Here are 27 books that (Don't) Stop Me if You've Heard This Before fans have personally recommended if you like
(Don't) Stop Me if You've Heard This Before.
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I believe in the power of personal narratives and the memoir genre as tools to foster healing and forgiveness. As a licensed professional counselor with a doctorate in adult education, I devoted years toward better understanding the fractured relationship I had with my mother, eventually uncovering the source of her pain and trauma. My mother’s mental health and addiction issues were muddied by the shame she carried for years, as a terrified secret keeper, full of self-loathing. Although I was often the target of her anger, I found a pathway to compassion that mended my heart and provided an example of intergenerational healing for my own daughter.
Melissa Febos’ book Body Work provides encouragement to writers who are considering the memoir genre by highlighting the importance of storytelling as central to human experience.
Memoir writing is like magic; unique in its ability to shine a light on stories of survival, perseverance, and resilience. Febos’ book beautifully portrays the power of memoir as a tool to prompt growth, pulling back façades in ways that are both personally empowering and enriching for readers and writers alike.
“We are telling the stories that no one else can tell, and we are giving this proof of our survival to each other.” (p. 27)
Memoir meets craft master class in this “daring, honest, psychologically insightful” exploration of how we think and write about intimate experiences—“a must read for anybody shoving a pen across paper or staring into a screen or a past" (Mary Karr)
In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller’s life and the questions which run through it.
How might we go about capturing on the page the relationships that have formed us? How…
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…
I teach and publish short stories, novels, and flash fiction. I’m also interested in the language people use to critique writing. Concepts (suspense, for example) can be helpful, but they often co-opt the imagination and become gold standards for what good fiction should be. In addition to the writer’s voice, I’m interested in the alchemy of the story, which is always greater than the sum of its parts. Right now, I’m writing a book called Accordion Fiction. It's about the shape and rhythm of stories—how they contract and expand like an accordion.
I admire the way this book jumps out of the box and debunks the emphasis on “pure craft”—a term that grew out of the hero’s journey. (Basically the “Horatio Alger” story about a character going from rags to riches.)
This model stifles the voices of writers from other cultures.
Salesses’ techniques help writers mine their cultural background and discover stories only they can tell. It also frees all writers from the model of the hero’s journey.
This national bestseller is "a significant contribution to discussions of the art of fiction and a necessary challenge to received views about whose stories are told, how they are told and for whom they are intended" (Laila Lalami, The New York Times Book Review).
The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing—including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability—and aspects of workshop—including the silenced writer and the imagined reader—Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts.…
I grew up in the Scottish countryside, reading passionately. When adults asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer came from my latest book: a nun, an outlaw, a queen, or an explorer. Not until I was in my twenties did I realise that I wanted to be the person behind the covers of a book, not between them. My early stories, written between waitressing shifts, were bafflingly bad. Gradually I began to understand that the fiction I loved was driven by a hidden machinery. I now teach at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and have been lucky enough to explore this idea with many talented students.
As a boy, Baxter stood at the window of his mid-western home and looked out at the empty street. He went on to fill that street with stories. In Wonderlands he talks about how those stories were made in terms of craft—he writes vividly about requests, lists, dreams, ghosts—and the events in his own life that shaped his fiction, including a long period of failure. An deeply companionable book.
Searching and erudite new essays on writing from the author of Burning Down the House.
Charles Baxter’s new collection of essays, Wonderlands, joins his other works of nonfiction, Burning Down the House and The Art of Subtext. In the mold of those books, Baxter shares years of wisdom and reflection on what makes fiction work, including essays that were first given as craft talks at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
The essays here range from brilliant thinking on the nature of wonderlands in the fiction of Haruki Murakami and other fabulist writers, to how request moments function in a story.…
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…
I grew up in the Scottish countryside, reading passionately. When adults asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer came from my latest book: a nun, an outlaw, a queen, or an explorer. Not until I was in my twenties did I realise that I wanted to be the person behind the covers of a book, not between them. My early stories, written between waitressing shifts, were bafflingly bad. Gradually I began to understand that the fiction I loved was driven by a hidden machinery. I now teach at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and have been lucky enough to explore this idea with many talented students.
Le Guin is a star in fiction’s firmament but in this book she’s also a wonderfully modest practitioner of the art of writing. She discusses the sound of your prose, naming characters, repetition, and point of view. I found her chapter on crowding and leaping especially helpful. Crowding is when you follow Keats’ advice to load every rift with ore; leaping is when you skillfully leave things out—two invaluable skills in fiction, and in life.
