Here are 86 books that Harlow fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m the tenth kid in my family. I can’t think of a single part of my personality that wasn’t defined by my interactions with my siblings, then later their partners, and then later their children. The thing about family is that, yes, it’s a source of stress and even trauma, but I’ve also found it the truest path to not just meaning in life but something like salvation. I love stories that put us at that tipping point, in part because I think most of us live there, whether we realize it or not.
I love this book because it made me think about myself as a parent. The premise here is crazy simple—a gunman seems about to kill two girls but takes one, leaving the other. I felt horrible for Meredith, crushed by survivor’s guilt, but my real sympathies fell to her mom, Claire.
At that point in my life, my sons were adolescents, and I was viewing their healthy independence as something I was losing. I was totally taken by the heart-rich, wise exploration of what we do when someone we love goes somewhere we can’t follow.
The breakout novel from the critically acclaimed author of the short story collections Who I Was Supposed to Be and Why They Run the Way They Do—when a middle school girl is abducted in broad daylight, a fellow student and witness to the crime copes with the tragedy in unforgettable ways.
What happens to the girl left behind?
A masked man with a gun enters a sandwich shop in broad daylight, and Meredith Oliver finds herself ordered to the filthy floor, where she trembles face to face with her nemesis, Lisa Bellow—the most popular girl in her eighth grade class.…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I’m the tenth kid in my family. I can’t think of a single part of my personality that wasn’t defined by my interactions with my siblings, then later their partners, and then later their children. The thing about family is that, yes, it’s a source of stress and even trauma, but I’ve also found it the truest path to not just meaning in life but something like salvation. I love stories that put us at that tipping point, in part because I think most of us live there, whether we realize it or not.
I love this book because I don’t cry easily. Decades before the whole world knew Barbara Kingsolver as the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Demon Copperhead, I found a beat-up copy of this book at a thrift shop in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
I bought it for a buck, and I’ve never spent a better dollar. I swooned to the simple story of Taylor, a teen fleeing home, and Turtle, the abandoned child who changes her life. The family they make is one of my favorite in all of literature.
The Bean Trees is bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver's first novel, now widely regarded as a modern classic. It is the charming, engrossing tale of rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer, who only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant. She succeeds, but inherits a 3-year-old native-American little girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Tucson, Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new life in the West.
Written with humour and pathos, this highly praised novel focuses on love and friendship, abandonment and belonging as Taylor, out of money and seemingly…
I’m the tenth kid in my family. I can’t think of a single part of my personality that wasn’t defined by my interactions with my siblings, then later their partners, and then later their children. The thing about family is that, yes, it’s a source of stress and even trauma, but I’ve also found it the truest path to not just meaning in life but something like salvation. I love stories that put us at that tipping point, in part because I think most of us live there, whether we realize it or not.
I love this book because it shouldn’t work. On paper, the notion that an introverted boy’s quasi-imaginary friend is what holds together a dysfunctional family is a lost cause. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to try writing it. But that’s just what Elizabeth Genovise did.
It’s a saga of broken kids clinging to one another in the shadow of broken parents, all hoping against hope for the most unlikely of saviors. I found it sometimes weird and whacky but always profoundly insightful.
Forty-one-year-old Abra, the narrator of Third Class Relics, gathers with her brother and cousins for an uncomfortable dinner the night after her father's wake. No one speaks of the one missing family member-Jeffrey, the youngest cousin-nor of his doppelganger, Rupert, whose name Abra's father cried out just before his death. When the evening comes to a close, Abra finds herself prowling her family's history against her will. As she journeys through their darkest chapters, she is forced to confront the complex role Jeffrey/Rupert played in both healing and destroying them all, as well as the significance of her relationship with…
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’m the tenth kid in my family. I can’t think of a single part of my personality that wasn’t defined by my interactions with my siblings, then later their partners, and then later their children. The thing about family is that, yes, it’s a source of stress and even trauma, but I’ve also found it the truest path to not just meaning in life but something like salvation. I love stories that put us at that tipping point, in part because I think most of us live there, whether we realize it or not.
I love this book because I think of it every time I go up on a ladder. That’s where Doug Merritt, the father of the family on the precipice here, goes when he needs to clear his mind.
