Here are 100 books that Writers & Lovers fans have personally recommended if you like
Writers & Lovers.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
From the time I was a girl, I’ve loved stories that put a lump in my throat even as I’m laughing. As a fiction writer, that funny-sad tone is the one I go for in my own work. I gravitate toward female protagonists of all ages who break the mold—women who are intelligent and strong but who also have unconventional, quirky personalities. Women who can be hilarious, infuriating, and heartbreaking—sometimes all at once. Because they are complex and unique, these women tend to struggle with life’s challenges more than their contemporaries. That’s what makes their stories so interesting, and why I have chosen the books on this list.
If I looked up “curmudgeon” in the dictionary, I’d half expect to find Olive’s picture. Perpetually grumpy and disappointed that the people around her don’t live up to her expectations (something I can relate to!), Olive is difficult, demanding, and often outrageous.
Yet her quirky charm has caused millions of readers—including me—to fall under her spell. I followed Olive’s journey with interest, hoping she’d find peace if not happiness.
The highly original, unconventional structure of this book has also made it one of my favorites. I love how Strout weaves Olive in and out of the action in this novel of connected stories, sometimes as a minor character and sometimes as the star.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • The beloved first novel featuring Olive Kitteridge, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Oprah’s Book Club pick Olive, Again
“Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You’ll never forget her.”—USA Today
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post Book World • USA Today • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Seattle Post-Intelligencer • People • Entertainment Weekly • The Christian Science Monitor • The Plain Dealer • The Atlantic • Rocky Mountain News • Library Journal
I can't be the only one to see men with power manipulate their status to hold back others. This isn’t just a Hollywood thing. A Sunday supplement piece by a young gay actor about his troubled life with a leading director struck a chord. Fate led me to him, and he connected me with others who shared off-the-record stories of exploitation and ambition. I wanted to tell these tales but not launch yet another bad news book into an already battered world. I aimed to create something accessible and engaging, darkly funny while shining a light on Hollywood's underbelly.
This book blew me away. He gets under the skin of ordinary folk like no other writer today. The story of a hostage situation that may or may not have happened made me laugh. It actually managed to make me cry–and I’m notoriously made of stone.
Through accessible writing, Backman showcases an unparalleled talent for exploring the complexities of human nature. His imperfect characters each carry their own sort of sorrow and flicker of hope. It’s one of those books I go back to. Again and again.
The funny, touching and unpredictable No. 1 New York Times bestseller, now a major Netflix TV series
'A brilliant and comforting read' MATT HAIG 'Funny, compassionate and wise. An absolute joy' A.J. PEARCE 'A surefooted insight into the absurdity, beauty and ache of life' GUARDIAN 'I laughed, I sobbed, I recommended it to literally everyone I know' BUZZFEED 'Captures the messy essence of being human' WASHINGTON POST
From the 18 million copy internationally bestselling author of A Man Called Ove _______
It's New Year's Eve and House Tricks estate agents are hosting an open viewing in an up-market apartment when…
Out of all the flattering reviews of my books, my favourite is of a reader choking on her lunch. My book was about death. The reader, who survived, said it made her laugh so hard. I write about tough times by bringing out the it’s okay to smile now bits. The Midnight Years is about teen mental health, Happily Never After is about loneliness, and Flyaway Boy is about stereotyping. Making people laugh through tears is a tough task. Here are some books that cracked it.
Fun home is what the author and her family call the funeral home they were raised in. I was drawn into this graphic memoir of the author’s relationship with her father, with disturbing themes of suicide, unaccepted gender identities, and domestic abuse.
The story manages to stay buoyant despite it all, and the observations are funny. The author’s ability to capture her most painful memories in bright light and intricate detail catapulted this read to the top for me.
DISCOVER the BESTSELLING GRAPHIC MEMOIR behind the Olivier Award nominated musical.
'A sapphic graphic treat' The Times
A moving and darkly humorous family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdel's gothic drawings. If you liked Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis you'll love this.
Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high-school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and the family babysitter. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is…
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.
