Here are 4 books that The Martha Novels fans have personally recommended once you finish the The Martha Novels series.
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I’ve always been deeply interested in how people connect to those around them—it is something I write about constantly. My first novel, So Much Love, was about how a community reacts to terrible loss and uncertainty, and my recent book of nonfiction, These Days Are Numbered, is about how my own community—and I—reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic. I am always looking at how humans human, separately and especially together. That is one of the joys of narrative fiction for me—the way we can use it to examine our behaviour and interactions, and how we form relationships and communities. I hope these books enthrall you as much as they did me.
Yes, it’s a Victorian novel but it’s also the slenderest and sweetest one, by my lights.
Cast out from his narrow religious community by the acts of a dishonest friend, Silas Marner flees to a new village and resolves to live a life apart, money his only security. Then along comes a tiny child in need and Silas cannot help but help—even though this new challenge comes on the heels of a devastating robbery.
The man’s generosity has the effect of opening him up to the generosity of others until, little by little, he becomes a part of the community he has lived apart from for so long. There is never a bad time to read this lovely, hopeful little novella about the worst and best of human nature.
Gold! - his own gold - brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away!
Falsely accused of theft, Silas Marner is cut off from his community but finds refuge in the village of Raveloe, where he is eyed with distant suspicion. Like a spider from a fairy-tale, Silas fills fifteen monotonous years with weaving and accumulating gold. The son of the wealthy local Squire, Godfrey Cass also seeks an escape from his past. One snowy winter, two events change the course of their lives: Silas's gold is stolen and, a child crawls across his threshold.
I have read adventure, crime, and thriller books all my life. Reading is a huge relaxation for me and a good novel will transport me from the stresses and strains of daily life into another place in my head. A place where I feel involved with the characters and the environment, a place where I can imagine I could be. A good storyteller is different from a crime writer. They take the reader on a journey that might be through history or different continents. A journey that the reader wants to travel as well. I try to emulate this in my writing.
The story of the young orphan Pip, the escaped convict Magwitch, the recluse Miss Haversham, and her adopted daughter Estella. Dickens weaves the story back and forth between the characters.
You could pick many of Dickens’ books, but I think this story has everything: murder, love, intrigue, and tragedy. A storyteller extraordinaire. I’d go as far as to say that he is Britain’s greatest storyteller.
'His novels will endure as long as the language itself' Peter Ackroyd
Dickens's haunting late novel depicts the education and development of a young man, Pip, as his life is changed by a series of events - a terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - and he discovers the true nature of his 'great expectations'. This definitive edition includes appendices on Dickens's original ending, giving an illuminating glimpse into a…
Though I’m not personally an orphan, I’ve always been drawn to books that feature them. Maybe it’s because I felt the lack of a father; mine wasn’t around much during my childhood, since he worked at a job in the city through the week. The absent or distant father is a recurring theme in my novels, including the Shakespeare Stealer series, Moonshine, The Imposter, The Year of the Hangman, and Curiosity. Of course, when you write for young readers, orphans also make ideal protagonists, since they’re forced to use their own resources to confront and resolve the story’s conflict, rather than relying on grownups.
And speaking of funny, they don’t get much better than Pratchett’s Discworld novels. Though they’re usually classified as fantasy, they’re really very pointed satire. He sends up everything from movies to opera to the postal system. Soul Music takes on popular music, and it’s one of his best.
Discworld is about to rock...Deputising for death was never going to be easy, not least when he has gone walkabout in search of the Meaning of Life - without even leaving a forwarding address. But for his granddaughter, Susan, it becomes even more difficult when she breaks one of the cardinal rules of the family business - don't get involved! All around the Disc, crowds are shouting out for Buddy Celyn and The Band With Rocks In. They are in the grip of a new and dangerous music and Buddy is under its thumb. It's alive, it changes people -…
I’ve always been fascinated by books that explore the slow, painful unraveling of the human psyche. In part, I think because it’s something so many more of us either fear or experience (at least to some degree) than anyone really wants to admit—but it’s also just such rich material for literary unpacking. I also love books with strong, angry female protagonists who fight back against oppression in all of its forms, so books about pissed-off madwomen are a natural go-to for me. Extra points if they teach me something I didn’t know before-which is almost always the case with historical novels in this genre.
I love all of Sarah Waters’ works, but Fingersmith ranks among my most obsessively adored books of all time. I find it a near-perfect interweaving of meticulously researched historical fiction—penned with Dickensian flair and grace—and compulsively page-turning thriller, marked by brilliant and utterly unforeseeable plot twists that will leave you slack-jawed.
It somehow manages to be wickedly funny, poignantly tragic, powerfully feminist, and gratifyingly steamy all at once. I also loved the Korean film adaptation of it, The Handmaiden, which not only embraces Fingersmith’s anti-patriarchal themes but ingeniously weaves anti-colonialist elements into the by setting it in Japan-occupied Korea in the 1930s.
“Oliver Twist with a twist…Waters spins an absorbing tale that withholds as much as it discloses. A pulsating story.”—The New York Times Book Review
Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.
One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man,…
