Here are 100 books that Unravelling Us fans have personally recommended if you like
Unravelling Us.
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Writers often get labeled as either nonfiction or fiction writers. In grad school, it was very difficult to study across genres, which I found very frustrating: To me, the most important thing about a book has always been the voice. A novel? A memoir? Essays? Stories? Don’t pin me down, just give me something with a voice that propels me forward, that is unique and sparkling and unputdownable. When I find books with voices so singular and propulsive, I return to them over and over.
There is nothing like this groundbreaking memoir—it is as good as it gets—and it has probably influenced every memoir since (including my own).
Kingston is a poet, and I find it impossible not to sink into the striking, gorgeous language and imagery as she describes growing up between multiple worlds: the China her parents emigrated from, the California of a first-generation daughter of immigrants, the ghost-filled China of her mother’s “talk stories,” and her inner life and growing awareness. She weaves family stories, famous myths, and her own girlhood experiences into a beautiful and unforgettable narrative.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With this book, the acclaimed author created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American.
“A classic, for a reason” – Celeste Ng via Twitter
As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of…
The Beatles are widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history and their career has been the subject of many biographies. Yet the band's historical significance has not received sustained academic treatment to date. In The Beatles and the 1960s, Kenneth L. Campbell uses The…
My parents survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia and the aftermath of the Vietnam War, so their love for us was always tinged with anxiety, fear, and a large deal of paranoia and control. All of my books are about the complex relationship between parents and their children, and the things we knowingly or unknowingly pass down. I’ve also worked a number of years as a university student counsellor, where the same enduring themes play out in my students’ experiences. So naturally, I am drawn to stories that explore difficult but loving family dynamics.
Hope Farm moved me so much because it conveys the bitter-sweetness of being thirteen, being privy to adults who make terrible choices, and having to adapt to the consequences of those choices. It is about parents who join cults (in this case, a hippy one) and the effects of this on their children. Peggy Frew has such a seductive and captivating way of engrossing the reader in the story through her stunning prose.
A devastatingly beautiful story about the broken bonds of childhood, and the enduring cost of holding back the truth.
“They were inescapable, the tensions of the adult world―the fraught and febrile aura that surrounded Ishtar and those in her orbit, that whined and creaked like a wire pulled too tight.”
It is the winter of 1985. Hope Farm sticks out of the ragged landscape like a decaying tooth, its weatherboard walls sagging into the undergrowth. Silver's mother, Ishtar, has fallen for the charismatic Miller, and the three of them have moved to the rural hippie commune to make a new…
My parents survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia and the aftermath of the Vietnam War, so their love for us was always tinged with anxiety, fear, and a large deal of paranoia and control. All of my books are about the complex relationship between parents and their children, and the things we knowingly or unknowingly pass down. I’ve also worked a number of years as a university student counsellor, where the same enduring themes play out in my students’ experiences. So naturally, I am drawn to stories that explore difficult but loving family dynamics.
Many years ago, because I’d written a book about my family’s experience surviving the Cambodian genocide, a talented author asked if I would mentor her through writing a book about the aftermath of the Bosnian conflict and her mother’s mental illness. The result of this is Amra Pajalic’s extraordinary memoir Things Nobody Knows about Me. Pajalic writes with raw candour about her mother’s bipolar and psychosis and growing up in the economically depressed suburbs of working-class Australia. Despite the horrors and hardships of having to constantly be an ‘adult’ in the parent-child relationship Amra’s memoir is full of humour, life, and love.
When she is four years old Amra Pajalić realises that her mother is different. Fatima is loving but sometimes hears strange voices that tell her to do bizarre things. She is frequently sent to hospital and Amra and her brother are passed around to family friends and foster homes, and for a time live with their grandparents in Bosnia.
At sixteen Amra ends up in the school counsellor's office for wagging school. She finally learns the name for the malady that has dogged her mother and affected her own life: bipolar disorder. Amra becomes her mother's confidante and learns the…
A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman
by
Lindy Elkins-Tanton,
A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman explores how a philosophy of life can be built from the lessons of the natural world. Amid a childhood of trauma, Lindy Elkins-Tanton fell in love with science as a means of healing and consolation. She takes us from the wilds…
I've always believed that the bonds of friendship and sisterhood among women are essential. Growing up in challenging circumstances, my sisters and I found solace and strength in each other, offering comfort and guidance during uncertain times. They became my closest friends and have remained so throughout my life. Stories that celebrate these deep connections never fail to move me. The unwavering support of my sisters has saved me more times than I can count, and I will forever admire authors who portray unity among women. I truly hope you enjoy these beautiful novels!
