100 Books Like After Story

Set in a mid-century department store, this wonderful short novel details life in a mid-20th-century frock department through the eyes of the women who worked there.

It is a book that highlights the importance of clothing in women’s lives at that time and the very specific kinds of garments. The tale follows Lisa as the news sales assistant in Cocktail Frocks and the friends she makes along the way. It is a sharply observed, funny, and tender story bringing the old department store alive.

I was always going to love this novel about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, told from the perspective of a clever and curious word nerd, Esme. I’m a book editor in real life and can lose hours down rabbit-holes of meaning and etymology, so I was glued to her every discovery. As a young girl in 1901, while her father works on the endless task of compiling the dictionary, Esme pockets a discarded word, ‘bondmaid’, a woman’s word, and therefore deemed worthless. So begins a life devoted to words, to finding meaning, through war and the fight for female suffrage, through friendship and love and loss. I think The Dictionary of Lost Words is a quiet and beautiful masterpiece. 

Every Australian bookish girl knows Sybylla from My Brilliant Career. She is the original feisty heroine, the unashamed young feminist who rejects the isolation and low expectations of the bush and marriage at the turn of the twentieth century, wanting to strike out on her own as a writer. That her yearnings are so irrelevant to those around her and her ambitions unfulfilled act as a dare to all of us, and to me – to have that brilliant career, to tell your truths and have your independence, whether anyone else likes it or not. Equally as vivid, witty, and socially acute as Twain, if you read only one old and dusty novel about Australia, read this one.

Toni Jordan writes stories that defy genre pigeonholing, so she’s a woman after my own heart. The Fragments is a mystery about a missing manuscript and it’s also a complex piecing together of women’s personal histories. In the 1980s, in sleepy, sunny Brisbane, bookseller Caddie attends an exhibition of charred fragments from a famously lost novel of 1930s New York literary sensation, Inga Karlson – and meets an enigmatic stranger there who sparks Caddie’s obsession to uncover the truth of Inga’s life and death. A highly entertaining romp follows, full of mischievous twists, but, best of all, this novel holds another dare for me: that women’s lives and writing can and should sparkle with unpredictability.

I’m a sucker for a good title, and this one had me hooked before I read a word. But the fun doesn’t stop there with this cosy spy thriller. Reading this book left me breathless.

The pace never lets up as the hapless Dawson travels to Australia where, confused, he is chased by a colourful collection of Germans, Russians, Brits, and Aussies, all intent on getting their hands on the eponymous teapot. 

I love books where the underdog finds their inner hero, and Dawson–with some help from the resourceful Lucy–is such a character. I galloped through this witty, clever book, eager to discover the secret of that teapot. I wasn’t disappointed.

A blast from the past. I feel this book never got the attention it truly deserved. From a sassy, headstrong lead, to a fashionable neighbour akin to Moira Rose, this immersive story is about friendship, determination, and a mystery here and there. I adored this character who was ahead of her time and always wished we had a little more Hazel Green in our lives! 

Although The Territory was published in the 1940s, the book is as vivid as if it came out last year. Neither a novel nor a history, it is an evocative account of Ernestine Hill’s extensive travels around Northern Australia, the Aboriginal and white people she met, the stories she came across, and the joys and hardships she faced. I view it as essential reading for anyone planning to visit the Top End of Australia. I first read it while I was mapping out the plot of my own book, and was blown away by Ernestine Hill’s evocation of The Territory. 

Australian author Kirsty Eagar’s love of surfing and the ocean comes through in every book she writes.

Here, she combines quintessential Aussie surf culture with vampires. Not sexy, heart-throb vamps, but soulless killers with an unquenchable thirst and increasingly disturbing plans for themselves and humanity. This novel is equal parts edgy contemporary Aussie coming-of-age story and skin-crawling horror. It’s no mean feat, and Kirsty hits it tone-perfect.

As always, there are well-written, believable characters (teen protagonists, unhinged vamps, and dodgy adults), plus a tense plot that builds to a frenetic pace with high stakes. Kirsty gives us classic mythology, refreshed and transplanted into a sun-drenched beach setting, underpinned by a reimagining of the brutal real-life story of the Batavia shipwreck in 1629.

I first read this over a decade ago and I loved it even more the second time around.

This is the best book written on Australian economic history.

How did a convict colony become one of the world’s most prosperous economies and successful democratic societies in just 200 years? McLean takes us methodically through the evidence with a compelling narrative dispelling popular myths along the way.

A good read alongside Why Nations Fail.

Slipstream fiction doesn’t get more uncanny than this collection of short stories featuring dead children and sometimes parents behind those deaths. The Forest of Dead Children is a startling book, absolutely alarming, in its suspense and incongruity pertaining to matters of little ones, especially if you’re a parent. The allure of European slipstream author Andrew Hook’s collection is in its darkness and revelation of the potency and frailty of parenthood, right there on the balance, and what, what, could possibly go wrong? Wholly unconventional and disturbingly captivating.