Here are 100 books that Five Wives fans have personally recommended if you like
Five Wives.
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I am drawn to books in which family history is never as simple as it first appears. I have always loved fiction about memory, silence, and the choices people make when they discover that something they believed about their past was not entirely true. As a novelist, I keep returning to these themes because I am fascinated by the way family stories shape who we become. I am especially interested in women who have to rebuild their sense of themselves when old explanations stop making sense. The books on this list stay with me because they do more than reveal secrets; they show what happens after the truth is known.
I love this book because it made me think about how far someone can go to leave one version of their life behind.
I kept thinking about the choices the characters make and the way those choices continue to affect people long after they were made. I was especially drawn to the family relationships and to the tension between who we believe ourselves to be and who other people think we are.
I also loved that Brit Bennett never makes her characters easy to judge. I sometimes understood a decision even when I disliked it. That stayed with me. The novel made me think about family, identity, and whether we can ever completely separate ourselves from where we came from.
THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP BESTSELLER #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE
'An utterly mesmerising novel..I absolutely loved this book' Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize 2019
'Epic' Kiley Reid, O, The Oprah Magazine
'Favourite book [of the] year' Issa Rae
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years…
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 am the product of a love triangle—an unusual one, between a French Holocaust survivor, an African student from France’s colonies, and a black GI. My parents came of age during really turbulent times and led big, bold lives. They rarely spoke about their pasts, but once I began digging—in the letters they exchanged, in conversations with my grandmother and aunts, with their childhood friends—I realized that all three had witnessed up close so much of the drama and horrors of the twentieth century and that what they had lived together merited being told. My parents’ love triangle is at the heart of my love of love-triangle stories.
This is so much more than a love triangle story that I hesitate to reduce it to merely that. The novel explores interracial relationships, “blackness” in both an African and an African-American context, and the ways in which those worlds collide, etc., etc. At its broadest, the book describes the story of the Nigerian diaspora writ large. But at its core, this is the story of a love triangle—the sort of story I love most.
(I grew up a bit of a mama’s boy, and in our household, we loved love stories…)
As in Ishiguro and Jones, cited above, and in Garcia Marquez, noted next, the characters here submit to pressures and make difficult choices—as thoughtfully as they can, under the circumstances. And those choices have life-changing consequences that the characters eventually come to regret.
Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.
How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria. Self-assured Ifemelu heads for America. But quiet, thoughtful Obinze finds post-9/11 America closed to him, and plunges into a dangerous undocumented life in London.
I’ve always been drawn to family stories, from King Lear to Anna Karenina. The ties that bind us to family—however strained or frayed those ties might be—contain within their fibers the entire spectrum of human emotion. For a writer, this is fertile territory. I could contemplate endlessly the rivalry that exists between a pair of siblings, or the expectations a child has for their parent. Family dynamics are often kept private, which makes encountering them on the page even more thrilling. To be let in on the life of another, granted permission to bear witness to their secrets and innermost longings, is the rare gift that literature brings us.
Here we see Jonathan Franzen, the master of the family novel, at it again. Like all of Franzen’s books, this one is both hilarious and poignant. Though it tips the scale at nearly 600 pages, I blew through it in a day or two, amazed by Franzen’s plot-making abilities and his keen insights into the human condition.
Bonus points for The Corrections and Freedom, either of which could easily have made this list, too.
Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.
It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless—unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social…
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 was born and bred on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in South Florida, so I am passionate about beach reads. There is nothing I love more than to get lost in a great book with themes of summer, the beach, love, and loss. Spending the whole day on a lounge chair by the shore, devouring a book, is my idea of heaven.
As a teacher of creative writing, I enjoy books with deep and complex human relationships. I also love books with a strong sense of place, where the setting is almost a character in its own right. Beach reads are great at giving the reader both!
I love this book because it is laser-focused on family relationships. Maine delves into the secrets and simmering emotions of one dysfunctional family during a crossroads summer.
It’s a ruthless yet tender ode to how understanding can bloom even in the most strained family relationships. I loved the quirky cast of family members and the beautifully rendered descriptions of the cottage and the town. I felt like I was along for the ride.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The celebrated author of Commencement and The Engagements introduces four unforgettable women and the abiding, often irrational love that keeps them coming back, every summer, to Maine and to each other.
