Here are 98 books that The Secret of Haven Point fans have personally recommended if you like
The Secret of Haven Point.
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I’m from North East England, an area of the UK under-represented in contemporary fiction. I love reading books from authors who grew up in the same area as me, and I enjoy stories that deal with issues relevant to our communities and capture the unique spirit of the people here. My writing is infused with social and political issues. I’m passionate about stories that explore the world around us and how it impacts people, and all these books do that in very different ways.
This brutal, beautiful book with a powerful, authentic northern voice captured my attention. Set in County Durham, the story follows young Traveller John-John after he is released from a young offender’s institution for a violent crime and tries to turn his life around. Despite his good intentions, he is soon caught up in a fight with local drug dealers.
I loved this book because it took an unflinching look at a community not often depicted in contemporary fiction and featured a complex, conflicted character (who loves dogs) who struggles to escape his past.
The book is by an author I admire. He writes gritty, dark northern fiction that focuses on the fringes of society. Originally published by independent presses, he has gone on to be very successful, and as an independent northern author, I would love to emulate that career trajectory.
WINNER OF THE GORDON BURN PRIZE
An unflinching portrait of contemporary Traveller culture by the award-winning author of The Gallows Pole
John-John wants to escape his past. But the legacy of brutality left by his boxer father, King of the Gypsies, Mac Wisdom, overshadows his life. His new job as an ice cream man should offer freedom, but instead pulls him into the dark recesses of a northern town where his family name is mud. When he attempts to trade prejudice and parole officers for the solace of the rural landscape, Mac's bloody downfall threatens John-John's very survival.
I’m from North East England, an area of the UK under-represented in contemporary fiction. I love reading books from authors who grew up in the same area as me, and I enjoy stories that deal with issues relevant to our communities and capture the unique spirit of the people here. My writing is infused with social and political issues. I’m passionate about stories that explore the world around us and how it impacts people, and all these books do that in very different ways.
I loved Eliza Clark’s debut novel, Boy Parts, and was keen to read her follow-up. Part crime fiction, part social critique, the author shines a light on the popularity of true crime stories and how we deal with tragedy in our communities. She also weaves the online world into her writing in a way that will be relatable to anyone (like me) who spends too much time on the internet and social media.
She has an original voice that reflects her relationship with North East England. Not many writers from this area make it into publishing, so I seek out the work of those who do, especially if they write northern stories.
A Guardian Best Book of the Year A Dazed Best Novel of 2023
'An unmissable banger.' ALICE SLATER 'A meta-meditation on the mysteries, malice, and minutiae of adolescence.' TOM BENN 'You've never read anything like this.' JULIA ARMFIELD
Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes?
Did you see the pictures of the body?
Did you look for them?
It's been nearly a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked the small seaside town of Crow-on-Sea. Based…
I’m from North East England, an area of the UK under-represented in contemporary fiction. I love reading books from authors who grew up in the same area as me, and I enjoy stories that deal with issues relevant to our communities and capture the unique spirit of the people here. My writing is infused with social and political issues. I’m passionate about stories that explore the world around us and how it impacts people, and all these books do that in very different ways.
I love literary fiction and stunning prose, and this book is full of gorgeous sentences that shine off the page. It deals with class issues and finding your own place in the world.
I’m from a working-class, deprived town close to the one featured in this novel. I related to some of the character’s concerns and struggles, particularly regarding the lack of opportunity in North East England.
"Andrews’s writing is transportingly voluptuous, conjuring tastes and smells and sounds like her literary godmother, Edna O’Brien . . . What makes her novel sing is its universal themes: how a young woman tries to make sense of her world, and how she grows up." –Penelope Green, The New York Times Book Review
This “luminous” (The Observer) feminist coming-of-age novel captures in sensuous, blistering prose the richness and imperfection of the bond between a daughter and her mother
It begins with our bodies . . . Safe together in the violet dark…
I’m from North East England, an area of the UK under-represented in contemporary fiction. I love reading books from authors who grew up in the same area as me, and I enjoy stories that deal with issues relevant to our communities and capture the unique spirit of the people here. My writing is infused with social and political issues. I’m passionate about stories that explore the world around us and how it impacts people, and all these books do that in very different ways.