This book holds a cherished place in my heart as it delves into the intricate dynamics of mother-daughter relationships and the profound journey of self-discovery. Growing up, I often felt the weight of cultural expectations, and choosing a different path inevitably strained my familial bonds.
As I read, memories of my mother and sisters flooded back, reminding me of the unique connections we share. An artfully crafted story that made me question so much about myself and the way that culture has influenced me as a person. Tan’s lyrical prose eloquently voices the experiences of so many young girls who have long been silenced, making this, without a doubt, one of my most treasured reads.
'The Joy Luck Club is an ambitious saga that's impossible to read without wanting to call your Mum' Stylist
Discover Amy Tan's moving and poignant tale of immigrant Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters.
In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club.
Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers' advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives - until their own inner…
Since I began reading seriously (albeit late in life!), I’ve been seduced by the travails of underdog protagonists trying to save their own lives through transformation. If you had told me when I was a teenager—drinking too much, racing muscle cars, and scraping by with Ds and Cs in a vocational high school—that I would end up teaching writing at a university, I would’ve said you were nuts. It wasn’t until I started college in my mid-twenties that I actually read a novel for the pleasure of it. My novel and short story collection are expressions of my cheering on the young underdogs who bravely fight to change their worlds despite all odds.
This one’s the fastest read of the bunch; in fact, you may find yourself rebooting for a second savory read without putting it down. Sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon faces a life sentence for his alleged participation in a robbery that killed a convenience store owner. To cope with the horrors of his cell block, where the spirited African American teen is housed until his trial ends, Steve recounts events before and after the crime in the form of a screenplay; this enthralling courtroom drama deep-dives into the racial and economic forces responsible for overcrowding our flawed criminal justice system. Steve’s perseverance against odds is truly inspiring.
This New York Times bestselling novel from acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers tells the story of Steve Harmon, a teenage boy in juvenile detention and on trial.
Presented as a screenplay of Steve's own imagination, and peppered with journal entries, the book shows how one single decision can change our whole lives.
Monster is a multi-award-winning, provocative coming-of-age story that was the first-ever Michael L. Printz Award recipient, an ALA Best Book, a Coretta Scott King Honor selection, and a National Book Award finalist.
Monster is now a major motion picture called All Rise and starring Jennifer Hudson, Kelvin Harrison,…
I have always believed in the power of journalism to tell stories of people: the powerful as well as the ordinary and disenfranchised. In the hands of the right writer, such stories can have as much dramatic sweep and be as engrossing as any work of fiction. I have read literary nonfiction since before I became a journalist, and as a foreign correspondent, while breaking news is a key part of my job, longform narrative writing is where I really find gratification, as a writer and a reader. It’s a vast genre, so I focused this list mostly on stellar examples of foreign reporting. I hope you enjoy it.
This is a master class in investigative journalism and in nonfiction storytelling. Radden Keefe is one of my journalistic role models, and this book about the troubles in Northern Ireland is gripping from page one as it investigates the 1972 murder and abduction of Jean McConville in a way that probably only a foreigner could do, given the sensitivity of the topic. It is a vital historical document, a gripping thriller, and an empathetic social observation all in one.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions
"Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review
Bold, funny, and shockingly honest, Ambidextrous is like no other memoir of 1950s urban childhood.
Picano appears to his parents and siblings to be a happy, cheerful eleven-year-old possessed of the remarkable talent of being able to draw beautifully and write fluently with either hand. But then he runs into…
I have a passion for novels with creepy settings, because I grew up in a haunted house and also spent my summers at a cottage on a lake with a long history of hauntings. I’m very familiar with the sensation of someone coming up behind you but when you turn around, nobody’s there, with lights flickering and the sound of unaccounted for footsteps, with shadowy corners, and chills running down your spine. As a child I loved to explore dark woods, abandoned buildings, and hold seances. As an adult I still explore these kinds of settings through my own writing and through the reading of some very creepy novels.
I loved the unique premise of the protagonist, Eleanor, having prosopagnosia which is known as face blindness—the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face. I also loved the setting of an old mansion deep in the woods of Sweden. The house had been kept a secret until Eleanor’s grandmother died, leaving it to Eleanor in her will. She returns there to prepare it for sale, but things do not go as smoothly as she’d hoped. I enjoyed the atmospheric, creepy setting of the old home full of family secrets, shadows, and things that should never have been disturbed.
"Engrossing, character-rich, powerful. Sten is on a roll."—Publishers Weekly(starred review)
Crimson Peak meets The Sanatorium in The Resting Place, a heart-thumping, unforgettable novel of horror and suspense by international sensation Camilla Sten.
Deep rooted secrets. A twisted family history. And a house that will never let go.
Eleanor lives with prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize a familiar person's face. It causes stress. Acute anxiety.
