Here are 12 books that Agony Hill fans have personally recommended if you like
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I loved everything about this book, which was inspired by true events. I didn’t know about the Pack Horse Library initiative, which brought books, newspapers, and magazines to people in remote communities in Kentucky during the Great Depression.
The central character is Cussy Mary Carter, a 19-year-old librarian with a genetic condition that turned her skin blue. Blues, as they were called, often faced bigotry and were blamed for many problems in the community.
She faced fierce prejudice. That didn’t stop her. Her love of books and her determination to bring stories to people in isolated communities was stronger than her fears.
Carter believed books unite people from all walks of life and that literature leads to hope and change. President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) created this program to help lift Americans out of the Great Depression; by 1933, unemployment had risen to 40 percent in Appalachia. Carter…
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A USA TODAY BESTSELLER A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER AN OKRA PICK The bestselling historical fiction from Kim Michele Richardson, this is a novel following Cussy Mary, a packhorse librarian and her quest to bring books to the Appalachian community she loves, perfect for readers of Lee Smith and Lisa Wingate. The perfect addition to your next book club! The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything-everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
“Kirsten Miller has that rare ability to take a serious subject and make it very, very funny. I enjoyed this novel and you will too.”--James Patterson
The provocative and hilarious summer read that will have book lovers cheering and everyone talking! Kirsten Miller, author of The Change, brings us a bracing, wildly entertaining satire about a small Southern town, a pitched battle over banned books, and a little lending library that changes everything.
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the…
I love reading mysteries, ever since I started back in junior high with Hercule Poirot, I have loved an atmospheric murder and ensuing investigation. As I’ve gotten older and started writing my own books, though, I’ve gotten pickier about what kinds of detective novels I can stick with—I now require that they also be excellent on the sentence level, which isn’t always easy to find. I also find that I gravitate towards books that have pockets of dry humor from time to time and a unique investigator.
This is the first book in the remarkably excellent series set in Ireland during The Troubles about a Catholic police officer, Sean Duffy, who lives in Belfast. I love the way McKinty writes this character; it’s funny and very Irish and such a pleasure to read.
The mystery in this first book involves a corpse with its hand cut off, and then another person’s hand thrown into a car with them. There’s also some Italian opera mixed in for atmosphere. It’s a juicy murder mystery that I couldn’t put down.
Fast-paced, evocative, and brutal, The Cold Cold Ground is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles -- and of a cop treading a thin, thin line.
Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things -- and people -- aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It’s no easy…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
My first books were set in and around San Francisco, an area I knew well and with plenty of opportunities for crime stories. When we moved to Montana twenty years ago, people asked when I’d write one there. I resisted setting dark stories in my own city, where my kids were growing up. Reading about the Bakken Oil Formation in North Dakota, a boom of wealth and expansion and a subsequent bust, offered a perfect storm—the kind that drives desperation, where locals conflict with newcomers, where money—new and old—drives people to make bad decisions. After a visit to the area, the fictional town of Hagen, North Dakota, and the Badlands Thriller Series was born.
In Black Harbor, Wisconsin’s most crime-ridden city, Morrissey has created a town that is a villain all on its own. A place no one wants to live. Hazel Greenlee has no choice.
An aspiring writer, Hazel is trapped in a less-than-perfect marriage and takes the only job she can find—as a police transcriber. But when her neighbor confesses to hiding the body of an overdose victim in a dumpster, Hazel sees the potential for a story that might help her break out of the frozen hell of Black Harbor.
Morrissey builds Hazel’s desperation, and the desperation of the town itself, with mounting tension so well drawn you can actually feel it in your bones and an ending so intense it leaves you breathless.
Every night, while the street lamps shed the only light on Wisconsin's most crime-ridden city, police transcriber Hazel Greenlee listens as detectives divulge Black Harbor's gruesome secrets. As an aspiring writer, Hazel believes that writing a novel could be her only ticket out of this frozen hellscape. And then her neighbor confesses to hiding the body of an overdose victim in a dumpster.
