Here are 100 books that Bluebeard fans have personally recommended if you like
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Right from an early age, I have always been interested in the fallibility of the human condition, being particularly conscious of my own faults. People who are too good to be true are of little interest, except that I want to know their faults or their secrets. I have found myself drawn to complex characters, those who have good and bad characteristics, and some of the novels and movies that I have enjoyed most feature such characters. In my career as a lawyer, I have met all kinds of people who have made bad decisions or suffered misfortune, and it has always been a pleasure trying to help them.
I have always loved the central premise of the book, that a human being might never age, and yet a portrait of him ages as the years go by.
I love the way that Wilde used elegant and lyrical prose, always boosted by a flamboyant irony, in describing the dissolute life of an aesthete while putting it in the context of a philosophical pursuit of beauty and art. Dorian Gray himself is a deeply flawed moral character, and that is key to the success of the novel.
'A triumph of execution ... one of the best narratives of the "double life" of a Victorian gentleman' Peter Ackroyd
Oscar Wilde's alluring novel of decadence and sin was a succes de scandale on publication. It follows Dorian Gray who, enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his depravity. This definitive edition includes a selection of…
“Creditable 1st novel” – Margaret Atwood (on Twitter/X )
“The product of an amazing new talent” – Quill & Quire
Italy, September, 1944.
As Allied armies close in on the retreating armies of the Third Reich, Captain Jim McFarlane, a Canadian infantry officer, is coming apart at the seams. He…
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
At the beginning of this book, I recognized the ingredients that make up popular erotic novels. The main character, Edie, a Black woman and struggling artist, is beginning a relationship with an older, wealthy, successful white man in an open marriage. There’s a power imbalance. To a certain extent, this excites Edie, and in this way, the book fits neatly into the parameters of the genre.
However, the relationship becomes messy, and Edie’s life, both with and away from Eric, is fraught with bad decisions. Race, wealth, and gender intersect with sex in a complex and uncomfortable milieu. Through all of this, and with the guidance of Eric’s wife, Edie begins to make progressive, less destructive choices, and as she does, her art progresses.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
WINNER of the NBCC John Leonard Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020 A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The New York Times Book Review, O Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Shondaland, Boston Globe, and many more!
"So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or…
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
This posthumously published novel is the last offering from the punk rocker, poet, and writer Jim Carrol. Carrol was a friend of Patti Smith and Andy Warhol and a product of the New York City art scene in the 1970s and 1980s.
The central character is Billy, a successful painter with such deep artistic sensitivities that navigating small things like relationships, his health, and earning money is crushingly difficult. The book reads like an allegory as much novel as moving characters through action seems a secondary aim. In this way, it reminds me of Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist.
A moving, vividly rendered novel from the late author of The Basketball Diaries.
When poet, musician, and diarist Jim Carroll died in September 2009, he was putting the finishing touches on a potent work of fiction. The Petting Zoo tells the story of Billy Wolfram, an enigmatic thirty- eight-year-old artist who has become a hot star in the late-1980s New York art scene. As the novel opens, Billy, after viewing a show of Velázquez paintings, is so humbled and awed by their spiritual power that he suffers an emotional breakdown and withdraws to his Chelsea loft. In seclusion, Billy searches…
When Walter Shore is murdered by Armenian mobsters, he returns as a Chihuahua seeking good karma while his shady producer brother Barry entangles a screenwriter in dangerous schemes.
I’m the descendant of three generations of visual artists, a gene I thought had skipped me. However, art popped up in many of my stories when I started writing fiction. In 2012, I published The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob, and to promote it, I launched a street art campaign that included putting plaster blobs on the streets of Washington, D.C. This blossomed into several other street art projects and earned attention from The Washington Postand several D.C. TV news stations. My next two books centered around Frida Kahlo and Edvard Munch.
This fictionalized biography of Madame Tussaud is a wild blend of fact and fiction. Orphan Marie (Madame Tussaud) works as an apprentice to a physician, making wax models of body parts and organs. This progresses to full-body models and even a grisly hall of famous murderers displayed for ticket-paying patrons. As Marie’s skill grows, so does her renown. Soon, she becomes an art instructor to the princess on the eve of the French Revolution.
What makes this book great is that while it’s based on fact, it reads like a surreal fairy tale. The inclusion of Carey’s illustrations throughout is an added bonus in this art-centric story.
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2019
LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2019
LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2019
SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA CROWN AWARDS 2019
A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year, Little tells the extraordinary story of a singular, diminutive crumb of a servant girl turned entertainment mogul.