I laughed out loud reading it, and more than once I found myself thinking about my own parenting, how the size and scope of that obligation is totally out of whack with your ability to influence kids at a certain point. Like I did with my sons, Merritt does his best to hold things together, and if he doesn’t entirely succeed, he sure as hell doesn’t fail. Maybe that’s enough.
Doug Merit's middle name is damage control. Working in public relations for GE, he's ready for any challenge: a teenaged son who still plays with trains, a thirteen-year-old daughter who hasn't spoken to him in six months, a first-grader who is a little too devoted to animal rights, and a wife who just might have whispered a month or two ago she didn't love him. No problem! He's got it covered.
But the events set in motion on a snowy night will put Doug's carefully constructed version of reality to the test.
I am an Australian writer living in Europe. Returning to my hometown on the East Coast of Australia post-COVID, I confronted relentless rain and king tides threatening the beach promenade cafes. Witnessing the potential demise of these familiar spots sparked the idea for my novel. Opening with a dystopian scene of future tourists exploring submerged coastal cafes with snorkels, my work delves into the realm of "cli-fi" (climate fiction). Against the backdrop of imminent climate danger, my characters, a lovable yet obstinate Australian ensemble, navigate a world profoundly altered by the impacts of climate change. I hope what I have written is an exaggeration. I fear it may not be.
Humans can be brave, and humans can be stubborn. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is both.
Refusing to leave New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina built strength out at sea in 2005, he stays and finds himself stranded in an eerily flooded city, seemingly alone and without help. He paddles the watery “streets” in an old kayak and finds others who could not or did not leave, offering help, and for his efforts, is arrested as a suspected terrorist and looter.
This book is not a simple tale of an everyday hero. We meet a character that downplays the dangers of a brewing storm but, despite his stubbornness, is also capable of great selflessness and bravery. The negligence of the institutions we expect to protect us is an insidious theme that runs throughout.
WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD AND THE LA TIMES BOOK AWARD
'Masterly. Brilliantly crafted, powerfully written and deftly reported' Guardian
The urgent and unforgettable true story of post-Katrina New Orleans . . .
In August 2005, as Hurricane Katrina blew in, the city of New Orleans has been abandoned by most citizens. But resident Abdulrahman Zeitoun, though his wife and family had gone, refused to leave. For days he traversed an apocalyptic landscape of flooded streets by canoe. But eventually he came to the attention of those 'guarding' this drowned city. Only then did Zeitoun's nightmare really begin.
I’ve loved jazz ever since I learned to play the clarinet as a child. My two great loves in life have been music and books, so it made sense to combine the two things and write novels with a link to jazz. These books are some of my favourites with a jazz theme. I promise that even if you’re not a jazz fan, these are all excellent novels, to be enjoyed with or without music playing in the background!
A young Louis Armstrong as an amateur detective – if that concept doesn’t draw you in, I’m not sure what will!
The year is 1919 and there’s a terrifying serial killer on the loose in New Orleans. This is the first installment in Celestin’s City Blues Quartet. I love all four books but The Axeman is probably my favourite because of the New Orleans vibe. You get jazz, mafia, Pinkerton detectives, crooked cops, and a taste of the macabre.
"Ray Celestin skillfully depicts the desperate revels of that idiosyncratic city and its bizarre legends in his first novel, THE AXEMAN." - The New York Times Sunday Book Review (Marilyn Stasio, Crime Columnist)
The Axeman stalks the streets of New Orleans...
In a town filled with gangsters, voodoo, and jazz trumpets sounding from the dance halls, a sense of intoxicating mystery often beckons from the back alleys. But when a serial killer roams the sultry nights, even the corrupt cops can't see the clues. That is, until a letter from the Axeman himself is published in the newspaper, proclaiming that…
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 a reference librarian, I love doing research for myself and others. By reading a well-written historical novel, we can learn about the past and compare and contrast it to our present. All but the last of my choices have strong female characters who must overcome the customs of their time. The struggle goes on today. Let these books remind you of how far we have come and how far we have to go.
This is another story of Reconstruction in the Deep South but told from a very different angle.
Three girls, the master’s daughter, his mulatto offspring, and his former slave who seeks to buy her small parcel of land, are totally dependent on the man for their futures, but he has disappeared into Texas. Despite their youth and sex, they go off to find him. The book begins in modern times and flashes back to this story.
