Here are 100 books that Gentlemen of the Road fans have personally recommended if you like
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I never outgrew the curiosity of wanting to know more about the things we fear. Plenty of monsters are just neat! But the more you learn about them, whether they’re animals like bears and sharks or figures of myth like werewolves and dragons, the more interesting they become. I wanted to take audiences deep inside a skin unlike their own so they could understand how it feels to be cast out and how much a monster might look down on us. Because the more you look at monsters, the more you recognize us in them.
One of the classic novels about monsters having internal lives. Grendel doesn’t even survive the first half of the Beowulf poem.
But what was his life like? This creature who went into rages over music and merriment? This outsider who clearly had no one to commune with? Where there could just be pathos, Gardner injects surprising dorkiness and humor that further round out Grendel’s existence. And there’s a huge bonus in the poem’s dragon also showing up as an utter weirdo neighbor.
This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic.
"An extraordinary achievement."—New York Times
The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This is the novel William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."
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…
My psychotherapist has always described me as a black and white thinker. Good and evil. Happy or sad. Up or down. I struggle with shades of gray in my day-to-day life. Which is maybe the reason I am drawn to literature that explores morally ambiguous characters and settings. Not only does every book on this list have no clear hero or villain, but each story forces the reader to question what they think they know about right and wrong. I may be a black and white thinker in every practical sense, but I read and write about people and situations that occupy that very human space of in-between.
Kazuo Ishiguro is known for stories rooted in real world contexts. Even his various forays into science fiction (Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun) are deeply grounded in contemporary, true-to-life settings. So, when I stumbled upon this classic fairytale by one of my favorite authors, I didn’t know what to expect. Talk about a gut punch!
This book explores morality and hope in creative and magical ways. And the twist at the end will leave you reeling—in true Ishiguro form.
*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available*
The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin.
The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards - some strange and other-worldly - but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another.
I’m a medieval historian, and I’ve written academic books and articles about the history of the medieval world, but I have also written two historical novels. I became interested in history in general and the Middle Ages in particular from reading historical fiction as a child (Jean Plaidy!). The past is another country, and visiting it through fiction is an excellent way to get a feel for it, for its values, norms, and cultures, for how it is different from and similar to our own age. I’ve chosen novels that I love that do this especially well, and bring to light less well-known aspects of the Middle Ages.
Hild plunged me into the rough and tumble world of seventh-century Anglo-Saxon England through the eyes of its title character, a young woman with unusual abilities who is dangerously close to the crown of one of its kings and who protects herself by becoming his seer.
I appreciated how Griffith evoked the texture of life in this period, its beauty and its roughness, bringing me into its mead halls and forests and onto its sea cliffs. She also draws out the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Anglo-Saxon world and the conflicts this created between Celts and Saxons, mixed with pressure from Franks across the Channel and the Latin Church in Rome.
Hild is born into a world in transition. In seventh-century Britain, small kingdoms are merging, usually violently. A new religion is coming ashore; the old gods' priests are worrying. Edwin of Northumbria plots to become overking of the Angles, ruthlessly using every tool at his disposal: blood, bribery, belief. Hild is the king's youngest niece. She has the powerful curiosity of a bright child, a will of adamant, and a way of seeing the world - of studying nature, of matching cause with effect, of observing human nature and predicting what will happen next - that can seem uncanny, even…
A poignant narrative about one young immigrant’s triumph in America, inspired by true events.
1938. Eli Stoff and his parents, Austrian Jews, escape to America just after the Nazis take over their homeland. Within five years, Eli joins the US Army and, thanks to his understanding of the German language…
I've always been fascinated by the way history feels inherently uncanny, as we inhabit the same places as people long dead. I suppose that’s why the novels I write tend to be in historical settings, and they tend to have a speculative twist. For much of my working life, I was a journalist, so I love the research part of writing historical fiction. I tend to be drawn to old stories, and I especially love looking at those stories from angles I haven't seen before. Two of my novels bookend the European Middle Ages: The Valkyrie, set in the 5th century CE, and The Chatelaine, set in the 14th century CE.
This is a slim book and it's told in an intimate, lyrical voice that feels like it's speaking directly to you from the period – which, in this case, is the 9th century CE.
All the Horses of Iceland follows a Norse trader through Rus to Mongolia in the company of Khazars. It's a ghost story, with notes of sadness mixed with wonder. And while it is possible to trace the journey and pick up on historical signposts, the book doesn't acknowledge that it knows when and where its reader might be – which bolsters the illusion of reading something very old.