I read this book because it’s set in my hometown, which doesn’t appear often in fiction. It’s full of places I know, and I enjoyed the quirky style and the way the story is told from some unusual perspectives.
Apples is about Adam and Eve, two different teens growing up on a council estate in Middlesbrough, dealing with family troubles and relationships. It’s fast-paced, dark, and full of energy, and it has a fantastic opening line. It’s a book I come back to regularly.
'We got a McDonald's the night my mam got lung cancer.'
As a distraction from sleazy male admirers, spiteful classmates and her mother's cancer, Eve's eyes are opened to a multicolour life of one night stands, drug fuelled discos and endless varieties of cheap plonk. She barely has time to notice Adam. Adam, however, notices Eve. Whilst contending with sexual frustration, a violent father and increasingly compulsive behaviour, is he too busy reading Razzle in his bedroom to make his move?
Narrated alternately by Adam and Eve, alongside a cast of teenage delinquents, perverts and butterflies, Apples is an exploration…
Ever since I was a little kid, I've loved scary stories. But more than the thrill of being afraid, I was drawn to the notion of befriending the ghosts, of making the frightening familiar, of finding meaning and comfort in the horrific. Maybe that's why I'm now a queer old goth, and maybe it's why my favourite themes to both read and write are those of identity, belonging as an outsider, and the 'monstrous' elevated to the beautiful.
I read this tiny collection of stories after chatting to the author on social media, and it's what got me reading again after two years of barely reading a thing.
Nostalgic, atmospheric, and vivid, these stories are sometimes stomach-churningly brutal. Even though a lot of them deal with the supernatural, it's the most mundane of situations that are the most anxiety-inducing. They took me right back to my own Northern childhood, with all the mystery, boredom, wonder, and terror it entailed. A very emotional collection with as much heart as heartbreak, wrapped up in chiming prose.
Welcome to The Repository of Lost Souls. A place for tales – and the people who walk within them – to step inside and rest their weary heads. Meet the vengeful mermaid, the weary ghost. The sibling vampire and the curious child. The family damaged by war. Join the final journey of the Bone Queen.Follow the hare.The Repository of Lost Souls is the debut short story collection of Jane Roberts-Morpeth. Twelve short stories of birth, life, death and beyond, that draw on personal experience and the North East of England, where she lives. Some have a ghostly or paranormal element…
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.
This book focuses on ten-year-old Archie, as he comes to terms with his father coming out as gay. Archie’s difficulties, and some of the book’s drama, come from his dad’s inability to talk to Archie honestly and openly about what’s going on and family uncertainty resulting from the divorce, rather than any issue that Archie has with his dad being gay. My favourite thing about this book is its portrayal of LGBTQ+ community - from teenage babysitters with dyed hair to drag queens and lesbian mums - as a place that’s warm and supportive for people of all ages. This book makes being LGBTQ+ sound like a whole load of glitter-filled fun! And that gets my vote every time.
The rainbow-filled, JOYOUS debut from a hugely exciting new talent. Perfect for 9+ readers and fans of Elle McNicoll, Lisa Thompson and Onjali Rauf's bestselling THE BOY AT THE BACK OF THE CLASS.
My name's Archie Albright, and I know two things for certain:
1. My mum and dad kind of hate each other, and they're not doing a great job of pretending that they don't anymore.
2. They're both keeping a secret from me, but I can't figure out what.
Things aren't going great for Archie Albright. His dad's acting weird, his mum too, and all he wants is…
I grew up near the coasts of New York and Connecticut, and since an early age I was fascinated by the natural world, especially the ocean. I have held a variety of jobs, including stints as a fisheries policy analyst at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a program manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and an environmental consultant stateside and in London. Throughout my career, one thing remained constant: I enjoyed writing and telling stories. I am the author of 14 non-fiction books on American history, including Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates, and Leviathan: The History of American Whaling.
Although a bit dated, Holland’s book offers a wonderful and wide-ranging tour of the general and often contentious history of America’s lighthouses. It also includes profiles of many of the nation’s most noteworthy and important lighthouses, broken down by region, and presented in a way that highlights the reasons why they are so memorable. Numerous historic images enliven the text.
