85 Books Like A Small Affair

This book is an intensely philosophical novel that tackles big subjects, like the nature of love, the limits and desirability of freedom, the expression of sexuality, and the very nature of human existence, while at the same time being immersive and easy to read. The main characters, Tomas and Tereza, are full of love for each other but fail to truly connect because of their personal frailties, which I believe is true of all of us at one time or another.

There are concepts from this novel that have become part of my own philosophy, in particular, that responsibility gives meaning to life. 

Leo Tolstoy’s follow-up project to the massive War and Peace explores the meaning of human existence and the interplay of socio-political events and individual free will through the medium of infatuation, marriage, and love.

It’s also a real page-turner. When she finished it, Elisabeth Elliot called it the greatest book she had ever read, writing that Anna Karenina’s character had held a mirror up to her soul and showed her what her own heart was capable of. 

Lying and cheating are not even the worst things that happen in this extremely compelling, twisty debut novel about an ambitious thief named Ivy. In addition, it explores the hardships and challenges of the immigrant experience while keeping you on the edge of your seat, which is a very impressive feat on its own.

“Moments of great import are often tinged with darkness because perversely we yearn to be let down,” starts Courtney Maum’s 2014 debut novel. A whole decade after its release, it is still one of my favorite first lines. Maum’s book, which is set in London and Paris, follows an artist in his mid-thirties whose wife has found out about his affair just as his career begins to take off.

While he tries to win back her affection and find where it went in the first place, his journey brings up many questions (and, sometimes, answers) about life and love. It’s a slightly different approach to your run-of-the-mill literary dalliance, which is one of many reasons it resonated so much with readers at the time of its release in 2014. It is not just a story about infidelity and its consequences; it’s an exploration of what it means to love someone… show more.

This novel is set in a national park and is filled with danger and drug traffickers.

I love the details the author writes of this amazing national park that begins in Natchez, Mississippi, supposedly follows a Native American trail, and then ends in Nashville, Tennessee. What a great setting for a novel, especially when you factor in that drug traffickers are using this trail. In truth, they’re using our national parks because no one lives in the parks. The forest is dark and makes a good cover.

Patricia Bradley pulls the reader in with her park ranger heroine who wants to find the truth about who murdered her father. 

Jane Austen meets Agatha Christie in Julie Klassen’s Shadows of Swanford Abbey. Rebecca is bidden by her recluse brother to get his manuscript published by an author residing at the abbey. A mysterious death occurs for which Rebecca is a suspect. Even worse, the man she used to care for is the presiding magistrate. Klassen is always faithful in detailing Regency elements in every single area of her work from the clothing, jury procedures, customs, architecture, etc. The mystery was seamlessly woven into the history.

There is little in life, be it circumstances or people, which appear to be as they’re presented and Montgomery does a masterful job of exampling this fact in “Deception,” a captivating thriller. Finley Borders, the daughter of a prostitute; murdered by the drugged-out pimp assigned to the role of “father” when their daughter was just a child, embodies an ambition that pushes her from the Faraday Center for Children just as she reaches the age of emancipation. At a young age, she has seen much more of life than is warranted but understands there is so much more to be lived. Frequency at the card table during the late nights and early morning hours when she’d escape, unknown, from the center groomed Fin for a lifestyle amidst the underworld’s elite.

While sitting at a high stakes “by invitation only” poker table in Cannes, Findley receives an urgent phone call that… show more.

I’ve never been able to resist the allure of a mystery with the fast, hard-driving pace of a Chandler-style noir story, the kind that Matt Coyle serves up in Yesterday’s Echo, the first in his Rick Cahill series.

Cahill is the perfect old-style protagonist: tough, honest, noble, and haunted by the past. An ex-cop and one-time suspect in his wife’s murder, he’s spent eight years building a new life when a beautiful woman tempts him with love.

After she’s arrested for murder, Cahill is drawn into a vicious web that again paints him as a potential killer and pulls him back into the blurred limelight of his wife’s death.

The story is superbly crafted and opens the door to an award-winning series. Not to be missed.   

Do you like some romance with your murder mystery? Then you will love Getting Rid of Bradley by Jennifer Crusie. Better known for her many bestselling romantic comedies, twice RITA winner Crusie had been writing laugh out loud love scenes for years before she turned to murder mystery. And boy does it show!

The pace is lightning fast, the dialogue a delight, the snazzy sister talk and keep your hair on cop talk metamorphose swiftly into a laugh-a-minute embezzlement and attempted murder romp. Does true love win? Ask Jake or Lucy. Or perhaps Lucy’s sister Tina, who will always take the opposite view. A well-plotted story that satisfies yet still leaves you wanting more!

This is the second book in the Texas Murder Files series and Griffin is the author who brought us the Tracers books (another great series. Go read it!) In Flight, Miranda is desperately trying to take a break and recoup from a far too stressful job. We can all relate. But when she stumbles upon a murder, her skills as a forensic photographer mean her break is over. Local Detective Joel is just the hero we need and the tension builds slowly and wonderfully. This is great romantic suspense!