From the celebrated Ursula K. Le Guin, "a writer of enormous intelligence and wit, a master storyteller" (Boston Globe), the revised and updated edition of her classic guide to the essentials of a writer's craft.
Completely revised and rewritten to address modern challenges and opportunities, this handbook is a short, deceptively simple guide to the craft of writing.
Le Guin lays out ten chapters that address the most fundamental components of narrative, from the sound of language to sentence construction to point of view. Each chapter combines illustrative examples from the global canon with Le Guin’s own witty commentary and…
I am first and foremost an avid reader of a variety of genres, but women’s/romantic fiction is my favorite. I have a passion for God and His ability to pull us out of the deepest pit and transform a life of beauty from the ashes of our past. Although I write from a “Christian” viewpoint, I prefer characters with flaws and books that deal with women’s issues in a realistic way, not glossed over or hinted at. Which is why my tagline is “Inspirational with an Edge!” ™ In my opinion, the harder our characters fall from grace, the more powerful their redemption or testimony will be.
This book is a little different from the others I’ve recommended in that the heroine is not a victim of child or sexual abuse but abuse nonetheless when her children and husband disappear. She must come to understand and trust in the depth of God and His redemptive grace, mercy, and forgiveness.
Gone in the blink of an eye. DEBRA PATTERSON'S two young children are missing from a Houston mall. How will she explain this horror to her husband, whose demanding, perfectionist personality has already filled her life with pain?
But now he's missing, too - - along with his belongings, the children's clothing, and other personal items.
A monstrous, downward spiral has begun.
Debra tries to fill her empty soul with alcohol, new friends, and finally, faith. But will she ever find the strength to live each day without her children - - without knowing where they are or if they…
I've always been interested in books about lost souls and broken people. Before I got clean it was the story of my life and they’re stories that continue to resonate with lots of readers. I think my being drawn to those kinds of stories was a reaction to the stories I read and tv and movies I saw growing up. The image-conscious suburban American Dream stuff. I grew up without all those illusions and naturally gravitated to gritty realism because it mirrored my experience. My book is less interested in the day-to-day mechanics of the lives of drug addicts and lost souls, but rather how they came to be what they are.
Most people probably know Denis Johnson from his short story collection Jesus Son but this was his first novel and holds a special place in my heart. Jaime is a young woman fleeing an abusive marriage with her two young children. Bill Houston is a bad guy wandering the American Southwest looking for an easy score to get rich. These two characters meet on a bus and partly because of Johnson’s beautiful spare prose we eagerly follow their tragic and doomed trajectory. A very American novel.
'A dazzling and savage first novel' New York Times
Angels tells the story of two born losers. Jamie has ditched her husband and is running away with her two baby girls. Bill is dreaming of making it big in a life of crime. They meet on a Greyhound bus and decide to team up.
So begins a stunning, tragic odyssey through the dark underbelly of America - the bars, bus stations, mental wards and prisons that play host to Jamie and Bill as they find themselves trapped in a downward spiral though rape, alcohol, drugs and crime, to madness and…
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…
As a kid, I’ve always loved reading romances, even if it meant spending my recesses in the library and reading through lunchtime. This resulted in my 6th-grade teacher giving me the weirdest look when she caught me reading a romance at school. When I started writing, I wrote a couple of different genres to test out, but YA contemporary romances were always the ones that stuck with me. I loved writing about the fluttery feelings of first love and the complexities of an uncertain future. It also helps that I met my husband, the love of my life, in high school so I’ll always have a soft spot for books that make me feel that way again.
I picked up A Taste for Love while I was browsing the aisles at Barnes and Noble and the description and gorgeous cover immediately caught my eye. Sometimes it is hard to rewrite a classic story and make it your own, but Jennifer Yen does it beautifully here. I completely forgot that it was a retelling of Pride and Prejudice as I was swept away in Liza’s life and all the laugh-out-loud antics of her family and friends. I’m also a huge fan of Top Chef so all the cooking in this book only made me hungry for more.
For fans of Jenny Han, Jane Austen, and The Great British Baking Show, A Taste for Love, is a delicious rom com about first love, familial expectations, and making the perfect bao.