As a huge fan of Ian McEwan’s early novels with their dark drama, especially The Innocent, I initially gave up on this book after the first 70 pages—but then, thankfully, resumed a while later.
What seemed a genteel novel about manners transforms into something much more sinister and dramatic. I loved the tense atmosphere of it, with much of the story condensed into one hot pre-war summer’s day and then the later serious repercussions from what, at the time, seem fairly harmless childish actions.
On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a…
I’m a historical novelist originally from Ohio. In Civil War lessons at school, we learned about battles and generals and read The Red Badge of Courage and other books centering on men’s experiences. With the exception of Florence Nightingale, women were largely absent from the discussions. I want to know about the women. As an adult, I lived in Roswell, Georgia, where I learned of the mill workers, mostly women and children, who, in 1864, were arrested and sent north by Federal forces for making Confederate cloth. Their fates largely remain a mystery, and I wrote my book in order to imagine what we may never know.
I can’t leave this book off the list! When I first read it as a teenager, I was so focused on the engrossing story of the four sisters that the fact it took place during the Civil War barely registered.
Upon rereading the novel as an adult, I can appreciate how the war profoundly affects the sisters’ lives through the absence of their father (and, for a time, their mother) and by creating an ever-present sense of uncertainty. I love the characterization and wisdom of this novel.
Louisa May Alcott shares the innocence of girlhood in this classic coming of age story about four sisters-Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
In picturesque nineteenth-century New England, tomboyish Jo, beautiful Meg, fragile Beth, and romantic Amy are responsible for keeping a home while their father is off to war. At the same time, they must come to terms with their individual personalities-and make the transition from girlhood to womanhood. It can all be quite a challenge. But the March sisters, however different, are nurtured by their wise and beloved Marmee, bound by their love for each other and the feminine…
Officially, I’m an award-winning author and specialist in the fields of psychology, trauma, and spirituality. I’m also a professionally trained therapist, clinical ethicist, and researcher. Ultimately, I’m an ardent believer that the same life that brings us joy also (sometimes) brings us pain. More importantly, that every aspect of life has a role to play in making us who we are today and who we’ll be tomorrow. We don’t always have control over the events in life, but the script we live by is ours to write—and write it we must, as only we can. I’m also a three-time heart attack survivor.
Joan Didion’s book is heralded for its bravery, clarity, and confessional witness about grief and loss. Indeed, it’s all these things, but for me, more importantly, this book paints a masterful depiction of the loss of innocence that comes when you lose something meaningful—like a loved one.
Particularly, it shows, with exhilarating force, the fragmented sense of time of such an experience, moving from Didion’s darkest moments of despair at the loss of her husband in the present to treasured memories of her life before his passing and musings about what comes now—in the future.
This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is for the savoring soul who, like Didion, possesses an inherent human desire for a sense of coherence and wholeness after life has torn it asunder.
From one of America's iconic writers, a portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion.
Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete sceptic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later - the night before New Year's Eve -the Dunnes were just…
I’ve been writing crime stories since I was a child. They entertained me and helped me cope with a lot of family strife. My first novel was published in college and sold to the movies, which got me into screenwriting, leading to writing hundreds of hours of TV and fifty novels to date. The one thing all of my stories share is humor because I believe it’s an essential part of life–and of memorable story-telling. Humor makes characters come alive, revealing shades of personality and depths of emotion you wouldn’t otherwise see. Here are five books that taught me that it’s true and that continue to influence me as a writer.
If you have a lot of things you want to say about war, sexism, rape, homosexuality, feminism, bears, hookers, literature, marriage, Vienna, politics and wrestling…or anything else in your fiction, you’d better do it with humor.
Irving had a LOT he wanted to say, but he made it entertaining and unforgettable with his shrewd humor. I was so busy laughing and crying that I didn’t realize how much I was absorbing thematically and politically from the wonderful, epic story…or how memorable it would be for me, even decades after I read it.
This was brilliant alchemy I could use myself…if I could figure out out how it worked. Irving taught me that if I wanted to communicate ideas and get someone to sit through a book that weighs ten pounds, then humor is the way to do it because the message gets through even deeper, perhaps even insidiously.
