Here are 92 books that Crane fans have personally recommended if you like
Crane.
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I’m a multi-genre writer who loves hearing the characters’ voices and getting their stories out there in the world. A lot of my characters are shaped by their gifts, whether they have supernatural ones or not. The things that happen to them shape who they are and how they react to future events. I exist on sarcasm, sass, and hot tea, so many of my characters do too.
It’s been a while since I read this book, but I remember thinking every place described felt real. It hits all the right notes of thriller with a fallible yet strong heroine who gets the job done, sometimes at great personal cost. Michael is as close to a shapeshifter as normal humans can be. She can become anybody. (Content warning – contains strong language)
Governments pay her. Criminals fear her. Nobody sees her coming.
Vanessa “Michael” Munroe deals in information—expensive information—working for corporations, heads of state, private clients, and anyone else who can pay for her unique brand of expertise. Born to missionary parents in lawless central Africa, Munroe took up with an infamous gunrunner and his mercenary crew when she was just fourteen. As his protégé, she earned the respect of the jungle's most dangerous men, cultivating her own reputation for years until something sent her running. After almost a decade building a new life and lucrative career from her home base in…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’m a multi-genre writer who loves hearing the characters’ voices and getting their stories out there in the world. A lot of my characters are shaped by their gifts, whether they have supernatural ones or not. The things that happen to them shape who they are and how they react to future events. I exist on sarcasm, sass, and hot tea, so many of my characters do too.
I heard this one on audiobook first. The first book is amazing.
What drew me to this one was the character of Cal James. She’s got an unenviable gift of being able to see recent ghosts and interact with them. Her personal life’s a hot mess, but she has a heart of gold, and doesn’t mind punching ghosts.
In Red River, the Wild West is alive and well. When Calamity James reluctantly returns to her hometown for a funeral, she wants answers that no one will give her. Soon, the local sheriff blackmails Cal into helping him solve a missing persons case. Though no one knows it, Cal is uniquely qualified to find homicide victims—she can see the dead. Of course, the dead don’t always cooperate. As the mystery unfolds, Cal falls deeper into her troublesome past, navigates burdensome family matters, and digs up new mischief with old rivals, both dead and alive.
I’m a multi-genre writer who loves hearing the characters’ voices and getting their stories out there in the world. A lot of my characters are shaped by their gifts, whether they have supernatural ones or not. The things that happen to them shape who they are and how they react to future events. I exist on sarcasm, sass, and hot tea, so many of my characters do too.
This story featured a cop just trying to get her job done. She’s not a saint, but she busts her backside to solve the mystery while wading through office politics.
Kate’s not perfect. She makes mistakes, but she’s got an admirable sense of determination to see justice done.
I think there’s a killer fight scene at the end of the book.
What would you do if someone murdered your daughter?
Jasmine, a lovely, teenage kid with a bright future was brutally murdered and thrown away like a rag doll.
It was Lt. Kate Gazzara’s first case as lead detective. For eight years she played Dr. Watson to Sergeant Harry Starke’s Sherlock Holmes, and then he was gone. Jasmine changed her life.
Who killed the poor kid? Why did she have to die? What could she have done to deserve such a fate?
It was her parent’s worst nightmare. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, and it begs the question: What would you…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I’m a multi-genre writer who loves hearing the characters’ voices and getting their stories out there in the world. A lot of my characters are shaped by their gifts, whether they have supernatural ones or not. The things that happen to them shape who they are and how they react to future events. I exist on sarcasm, sass, and hot tea, so many of my characters do too.
Logan loses it all. Then her best friend’s charged with murder. Time’s running out and a deranged killer wants her dead.
In the first novel of Davisson’s thrilling, best-selling series, Logan loses her husband, her illusions, the company they built together, her music, and now, probably her job. But when a young glassblower is brutally killed at the local arts festival and her good friend, Thomas Delgado, a Native American artist, is accused of the crime, Logan drops everything to come to his defense.
