Here are 98 books that The Wicked Girls fans have personally recommended if you like
The Wicked Girls.
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I’m Julia Buckley, a passionate lifelong reader, English teacher, and mystery writer. I gravitated toward mystery as a child when my mom read all the greats of 20th Century Mystery and Romantic Suspense and then passed them on to me. When I became an English teacher, I had the privilege of teaching some of the great Gothic classics like Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and The Castle of Otranto. Teaching these great works and researching the way that all Gothic literature stemmed from Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe, I realized that MANY of the books I read are tinged with the Gothic.
This is a Gothic suspense classic, but the suspense is gradual in the most delicious way. The book begins with a 1930s meet-cute in which a young paid companion to a rich and unpleasant woman meets a wealthy, unhappy widower at a resort. The young woman befriends the man while her employer is bedridden with a cold, and the two share some funny and touching moments.
The Gothic part comes when he unexpectedly proposes marriage, and they return to his gargantuan family estate, Manderley, which was formerly run by his late wife, Rebecca. Now, the spookiness permeates the story, from the shadowy corners of the mansion to the constant watchfulness of the very creepy housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. Rebecca has been in print for almost a hundred years, and that alone is evidence of its awesomeness.
In this modern feminist era, Maxim DeWinter might seem horribly patriarchal, but it’s utterly believable…
* 'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY * 'One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century' SARAH WATERS * 'It's the book every writer wishes they'd written' CLARE MACKINTOSH
'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .'
Working as a lady's companion, our heroine's outlook is bleak until, on a trip to the south of France, she meets a handsome widower whose proposal takes her by surprise. She accepts but, whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory…
I’ve always loved books where something in the past of the main storyline surges into its present, demanding that an old wrong be righted or an old mystery solved. It’s why my first degree was in Social and Political Sciences (Psychology major) instead of English Literature or Creative Writing: I knew that learning how to writewould be useless if I didn’t understand the things I wanted to write about. The role of the past in shaping our present – our behaviours, sense of self, relationships – is endlessly fascinating, and stories that unpick this are often the ones that surprise me the most with their insight into the human condition.
The ‘crime’ in Animal Dreams is a legal technicality, and this is a literary contemporary novel rather than a crime one, but its narrative drive comes from the same need to untangle the past to set the characters free (or as free as they can be) in the present.
The writing is glorious – rich, deep, surprising, layered – reaching levels of technical mastery that few other writers even glimpse. There are several point-of-view characters and, unlike most books with this structure, Kingsolver wrings every last drop of drama and interest from the nuances this offers.
Instead of longing to get back to a preferred perspective, the reader revels in how vivid, how real, each character feels in turn. If you love LP Hartley’s The Go-Between, you’ll probably adore this.
Set in the southwestern mining town of Grace, Arizona, this novel revolves around Codi, her sister Hallie and their severe and distant father, Doc Homer. The author has previously written "The Bean Trees" and "Homeland", the latter a collection of short stories.
My whole family shared a love for classic British mysteries, especially light-hearted, witty ones. With the enduring popularity of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, people sometimes forget there were lots of other great writers from the “golden age” of mysteries. I first found most of these books on my parents’ bookshelves when I was a bored teenager growing up in snowy central Maine. Several of the paperbacks were so well-worn the cellophane was peeling off their covers. For me, reading classic mysteries is like listening to Mozart—they are endlessly stirring and fascinating, and in the end, order is restored, and all is right with the world.
This book is one of my favorite mysteries of all time. It addresses one of the great unsolved mysteries in English history: Did Richard III kill the princes in the tower? Tey’s sleuth, Alan Grant, is a dogged investigator, and, in the hospital with a broken leg, he treats this historical mystery like a contemporary murder. His step-by-step investigation pulled me in and convinced me that Richard Plantagenet has been mistreated by history.
Miss Tey is so convincing that she inspired me to write the (very innocent) ghost of Richard III into one of my own mystery novels after the monarch’s body was found under a Midlands car park in 2012.
_________________________ Josephine Tey's classic novel about Richard III, the hunchback king whose skeleton was famously discovered in a council car park, investigates his role in the death of his nephews, the princes in the Tower, and his own death at the Battle of Bosworth.
Richard III reigned for only two years, and for centuries he was villified as the hunch-backed wicked uncle, murderer of the princes in the Tower. Josephine Tey's novel The Daughter of Time is an investigation into the real facts behind the last Plantagenet king's reign, and an attempt to right what many believe to be the…
Buried Secrets. A web of deceit, betrayal, and danger. Can she survive her fight for justice and truth? Laura thought she knew everything about her late husband before he died. Now, her life and the lives of those she loves are in danger. As Laura delves into his previous role…
I’ve always loved books where something in the past of the main storyline surges into its present, demanding that an old wrong be righted or an old mystery solved. It’s why my first degree was in Social and Political Sciences (Psychology major) instead of English Literature or Creative Writing: I knew that learning how to writewould be useless if I didn’t understand the things I wanted to write about. The role of the past in shaping our present – our behaviours, sense of self, relationships – is endlessly fascinating, and stories that unpick this are often the ones that surprise me the most with their insight into the human condition.
