Here are 100 books that Eggshells fans have personally recommended if you like
Eggshells.
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I’m the child of immigrants and grew up imagining a second self—me, if my parents had never left India. Then, when I became a writer, doubles kept showing up in odd ways in my work. In my first play, House of Sacred Cows, I had identical twins played, farcically, by the same actor. My latest novel features two South Asian women: one, slightly wimpy, married to an unsympathetic guy called Mac, and another, in a permanent state of outrage, married to a nice man called Mat. My current project is a novel about mixed-race twins born in India but separated at birth.
This is actually just the first book of Ferrante’s four Neapolitan novels, which tell a single riveting story of two girls, Lila and Lenù, from a depressed Naples neighborhood. Lenù is the narrator, taking us through fifty years of friendship and the latter half of the 20th century. (Her actual name is Elena, like the author—another doubling, especially since she writes under a pseudonym.)
I am a sucker for event: a lot happens and we get to know a huge cast of characters from the neighborhood. But our anchors are these two friends and rivals, vibrant and injured, striving to transcend their origins.
OVER 14 MILLION COPIES OF THE NEAPOLITAN QUARTET SOLD WORLDWIDE
NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES
GUARDIAN 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY
58 WEEKS ON THE BOOKSELLER'S TOP 20 ORIGINAL FICTION BESTSELLERS LIST
SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2015
43 INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS DEALS
Now in B-format Paperback
From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, comes this ravishing and generous-hearted novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but…
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…
As the photographer Stieglitz once wrote, “Everything is relative except relatives, and they are absolute.” I was born into what was considered a mixed marriage in Argentina, then moved to LA, where I became a foreigner on top of being a mongrel. My family life was turbulent, but I found surrogate parents through my circle of school friends and, eventually, a close-knit community in the local motorcycle world. As I had no roots in my new culture, I spoke freely to anyone, and found family in all sorts of extravagant situations. I’ve continued to explore the permutations of family in my writing for decades now.
This was my favorite book the year I read it, and I will read it again, with no doubt the same result. The narrator is an anonymous 18-year-old woman navigating family, community, and romantic relationships in the midst of the Irish Troubles.
Almost every character is identified by a local nickname, part town culture and part a way to keep both authorities and rebels off track. I loved the strong writing and the surprising but always plausible twists. I’ve recommended it to every reader I know.
Liberty fabric covered editions bring classics from the Faber backlist together with important modern titles, putting them in conversation and celebrating both the history and the future of Faber & Faber.
In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes 'interesting'. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and…
I started keeping a daily journal when I received one for my ninth birthday, and, as they say, the rest is history. Into my twenties, there was nothing I loved more than sitting down to write and write`. It was a way to understand my feelings, and it was also a way to make sense of the world in all its beauty and bewilderment. There seemed to be magic and attempted connection everywhere! And so I became a lover of writing that focused on humans playing out their lives in a world at once surreal and real in an attempt to make sense of the extraordinary.
Entering this marvelous novel is like entering a luxury train and sitting down for a long, wild, and highly entertaining adventure. Yes, it is a very long novel, and yes, it is composed of a single sentence, but once I started reading, none of that mattered—I was ecstatically along for the ride.
What I love most about this novel is that we fully enter the thoughts and feelings of the middle-aged mother protagonist in a stream of consciousness, and she is, quite frankly, all of us with our neuroses, observations, frustrations, and loves. Incredibly, there is a definite form to this novel and a propulsive plot that gets downright harrowing at the end. A brilliant, brilliant read.
WINNER OF THE 2019 GOLDSMITHS PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 BOOKER PRIZE • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2019 • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 • A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF 2019
"This book has its face pressed up against the pane of the present; its form mimics the way our minds move now toggling between tabs, between the needs of small children and aging parents, between news of ecological collapse and school shootings while somehow remembering to pay taxes and fold the laundry."―Parul Sehgal, New York Times
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…
As the photographer Stieglitz once wrote, “Everything is relative except relatives, and they are absolute.” I was born into what was considered a mixed marriage in Argentina, then moved to LA, where I became a foreigner on top of being a mongrel. My family life was turbulent, but I found surrogate parents through my circle of school friends and, eventually, a close-knit community in the local motorcycle world. As I had no roots in my new culture, I spoke freely to anyone, and found family in all sorts of extravagant situations. I’ve continued to explore the permutations of family in my writing for decades now.
Like Milkman above, this was my favorite book the year I read it, and I plan to re-read it soon. It’s a quietly intense and lonely story, in first person, with an unnamed female narrator whose “family” is the community she lives in by a river in England.