"Rich and exhilarating ... You don't want the novel to end."—The New York Times Book Review
For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. As three generations of Kelleher women arrive at the family's beach house, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two…
As a child, I learned that I was able to lucid dream at will, speaking to the beings I met in these places I’d never seen before, and it always gave me a sense of interconnectedness. A thread that goes through all of us and our histories. I believe that the ancients dedicated so much of their energy and resources to preserving their stories in order to maintain this connection because it’s so important. Inside all of us is a darkness that, if left unchecked would lead us to ruin. These books all demonstrate the inner struggle we have to understand and redirect that darkness toward the light and the good.
This book explores the customs and development of the Polynesian Islands prior to interference from European powers.
I see the rawest forms of our instincts and psychology in the indigenous peoples of the world. This book is a call for all readers to suspend the tendency to judge other cultures and time periods and just be observers.
Pulitzer Prize–winning author James A. Michener brings Hawaii’s epic history vividly to life in a classic saga that has captivated readers since its initial publication in 1959. As the volcanic Hawaiian Islands sprout from the ocean floor, the land remains untouched for centuries—until, little more than a thousand years ago, Polynesian seafarers make the perilous journey across the Pacific, flourishing in this tropical paradise according to their ancient traditions. Then, in the early nineteenth century, American missionaries arrive, bringing with them a new creed and a new way of life. Based on exhaustive research and told in Michener’s immersive prose,…
I grew up attending a little Baptist church where we would host traveling missionaries. I remember one young woman in particular, Jane Vandenberg, who would open her bag to show us mementos from her life in Africa. As I listened to her stories, I admired how brave she was. I wanted to be like that! I served for 16 years as an English professor at Moody Bible Institute where I would share well-written and inspirational books with my students. And, as a Christian woman and mom, I think we need more role models for ourselves and for our daughters. Sharing the powerful biographies of Christian women is one way to make that happen!
This is the best missionary autobiography I have ever read.
In These Strange Ashes Elisabeth Elliot is so brutally honest about being a missionary. She complains about humidity and wrinkled clothes. She endures loneliness and times of deep discouragement in the jungles of Ecuador. And the ending! I won’t spoil it.
While I’ve read other books by Elliot, including her famous memoir about losing her husband Jim, this one stayed with me. It asks, why do we serve God? What happens when the result is not stellar? Does it mean we failed? I wasn’t eager to sign up for a trip to the jungle after reading her story, but it helped me see my life from a new perspective.
In her first year as a missionary to a small group of native women in the Ecuadorian jungle, Elisabeth Elliot faced physical and spiritual trials. In These Strange Ashes, Elliot captures the mysteries and stark realities surrounding the colorful and primitive world in which she ministered. More than just a recounting of her early days, this is a beautifully crafted and deeply personal reflection on the important questions of life and a remarkable testimony to an authentic Christian commitment.
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,…
I’m a queer-punk author who’s dreaming and scheming for better days. My award-winning long and short fiction includes my bunker-horror novel (below)and its antidote, Glean Among the Sheaves, which I’m finishing any minute. I’m one of six Canadian authors featured in the writers’ tell-all Off the Record. The self-anointed Can Lit Doula, I teach creative writing and guide stuck manuscripts to their next astounding drafts. I write and practice earth-based witchcraft in Toronto, Canada.
People kept telling me to read it, so I finally did–just in time to include it on this list. Rotating narrators–a White missionary’s wife and four daughters from the American South–represent disparate points of view concerning their family’s move to the Belgian Congo in 1959.
One thing I loved is the attention to historical detail and Kingsolver’s ability to include multiple, complex subplots to better frame the colonial history of this particular time/place and to better demonstrate the insidious ongoing brutality of colonization in terms of inequitable global wealth.
Language and religion play a major role in the plundering resource extraction industries, as do political and military interference, apartheid, and so much more. I loved her exploration of language(s): the power held in naming and misnaming. The youngest daughter sums it up best. “My life: what I stole from history, and how I live with it.” Characters are primarily White…
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An international bestseller and a modern classic, this suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and their remarkable reconstruction has been read, adored and shared by millions around the world.
'Breathtaking.' Sunday Times 'Exquisite.' The Times 'Beautiful.' Independent 'Powerful.' New York Times
This story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959.