I could not wait for the author to continue telling their tale.
From the author of the No.1, two million-copy bestseller Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic story of a family separated, their search for answers, and an epic journey to reunite the missing . . .
Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest. For heiresses Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery's end, the pilgrimage westward reignites an…
I’ve been a connoisseur of all things terrifying and fantastical since I was 5, and so scared of my Baba Yaga book downstairs I couldn’t sleep. I pursued the delicious fear of a well-written monster through my teens and into adulthood but found that so many books within the horror and fantasy genres are aimed at younger readers. So I wrote the books I wanted to read. I’d always planned to write, but it was developing extreme anxiety that inspired me to nurture my creative side and finally do it. I was having terrible nightmares at the time, and these awful dreams became the central scenes of my novels.
In her final novel of the Mayfair Witch Trilogy, Anne Rice really seduced me with the concept of the sympathetic monster. Ash, her Taltos character is inhuman, but so pure and love-filled, I understood that an inhuman character can be used to highlight humanity’s greatest strengths. Around the creation of her creatures, she wove a history of fiction and legend and Celtic history that I found fascinating. I read this book almost thirty years ago, and it’s still one of those books that I hark back to as inspiration.
SOON TO BE A MAJOR TV SHOW, FROM THE NETWORK BEHIND THE WALKING DEAD
'[W]hen I found Rice's work I absolutely loved how she took that genre and (...) made [it] feel so contemporary and relevant' Sarah Pinborough, bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes
'[Rice wrote] in the great tradition of the gothic' Ramsey Campbell, bestselling author of The Hungry Moon
The Mayfair Witches face an unimaginable new threat: the Taltos - the giant race gifted with preternatural knowledge, who breed in minutes and live for centuries. The race that spawned the monster-innocent Lasher, who gave the witches their power…
I have loved historical novels since my mom first read Anne of Green Gables to me as a kid. They are the novels I reach for first and love the most. The creative glimpse into other times and lives is, to me, the most exciting reading experience. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do. My latest book – The Sunshine Girls is a dual narrative timeline, set in the current day and the 1960s-1980s.
Amanda Skenandore’s beautiful and insightful novel about a silent film star who was sent to live in a Louisiana Leper Colony in the 1920s. The book is rich and full of surprising historical details. While it might seem like a downer – it is funny and heartwarming, with a beautiful coming-of-age story and romance at its heart. Absolutely fascinating.
The glamorous world of a silent film star’s wife abruptly crumbles when she’s forcibly quarantined at the Carville Lepers Home in this page-turning story of courage, resilience, and reinvention set in 1920s Louisiana and Los Angeles. Based on little-known history, this timely book will strike a chord with readers of Fiona Davis, Tracey Lange, and Marie Benedict.
Based on the true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout…
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'm a contemporary African American writer born and raised in the South. It was this sense of place that has shaped my artistic sensibilities. I was in my mid-twenties, searching, seeking for answers and direction on my own, when other Black southern writers were instrumental in pointing me in the right direction: Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, Ernest J Gaines, Alice Walker, Arna Bontemps, Albert Murray, just to name a handful. Their writings were revelatory. The same issues that they were dealing with a generation earlier were the same ones I was struggling with every day. It opened my eyes, mind, heart and creativity to put into perspective what I was feeling.
This is where prose and poetry blossom into memoir. James’ account of growing up impoverished with an absentee father and how a small rural Louisiana community became her surrogate family is both moving and insightful. She engages in an exercise of self-examination of the things that made her a writer and the person she has come to be. There is much grace and beauty in these pages as she seeks a path of truth and understanding and mending a broken relationship with her estranged father. This story is both personal and universal and provides understanding of the human condition. There is much poverty, pain, humor, blues, disappointment, and love in this book. Always love.
Table Scraps and Other Essays is for all intents and purposes memoir writing. At the heart of the twenty-two true stories is an African American female who, as a child, along with her siblings, must learn the value of hard work as hired hands. James's young spirit is often at odds with her growing family, especially with a father figure who ignores his duties as husband and provider. She has a strong, loving mother who insists on keeping the family together. James learns to trust and depend on the "guardians" of her small Louisiana community--teachers who are eventually forced to…