A hypnotic historical fantasy with gorgeous and unusual literary prose, from the captivating author of The Fourth Island.
Everyone knows of the horses of Iceland, wild, and small, and free, but few have heard their story. Sarah Tolmie’s All the Horses of Iceland weaves their mystical origin into a saga for the modern age. Filled with the magic and darkened whispers of a people on the cusp of major cultural change, All the Horses of Iceland tells the tale of a Norse trader, his travels through Central Asia, and the ghostly magic that followed him home to the land of…
I am a Professor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham and have been teaching, researching, and writing about all aspects of the Viking Age and its aftermath for many years. My particular expertise is in the poetry, sagas, and runic writings of medieval Scandinavia. To understand these, it has been important to me to follow in the footsteps of the Vikings from the Baltic to North America, to see the places they were familiar with, and to experience the traces of their culture in those places. These books tell the stories which will guide the armchair traveller on the same voyages.
According to this medieval tale, the Baltic island of Gotland was once so enchanted that it sank into the sea during the day and rose up again at night. From these mythical origins, this short saga, written in the special dialect of the island, tells how Gotland became populated, how some of them went east to Russia and Byzantium, how they exchanged their heathen idols for the Christian religion, and their relationship with the King of Sweden. It’s a rare literary insight into the Vikings’ eastern settlements and adventures.
After enjoying Josephine Tey’s wonderful Daughter of Time, in which she exonerates Richard III from the crime of murdering the princes in the tower, followed by the Brother Cadfael mysteries, I became hooked on historical crimes and decided to try writing them myself! It was quite a challenge researching both the history and the settings from Australia, but the novels became a wonderful excuse for lengthy visits to travel around Great Britain and France. As well as writing the Janna Chronicles, my passion for history has also prompted several other published novels and series, including the Shalott trilogy.
Because my character Janna seeks refuge in an abbey while on her quest to find her father, I found it interesting and instructive to read about Abbess Helewise and life at Hawkenlye Abbey in more detail. I also enjoyed trying to second-guess whodunit as the Abbess and her helpmate, lord of the manor, Josse d’Acquin, solve the many crimes that come their way. And I was intrigued by the supernatural elements introduced by Alys Clare, with the abbey being situated so close to the ancient forest in the Great Weald, and how the two worlds often intertwine.
Shortly before his unexpected coronation, King Richard passed a law letting all of England's prisoners go free. Shortly afterwards a young nun is found, gruesomely murdered. Richard swiftly employs an old military colleague of his, Josse d'Acquin, to unravel this hideous mystery. Who could have wanted to kill this innocent young novice, and, more worryingly, why?
Josse goes to Hawkenlye Abbey to find out the answers to these questions. He is having little success until meets the Abbess Helewise, a woman who quickly proves herself to be his equal, both as an amateur sleuth, and as a figure the community…
I studied the Tudor era in high school and have been hooked ever since. It was an era of enormous change. The world was opening up, science was advancing, religion was losing its grip over people, and new ideas were challenging every level of society. Discovery was everywhere–new planets, lands, theories, foods, and trading routes. Society was changing, and women were beginning to have a voice and education. It was also an era of characters–men and some women who made a mark on the world through their wit and wisdom–and some just by being rogues. There are no dull moments in Tudor times.
I love this because Ken Follett is a master storyteller. It spans the Elizabethan era and captures the intrigue, international conspiracies, horrors of religious persecution, and the opening up of the world through trade and exploration.
Yet again, Follett takes you to the town of Kingsbridge and into the world and lives of the characters who live there. You are engaged and invested in them and even feel you know them. I loved the reality, the emotion, the highs of joy, and the lows of sadness.
"Absorbing . . . impossible to resist." -The Washington Post
As Europe erupts, can one young spy protect his queen? #1 New York Times bestselling author Ken Follett takes us deep into the treacherous world of powerful monarchs, intrigue, murder, and treason with his magnificent new epic, A Column of Fire.
In 1558, the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and Protestants, royalty and commoners clash, testing friendship, loyalty, and love.
I’m a scholar, a teacher, and an activist for gender equity. I earned my Ph.D. in medieval history at the University of Virginia. Since then, I've taught at small liberal arts colleges where I’ve had the flexibility to diversify the courses I teach. Among those courses are ancient, medieval, and Islamic history, the History of Magic and Witchcraft, Latin, and Gender and Sexuality Studies. My current gig is at Pacific University Oregon where I established a Gender and Sexuality Studies minor, founded the Center for Gender Equity, and developed an exchange program with Lady Doak college in India for exploring issues regarding gender. I've recently published two books on the intersection of magic, gender, and ritual.
