100 books like The Soldier's Curse

This is an enthralling adventure story that drags the reader across the rugged mountains, glens, and cities of 18th-century Scotland as the hero seeks to recover his stolen inheritance.

The story gallops along with vivid descriptions that transport the reader back to a time when loyalty and honour were really cherished. The character development, as David Balfour and Alan Breck risk all amongst the failed Jacobite uprising, is exceptional. This is another timeless classic that transports the reader to another age.

I love the interplay of real characters and real events with the underlying story, a technique that I use fully in my novels; it adds depth, veracity, and interest. Stevenson’s prose is also exceptional, creating images that make this a compelling and memorable adventure story.

Some have called this the first of the Victorian detective genre. It is a classic, timeless masterpiece that is full of mystery and intrigue.

A valuable diamond, the moonstone, is stolen, and the story involves a complex web of deception and suspense with twists and turns until the final chapter reveals all. Collins’s innovative writing style, told through different narrators, adds depth to the story and keeps the pages turning. 

It is a novel that still, today captures the imagination and drips with atmosphere. Also, I was honoured in one review to have my writing style compared favourably with Collins, so definitely a book to add to my list with the added benefit of having the period atmosphere and plot complexity that captivates me!

This is the story that introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world.

The plot brings the reader to the dark streets of Victorian London as a cunning murderer is hunted down. Holmes’s unique powers of observation and deduction then set the bar for all subsequent detective stories as his friend, Watson, is etched into your mind as a ‘true blue’ friend whom you would like to call your own. The story is intricate, delving into the human psyche and the nature of justice. It draws you into the period; it has great characters and mystery, intrigue, and unexpected deductive skills.

I make no apologies for incorporating some of this Sherlockian style into my own mysteries, and perhaps there cannot be a greater tribute than that for this timeless classic. 

This unique book chronicles the misadventures of the school bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays who has matured into an unapologetic coward marching across the pages of 19th-century British imperialism.

Its historical depth weaves in actual events and characters of the time and blends humour, adventure, satire, and great character development. Flashman, with his roguish charm, makes for an unforgettable character who, despite or perhaps because of his cowardice, always seems to find a way to come out on top.

Fraser writes with an easy pace, and his meticulous research into history adds another dimension. It is a technique that I use unashamedly in my own books, although Fraser’s tongue-in-cheek commentary on the social mores of the age set this author apart from everyone else.

Tom is an old mate, and a magician with words. He is also a prodigious researcher. Books: yes. The bibliography in The Commonwealth of Thieves runs to seven tight-packed pages, divided between primary sources (three pages) and secondary sources. The bibliography is underpinned by no fewer than 27 pages of notes. The Australian history I was taught at school was hogwash. Tom has set it straight in this brilliantly researched and off-the-wall history of our early days.

This book was my introduction to Australian literature. I loved its eloquent evocation of a world totally new and mysterious to its characters. Although I was vaguely familiar with Australia’s penal colony past and with the destruction wrought on Aboriginal lives and culture, this book brought it home. I deeply appreciated the way it took me into the minds of men and women, most of them well-meaning but ignorant, and showed me how they missed the point of where they were and how to thrive there. The tragedy of that ignorance resonates with me, since I see it all around the world. 

David Hill’s research is incredible and results in a mind-blowing account of how not only convicts, but their guards and sailors, would colonise Australia, enduring the most brutal hardships. The transportation is described, and it is a miracle that anyone ever reached the destination in the leaky, unseaworthy ships. The enterprise was poorly-planned and underfunded, resulting in appalling suffering.

With such a shocking start, it is a wonder that Australia ever developed into the wonderful, successful country that it is now.

I thought I’d finish my list with something a little different. Everyone else in the books I’ve chosen made some kind of personal decision to take their life in a different direction, but the people in this last book didn’t. The Fatal Shore is about the earliest convicts, banished to Australia to start new lives in unfamiliar, hostile territory. The first chapter alone is fascinating, documenting peoples from a ‘civilised’ part of the world struggling for survival while aboriginal ‘savages’ thrived. It’s more than just a story of survival in a new world, but also a fantastic example of where we went wrong, turning our backs and our noses up to indigenous knowledge in the assumption that we know best. This book is a brilliant example of where Western civilisation went wrong, and how dangerous assumptions can be. 

In this book the people and families of a human penal colony on a water-covered alien world are driven from their homes and into open waters after offending the indigenous alien species.

Out in the planet-wide ocean on a flotilla of ships, they encounter bizarre creatures and odd experiences. As the community falls apart, individuals come together, but ultimately, they will find that the planet itself is guiding them towards total unity.

This book will make you consider the bond between all living creatures, the need for forgiveness and progress forward, and succumbing to what is inevitable.

The writer’s account of a journey across Siberia and into the Russian Far East to investigate prison conditions on an island in the Sea of Okhotsk north of Japan. A book of investigative journalism and a finely worked travel narrative conjuring spongy mud, ‘smoky, dreamy mountains’ and ‘lithe’ rivers while the author dreams of turbot, asparagus and kasha.