired by memories of his grandparents and their letters during the war. The novel follows the lives and relationships of four young people in Britain during the early years of World War II. It also follows action on the island of Malta, a part of World War II history not as well known. It’s also a story of love, friendship, and surprising choices. A warning: Do not read ahead. The novel has an incredible last scene and you don’t want to ruin it!
'Ian McEwan did this with Atonement, Sarah Waters did it with The Night Watch, and Chris Cleave does it too with Everyone Brave is Forgiven... A compelling and finely crafted novel.' FT
'An addictive, propulsive read' The Sunday Times
Summer Reading pick - Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train Top Ten hottest summer reads - Sunday Telegraph Instant New York Times Bestseller Evening Standard bestseller 'A cracker' Stylist, 10 Exciting Books in 2016 'His best book to date' Esquire, 10 best novels of 2016 Guardian Literary Highlight of 2016 Independent Best Book to read in 2016 Irish…
Among other things, I'm an existentialist. A well-constructed mystery novel is an existential puzzle given to the reader to solve at his/her leisure, and the noir sub-genre has the further subtext that the protagonist—and the reader—are doomed in some way even if the solution is nailed. Romance novels are drivel and have no basis in reality, but noir and other types of mystery fiction reflect the way that the world works: you may solve this puzzle problem, but then you are left to a vast world that is rife with puzzles but without a coherent plot. The detective trudges on, achieves a kind of satisfaction, and then is thrust into the next crisis.
Watching
bad people self-destruct is hard work, but author Cain makes sure that the bad
people get what they deserve. A drifter takes a job at a roadside diner that is
run by an old man and his beautiful and unhappy wife; the two youngsters begin
a dangerous affair and then plot to kill the husband so that the girl inherits
the property. But matters do not turn out as they planned. The novel has been
adapted for film at least seven times, with the favorite being the 1946 movie
starring Lana Turner.
'Nobody has ever quite pulled it off the way Cain does, not Hemingway, and not even Raymond Chandler' Tom Wolfe
'It is no accident that movies based on three [of Cain's novels] helped to define the genre known as film noir' NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
'The most starkly elemental thing that has been written for years' EVENING STANDARD
The torrid story of Frank Chambers, the amoral drifter, Cora, the sullen and brooding wife, and Nick Papadakis, the amiable but inconvenient husband, has become a classic of its kind, and established Cain as a major novelist with a spare and…
As a police psychologist and mystery writer—I call myself a shrink with ink—I love to read how other authors portray therapists in their novels.It’s challenging to bring tension, action, and conflict to a 50-minute session that primarily involves quiet conversation, perhaps salted with tears. I started out writing non-fiction. Then I got tired of reality and began writing mysteries inspired by real police officers and their families. Writing fiction was harder, but more fun. Sometimes it’s been therapeutic. I especially enjoy the opportunity to take potshots at cops who treated me poorly, incompetent psychologists, and two of my ex-husbands.
I absolutely loved this novel, not just for the craft (the writing is beautiful), but for the suspense created when a troubled man eavesdrops on a psychologist’s sessions.
Fascinated with one particular client, he gets deeply and actively involved in her search for identity and her ties to Nazi Germany. As a practicing psychologist, I tried, unsuccessfully I might add, to imagine how I would handle a similar situation.
Set in my town, 1970’s San Francisco during a tumultuous era marked by psychedelics, feminism, and the Zodiac killer, I even recognized the building where Ullman’s fictional psychologist practices because some of my colleagues have offices there.
From the acclaimed American novelist and memoirist Ellen Ullman, By Blood is a gothic noir novel that explores questions about fate, identity and genetics in the guise of a gripping psychological thriller.
"Delicious and intriguing" Daily Telegraph
A professor is on leave from his post a leave that may have been forced upon him. He may or may not be of sound mind. To steady himself, he rents an office in San Francisco. It is 1974, a time when free love and psychedelic ecstasy have given way to drug violence and serial killings. Through the thin office walls, the professor…
I’ve only ever lived in small Midwestern towns. I grew up there, raised my kids there, recovered from a divorce there, remarried there. I’ve had the same best friends for 40 years. I’ve paid and bartered for my classmates’ trade services. I’ve argued with them in churches and cafes, rooted for and against their kids at high school basketball and football games all over the state. We’ve celebrated and buried each other’s loved ones. I’ve run hundreds of miles of Wisconsin trail, soaked in her waters, marveled at her sunsets. It’s as home to me as my own body, and I’ll never tire of reading about it.