'A startlingly original novel' Times
Born in Alsace in 1761, the unsightly, diminutive Marie Grosholtz is quickly nicknamed 'Little'. Orphaned at the age of six, she finds employmet in Bern, Switzerland, under the charge of…
I'm passionate about nature, our impact on it and the people who best know how to be its companion – Indigenous peoples. I grew up on B.C.'s west coast, swimming with seals and otters. That inspires me to protect the land and to write and draw about it.
As the author/illustrator of over 70 books I've been lucky to be able to present my thoughts on many topics. I learned early on to do my research and work with rigorous editors. With P'eska, I relied on members of the community I wrote about. I know I'm speaking to young kids so honesty is paramount.
Going to the Vancouver Art Gallery when I was a kid I saw my first Emily Carr painting and it drew me in with its dark beauty.
This book brings to life the story of Emily Carr, a talented painter and (although the word wouldn't have been used then) ecologist. She passionately pursued her art in ways proper young ladies of the time just didn't do. She revered the First Nations people and their cultures. The gift was returned when she received her own honourary name, Klee Wyck (Laughing One) from the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people.
I love this book because of its honesty, it is about a person and a place, firmly rooted in a love of nature.
Shortlisted for the 2005-2006 Red Cedar Book Award, Nonfiction
Selected as Honour Book by the Children's Literature Roundtable Information Book of the Year
The brilliant artist Emily Carr lived at the edge. When she was born, in 1871, Victoria, British Columbia was a small, insular place. She was at the edge of a society that expected well-bred young ladies to marry. For years, she was at the edge of the world of artists she longed to join.
Emily Carr’s life was not an easy one. She struggled against a family that did not approve of her art and against poor…
The world opened to me in a safe space when I learned to read as a child, and by 6th grade I regularly hauled home stacks of books from the library and, inspired by Jo March, hoped to be an author. I put aside my dream of writing and pursued other career goals until my marriage to Mark Buehner. It was his career as an illustrator that opened a path for me to write, and together we have created many picture books, including the Snowmen at Night series. I’ve learned that stories are told with pictures as well as words, and beautiful picture books can be savored at any age.
Local to me, I’ve been familiar with the gorgeous poster and mural art of Greg Newbold. More recently he has teamed up with his wife Amy to create a series of picture books showcasing the styles of renowned artists. This first book takes snowmen and imagines what they would look like if painted by artists such as Van Gogh, Dali, Picasso, O’Keefe, and others. An excellent introduction to the painting styles of famous artists, with informative text to reinforce the idea that “not all artists paint the same.”
From that simple premise flows this delightful, whimsical, educational picture book that shows how the artist's imagination can summon magic from a prosaic subject. Greg Newbold's chameleon-like artistry shows us Roy Lichtenstein's snow hero saving the day, Georgia O'Keefe's snowman blooming in the desert, Claude Monet's snowmen among haystacks, Grant Wood's American Gothic snowman, Jackson Pollock's snowman in ten thousand splats, Salvador Dali's snowmen dripping like melty cheese, and snowmen as they might have been rendered by J. M. W. Turner, Gustav Klimt, Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Georges Seurat, Pablita Velarde, Piet Mondrian, Sonia Delaunay, Jacob Lawrence, and Vincent van…
Stories, essays & dialogues about art, imagination & the erotic life. A young man named Charles writes a series of erotic tales, and his bookish friend Lisa offers light-hearted critiques of them.
Some stories feel like erotic meditations or random erotic moments in a young man's life. Others start with…
I have always loved reading biographies: we only get one life, but through stories of others’ lives we get to absorb into our own imagination their experiences and what they learned, or didn’t, from them. Having written poetry since childhood, I have long been an observer of myself and those around me, with a great curiosity about how people live and what motivates them. I’ve come to see that, no matter what genre I’m writing in, I’m driven to understand the connection between identity and place–for me, in particular, women in the southern U.S., and how each of us makes meaning out of the materials at hand.
I’ve been intrigued all my life by the women on my mother’s side of my family who were artists and writers. How did I fit into that familial line, and what could I learn from them?
Honor Moore’s investigation into her artist grandmother’s life drew me into her own examination of that question, and I was deeply moved by her mission of reviving her beautiful, brilliant grandmother’s reputation as an artist while offering an honest assessment of how societal pressures affected her mental health and problems with alcohol abuse.
Margarett Sargent was an icon of avant-garde art in the 1920s. In an evocative weave of biography and memoir, her granddaughter unearths for the first time the life of a spirited and gifted woman committed at all costs to self-expression.