To her friends, high school senior Liza Yang is nearly perfect. Smart, kind, and pretty, she dreams big and never shies away from a challenge. But to her mom, Liza is anything but. Compared to her older sister Jeannie, Liza is stubborn, rebellious, and worst of all, determined to push back against all of Mrs. Yang's traditional values, especially when it comes to dating.
My childhood was marked by weekly trips to the library, afternoons on the couch with snacks and novels, and imaginary play with friends. I became a professional historian later in life and found my home in the study of energy, environment, and technology as key factors in the story of human change. My workday is consumed with tracking down the facts of how and why things took place in the past. It's a delight to pick up a novel for the writing and narrative, and to put it down thinking about the environmental history hidden within. I selected these five books because they're renowned for their authorship, yet they convey tales of environmental change interwoven with the drama of human lives.
As a longtime resident of Houston, of course, I must include a book about this unusual place! Washington’s characters lead difficult lives, his narrative is tough, and sometimes his geographical references are misleading. Nonetheless, each episode (which unfolds on a particular lot or spot in Houston) captures the experience of living in the Bayou City – the traffic, the summer weather, the slow-moving waterways, the unruly weed patches, the architecture, the neatly maintained neighborhoods, and the mix of cultures from around the world. Houston was transformed from prairie, swamp, and piney woods to a landscaped metropolis by wildcatters, entrepreneurs, scientists, workers, creatives, and others. Washington’s stories evoke this dynamic human/environment connection throughout.
* One of Barack Obama's "Favourite Books of the Year" *
* A New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2019 *
'A superb book' Max Porter, author of Lanny ____________________________________
Stories of a young man finding his place among family and community in Houston, from a powerful, emerging American voice.
In an apartment block, the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, trying to dodge his brother's fists and resenting his older sister's absence. He's also discovering he…
Ever since I started playing Strat-O-Matic baseball as a 13-year-old and then realized that they actually pay people to write about Major League Baseball, it’s been my dream to be a baseball beat writer. I’ve been lucky enough to do it for 25 years. I’ve seen thousands of baseball games and I’ve spent thousands of hours talking to players, managers, coaches, and executives about the sport, but I still learn things from every baseball book I read. Hopefully these books teach you something and help you enjoy the game more.
If you think this book is just about the trash can-banging Houston Astros and how they stole signs on the way to winning the 2017 World Series, you’re wrong. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Drellich was covering the Astros long before all of that started, so he gives you a deep look at the organizational culture that led to the scandal.
The reporter who broke the Houston Astros' cheating scandal reveals how a baseball team could so dramatically descend into corruption, with never-before-told details of a broken management culture, the once-revered leaders who enabled it and the scandal itself.
Baseball, that old romantic game, has been defaced and consumed by corporate America. As Moneyball-thinking and Ivy League graduates grabbed hold of the sport, the Astros set out to build a cost-efficient winning machine on the principles of the outside business world, squeezing every dollar out of every transaction, player and employee.
In less than a decade, ex-Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow…
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’ve written four true crime books about Texas murders. The first, Wasted, was about the murder of a rich lesbian in Austin, Texas. It was a New York Times bestseller. My last, The Fortune Hunter, was about the murder of a multi-millionaire media mogul. It was the basis of the Lifetime TV movie Secrets of a Gold Digger Killer. I have since started writing memoir. Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality was about my journalistic exploration into the worlds of alternative sex practices, written through my uptight, prudish Texan, wide-opened eyes. It was featured on Katie Couric’s talk show, Katie.
Blood Will Tell is the Fort Worth version of Blood and Money.
In fact, the accused killer, T. Cullen Davis, the middle son of prominent oil and gas multi-millionaire “Stinky” Davis, went to high school with Tommy Thompson and had read his book.
So when Cullen was in a frustratingly long divorce battle with his wife Priscilla, a buxom blonde bombshell who was everything the oil and cowtown society hated—sexy, flashy, vulgar, and obviously after Cullen’s cash—Cullen supposedly tried to off her.
Priscilla was merely wounded, but her boyfriend and her 12-year-old daughter were killed.
Over the course of two trials, Cullen’s attorney, Richard “Racehorse” Raines, put Priscilla and her trashiness on trial, so much so that her murdered daughter was seemingly forgotten, but the juries didn’t forget Priscilla.
The fast living of the Texas rich is the focal point of this true crime story about the murder trials of a multimillionaire oilman acquitted of the murder of his daughter and his wife's lover