The suspicious death is linked to Candy Man, a notorious drug dealer. Now Hazel has a first row seat to the investigation and becomes captivated by the lead detective, Nikolai Kole. Intrigued by the prospects of gathering…
I wanted to write crime fiction from a young age. I took a Biomedical Science degree, hoping to follow this with a PhD in Forensics but soon realised I didn’t want to spend the rest of my working life in a lab. So I took a Master’s degree in Science Communication and became a health journalist and editor instead. I knew my own crime novel needed to feature a journalist. My main character, Shanna Regan, has spent her life travelling, whereas my own job has always been desk-based in the UK. Maybe this is why I love reading crime novels that whisk me off to other countries (in my head)!
I enjoy reading crime novels that feature other cultures or countries. Dark Pines (and the series that follows) whisked me off to deepest, darkest Sweden.
The main character, a local reporter called Tuva Moodyson, is a strong female lead. She’s young, feisty and tenacious. Her deafness makes her multidimensional, overcoming life’s challenges, without author Will Dean resorting to common tropes of crime fiction protagonists (e.g. cynical, alcoholic detective).
Dark Pines features a host of memorable and eccentric characters in a creepy and claustrophobic small town, giving this quirky book a Twin Peaks vibe. For me, the setting was a character in its own right – with the visceral descriptions of the dark pine forests.
Selected for ITV's Zoe Ball Book Club and shortlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker prize
A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year
'Will Dean's atmospheric crime thriller marks him out as a talent to watch. Dark Pines is stylish, compelling and as chilling as a Swedish winter.' Fiona Cummins, author of Rattle
'Atmospheric, creepy and tense. Loved the Twin Peaks vibe. Loved Tuva. More please!' C.J. Tudor, author of The Chalk Man
For fans of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects and Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, a brand new debut crime writer introduces a Scandi-noir Tuva Moodyson Mystery…
Atmosphere can play a critical role in crime fiction, and I always find the most satisfying and memorable stories convey a strong sense of place. My own mysteries are set in the Thousand Islands, where many residents live in island homes built by gilded age titans of industry, and this setting is integral to Death in the Family and the entire Shana Merchant series. For twenty years I’ve been a regular visitor to the area, which extends from Upstate New York to Ontario, Canada. The human dangers in my books may be imagined, but the remote and rugged nature of the region always contributes to my contemporary, Agatha Christie-style plots.
This is an evocative mystery with not one but two atmospheric settings: Long Island’s Suffolk County, and Ireland’s County Clare. When an Irish national is found dead on a Long Island beach, Detective Maggie D’arcy’s planned vacation to Ireland becomes a tense investigation into the mysterious victim’s death, and a fight to keep her young daughter safe both abroad and back at home. I found A Distant Grave to be deeply chilling and impossible to put down.
In the follow up to the critically acclaimed The Mountains Wild, Detective Maggie D'arcy tackles another intricate case that bridges Long Island and Ireland in A Distant Grave.
Long Island homicide detective Maggie D'arcy and her teenage daughter, Lilly, are still recovering from the events of last fall when a strange new case demands Maggie's attention. The body of an unidentified Irish national turns up in a wealthy Long Island beach community and with little to go on but the scars on his back, Maggie once again teams up with Garda detectives in Ireland to find out who the man…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I have read thrillers for as long as I can remember reading adult novels. I can chart my life of reading from Robert Parker to David Baldacci to Jeffery Deaver and today’s luminaries such as Sarah Pekkanen, Mary Kubica, and all the authors listed below. While I love a good beach or airport read, the novels that stick with you—that make you want to clear your schedule because you need to sit and think about what you’ve just read—are my favorites.
The one thing I appreciate above all else in a novel is emotional gravitas. That feeling transcends time and place; the only thing that matters is what happens to the character(s) you care about. You feel your heart beating, and when you finally put the book down, all you can say is ‘wow.’
Stacy Willingham’s debut lingers long in the memory after the book is read. Her talent at describing setting is any writer’s dream, and her characters snuck into my heart and made me care deeply, all the way to the pulse-pounding conclusion. It is the best thriller I have read in the past half-decade, only challenged by her subsequent novels.
She thought the murders had stopped. She was wrong.
