Here are 66 books that Gwendy's Button Box fans have personally recommended if you like
Gwendy's Button Box.
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Since I was a young boy, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of time. I’ve spent hours studying the physics of time as a hobby, and to this day, as an adult, that fascination continues. Whenever the topic of time arises in conversation, I will be the first to contribute my understanding of this mystery that has baffled humankind since the beginning of...well, time.
This book did something amazing to me. I was mesmerized by Finney’s narrative of the past, which negated the method of self-hypnosis he used to bring the protagonist from the future to the past, so it no longer seemed far-fetched.
The narrative recreation of the late 19th century captivated my imagination, enabling me to feel the protagonist’s awe at seeing, feeling, and smelling the past as actual reality. Isn’t this every writer’s dream?
Si Morley is bored with his job as a commercial illustrator and his social life doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So, when he is approached by an affable ex-football star and told that he is just what the government is looking for to take part in a top-secret programme, he doesn't hesitate for too long. And so one day Si steps out of his twentieth-century, New York apartment and finds himself back in January 1882. There are no cars, no planes, no computers, no television and the word 'nuclear' appears in no dictionaries. For Si, it's very like Eden,…
Joth Proctor is an under-employed, criminal defense lawyer based in Arlington, Virginia, where a mix of southern charm, shady business dealings, and Washington, D.C. intrigue pervade the story. Upon the suspicious death of the wife of a close friend, Proctor enters a tangled web of drug and alcohol abuse, real…
When I was about twelve years old I noticed a tattered old paperback in a box at a flea market. Titled Third From the Sun and Other Stories,it featured a colorfully bizarre illustration on the cover along with the author’s name: Richard Matheson. I bought the book—nearly fifty years later I still have it—and so began my journey into the works of one of America’s greatest fantasists. Decades later, I had the honor of working with the man himself, which ultimately led to the creation of my anthology,He Is Legend. Richard is gone now, but his timeless works live on.
Charles Beaumont was close friends with Richard Matheson, and they worked together on such projects as the Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe films and Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone. Beaumont’s stories are as rich and varied as Matheson’s, with delightfully witty language and fantastic plot twists. If you love classic Matheson short stories like “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and “Death Ship,” you’re bound to love Beaumont.
That Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone is only natural: for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. So take one uneasy step and fall headlong into his world: a world where lions stalk the plains, classics cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including five stories that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.
When I was about twelve years old I noticed a tattered old paperback in a box at a flea market. Titled Third From the Sun and Other Stories,it featured a colorfully bizarre illustration on the cover along with the author’s name: Richard Matheson. I bought the book—nearly fifty years later I still have it—and so began my journey into the works of one of America’s greatest fantasists. Decades later, I had the honor of working with the man himself, which ultimately led to the creation of my anthology,He Is Legend. Richard is gone now, but his timeless works live on.
The Ritual of Illusion is a brilliant short novel by Richard Christian Matheson (Richard Matheson’s son). Written entirely in dialogue from the points of view of numerous different witnesses, it tells the story of Hollywood star Sephanie Vamore’s strange rise and bizarre fall. This is Sunset Boulevard Matheson-style…another generation of Matheson, that is.
A sinister love letter to the movies, acclaimed author Richard Christian Matheson’s The Ritual of Illusion is a novella of modern fear about where stars truly come from. Oscar-winning film siren, Sephanie Vamore, meteors to iconic fame … but like cinema itself, nothing is as it appears. The fifty witnesses to her mythic ascent and bizarre fate are film royalty … many based on Hollywood glitterati; directors, stars, agents, studio heads, screenwriters, lovers, producers.
Widescreen with lies and revelation, Vamore’s story is told Rashomon-style with dialogue alone—each hypnotic character adding poignant or lurid details to the shocking truth of what…
Former model Kira McGovern picks up the paint brushes of her youth and through an unexpected epiphany she decides to mix ashes of the deceased with her paints to produce tributes for grieving families.
Unexpectedly this leads to visions and images of the subjects of her work and terrifying changes…
When I was about twelve years old I noticed a tattered old paperback in a box at a flea market. Titled Third From the Sun and Other Stories,it featured a colorfully bizarre illustration on the cover along with the author’s name: Richard Matheson. I bought the book—nearly fifty years later I still have it—and so began my journey into the works of one of America’s greatest fantasists. Decades later, I had the honor of working with the man himself, which ultimately led to the creation of my anthology,He Is Legend. Richard is gone now, but his timeless works live on.