Written and set in the 1950s, this is the 4th in the Felse detective series.
Peters is more famous for the Cadfael mysteries, with their wonderful depiction of England at the time of the civil war between Stephen and Maud. However, the Cadfael books need to be read in order and the first is far more successful in the BBC adaptation.
Dated in some ways, and with prose that’s functional rather than beautiful, Peters has a brilliant eye for capturing a period. The clever trail of clues means it’s possible to work out the mystery so the reveal is satisfying and doesn’t cheat the reader.
If you like Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (the 1974 film is dated but still brilliant), you’ll probably enjoy this too.
In a derelict seashore graveyard a mystery unfolds, a trail of violence in Maymouth's history which casts long shadows. Permission is granted to open the tombs of a loving couple, Jan and Morwenna Treverra, buried centuries ago and given touching epitaphs. But there are recent remains in there - buried long after the couple died - and the whole community, young and old, is involved in this case.
I’ve been driven to help advance women and girls around the world for years, shining a light on their stories of resilience and strength, even in the most dire of circumstances. My thirty-plus-year career in global development has introduced me to hundreds of inspirational women who are changing their own lives, investing in their families, and building their communities. I am a woman for women because of them. The recommended authors are inspirational women in their own right who have used their writing to amplify the voices of other women. I hope you enjoy these books and can identify with the personal stories found in their pages.
Dionne’s book speaks to me on such a personal level. The story follows her journey of uprooting her family to West Africa and shares the stories of the women she meets along the way, navigating extraordinary circumstances and hardship. I, too, did this.
In 2012, my three sons and I landed in Kigali, Rwanda, where we lived for a year. Having experienced firsthand the resiliency and tenacity of women, such as those Dionne encountered, I can’t recommend In Pursuit of Disobedient Women enough to learn more about the challenges and triumphs for women across Africa.
When a reporter for The New York Times uproots her family to move to West Africa, she manages her new role as breadwinner while finding women cleverly navigating extraordinary circumstances in a forgotten place for much of the Western world.
“A story you will not soon forget.”—Kathryn Bigelow, Academy Award–winning director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty
In 2015, Dionne Searcey was covering the economy for The New York Times, living in Brooklyn with her husband and three young children. Saddled with the demands of a dual-career household and motherhood in an urban setting, her life was in…
I’m a fiction and humor writer whose imagination was initially sparked by superheroes and comic books. The idea of an otherwise average person who could turn themselves into a superbeing was transformative and powerful. As a teenager, these early heroes faded, and I became fascinated by The Twilight Zone’s compact and poignant storytelling that contained moral messages. This eventually led me to the fiction of Stephen King where the idea of average people encountering the supernatural and overcoming obstacles was a recurring theme. In my own work, I have tried to carry forward the idea that our everyday lives are more absurd, complex, and magical than they appear.
Adler’s book depicts a woman’s life through a series of moments, incidents, bits of speech that come at the journalist narrator. The short passages perfectly capture the neurotic energy, humor, and horror of New York City. When I first read it, I was blown away. It showed there is great latitude in ways to approach writing. The short, choppy format is the closest a book has come to mirror my experience as a writer who seeks to find meaning and/or humor in everyday life. It’s a jagged mosaic of a book when put together is a delightful treasure.
When Speedboat burst on the scene in the late ’70s it was like nothing readers had encountered before. It seemed to disregard the rules of the novel, but it wore its unconventionality with ease. Reading it was a pleasure of a new, unexpected kind. Above all, there was its voice, ambivalent, curious, wry, the voice of Jen Fain, a journalist negotiating the fraught landscape of contemporary urban America. Party guests, taxi drivers, brownstone dwellers, professors, journalists, presidents, and debutantes fill these dispatches from the world as Jen finds it.
A touchstone over the years for writers as different as David…
After solving her first case, private eye Siobhan O’Brien is hired by Phillip Ahn, an octogenarian billionaire with his own personal island in the Pacific Northwest. Ahn, a genius in artificial intelligence, swears that Duke, his youngest child and only son, is an impostor. Is Ahn crazy, or is Duke…
As the author of Hicky's Bengal Gazette: The Untold Story of India's First Newspaper I have great interest in journalism and history in the Indian subcontinent. There are relatively few books that explore these topics in a narrative nonfiction way. It is my hope that this shortlist will help readers find a few good books to start with.
Faleiro’s book is an impressive piece of investigative journalism. She followed the life of one woman, a teenage girl who worked as an exotic dancer in Mumbai. Faleiro paints a sobering image of Mumbai’s sex industry, especially dealing with government corruption and mafia-like figures. Her writing will keep you engrossed from start to finish.
Already published in India to great acclaim and named a Time Out Subcontinental Book of the Year and an Observer Book of the Year, Beautiful Thing is a stunning piece of reportage that offers a rare firsthand glimpse into Bombay’s notorious sex industry.