She rarely deals directly with these people, though her interactions are generally described in retrospect, and, in a way, her constant observation and evaluation of her surroundings make the urban/industrial landscape part of her family, too.
Urban landscapes have been an important part of my life, too; they have shaped much of who I am. There are hints of a lost child and earlier immersions in other, distant river landscapes. Quiet, elegiac, and powerful.
1
author picked
River
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
16, and
17.
What is this book about?
"A magnificent novel."—The New Yorker
"This is a book to relish."—The Guardian
A woman moves to a London suburb near the River Lea, without knowing quite why or for how long. Over a series of long, solitary walks she reminisces about the rivers she has encountered during her life, from the Rhine, her childhood river, to the Saint Lawrence, and a stream in Tel Aviv. Filled with poignancy and poetic observation, River is an ode to nature, edgelands, and the transience of all things human.
Human psychology has always fascinated me, and studying what drives human behavior is necessary in writing realistic characters. I bring psychological studies into every novel I write, and realistic characters, often flawed, always receive top billing. One of my hallmarks is presenting a story’s setting as a supporting character, as well—much like the books I’ve recommended. I have written and published seventeen titles, chock full of the many facets of the human condition, whether I’m writing for teens (as Sasha Dawn) or adults (as Brandi Reeds). The books on my list inspire, entertain, and perhaps most importantly feel. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Foley depicts a struggle of finding oneself and learning where one belongs, and holding onto the everchanging definition especially when the geography surrounding us suddenly changes. Maggie and her family migrate from Chicago to Ireland, leaving behind her favorite uncle, and musical influence, the wayward Kevin. Add to this the backdrop of the anticipation of attending a Nirvana concert and you have all the fixings for a well-rounded tale of love, loss, and living. Having had the pleasure of meeting Foley a time or two, I can attest that her sense of setting is as apparent in her identity as an Irish Chicago resident as ever, and this comes through in her characters, who illustrate the same.
ALA 2015 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults Chicago Weekly Best Books of 2014 A Michael L. Printz Honor Award Winner Winner, 2014 Helen Sheehan YA Book Prize Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2014 Finalist, William C. Morris Award
It's 1993, and Generation X pulses to the beat of Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement. Sixteen-year-old Maggie Lynch is uprooted from big-city Chicago to a windswept town on the Irish Sea. Surviving on care packages of Spin magazine and Twizzlers from her rocker uncle Kevin, she wonders if she'll ever find her place in this new world. When first…
I don’t think I’m alone in considering cults and those who join cults fascinating, but I’ve also always found it frustrating when non-fiction accounts or documentaries focus on the logistics of how the communes operate rather than finding out the why. Why do people join a cult, why do they stay, why do they follow increasingly erratic and dangerous instruction? For me, researching cults for my new novel The Sleepless – about a commune whose disciples believe that sleep is a social construct – was about finding out about the characters, the individuals, who are drawn into organisations which often ask you to relinquish that self-same sense of individuality.
This is a novel about a young woman, the titular Nina, escaping from a Maoist cult and it’s a terrifically absorbing and engrossing tale.
What makes it unique is that it’s as much about the protagonist reclaiming, or even forming, her own identity as it is about the cult that she’s wrestling herself free from. Both the storyline and the form of the book itself involves the reader in that journey into freedom. An excellent and under-rated book.
Winner of the Saltire Literary Award Fiction Book of the Year
'Literary gold . . . Morrison has published his masterpiece' Sunday Times
'Sensational. Like nothing I've ever read. A tour de force' Ian Rankin
Nina X has never been outside. She has never met another child. Nina X has no books, no toys and no privacy. Nina X has no idea what the outside world is like. Nina X has a lot to learn.
Nina X has no mother and no father; she has Comrade Chen, and Comrades Uma, Jeni and Ruth. Her closest emotional connection is with the…
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 am a forty-five-year career educator, sharing my classrooms with students from primary school through graduate programs in creative writing. What I love most in every classroom I enter is sharing the books and stories and poems I love with my students. The best days: when I’m reading one of my favorite parts of the book out loud to the group and I look up and they laugh or gasp, or I look up and see their eyes full of joy. If it’s my own work I’m reading from, all the better!
Ah, these juvenile narrators: they think they know it all. Lucille Odem has it all figured out. She can fix her broken family and heal her parent’s broken hearts—because of course she can. For me, the pleasure of a great young adult narrator is watching as even the smartest of these smarty pants comes to learn that we all have blind spots and that it’s often the things we can’t see or don’t know that are the most important part of the equation. What a sweet book this is.