It doesn’t help that Thomas is refusing to defend himself. As Logan struggles to maintain her…
I was a weird kid. Often accused of ‘thinking too much’, I cut my literary teeth on Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Phillip K Dick, and Shirley Jackson. Raised on their dark milk, I grew up wanting more than hollow scares and mindless eviscerations. Don’t just give me a scary story, give me a scary story that resonates, one that raises a lens to our world, our history, the rules we’re asked to live by. Unsettle me, make me think. Most of all, give me characters worth my precious time. These are the kind of stories I endeavor to write and the ones I most enjoy reading. I hope you enjoy this small selection as much as I have.
More beautifully written magic realism, with compelling characters and a fascinating plot. Fowley-Doyle uses the obliqueness of the supernatural and the compelling tropes of a mystery story to explore Ireland's troubled history with women and children. There's something of the road trip to this one, with a warm, supportive, found-family providing kindness and companionship to the main character in a story that otherwise might be too bleak to bear. Release yourself to the prose and to the experience, let the book carry you. It’ll be worth the journey.
On Deena's seventeenth birthday, the day she finally comes out to her family, her wild and mysterious sister Mandy is seen leaping from a cliff. The family is heartbroken, but not surprised. The women…
In my poetry, stories, novels, and scripts, I have long been drawn to the workings of chance: how it can charm characters by the opportunities it appears to offer; how it can turn attractive prospects inside out; and how it can so often force characters to confront realities which, perhaps for a long time, they have sought to avoid. Through different genres—science fiction, mainstream literary, lyric poetry, and realistic drama—I have, over the years, explored the notion of the fork in the road. Will a character choose their path wisely? Will they choose foolishly but press on against all odds? In literature, in lfe, such questions are crucial.
Spanning the decades between the 1920s and 1980s, this is the story of the Quintons of Kilneagh, County Cork, Protestant mill-owners but supporters of the Irish independence cause; of the revenge taken on them by the Black and Tans; and of its life-skewing consequences for the survivors of Kilneagh. The Quintons’ son, Willie, is confronted with an almost indescribable fork in the road: should he avenge the family for the Black and Tans’ atrocities? Or should he search his heart for forgiveness? His decision takes an enormous toll on his character, with ramifications for his ability to be truly close to any other human being, including his lover Marianne.
Penguin Classics is proud to welcome William Trevor—"Ireland’s answer to Chekhov" (The Boston Globe) and "one of the best writers of our era" (The Washington Post)—to our distinguished list of literary masters. In this award-winning novel, an informer’s body is found on the estate of a wealthy Irish family shortly after the First World War, and an appalling cycle of revenge is set in motion. Led by a zealous sergeant, the Black and Tans set fire to the family home, and only young Willie and his mother escape alive. Fatherless, Willie grows into manhood while his alcoholic mother’s bitter resentment…
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
As a kid, I loved books of all shapes and sizes, especially those written by Irish authors. They made me feel like there was a chance of my own dream coming true – that I would walk into my local bookshop and see a book with my name on the cover. In the last twenty years, we've seen an explosion of new Irish authors making their mark on the world of children’s literature. Don’t get me wrong, I adore leprechauns, and many of the classic Irish books that have been loved by previous generations. But there’s a crop of brand new Irish authors making some incredible work, and it’s time to give them some love!
I’m super-passionate about giving young people the window into the world that they deserve – in fact, I wrote a whole book about journalism and fake news for kids.
David McCullagh, with this book, has flung that window wide open.
David will be familiar to Irish audiences as the anchor of the main evening news programme on RTE, but he’s managed to do the almost-impossible with this book. Namely: communicating the world of politics to kids in a way that doesn’t patronise or talk down to young people.
This beautifully-illustrated book explains some quite complicated concepts clearly with real-word examples and some excellent tongue-in-cheek humour.
I’ll be forcing it on my wee nephew as soon as he’s old enough!
Join political buff David McCullagh and illustrator Graham Corcoran as they guide you through all the things that make our country work. Why do we have a president and a Taoiseach? What is the Seanad and why can only some citizens vote in its elections? Who makes the rules for Ireland and how are they enforced? And what do we do if we want to change them?
Learn what it means to be a citizen and the positive role you can play by helping others, protecting what works and creating change in the world you live in.
