Here are 87 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…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
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’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…
I’ve always enjoyed the intrigue of the mystery and the constant back and forth of the twists and turns offer in a well-written novel. The tremor of my nerves at the base of my neck as I try to figure out the culprit and their intentions, has always enticed my imagination. To, me, those sensations are mind stimulating, and are only born through reading.
The Tin Roof Blowdown shows us New Orleans, and the surrounding areas the days after Katrina raged havoc. Taking into account the lives that have been traumatized as crime and murders increased nine-fold. Detective David Robicheaux of Iberia Parish finds himself in the midst of a murder in an old-time neighborhood, as he tries to figure out if the murder of a local black boy during a robbery was racially motivated or not. The details and stories of this horrific tragedy show the bleakness of the aftermath and that not only did many reach their deaths, but how many who survived died also. No order exists as Robicheaux tries to unravel his latest mystery.
Hurricane Katrina has transformed New Orleans into a violent wasteland. Criminals capitalise on the devastation as survivors wait for help that never comes.
David Robicheaux - his city in ruins -- is tasked with investigating the murder of a pair of looters: is it a simple case of 'stand-your-ground', or something altogether darker? The dead men's accomplice holds the key but he has disappeared to escape the people hunting him.
As Robicheaux uncovers a brutal catalogue of greed, torture and murder, his own family is threatened, and the ravaged city provides the perfect…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
As an American history major in college, I planned an academic career. But a professor teaching my Civil War seminar said, “You are more interested in history as it affects the present. You should be a journalist.” So I was and am but always viewing current events through history. In my writing, as a journalist and author, I try to place people and places within a time frame, emphasizing links to the past. The Civil War era has loomed large in my work since so much of our story is rooted there. My appetite for historical nonfiction remains undimmed, and wherever I travel, I find that the past is always present.
Imagine a political maverick rejecting the leader and crusade he’d long supported, along with “the Lost Cause,” a credo subscribed to by millions (and generations) of unreconstructed white Southerners. James Longstreet, one of Robert E. Lee’s top generals, I learned, was not one of them.
That surprised me, as he was fully devoted to preserving slavery and supporting secession during the war but became a staunch Unionist afterward, even working with Black officials in his newly adopted home state of Louisiana. If you’ve ever wondered why there are no memorial statues on courthouse lawns to this rebel general, read this book to learn why.
I found this biography of “The Confederate General Who Defied the South” to be well-written, revelatory, and absorbing. It challenges long-held views of the Confederate cause.
Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography American Battlefield Trust Prize for History Finalist
A "compelling portrait" (Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize -winning author) of the controversial Confederate general who later embraced Reconstruction and became an outcast in the South.
It was the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle.
I am a mother, wife, sister, teacher, artist, officer, and writer. I retired from the USAF after serving active duty and as a reservist as a C-130 navigator, executive officer, and maintenance officer for over 20 years. Currently, I teach physical science in northern California. My main passions have always centered around story-telling, and I have been a lifelong dabbler in writing fiction. With my experiences in male-dominated fields like military aviation and my love of science, I feel particularly drawn to tales involving women striving to overcome obstacles in a male-dominated culture. I enjoy traveling, art, and, most of all, lounging on my sofa and reading.
Anne Rice is a wonderful poet disguised as a novelist who creates dreamy and eerie landscapes in this book. She paints backdrops of multiple settings and weaves those landscapes with the mood of her characters: modern and bustling San Francisco to mysterious and moody New Orleans.
The plot involves an analytical science girl who is suddenly immersed in a mysterious past that includes witches and other supernatural beings. It explores the roots of societal misogyny by recapping the history of the Mayfair clan and an unleashed demon spirit that haunts the family, all with a romance lurking in the subplot.
It is written like a dark fairy tale that weaves a contemporary world with supernatural elements. Don’t miss this!
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
On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking. And the witching hour begins...
Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes…
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…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
I am a historian of race and slavery in the lower Mississippi Valley because the region is a fulcrum of United States history. I was always fascinated by the significance of the Mississippi River for American expansion, society, and culture. Ultimately, this region of the country is so deeply influenced by people of African descent that must be included in all histories, and I wanted to share their stories in a particular place during the colonial period. Telling these stories in places where they have commonly been less well represented is very rewarding and it opens more ways to understand the histories of places like Natchez along the Mississippi River.
Kimberly Hanger’s Bounded Lives, Bounded Placesestablishes the role of free people of color in Spanish New Orleans. She traces families and individuals of color throughout the Spanish decades and weaves a rich tapestry of their world in the Crescent City. Women play an important role in her work, and she teases out the way that free people of color sought to fit in the colonial society of Louisiana. While never able to become equal to white people, they created a space above enslaved people that enabled them to participate as ‘almost free’ in New Orleans’s society.
During Louisiana's Spanish colonial period, economic, political, and military conditions combined with local cultural and legal traditions to favor the growth and development of a substantial group of free blacks. In Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, Kimberly S. Hanger explores the origin of antebellum New Orleans' large, influential, and propertied free black-or libre-population, one that was unique in the South. Hanger examines the issues libres confronted as they individually and collectively contested their ambiguous status in a complexly stratified society. Drawing on rare archives in Louisiana and Spain, Hanger reconstructs the world of late-eighteenth-century New Orleans from the perspective of its…