Sonia Faleiro was a reporter in search of a story when she met nineteen-year-old Leela, a charismatic exotic dancer with a story to tell. Leela introduced Sonia to the underworld of Bombay’s dance bars: a world of glamorous women; of fierce love, sex, and violence; of gangsters, police, prostitutes, and pimps. When an ambitious politician cashed in…
I’ve been fascinated by the transformational power of travel ever since my husband and I unexpectedly signed a lease to an apartment on the Italian Riviera instead of divorce papers. The power of that year abroad saved our marriage, united our family of four in a sacred way, and introduced us to the many cultures of Europe. I learned the crucial difference between taking a trip and embarking on a journey. Capturing a travel experience on the page for those who can’t journey to a destination themselves is a joy and a privilege I don’t take lightly. Publishing this memoir allowed me to pivot in my career to a full-time writer and writing coach/editor.
There have been only a handful of books that I have been unable to put down.
This memoir is one of them. In 2008, Amanda Lindhout began her career as a reporter by traveling to Somalia. On her fourth day, she and another journalist were abducted and held for ransom.
She recounts her harrowing experience in captivity (460 days) in vivid, and heart-wrenching detail. When she is most desperate, she travels in her mind to A House in the Sky enabling her to block out her dire circumstances and let in a ray of hope.
BREAKING NEWS: Amanda Lindhout’s lead kidnapper, Ali Omar Ader, has been caught.
Amanda Lindhout wrote about her fifteen month abduction in Somalia in A House in the Sky. It is the New York Times bestselling memoir of a woman whose curiosity led her to the world’s most remote places and then into captivity: “Exquisitely told…A young woman’s harrowing coming-of-age story and an extraordinary narrative of forgiveness and spiritual triumph” (The New York Times Book Review).
As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself visiting its exotic locales. At the…
As a writer, reader, and human, I’m drawn to complex stories about motherhood. It’s something we can choose, or something that can be forced upon us. Our relationships with our own mothers shape our entire lives. For my book She’s Not Home, I spent a lot of time deepening Sheryl, the mother’s, character. Early versions of the manuscript received criticism for her being too easily villainize. Too two-dimensional. Readers wanted a complex, heartbreaking character. I went to a very painful place to give Sheryl a richer voice. Here are a few books I love that also face the pain and complexity of motherhood and mothering head-on.
I don’t even think I was through the first chapter before I cried over this book.
Mary Louise Kelly writes frankly and poignantly about the nature of time as it pertains to raising children. She does not apologize for being good at her job, nor for the essential part of herself who needs to be immersed in it.
At the same time, she is unsparingly vulnerable about the tradeoffs: the times, good and bad, she has missed with her kids. As a writer who couldn’t stop writing to be a full-time parent if I tried, Kelly’s words resonated with me from the first page to the last.
This memoir is a gift to ambitious, big-hearted moms everywhere.
“This voice-driven, relatable, heartfelt and emotional story will make any parent tear up.” ―Good Morning America, “15 Delightful Books Perfect for Spring Reading”
Operating Instructions meets Glennon Doyle in this new book by famed NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly that is destined to become a classic―about the year before her son goes to college―and the joys, losses and surprises that happen along the way.
The time for do-overs is over.
Ever since she became a parent, Mary Louise Kelly has said “next year.” Next year will be the year she makes it to her…
Miranda falls in love with her dream house but soon discovers it's an affair with complications. A lot of them. Rosewood is a centuries old, tumble-down, gambrel roofed charmer located in an isolated, coastal corner of Virginia referred to as "strange". Known for long-standing and antiquated customs, an almost indecipherable…
I’m the author of the critically acclaimed Geneva Chase Crime Reporter series. I live and write on a barrier island on the coast of North Carolina with my wife, Cindy, and Annie, our Shih-Tzu. I’ve had a long career working for newspapers and magazines, primarily in New England and New York, and I’m currently working on my next novel.
Mr. Belsky’s media background is in newspapers, magazines, and TV/digital news. Yesterday’s News is the first in his series featuring Clare Carlson, the hard-driving and tenacious news director for Channel 10 in New York City. When eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin disappeared on her way to school more than a decade ago, it became one of the most famous missing child cases in history. The story turned reporter Clare Carlson into a media superstar overnight.
Now Clare once again plunges back into this sensational story. With new evidence, new victims, and new suspects—too many suspects. Everyone from members of a motorcycle gang to a prominent politician running for a US Senate seat seems to have secrets they’re hiding about what really might have happened to Lucy Devlin.
I love Mr. Belsky’s Clare Carlson series because they’re fast-paced and thought out and the protagonist is easy to identify with.
“Tell me what happened to my daughter?” For fifteen years this anguished plea has haunted reporter Clare Carlson
When eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin disappeared on her way to school more than a decade ago, it became one of the most famous missing child cases in history.
The story turned reporter Clare Carlson into a media superstar overnight. Clare broke exclusive after exclusive. She had unprecedented access to the Devlin family as she wrote about the heartbreaking search for their young daughter. She later won a Pulitzer Prize for her extraordinary coverage of the case.
