I am drawn to books in which family history is never as simple as it first appears. I have always loved fiction about memory, silence, and the choices people make when they discover that something they believed about their past was not entirely true. As a novelist, I keep returning to these themes because I am fascinated by the way family stories shape who we become. I am especially interested in women who have to rebuild their sense of themselves when old explanations stop making sense. The books on this list stay with me because they do more than reveal secrets; they show what happens after the truth is known.
I wrote...
Red Riding Hood
By
Svetlana Rodina,
What is my book about?
Rose begins to reconstruct what really happened, but the one person who may know the truth is her mother, whose…
I first loved Rebecca for its atmosphere, but what stayed with me was something more unsettling: how completely another person’s version of the past can shape the present.
I remember finishing it and thinking about how easily we accept a story when everyone around us seems to believe it. As a writer, I keep returning to that idea.
Du Maurier showed me that an absence can dominate a novel as powerfully as a living character, and that what people refuse to say can matter as much as what they reveal. That has stayed with me in my own writing about memory, silence, and family secrets.
* '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 loved The Thirteenth Tale because it made me distrust every comfortable version of a family story.
What stayed with me most was the way Diane Setterfield treats memory: not as a reliable record, but as something people reshape through fear, shame, love, and silence.
I was especially drawn to the sense that what is missing from a story can matter as much as what is told. By the end, I found myself thinking about the family stories we accept without ever asking who first told them, what they left out, and why.
'Simply brilliant' Kate Mosse, international bestselling author of Labyrinth
***
Everybody has a story...
Angelfield House stands abandoned and forgotten.
It was once home to the March family: fascinating, manipulative Isabelle; brutal, dangerous Charlie; and the wild, untamed twins, Emmeline and Adeline. But the house hides a chilling secret which strikes at the very heart of each of them, tearing their lives apart...
Now Margaret Lea is investigating Angelfield's past, and its mysterious connection to the enigmatic writer Vida Winter. Vida's history is mesmering - a tale of ghosts, governesses, and gothic strangeness. But as Margaret succumbs to the power…
A wind sorcerer. A dark spirit. An unsolved murder.
On the haunted Draakensky Windmill Estate, sketch artist Charlotte Knight arrives to live on the property, hired to illustrate the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke—a bright and lucrative opportunity to boost her struggling art career.
I love this book because it turns family history into something fragile, layered, and deeply personal.
What stayed with me most is how uncertain memory feels in the novel, and how much can disappear when people stay silent or simply stop telling parts of the story. I was especially drawn to the feeling that we can grow up inside a family story without ever realizing how much of it has been left out.
I also love the atmosphere of the novel, where places, objects, and old stories seem to carry emotional evidence of their own. It made me think about how much of ourselves we inherit without ever questioning it.
A special Sophie Allport Design limited edition of the moving and powerful mystery, The Forgotten Garden, the bestselling second novel from the author of The House at Riverton, Kate Morton.
A lost child . . .
On the eve of the First World War, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her -but has disappeared without a trace.
A terrible secret . . .
On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell Andrews learns a secret that will change her life forever. Decades later, she…
I love this book because it shows how one decision can quietly reshape an entire family for years.
What stayed with me most is the emotional weight of secrecy: the way people can believe they are protecting someone while creating a different kind of damage. I was drawn to the novel’s attention to guilt, distance, and the stories people tell themselves in order to keep living with what they have done.
I also love how the characters are never reduced to a single mistake. Their choices remain painful, but their motives are complicated and recognizably human. The book made me think about how silence can become part of a family’s inheritance.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
By
Kim Edwards,
What is this book about?
The multi-million copy bestseller, Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a moving and poignant novel about grief, family and betrayal.
Families have secrets they hide even from themselves...
It should have been an ordinary birth, the start of an ordinary happy family. But the night Dr David Henry delivers his wife's twins is a night that will haunt five lives for ever.
For though David's son is a healthy boy, his daughter has Down's syndrome. And, in a shocking act of betrayal whose consequences only time will reveal, he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly entrusting her…
“Buck’s Pantry is a surprising tale of intrigue and suspense, and a perfect example of how three days and a random encounter can change the course of so many lives. Khristin Wierman’s narrative is charming and disarming all at the same time.”—Laurie Gelman, author of the Class Mom series
I love this book because it made me think about how far someone can go to leave one version of their life behind.
I kept thinking about the choices the characters make and the way those choices continue to affect people long after they were made. I was especially drawn to the family relationships and to the tension between who we believe ourselves to be and who other people think we are.
I also loved that Brit Bennett never makes her characters easy to judge. I sometimes understood a decision even when I disliked it. That stayed with me. The novel made me think about family, identity, and whether we can ever completely separate ourselves from where we came from.
THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP BESTSELLER #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE
'An utterly mesmerising novel..I absolutely loved this book' Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize 2019
'Epic' Kiley Reid, O, The Oprah Magazine
'Favourite book [of the] year' Issa Rae
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years…
Rose begins to reconstruct what really happened, but the one person who may know the truth is her mother, whose memory is beginning to fail.
As Rose follows the photographs, letters, and fragments of family history left behind, she begins to discover how deeply her own life has been shaped by a version of the past that may never have been true.
When former police detective Michael McLaren is given an old photograph and newspaper article, an inquiry begins that seems straight forward enough: a deadly accident fifteen years ago in a millpond. But when it’s apparent that other deaths in the area are not only similar in their method but also…
Former police detective Michael McLaren is looking forward to spending Christmas at his grandfather's ancient Hall with his grandfather, uncle, and his lady love, Melanie. But McLaren’s holiday plan gets snowed under when a dead man is discovered outside his grandfather’s house--in circumstances similar to an older murder. And it’s…