'A smart, edge-of-your-seat story with plot twists you'll never see coming' Karin Slaughter
'Spectacular' Daily Mail
'Tense, twisty and threatening, A Flicker in the Dark will make you abandon your box sets' Val McDermid
The instant New York Times bestseller, soon to be a major TV series, developed by Emma Stone
Chloe Davis' father is a serial killer. He was convicted and jailed when she was twelve but the bodies of the girls were never found, seemingly lost in the surrounding Louisiana swamps. The case became notorious and Chloe's family was…
The first books I loved were Gothic classics like Jane Eyre and Rebecca, because of their isolated settings and secretive characters. When I first started writing, it was always stories about communities–the first novel I wrote featured a retirement village and a circus. Maybe that’s because I love observing communities in everyday life, like local pubs in which everybody has their place. When domestic suspense novels really took off, I started devouring crime books with close-knit settings and soon was writing them, too. I love the claustrophobia, the backstories, the landscape, the web of relationships. It can be done in so many different and brilliant ways.
From the first page of this book, I was there. The drought-ridden farming community of Kiewarra, Australia, is evoked so vividly that the whole story feels as gritty and parched as the landscape. For me, this book has all the ingredients that make a claustrophobic setting even more intense: harsh weather conditions, hostile locals, and a dingy bar where fights break out and people drink away their troubles. For these reasons alone, I was sold! This is a community where everyone knows everyone, but they’re all under so much pressure you just know they’d turn on their neighbors in a heartbeat.
I’m also a sucker for a narrative in which someone who has moved away from their hometown is drawn reluctantly back, and this book has that in spades. The main character, Detective Aaron Falk, left Kiewarra under murky circumstances as a teenager and is forced to return when his…
As a kid I found myself watching cop shows and wondering “These cops seem to be on duty all day and all night. Don’t they have families?” And when I’d read dramas in which characters took lavish vacations and bought expensive cars, I’d think “Doesn’t anyone worry about money?” While I certainly don’t believe that fiction should always strive toward perfect realism (I love fantasy and sci-fi stories!) I do think that adding everyday problems and concerns makes a character much more relatable and interesting. A detective chasing a serial killer is exciting. A detective suffering from an excruciating toothache while chasing a serial killer adds another layer of delicious tension.
There are a dozen reasons to read anything by Ken Bruen, but the best is this: His books are fun.
Unlike so many self-serious writers, Bruen never forgets that he’s writing for readers. And Bruen’s most compelling creation is Jack Taylor, a washed-up private investigator who always has a sharp comment, even when stuck in a scary situation. I read Bruen and find myself cackling just as often as I gasp.
Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Síochána—the Guards, Ireland's police force—and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. In his sober moments Jack aspires to become Ireland's best private investigator, not to mention its first—Irish history, full of betrayal and espionage, discourages any profession so closely related to informing. But in truth Jack is teetering on the brink of his life's sharpest edges, his memories of the past cutting deep into his soul and his prospects for the future nonexistent.…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I’m a Canadian writer born in Northern Ireland. My first book, A Nice Place to Die, introduced Northern Ireland detective DS Ryan McBride. In 2019, A Nice Place to Die won the RWA Daphne du Maurier Award for Mainstream Mystery and Suspense, was shortlisted in the Crime Writers of Canada Awards in 2021, and was a 2023 Silver Falchion Award finalist. As for my choices, each of these fabulous, atmospheric mysteries has richly drawn settings inhabited by characters the reader comes to care deeply about. This brings a book alive for me — each has a wonderful, compelling cast of characters and a clever, complex plot.
Sarah Stewart Taylor is an American writer who has lived and studied in Ireland.
Her books offer complex, intelligent plots filled with flawed yet compelling characters. Maggie D'arcy, a detective in the North Shore of Long Island and divorced mother of a teenage girl, offers to go to Ireland to follow up on a phone call her uncle Danny received.
His daughter, and Maggie’s cousin, Erin, has been missing for twenty-three years, since disappearing on a hike in the Wicklow mountains. Back then, Erin went to Dublin to try and find her, and became involved in the initial enquiry. Now the Irish police have found something, a buried scarf they believe belonged to Erin. And another girl has gone missing.
The settings are finely-drawn––you can feel the rain and smell the peat fires. A beautifully written novel, not to be missed. That rarest of treats, a literary mystery.
Twenty-three years ago, Maggie D'arcy's family received a call from the Dublin police. Her cousin Erin has been missing for several days. Maggie herself spent weeks in Ireland, trying to track Erin's movements, working beside the police. But it was to no avail: no trace of her was ever found.
The experience inspired Maggie to become a cop. Now, back on Long Island, more than 20 years have passed. Maggie is a detective and a divorced mother of a teenager. When the Gardai call to say that Erin's scarf has been found and another young woman has gone missing, Maggie…