It can make you question what you think you know.
When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to…
Half a century ago (hard to believe!), as a young newspaper reporter, I began every day at a police station, reading the log and talking to the watch commander. Occasionally, I was able to contact the detectives as well. For me, the way crimes and criminal investigations unfolded, and the personalities of the officers involved, were multi-dimensional and touched with surprising, and often unexpected, moments of humor. In my reading as well as my writing, I seek a balance between authenticity and a sense of the absurd, without which the experience of solving murders—real or fictional—could become emotionally crushing.
Although this isn’t the first entry in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series, it’s the first that I read, and it hooked me. What a great idea for an offbeat police series, cleverly handled and featuring two eccentric London detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May. In this mystery, two cases initially appear unrelated, and it takes quite a bit of sleuthing before the links emerge. Bryant and May must unravel encrypted codes and symbols, discover secret rooms and dig through baffling clues as danger mounts. While this series has a darker tone than some of my preferences, it’s engaging and rewarding.
Winner of CrimeFest 2013's 'eDunnit Award' for 'the best crime fiction ebook published in 2012 in both hardcopy and in electronic format'.
Two small children are playing a game called 'Witch-Hunter'. They place a curse on a young woman taking lunch in a church courtyard and wait for her to die. An hour later the woman is indeed found dead inside St Bride's Church - a building that no-one else has entered.
Unfortunately Bryant & May are refused the case. Instead, there are hired by their greatest enemy to find out why his wife has suddenly started behaving strangely. She's…
I’ve been fascinated by true murder cases ever since I started reading about them when I was sixteen years old. They draw on all your senses and emotions: your curiosity about the psychology behind the killer’s actions and your horror and sympathy for the victims, their families, and the families of the killers because they suffer too. As a writer I am particularly drawn to apparent miscarriages of justice and I think there must be a secret detective hidden deep in my soul because I love to delve and investigate these. I wrote my first book after retiring from my long career in Social Services and Mental Health Services.
As it did to other parents all around the world, the murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey in 1996 chilled me to the bone. What kind of monster could kill an innocent child and leave her violated dead body in the basement of her home? And if it was possible to make it even worse, to do it on Christmas night. Police investigators seem to have made the child’s mother Patsy their number one suspect and completely ruled out JonBenet’s father John. The author rules him straight back in—hence the title of the book. I have read most of the books written about this sad case and in my opinion this one is the best. Doc G backs up everything he says with evidence and facts and you end up finding it difficult to disagree with him.
Because the JonBenet Ramsey case is so very complex, so very mysterious, with such a superabundance of both evidence and suspects, and so many assumptions, opinions, and contradictory and/or questionable testimony, it is especially important to exercise the greatest diligence in tracking down the facts and not allowing oneself get too distracted by all the rest. If we attempt to account for all the many bits and pieces of “evidence,” all the various opinions, both “expert” and inexpert, the many various suspects, no matter how “likely” each one seems to be, and the dubious…
An inspiring, hilarious, and much-needed approach to addiction and self-acceptance,
You’re Doing Great! debunks the myth that alcohol washes away the pain; explains the toll alcohol takes on our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being; illustrates the steps to deal with our problems head-on; exposes the practices used…
Living on Devon's gorgeous coast, I'm melding my lifelong love of reading Cozy Sleuths with my love of writing and years of living in foreign climes to write Travel Cozies. I also have a Vella Heist serial Found Money starting on Vella soon, and a Cozy Spy series They Call Him Gimletcoming out in the Autumn.
Narrator Professor Hilary Tamar’s habits and character traits invite non-stop laughter; and yet amazingly the three young barrister characters are every bit as funny in an entirely different way. One of the barristers always carries the action; but Hilary is no Dr. Watson gasping at their brilliance; in every book, her perspicacity and specialist knowledge enable the murder motive to be unravelled and the murderer brought to justice.
These books are rich in comic dialogue, often given as indirect speech. Caudwell’s unique spin on technical legal language will have you laughing out loud.
The storyline is enchanting. Without Hilary’s specialist knowledge of ancient Greek texts, there might well have been many more murders! And yet so cleverly is this charming novel plotted, that we almost feel her esoteric expertise is only what might be expected of any amateur sleuth worthy of the name.
Everyone in the family had decided that changing the trust arrangement seemed the perfect way to avoid three million in taxes. However, when dreary cousin Deirdre has a mysterious accident after demanding a fee for her signature, the young London barristers handling the trust seek advice from mentor Hilary Tamar.
Julia believes it's murder; whilst Hilary wonders why the raven-haired heir did not die. But with more deadly accidents occurring, it is Hilary who is given the perilous quest of unmasking the killer.