As both a librarian and a writer, I've dedicated my life to reading, creating, and recommending books that blur genres. I'm always searching for something that jams Sci-Fi, Horror, Mystery, Fantasy, and Romance together with LitFic. Every week, I'm trying to put something unique into a library patron's hands, something that may not be on the New York Times best sellers list...or may not even be in a genre they knew existed. There's so much good literature out there and I want people to be able to find the weirdest things their hearts desire...and maybe I'll write that thing along the way if it doesn't already exist.
This book combines so much of what I love in weird, fantastical literature. Beautiful sentences. Odd ghosts. A grief-stricken reincarnation of Joan of Arc’s Executioner. I loved the narrative arc of the failed punk artist as he tries to drive to LA to attend his ex-wife’s funeral in the hopes of finding some redemption.
This one hit all the right emotional notes for me, and I can’t say I’ve ever read another book like it. Honestly, all of Rosson’s books do this. Don’t sleep on them!
"Rosson is a talent to be watched." - Jason Heller, NPR
Marvin Deitz has some serious problems. His mob-connected landlord is strong-arming him out of his storefront. His therapist has concerns about his stability. He's compelled to volunteer at the local Children's Hospital even though it breaks his heart every week.
Oh, and he's also the guilt-ridden reincarnation of Geoffroy Thérage, the French executioner who lit Joan of Arc's pyre in 1431. He's just seen a woman on a Los Angeles talk…
I’m a creative director in Vermont with a few favorite things: laughter, standard poodles, and happy endings—in life and in fiction. Romance fiction abounds with young heroines and happy endings. But I prefer reading about mature women like myself, women who have experienced their share of disappointments yet face life’s challenges with courage and humor. I like the elements of both genres in one juicy book. After much-frustrated searching, I gave up and wrote the story I wanted to read. My wise, middle-aged heroine still has lots to learn about grief and joy, and learns many of those lessons with men—in bed.
Spending is about a divorced artist and mom. It starts with a middle-aged protagonist reluctantly giving a gallery talk. She complains that male artists often have muses to do their laundry and supply sex, thereby providing practical and “therapeutic” support. A man in the audience stands up and offers to be the artist’s muse. The story is about what happens when this stubbornly independent woman takes him up on it. I totally related to the crusty heroine who has fought for everything she has and distrusts fortune when it offers abundant gifts.
Monica Szabo, a middle-aged, moderately successful painter, encounters B, a wealthy commodities broker who collects her work. B volunteers to be her muse, offering her everything that male artists have always had to produce great art: time, space, money, and sex. Passionate, provocative, and highly engaging, Spending displays Gordon's maverick feminism, her extraordinary wit, and her unique perspectives on art, money, men, sex -- and the desires of women.
Maximilian Tundra is about to have an existential crisis of cosmic proportions.
When a physical duplicate of him appears in his living room, wearing a tight-fitting silver lamé unitard and speaking with an English accent, Max knows something bad is about to happen. Bad doesn’t cover it. Max discovers he’s…
I have always loved reading fiction novels with a fast-paced plot and an unexpected ending that surprises me. In my own Dr. Kyle Chandler Thriller Series, I try to use this same thought-provoking pattern that also includes quick dialogue with an underlying sexual tension between the male and female protagonists to keep the readers’ interest. Using this, I feel I am conveying my passion for the characters and plot to the reader. I believe that this theme of fast-paced, twisting plots matched with surprise endings is shown with clarity in all five of the books I have recommended in this list.
As a skilled mystery/thriller author, Dick Francis always wrote stories with interesting protagonists fighting uphill against all odds, and this fascinating story is no different.
I personally loved this attention-grabbing plot set in the Scottish highlands about an offbeat young painter who gets drawn into a complex family drama. As the most unlikely character chosen to protect his ancient family heritage, I found the ever-changing story with an unexpected ending a sheer delight to consume rapidly.
Discover the classic mystery from Dick Francis, one of the greatest thriller writers of all time
'Great characters, twisting plot. One of the very best Francis novels' 5***** Reader Review 'Tense, puzzling and powerful . . . Francis is a consummate craftsman' 5***** Reader Review ______
Just after learning that his stepfather is gravely ill, artist Al Kinloch, returning to his remote home in the Scottish Highlands, is attacked by four men.
They ask one question - 'where is it?' - then leave him for dead . . .
Baffled and hurt, Al visits his stepfather and learns millions of…