As a kid growing up in the northeast of England I became fascinated by the insects, flowers, birds, geology, and seashore life around me. That fascination with natural history never left me and I had the fortune to turn my childhood interests into a professional career as a research scientist, teacher, and writer. My work on pollinators and plants has taken me around the world, from the grasslands of Oxfordshire to the deserts of Namibia and the mountains of Nepal, from the rainforests of Brazil and Australia to the thorny shrublands of Tenerife. The result has been more than 135 articles plus a couple of books. I must get back to writing the next one…
This ground-breaking book was the first illustrated field guide to cover all of the more than 270 species of bees that occur in Great Britain and Ireland. It provides a detailed account of the natural history of these fascinating insects, plus photographs and taxonomic keys to help you to determine what they are. Be warned, however, as the author acknowledges, many bees are challenging to identify! Nonetheless, Falk and Lewington’s book is invaluable for anyone interested in the natural history of bees.
This is a brand new field guide to Britain's bees that for the first time makes this fascinating and important group of insects accessible to the general naturalist. The guide covers over 270 species, and is fully illustrated with stunning photographs and Richard Lewington's beautiful colour artwork.
I was a teenager when I discovered that my grandfather was an Irish rebel during the War of Independence. As a Canadian, I was astounded by the stories he told me when we were alone during my first visit to Dublin. At 16, I promised him I would write a book about him. Alas, he was long gone when I got started. Researching, I would think of him, whispering anecdotes to me he never told his children. I discovered the stories were much worse than he let on. I could not stop until I got the whole story down on paper. I think he is smiling.
I love this book because it is a compilation of first-person accounts of major events throughout the history of Ireland. From St. Patrick to the raids of the Vikings, the rebellions of former rebels, and all the way to the civil war of 1923-24. Each selection is from extant works located in libraries and institutions around the country.
We hear the wild stories told with awe and wonder, with shock and abhorrence, as if we are sitting in a pub listening to the author whisper his witness in astonishment or regret. Suddenly, we understand the Irish rebels, the generations of rebels through the centuries, and we find ourselves full of admiration for those men and women who endured and fought and finally found freedom for their countrymen.
The history of Ireland told through the words of the people who lived it
Eyewitness to Irish History draws upon original source materials to capture the tumultuous events and rich texture of Irish history like no other book. Comparing the readings compiled here to snapshots, the renowned Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis offers what is, in essence, a family album of Ireland and the Irish people—beginning with Golamh, the legendary leader of the band of Iberian Celts who settled the island more than three thousand years ago, and concluding with gripping firsthand accounts by those on both sides of the…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I’m an Irish historian and biographer living in London and have always been fascinated by the confused attitudes that bedevil the relationship between Ireland and England. Educated in Ireland and the USA, I came to teach at the University of London in 1974, a period when IRA bombings had penetrated the British mainland. In 1991, I moved to Oxford and taught there for twenty-five years. As I constantly move between the two countries and watch my children growing up with English accents but Irish identities, I remain as fascinated as ever by the tensions, parallels, memories, and misunderstandings (often well-meaning) that prevail on both sides of the narrow Irish Sea.
Elizabeth Bowen once described the Ireland-England relationship as ‘a mixture of showing-off and suspicion, nearly as bad as sex’. Her 1928 novel demonstrates this beautifully, eviscerating the attitudes of Anglo-Irish grandees in their Big House as the country around them crackles with guerilla war and showing the incomprehension between the Irish (at all social levels) and the British soldiers sent ostensibly to keep the peace.
Though it ends in tragedy, social comedy, as so often, shows the brutal realities beneath the surface. And the atmosphere of the Irish landscape, at once idyllic and brooding, comes alive in Bowen’s supercharged prose.
Read Elizabeth Bowen's accessible feminist take on the Irish aristocracy
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY VICTORIA GLENDINNING
The Irish troubles rage, but up at the 'Big House', tennis parties, dances and flirtations with the English officers continue, undisturbed by the ambushes, arrests and burning country beyond the gates. Faint vibrations of discord reach the young girl Lois, who is straining for her own freedom, and she will witness the troubles surge closer and reach their irrevocable, inevitable climax.