At the age of seventeen, Lucille Odom finds herself in the middle of an unexpected domestic crisis. As she helps guide her family through its discontent, Lucille discovers in herself a woman rich in wisdom, rich in humor, and rich in love.
I’m a Chinese Vietnamese American author who writes about the Asian girls I never saw in books as a kid. Growing up in Southern California, I was part of an Asian community that was extremely diverse—a reality that was rarely reflected in American pop culture. For years, I longed to see messy, flawed, fully humanized Asian characters in all different kinds of stories, not just the typical child-of-immigrant narratives. As a result, I now spend a lot of time thinking about representation (whether I want to or not!), and I’m always looking for writers who pull it off with nuance and realism. I hope you’ll find these books are great examples of that.
There isn’t another young adult book out there that makes me feel as seen asLucy and Linh, alternately titled Laurindain its native Australia.
It was the first novel I’d ever come across with a Chinese Vietnamese protagonist, and the details about her life as the daughter of working-class refugees really hit home.
That the prose is impeccable, the social observations incisive, and the themes not at all didactic (the main character Lucy makes plenty of mistakes) instantly turned me into an Alice Pung superfan.
From an author Amy Tan calls “a gem,” this is a witty, highly acclaimed novel that’s “part Mean Girls, part Lord of the Flies” (The Bulletin, Starred review) about navigating life in private school while remaining true to yourself.
Lucy is a bit of a pushover, but she’s ambitious and smart, and she has just received the opportunity of a lifetime: a scholarship to a prestigious school, and a ticket out of her broken-down suburb. Though she’s worried she will stick out like badly cut bangs among the razor-straight students, she is soon welcomed into the Cabinet, the supremely popular…
As a female author myself, I always want to uplift and highlight other women-identifying writers who are weaving complicated stories about growing up. The truth is, I think we’re all continuing to change at all ages - it’s never too late to grow from past mistakes and make different choices, especially as we grow older and experience both our first love and first heartbreak. All of these stories are bonded by good women who sometimes do bad things - just like in my novel - and I think it’s important to show that female protagonists, particularly sculpted by female writers, can be just as messy, vulnerable, and complicated as male leads.
To be fair, I read this book on a summer holiday in Cinque Terre, Italy, which perhaps made the experience even more dreamy and lush.
This is a modern love story that celebrates the desire of its female protagonist, and makes no apologies for her ability to take what she wants - in the form of her current romantic partner’s father. The story contains nuance and delicacy, and talks about relationships with honesty and vulnerability.
There is an undercurrent of grief here, as well, which bonds our lovers, and makes the lightness of the romance that much deeper.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF THE EVENING STANDARD'S BLOCKBUSTER BOOK TRENDS OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR FOYLES FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR NOMINATED FOR THE GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS FOR ROMANCE A ZOELLA BOOK CLUB PICK
'This book filled me with excitement and possibilities.' Jenny Colgan 'Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous.' @savidgereads 'Say hello to the book of the summer' @bettysbooksuk 'Fantastic . . . I cannot put it down.' @thebibliotucker ____________ Have you fallen for this INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING novelist's sizzling hot entrance into the world of romance?
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 have always loved reading about individuals and the ways they behave in extraordinary or unusual circumstances. Stories that are about a person growing up and coming to an understanding that the world around them is deeply flawed, and that they themselves are patched-up, imperfect creatures, fascinate me. I find myself observing people and the words they say. Those are the kinds of stories I write, about regular people stumbling along and discovering some truths about themselves.
The protagonist is a Pakistani girl moving from the urban city of Rawalpindi to a rural city in the US, as part of a program that places students abroad for a year in high school.
There were so many instances when I completely understood Hira, the way she talked about the US, about growing up in Pakistan, about language. Her adjusting to life far from home is complicated by her illness, a disease the perception of which further makes us question our prejudices about a place and its people.
'Prose that dances with charge and potency' LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
WINNER OF A 2023 ASIAN/PACIFIC AMERICAN AWARD FOR LITERATURE
On a year-long exchange programme, sixteen-year-old Hira must swap the bustle of urban Pakistan for church and volleyball practice in rural Oregon.
Stuck between two worlds, her experience of America is sometimes freeing, sometimes painful, often quite painful. And while she faces racism and Islamophobia, she also makes new friends and has her first kiss.
But when her new life is blown apart by a shocking health crisis, Hira's sense of belonging is overturned once…