If someone asked me to name the greatest American horror story writer of the second half of the twentieth century, I would say “Richard Matheson” without hesitation. But if I were allowed two names, the other—equally without hesitation—would be Dennis Etchison, a writer who resembles Matheson in his economy of language, Southern California settings, and intense, twisty plots. His stories are as dark and disturbing as Matheson’s—and that’s really saying something.
In this second printing, Cycatrix Press is proud to bring the highly acclaimed collection Dennis Etchison's It Only Comes Out at Night, previously only available as a limited-edition hardcover (out of print) from Centipede Press to an affordable trade paperback with the addition of previously uncollected fiction, new illustrations, and unpublished appreciations by fellow authors.
More about It Only Comes Out at Night: Few writers of horror fiction are held in such high regard as Dennis Etchison. This career retrospective takes his best fiction, culled from nearly fifty years in the field.
Dennis Etchison (1943-2019) was an American writer and…
Steven Ramirez is a lifelong fan of the movies—especially gripping thrillers and nail-biting horror. An award-winning author, he wrote the supernatural suspense series, Sarah Greene Mysteries, and the horror-thriller series, Tell Me When I’m Dead. His latest novel is Faithless, a thriller. A former screenwriter, Steven lives in Los Angeles with his family. He enjoys Mike and Ikes with his Iced Caffè Americano, doesn’t sleep on planes, and wishes Europe were closer.
The way the author describes Sammy’s state of mind as he tells the story—accompanied often by wry, even side-splitting observations—drew me into this strange family, wanting more than anything to learn how they would extricate themselves from their collective morass. If you like ghost stories that are fresh and modern and feature plenty of humor, then I highly recommend From Away.
Sammy Kehoe, his sister, Charlotte, and her four-year-old daughter, Maggie, are all each other have left since the car accident that killed the rest of their family. When they visit their beloved old family home on remote Fox Island, Maine, Sammy and Charlotte each have relationship sparks with island locals. But the budding idyll is shattered when Sammy and Maggie’s unexplained abilities to “see things” are put to the test when dangerous ghosts from the past resurface. At first, this novel about an unusual and loving family draws readers in with warmth and intrigue―and then it builds with suspense that…
Mid-life for women is many things, including greatly underrepresented in the stories around us. I am forever in awe of the women around me as they continue to rise to each crazy occasion that life presents, managing and coping with wisdom, humor, and strength. This is why I am recommending these books about kickass middle-aged women. I wrote a novel inspired by some of my own challenges in mid-life. It was published by Atria Books, Simon & Schuster. I hope you love the recommendations as much as I do and that you’ll be inspired to check out my book as well.
I love this book because it is not afraid to look at deep sadness and disappointment in an honest and complex way. This novel is a collection of short stories that all take place in a coastal Main town and are connected by the large presence of Olive.
Olive is intelligent, acerbic, and abrasive. She is anything but easy. I appreciate the compassion Strout gives her imperfect characters as they struggle with their messy lives. I grew to care more for Olive as I traveled her rocky path with her, even as she was often the one to throw down the rocks before her.
This is a quiet book, which I read in a quiet way. It brought me comfort in its illumination of uncomfortable things.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • The beloved first novel featuring Olive Kitteridge, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Oprah’s Book Club pick Olive, Again
“Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You’ll never forget her.”—USA Today
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post Book World • USA Today • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Seattle Post-Intelligencer • People • Entertainment Weekly • The Christian Science Monitor • The Plain Dealer • The Atlantic • Rocky Mountain News • Library Journal
On the surface, Dawn Easton seems to have it all. Heiress to a fashion empire, and with a gorgeous younger boyfriend, there’s almost nothing she can’t have. Yet, despite her wealth and power, there’s one thing that’s remained out of reach her entire life—giving birth. As her 40th birthday inches…
I never stopped reading children’s books and started writing my own when I hit the age of 40. I gravitate toward crisp drawing styles and illustrations that bring out the magic in the everyday. These books are a few of my favorites.
The fascinating thing about this book is the overall lack of a plot.