I’ve lived in Wisconsin since 1985, and somehow I had no idea there used to be a thriving Playboy resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
After the book came out I learned I even have a family member who worked security there—that’s how little people around here talk about this juicy history. Christina Clancy’s book is set in the 1980s in both Lake Geneva and the smaller community of East Troy, and she does an excellent job of balancing the celebrity and historical elements with the young Wisconsin women themselves and the complex relationship so many of them had with the seedy perception of Playboy. A lot of them were from farms and rural towns, and their families didn’t even know they worked there.
This particular Playboy resort was even known as a family-friendly destination. I loved learning about a world I had no idea existed, set against one I thought…
The small town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin is an unlikely location for a Playboy Resort, and nineteen-year old Sherri Taylor is an unlikely bunny. Growing up in neighbouring East Troy, Sherri plays the organ at the local church and has never felt comfortable in her own skin. But when her parents die in quick succession, she leaves the only home she's ever known for the chance to be part of a glamorous slice of history. In the winter of 1981, in a costume two sizes too small, her toes pinched by stilettos, Sherri joins the daughters of dairy farmers and…
A lover of fiction since my teens, I only really took an interest in history in my 20s. I’m fascinated with WWII and the 1950s due to family histories and having visited key sites, like Bletchley Park and the Command Bunker in Uxbridge, near where I grew up. I’m not especially patriotic, but I am proud of what Britain had to do in 1940, as well as the toll the war took and the years of recovery. But it’s also the time, albeit decreasingly so, when people still alive today can look back at their youth, and we can all have a nostalgia for that time in our lives.
I remember reading this in my student bedsit and being transfixed. I was studying art but had just decided that I wanted to be a novelist. As such, I loved the opening lines: “A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
It is a simple yet beautiful book about love, belief, and betrayal. I’m not religious, but the testing of someone’s faith and how it may make them act stuck with me. Also, the facade of the ‘stiff upper lip,’ but underneath, the vulnerability.
The love affair between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off. After a chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy two years later, Bendrix hires a private detective to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.
I’m an attorney who formerly practiced intellectual property law at large firms in Chicago and San Francisco. Even while I was practicing law, I had dreams of becoming an author. I’ve always been drawn to Chick-Lit, Rom-Coms, and Women’s Fiction, and even more fascinated by other lawyers who made the leap from lawyering to writing in these genres. My debut novel was about a PR executive, but for my sophomore novel, The Trials of Adeline Turner, I couldn’t help but revisit law firm life. While I enjoy reading and writing about lawyers, my favorite thing about these books is their message of following your heart to live your best life.
On her thirtieth birthday, good girl and Manhattan attorney Rachel White sleeps with her best friend’s fiancé. To complicate matters, it’s not just a drunken mistake—Rachel realizes she’s always had feelings for him and learns that he too has feelings for her. With its messy, complicated relationships and deep dive into female friendship, I could not put this book down. This was one of the first “chick lit” novels I read about a single, urban professional woman navigating her career and personal life. And even while I was cringing at some of Rachel’s choices, I admired how honest and flawed the characters were in this story and loved Giffin’s smooth writing style, and have devoured all of her books ever since reading this one.
Something Borrowed is the smash-hit debut novel from Emily Giffin for every woman who has ever had a complicated love-hate friendship. The basis for the blockbuster movie starring Kate Hudson, Ginnifer Goodwin, and John Krasinski!
Rachel White is the consummate good girl. A hard-working attorney at a large Manhattan law firm and a diligent maid of honor to her charmed best friend Darcy, Rachel has always played by all the rules. Since grade school, she has watched Darcy shine, quietly accepting the sidekick role in their lopsided friendship. But that suddenly changes the night of her thirtieth birthday when Rachel…
