100 Books Like Airs Above the Ground

I first read this book as a kid, and it’s one of the reasons I became an avid reader. It's set in Puritan New England and features romance, intrigue, and suspense. It has great historical detail, a fun story, and well-written characters.

The protagonist, 16-year-old Kit from Barbados, arrives in the harsh world of early colonial Connecticut and doesn’t fit in—and society punishes her for it! I found myself angry and outraged for her–I just wanted everything to be fair. This story is a light-handed look at how life isn’t fair. Frustration comes from expecting or demanding it to be. There will always be circumstances and people making things difficult. Can it be endured? Yes!

I love the main characters, Kit and Nat (the son of the boat Captain who brought Kit to the colonies). They are cute together. This is still one of my favorite books.

This novel put a pin on what became a life-long fascination with gothic fiction for me.

I first read it over forty years ago and it is hands-down the most memorable novel ever from my early reading diet.

Why is it so memorable? It hits all the high notes necessary for gripping suspense/mystery/romance in this genre and is laden with all the gothicky feels.

It includes a bit of the supernatural, mystery of an old gravestone, mood setting in the Virginia hills, and a heroine in a dangerous pickle.

Originally published in 1971, it is out of print now but find a copy if you can. You won’t regret it.

It’s so tough to choose just one novel from Phyllis Whitney’s voluminous stack.

She is quite arguably the queen of the gothic suspense genre. With this pick published in 1974, I am highlighting my very first read by her.

Why do I love it? It rocked my world and, to this day, draws me right into its web.

With all her books, she depicts unique settings that allow for “armchair travel”. This one is set in what was a completely exotic location to my younger self, the American Southwest.

I also learned about the element of suspense from this novel mixed together with gothic details. The mask and how it fits into this mystery is so chilling that I have never forgotten it.

I spent so many summer afternoons as a teenager reading Barbara Michaels’ novels.

She is another writer who managed to set in stone my love and fascination for tales gothic and truly inspired and informed my own writing.

This one with a copyright of 1973 has it all. Isolated, rural setting with a historic stone cottage, creepy, almost folk horror-esque townspeople, a twisted villain, and a supernatural edge.

But it also has something that Michael’s specialized in: dialogue that captures relationships in a very approachable and identifiable way despite the vintage year.

Witch captures her mastery of the gothic and ticks all the boxes of a great read in the genre.

I currently study under the Ritters. Dr. Ritter has published two books and this one is his master compendium. In it he explains the history of dressage plus offers a plethora of exercises and drills to help your horse become more supple and responsive. His explanation of stirrup stepping which has been known to be used at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna is extremely useful. 

This unlikely story has a different focus from other Holocaust memoirs. After working in a slave labour camp, Edith Hahn, a Viennese Jew, was ordered to report for transport east, and probable death, but instead went into hiding with a new identity thanks to two Christian friends. Jews hiding in plain sight were called U-boats. Though trained as a lawyer, she worked as an ignorant nurse’s aide in a hospital and met a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. She told him she was Jewish but he wanted to marry her anyway and became both a protector and a constant threat. In an unsentimental style and with surprising dark humour, Hahn has written a gripping account of that period when being found out would have been fatal.

A sensitive yet relentless story of his family’s failed assimilation that ends in its annihilation. Clare ends up in the UK, seeking meaning, in vain. His story so closely mirrors the real-life story of my own family, also Jewish refugees from Vienna who found refuge in the UK, that it sent a chill down my spine. Beautifully written and evocative. Clare concludes with Voltaire’s verdict: “History never repeats itself, man always does.”

The second in the Liebermann Papers: a mystery series featuring Freud-student Max Liebermann noted as literature’s first psychoanalytic detective who helps the pragmatic and gruff Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt solve some of fin-de-siecle Vienna’s most dastardly crimes. While since made into a successful PBS series, the book’s atmospheric rendering of the Baroque jewel’s opulence is countered by the stark portrayals of anti-semitism, paranoia, and the primitive, cruel, and rudimentary techniques used to “treat” patients suffering from mental disorders.  

Recalling Ibbotson’s personal experience of leaving Austria for England before Hitler’s Anschluss, The Morning Gift is a witty and warm marriage of convenience story between a witty and intrepid archaeologist, Quinton Somerville, and a brilliant professor’s daughter Ruth Berger. When Ruth is accidentally left behind in Vienna after her family has emigrated to England, Quin marries Jewish Ruth and protects her from oncoming Nazi occupation: under the condition that they will part ways when both are safely back in London. But Quin and Ruth continue to run into each other again and again and again. A deliciously Austrian-flavoured book. Ibbotson’s Viennese set-sequences and memories are a love letter to her city.

This is a novel that is tender and sad, and it relates in a language that is simple and poetic to the atmosphere of the Habsburg Empire during its final days. The novel takes place in the provinces rather than in the capital.  Every line of the book can be savored, with every sentence laden with nostalgia for a world that seems like another, kinder planet. It is the world that pre-dated one of my other recommendations, The Strudlhof Steps, in its presentation of people with a sense of purpose, duty, and loyalty, even if not blessed with an abundance of acumen.

These were well-intentioned people trying to hold an empire together of disparate people and cultures. The empire represented an ideal world of Habsburg paternalism to Jews, Slavs, and Hungarians. It is difficult to conclude the book without tears. No cinematic version has done it justice—nothing captures the… show more.