It pairs McCloskey’s crisp pen-and-ink drawings with simple prose to evoke the bucolic feeling of life on the coast of Maine. Although not as universally known as McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings or Blueberries for Sal, this entry can bring one to a calm place and let them breathe for a while.
Today is a specidal day for Sal because she gets to go to Buck's Harbour with her dad. But when she wakes up to brush her teeth with her baby sister, she discovers something shocking.... Her tooth is loose!
William Klingaman is the author of ten books, most recently The Darkest Year: The American Home Front, 1941-1942, and The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History. He holds a Ph.D. In American History from the University of Virginia, and has taught at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland.
No one wrote better than E. B. White, and no one captured the essence of daily life on the home front better than White in this collection of essays. “This is my country and my night,” he wrote from his farm in Maine, “this is the blacked-out ending to the day, the way they end a skit in a revue.” Yet White acknowledged that it was nearly impossible for him or anyone else to truly convey all the ways that the war was changing ordinary Americans. “You write something that sounds informative, throwing the words around in the usual manner, then the thing explodes in your hands, and you look down at your hands,” he explained. “As though you had crushed a light bulb and were bleeding slightly.”
Too personal for an almanac, too sophisticated for a domestic history, and too funny and self-doubting for a literary journal, One Man's Meat can best be described as a primer of a countryman's lessons a timeless recounting of experience that will never go out of style.
As a born and bred Mainer, there are dozens of great books I could recommend set in the Pine Tree State. But the five I’ve curated capture, for me, the diversity of the Maine culture, from the long-gone loggers who made their living from the woods to the often-overlooked Indigenous communities to the mill towns struggling to survive. When a non-Mainer thinks of our state, what usually comes to mind are quaint coastal villages, lighthouses, lobster… And while those things are part of what makes Maine the place it is, there exists, both on and off the page, plenty of other experiences and histories to discover here.
Addiction, grief, generational trauma… all these things exist in Talty’s work. But his prose lifts all that heaviness and makes it not only bearable, but often strangely beautiful.
His characters are raw and real, and his skill with dialogue is enviable. I love the way the book is structured as a collection of linked stories, each one informing and contributing to the rest. The book is set on the Penobscot reservation in Maine, an area often overlooked both in literature and reality.
Talty is a natural storyteller, and his voice rings with wisdom, dry humor, and honesty, giving readers rare insight into this community.
Winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, American Academy of Arts & Letters Sue Kaufman Prize, The New England Book Award, and the National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree
A Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Chautauqua Prize 2023, and Barnes & Noble Discover Book Prize
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, NPR, Esquire, Oprah Daily, and more
Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be…
Anita Walsh, still reeling from her husband's sudden death, finds herself haunted not only by grief, but his Negative Image, a new phenomenon where the deceased prey on those they loved in life, turning intimate memories into nightmares. This spectral figure uses their shared past as a weapon, systematically dismantling…
I've read mystery books since I was a kid in a small Iowa town and my
mother was on the library board and in charge of reviewing books for
purchase. She would bring home mysteries and I grew up reading about
James Bond, The Saint, Miss Marple, and many, many other 'classic'
detectives. I wrote my first mystery 'novel' when I was ten and it took
me forty more years to finally decide to get serious about it. I found I
wanted to write about an older demographic—my heroes and heroines are
usually in their 40s or 50s. I try to make my characters believable and
down-to-earth—except they get involved in the occasional murder!
When I first started writing mysteries, I realized that a different approach had to be used when I wrote in a first-person point of view. Only those clues that are seen by the main character can be shown to the reader. So that might limit what I, the author, can use as clues.
In Doiron's book, the main character is in law enforcement, and he has access to methods and information that a non-LEO person can access. But despite that Mike Bowditch, the main character, often doesn't realize that he's found a clue or a key to a mystery until it almost slips out of his hands. That makes him a person I can relate to.
And I also like that he explains a lot about policies and procedures just as he decides he's not going to follow said procedures.
While on vacation, Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch receives a strange summons from Billy Cronk, one of his oldest friends and a man he had to reluctantly put behind bars for murder. Billy wants him to investigate a new female prison guard with a mysterious past, and Mike feels honor-bound to help his friend. But when the guard becomes the victim in a brutal attack at the prison, he realises there may be a darker cover-up at play - and that Billy and his family might be at risk.
Then Mike receives a second call for help, this time from a…