"A detailed, scholarly, masterly book…and yet the romance is still there." — Chicago Tribune Beacons of light along the shore have guided mariners for thousands of years — from the days when olive oil lamps burned on darkened hillsides to signal the location of ancient harbors, to modern times when automated stations sent out 350,000 candlepower beams that cut through darkness and fog. The present volume, the first full-scale study of the United States Lighthouse Service, is a celebration of these vanishing symbols of security. Written by a historian of the National Park Service, this book describes the founding and…
I grew up near the coasts of New York and Connecticut, and since an early age I was fascinated by the natural world, especially the ocean. I have held a variety of jobs, including stints as a fisheries policy analyst at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a program manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and an environmental consultant stateside and in London. Throughout my career, one thing remained constant: I enjoyed writing and telling stories. I am the author of 14 non-fiction books on American history, including Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates, and Leviathan: The History of American Whaling.
At its core, the history of America’s lighthouses is about people. Undoubtedly the most important actors are the male and female keepers, who—often with the invaluable assistance of their families—faithfully kept the lights shining and the fog signals blaring. Guardians of the Lightspresents a wonderful survey of many of the most interesting and unique lighthouse keepers through the centuries, focusing special attention on their noble actions in the service of saving others.
In a charming blend of history and human interest, this book paints a colorful portrait of the lives of a vanished breed—the lighthouse keepers—from the year 1716, when the first lighthouse was established in America, to the early 1980s when automation replaced the last human “guardian of the light." A wealth of material from the archives of the 19th and 20th centuries—primarily letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts—provides vivid stories about lighthouse keeping in this country: the daily work; coping with fog, storms and other catastrophes; legends and ghosts; women's and families' roles; lighthouse children and pets; the natural world around…
I have always loved science and luckily had inspirational teachers at school and university. I ended up being a professor of molecular biology, but animal behavior has always fascinated me. Watching a total eclipse of the sun near my parents’ house in Cornwall when horses started to behave unusually before the darkness fell piqued my interest in writing my book. Did they know it was coming? Reading about Dolbear’s Law using crickets to measure the air temperature led me to ask what was going on. The more reading I did, the more amazing stories became revealed, and it seemed timely to put this passion into a book.
I love old technology, and lighthouses epitomize this. This book does two things. It brings to life the sheer hardship of building massive structures in what appear to be impossible places. Often, the engineers and builders had to battle the environment, and sometimes animals could help predict when catastrophe might be about to strike.
The book also tells the story of an amazing family who were instrumental in putting lights around our coasts. This saved, and still saves, thousands of lives. Reading such amazing stories as these shows the tenacity of those involved, and I think I can teach us a lot about becoming successful in the modern world, too.
An exciting new edition of Bella Bathurst's epic story of Robert Louis Stevenson's ancestors and the building of the Scottish coastal lighthouses against impossible odds.
'Whenever I smell salt water, I know that I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors,' wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in 1880. 'When the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn more brightly for the genius of my father!'
Robert Louis Stevenson was the most famous of the Stevensons, but not by any means the most productive. The Lighthouse Stevensons, all…
I grew up near the coasts of New York and Connecticut, and since an early age I was fascinated by the natural world, especially the ocean. I have held a variety of jobs, including stints as a fisheries policy analyst at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a program manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and an environmental consultant stateside and in London. Throughout my career, one thing remained constant: I enjoyed writing and telling stories. I am the author of 14 non-fiction books on American history, including Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates, and Leviathan: The History of American Whaling.
Fresnel lenses, invented by Frenchman Augustin Fresnel, are the crown jewels of lighthouse illumination. They not only greatly increased the intensity of the light, as compared with earlier forms of lighting, but also became one of the most important and strikingly beautiful inventions of the nineteenth century. Levitt’s luminous prose and great skill at storytelling makes this a fascinating and compelling read. It will make you look at lighthouses and Fresnel lenses with a well-deserved measure of awe.
Augustin Fresnel (1788-1827) shocked the scientific elite with his view of the physics of light. The lens he invented was a feat of engineering that made lighthouses blaze many times brighter, further and more efficiently than they had before. As secretary of France's Lighthouse Commission, he planned and oversaw the lighting of the nation's coast. Although Fresnel died young, his brother Leonor presided over the spread of the new technology around the globe. The new lights were of strategic importance in navigation and the Fresnel legacy played an important role in geopolitical events. Levitt's scientific and historical account, rich in…