A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers.
'A wonderful novel, full of energy and art, at once funny and heartbreaking...terrific' WASHINGTON POST
Anniversary edition with a new afterword from the author.
A worldwide bestseller since its publication, Irving's classic is filled with stories inside stories about the life and times of T. S. Garp, struggling writer and illegitimate son of Jenny Fields - an unlikely feminist heroine ahead of her time.
Beautifully written, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP is a powerfully compelling and compassionate coming-of-age novel that established John Irving as one of the most imaginative writers…
I’m an American author who lived three years in a backyard tiny house with my family: husband, two young children, and a part-time dog. We wanted to live a bigger life, focused on our favorite activities and most important relationships. I wrote this book during the first spring of COVID-19, partly as a way to record my family’s experience weathering a pandemic in under 300 square feet, and partly as a way to explore the ways that children can be resourceful when life gives them a pinch. I've been a writer for most of my life, and I love to teach writing. Ark is my first middle-grade novel, and my lucky thirteenth book to publish!
Granted, nobody would call a castle a small space, but the world of 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain—the narrator of this full-of-life novel-in-journal-form—is hemmed in by her father’s writer’s block and his innate dislike of neighbors, resulting in their family’s life of dwindling gentile poverty in a dilapidated rented castle.
Much of the novel’s long-lasting enchantment is how Cassandra makes the best of the stone walls that contain and border her life. Cassandra has a wonderful imagination and a knack for seeing her life as a story. A very funny and wise coming-of-age story about how our homes shape our world-views.
A wonderfully quirky coming-of-age story, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians is an affectionately drawn portrait of one of the funniest families in literature.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is illustrated by Ruth Steed, and features an afterword by publisher Anna South.
The eccentric Mortmain family have been rattling around in a…
As an immigrant, an Asian American, and a gender-questioning person, I’ve never fit comfortably anywhere. So perhaps it’s no surprise that my writing isn’t easily categorizable either: many have told me that my work is too literary to be considered SF/F and too SF/F to be strictly literary. But what is genre anyway? My favorite books have always been the ones that straddled genres, and every time I read a wonderful book that can’t be easily labeled or marketed, I grow even more sure that the future of literature lies in fluid, boundary-crossing, transgressive texts. Here are some of my favorites—I hope you enjoy them.
It is my sincerest belief that science fiction loses its purpose when it focuses too much on the science and too little on the humans (or aliens, or sentient spores) at the center of the story.
No one can accuse Swyler’s Light from Other Stars of that. Straddling the line between literary and science fiction, this novel is about space travel, yes, but it’s also about parent-child bonds, friendship, and the people of a small town in Florida in all their idiosyncrasies, virtues, and flaws.
This novel will make you think (mostly about physics), but it will also make you deeply feel.
A Long Island Reads 2020 Selection * A Real Simple Best Book of 2019
From the bestselling author of The Book of Speculation, a “tender and ambitious” (Vulture) novel about time, loss, and the wonders of the universe.
Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach--if she can just grow up fast enough. Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda's newborn brother several…
During my 25-year journalism career and now, in my books, I’ve specialized in telling powerful, human stories that are often humorous and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. To me, humor is an essential part of life. Real stories might make us cry, but just as often, they make us laugh. That’s the balance I try to achieve with all my writing.
Humor often comes from putting normal people in absurd situations. That’s what Kevin Wilson does here—setting the lovable loser Lillian in her rich friend’s home, where she’s asked to care for her two young children. Children who, when agitated, tend to burst into flames. This frightens everyone but leaves the kids unhurt.
I found myself laughing and caring at the same time. That’s a neat trick for any author.
A New York Times Bestseller • A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, People, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, TIME, The A.V. Club, Buzzfeed, and PopSugar
“I can’t believe how good this book is.... It’s wholly original. It’s also perfect.... Wilson writes with such a light touch.... The brilliance of the novel [is] that it distracts you with these weirdo characters and mesmerizing and funny sentences and then hits you in a way you didn’t see coming. You’re laughing so hard you…