They carry with them everything they believe they will…
After discovering Jesus at the age of fourteen, I began reading the King James Version of the Bible. This early modern English version was difficult to understand at first, but it soon became my poetic introduction to a faith that would reveal just how big and wonderful our Creator is. I eventually realized how a correct interpretation of science agreed with a correct interpretation of the Bible. That led me to study apologetics and such topics as how the universe began. As a creative person at heart, having been an actor, songwriter, playwright, and novelist, I am realizing that being made in the image of God means that the possibilities for creativity never end.
I was shocked at how this book opened my eyes to the overwhelming challenges and difficulties of being an American missionary in India during the early nineteenth century. I felt as though I was reading a very personal autobiography of one of the first Christian missionaries as well as a history lesson about how people struggled to survive in a remote and often uncivilized part of the world.
I was left with a feeling of gratitude and perhaps a bit of guilt regarding those believers who gave everything they had, including their very lives, to help those less fortunate than themselves.
On February 12, 1812, Ann and Adoniram Judson sailed from Salem aboard the brig Caravan as two of the first missionaries to go out from North America. Watching the shoreline disappear from view, they could not have foreseen the impact of their journey on the future of the Christian world mission or on the thousands of men and women who would follow in their footsteps. After a short stay in India, they carried the Good News of Jesus Christ to the golden shore of Burma.
Drawing on letters and church records, Courtney Anderson paints a poignant portrait of Judsons early…
From my first exposure to Elisabeth Elliot’s writing when I was a teenager, I was intrigued by her story: a missionary few had ever heard of who became an author with several books published by a Big Five publishing company. Over the years I both wrestled with and was encouraged by her work. I’ve now spent more than a decade conducting original research on Elliot’s life. I believe learning more about her and the influences that shaped her enriches our understanding of our past and, thus, of our present and offers us important tools for approaching the future.
Elisabeth Elliot’s approach to faith and to missiology was heavily influenced by 19th-century Irish missionary Amy Wilson Carmichael. Carmichael moved to India in her twenties and spent the rest of her life there, working to rescue children from exploitation and abuse. She also wrote poetry, biography, meditations on missiology, and books about her experiences.
Elliot was introduced to Carmichael’s writing by the headmistress of her high school, and over the next several years, she devoured everything of Carmichael’s that she could get her hands on, even writing to Carmichael to thank her for her work. Carmichael died at age 83, when Elliot was 25. More than three decades later, Elliot traveled to India to research and write this book, the story of the woman she called her spiritual mother.
A Chance to Die is a vibrant portrayal of Amy Carmichael, an Irish missionary and writer who spent fifty-three years in south India without furlough. There she became known as "Amma," or "mother," as she founded the Dohnavur Fellowship, a refuge for underprivileged children.
Amy's life of obedience and courage stands as a model for all who claim the name of Christ. She was a woman with desires and dreams, faults and fears, who gave her life unconditionally to serve her Master.
Bringing Amma to life through inspiring photos and compelling biographical narrative, Elisabeth Elliot urges readers to examine 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 a huge self-proclaimed history dork. I love reading real stories of how God uses the ones that no one would expect in extraordinary ways. I love hearing how God turns horrible situations around. Even in my own manuscripts, from a historical fiction perspective, I love to immerse it in such truth that you think, “That couldn’t really happen... Could it?” I have an ongoing phrase in ministry and life that you need to take “The poo you walk through and let God turn it into fertilizer.” These book recommendations definitely do that. Bad things do happen. They don’t come from God but through Him we can overcome them.
Brother Andrew’s story is astounding. He was probably one of the least likely candidates to be used by God in such a way, but God always picks those the world would not. The founder of Open Doors Ministries, Brother Andrew’s adventures will leave you in awe of what a life well lived for the gospel can do. It encouraged me to stand for what the Lord says in spite of circumstance. It reminded me of the Biblical truth that God always makes a way, and inspired me to continue to blaze the trail God has for me.
A True-Life Thriller That Will Leave You Breathless!
In the anniversary edition of this electrifying real-life story, readers are gripped from the first page by the harrowing account of a young man who risked his life to smuggle Bibles through the borders of closed nations. Now, sixty years after Brother Andrew first prayed for God's miracle protection, this expanded edition of a classic work encourages new readers to meet this remarkable man and his mission for the first time.
Working undercover for God, a mission that continues to this day, has made Brother Andrew one of the all-time heroes of…
