Here are 4 books that The Suffolk Trilogy fans have personally recommended once you finish the The Suffolk Trilogy series.
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When I started writing historical mysteries, I made my sleuth posh so she would have the spare time and the spare money to go racketing about solving crimes. But I’m not posh (at all) and so, when I’m thinking about earlier times, I never imagine I’d be in the fringed flapper dress, or on the fainting couch. I always assume I’d be down in the basement, grating a block of lye soap to scrub the soot off something. I think that’s why I’m so endlessly interested in how the grunt work gets done.
This is the third of Barbara Neely’s mysteries about a peppery African-American housekeeper, Blanche White, and the dirt she finds while she’s cleaning other people’s houses. It’s a different house in each of the novels – and a tough task to choose just one, I can tell you. This time, we find Blanche in Boston working for the Brahmin-ish Brindle family, who have got “too-good-to-be-true” written all over them. There’s a nifty plot, but what I love (and this can’t be a surprise after the first four books, surely) is Blanche’s take on everything from how a spice-rack is organised, to why rich people have such ugly art. She is irresistible. I wish somehow she could meet Frances Wray (from The Paying Guests) and share some of her moxie. I’d kind of love to hear her thoughts on the Mortmains too.
“Barbara Neely’s skill is a force to be reckoned with!” Essence Magazine
The third, ground-breaking mystery featuring African-American maid and amateur sleuth Blanche White by Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Award winning Author Barbara Neely, the 2020 Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster
Blanche White is working as a temporary cook and housekeeper for a right-wing, Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Alistair Brindle when someone tries to blackmail him. It’s an ugly mess that Brindle’s political team is eager to sweep under the carpet and that Blanche can’t resist cleaning up herself…especially after a young black man is killed who knew too much about…
When I started writing historical mysteries, I made my sleuth posh so she would have the spare time and the spare money to go racketing about solving crimes. But I’m not posh (at all) and so, when I’m thinking about earlier times, I never imagine I’d be in the fringed flapper dress, or on the fainting couch. I always assume I’d be down in the basement, grating a block of lye soap to scrub the soot off something. I think that’s why I’m so endlessly interested in how the grunt work gets done.
The Baldwins live a small but happy life in London, until the bombshell day when Mr. Baldwin retires. He loses his raison d’etre, but his wife too has her life upended by his constant presence. Slowly their domestic bliss begins to unravel. Until they decide to do something beyond radical: they move to the county – to Greengates, a spanking new 1930s villa – and a thrilling fresh start together. I really mean “thrilling” too. This quiet and affectionate exploration of a couple remaking their humdrum life moves me to tears, even while the fascinating details of equipping and running a “new” house charms my socks off.
I’ve been an avid reader since I was a child, and my favorite protagonists are readers and writers. The Kansas tallgrass prairie horizons where I grew up fueled my imagination, and I wanted to write like the girls in my novels. I discovered Anne of Green Gables as a teen, and since then, I’ve researched, published, and presented on the book as a quixotic novel. As a creative writer, my own characters are often readers, writers, librarians, book club members, and anyone who loves a good tale. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I do each time I return to them.
This book has so many different elements—humor, the struggles of poverty, Cassandra’s dreams of success as a writer, quirky family members, and a tumbledown castle where the Mortmain family lives.
I identified with Cassandra’s efforts to keep a journal to hone her writing skills, having done so myself as a teen. I also enjoyed the unconventional take on a castle and Cassandra’s honesty in depicting (or “capturing”) it and its inhabitants with her words.
The dilapidated castle and the family’s foibles make this story approachable and enjoyable. It is one that invites the reader into the castle and the story as a welcome guest.
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…
I’ve become fascinated with the unconventional tumultuous world of the 1920s ever since I discovered my grandmother’s box of mementos that led to my debut historical fiction, Whistling Women and Crowing Hens. The lesser-known parts of our country’s history draw me in, and the potential for strong female characters keeps me writing. Before I fell down many research rabbit holes, I thought the 1920s were just speakeasies, fringed flappers, and bathtub gin—while entertaining, it’s only the “big city” side of this transformative decade. I’ve found I prefer reading what everyday townspeople experienced, or how “normal” women became unexpected heroes, or ways people persevered after the turmoil WWI caused. There are so many undiscovered stories to be told!
I love character rich, slow-burn reads and Waters always delivers.
The Paying Guests is set in 1922 London and eloquently (with psychological twists) reveals the effects of post-WWI. During the war, the protagonist, 27-year-old Francis, had found her independence in many liberating ways, and Mrs. Wray, her mother, clung to her genteel social status. Now that her husband and sons are dead, they’re forced to scrub their own floors and take in boarders, i.e., “paying guests,” Leonard and Lillian, a modern lower-class couple, in order to keep their home.
I never suspected what would ensue—from clandestine lovers to empowered women, to murder. Waters paints the changing times, social constraints, and class distinctions with a fine-tipped pen.
This novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Little Stranger, is a brilliant 'page-turning melodrama and a fascinating portrait of London of the verge of great change' (Guardian)
It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.