Robert Moore’s history of the growth of institutional persecution in the tenth through thirteen centuries is a classic in medieval history. Moore demonstrates that the oppression of various “undesirables” in society, such as Jews, heretics, lepers, and homosexuals, fits into a pattern of state-building. Particular groups were not targeted for harassment, expropriation, segregation, expulsion, and mass execution because they caused a real threat. On the contrary, they were defenseless, and by playing on common people’s ignorance and stirring up fear, the centralized powers of state and church were able to scapegoat those groups as polluted, deviant, and dangerous.
Having established the powerless as the “other,” the ruling elite were then able to bring them down and appear to be the saviors of the Christian social order. This book does not focus on witches per se, but it explains how in the central Middle Ages governing mechanisms and bureaucratic procedures created…
The tenth to the thirteenth centuries in Europe saw the appearance of popular heresy and the establishment of the Inquisition, the expropriation and mass murder of Jews, and the propagation of elaborate measures to segregate lepers from the healthy and curtail their civil rights. These were traditionally seen as distinct and separate developments, and explained in terms of the problems which their victims presented to medieval society. In this stimulating book, first published in 1987 and now widely regarded as a a classic in medieval history, R. I. Moore argues that the coincidences in the treatment of these and other…
I was an author of history and travel books before turning to children’s fiction. My books for the publishers Pen and Sword tell the stories of the places associated with the Princes in the Tower, the boys who mysteriously disappeared from the Tower of London during the reign of King Richard III, and King Arthur, the semi-mythical King of the Britons during the Dark Ages. So it was obvious that I should use my passion for medieval history when it came to deciding on a setting for my collection of upper middle grade children’s novels. I hope readers enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed researching and writing them!
The great thing about this book is that it combines fast-paced adventure with authentic historical detail – particularly relating to the “classic” medieval themes of castles, battles, and sieges.
It’s a time-travel children’s book that was originally published in 1951 but was republished in 2015, and features as its main character a “contemporary” boy named Peter who, wandering around the ruins of a Welsh castle, finds himself transported back to the 1300s when his Norman ancestors held the castle and he was none other than the oldest son of Sir Roger de Blois.
As the inhabitants of the castle face a rebellion, Peter must learn how to hawk, fight, and shoot a longbow; fascinating aspects of medieval life that come alive on the page thanks to vivid writing by the author.
Young Peter is visiting uncle in the Welsh countryside. When he finds an old knight's gauntlet, he put it on and is transported back in time to the fourteenth century. There he is the supposed son of a great Norman knight, his ancestor. He learns all about the Medieval life, and enjoys every part of his adventure (archery, hawking, jousting), even when danger arrives in the form of attack from the Welsh tribes. He helps his family lift the seige of their castle, but must finally return to his time. Will anyone believe his story? How can he convince them?
In the 1980s, I was living in Spain, teaching high school. On weekends and vacations, I traveled throughout the country, fascinated with the remnants of its flourishing medieval civilization, where Jews, Christians, and Muslims mingled. When I later became a historian, I focused on the rich history of Jewish-Christian-Muslim contact in Spain and throughout the Mediterranean. I also wanted to understand conflict and prejudice, particularly the historical roots of antisemitism and islamophobia in Europe. I have increasingly realized that classical religious texts need to be reread and contextualized and that we need to rethink our ideas about religion and religious conflict.
In the US, when we think about Christianity, we tend not to think much about saints and when we do, they are at best a sort of role model for piety, an antiquated cast of characters in the history of religion. But to early Christians, saints were powerful patrons. The earliest saints were the martyrs put to death by the pagan Roman state: thrown to the lions, massacred by gladiators, executed at the orders of Roman officials. These saints’ bodies and tombs became objects of veneration, purported to produce miracles. In the middle ages, as Christianity became the dominant force in Europe, everyone wanted to benefit from the proximity to these holy men and women. But if you lived in Northern Europe, you didn’t have access to the hundreds of saintly bodies buried in Spain, Italy, or Provence. What to do? Buy them or steal them! In this fascinating book,…
To obtain sacred relics, medieval monks plundered tombs, avaricious merchants raided churches, and relic-mongers scoured the Roman catacombs. In a revised edition of Furta Sacra, Patrick Geary considers the social and cultural context for these acts, asking how the relics were perceived and why the thefts met with the approval of medieval Christians.
