Here are 69 books that I, Julian fans have personally recommended if you like
I, Julian.
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I have lived in North Norfolk for more than thirty years and grown to love its creeks, dunes, crumbling cliffs, and atmospheric church towers. I’ve spent years working in a shed in the garden of my remote flint cottage (originally built as a hovel), writing features for national newspapers and magazines. I’ve visited grand old mansions with eccentric aristocratic owners; become familiar with the setting for L.P. Harley’s The Go-Between; been fascinated by the steam trains and railways that once linked ocean and fen; listened to skeins of geese flying overhead each winter; and been transported by the spiritual dimension in the vast horizontals of land, sea, and sky.
I’ve always loved this book and have paid homage to it by naming the local aristocrat in my novel Lord Hartley.
The book is set in 1900, and adolescent schoolboy Leo spends the long, hot summer with his wealthy schoolfriend Marcus at Brandham Hall, Norfolk. The boy copes with agonising class differences, lost innocence, and eventual breakdown. He is undone in his role as messenger for the daughter of the house, who is having a steamy affair with the tenant farmer next door.
The book was turned into a film, set at Melton Constable Hall (my model for Swan Hall in The Sitter), Heydon, and Norwich.
L.P. Hartley's moving exploration of a young boy's loss of innocence The Go-Between is edited with an introduction and notes by Douglas Brooks-Davies in Penguin Modern Classics.
'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there'
When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings him to a shocking and premature revelation. The…
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 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…
I’m a pragmatist and a problem-solver. As a student of innovation, I draw inspiration from a risk-taker’s approach to attacking a problem. I’ve changed my life drastically from a farmland kid to a global technology CEO and then author. Along the way, I’ve had opportunities to struggle. I’ve found conventional wisdom seldom fixes the problem, so I’ve refined the ability to look for unique paths. I believe women provide the best examples to learn from because they don’t walk into the room bluffing their way to the solution. They credit the resources they tapped for their solution and bring others along in the journey to raise the education level.
I tip my hat to author Marie Benedict. Nearly every book she writes could be on this list. In The Personal Librarian, Belle Da Costa Greene shocks me with her strength to walk into a different world in order to follow her passion for books and art. I can’t imagine being forced to compartmentalize your identity to also be true to yourself.
She solves the problem that blocks blacks from holding professional positions beyond white people’s expectations. She also breaks the role barrier for women as J P Morgan’s Personal Librarian. I’m inspired by Belle’s tenacity and determination for excellence. Alongside the story of an impressive woman, I enjoyed the peek into the process of the extreme wealthy’s acquisition of their collections.
The Instant New York Times Bestseller! A Good Morning America* Book Club Pick!
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR! Named a Notable Book of the Year by the Washington Post!
“Historical fiction at its best!”*
A remarkable novel about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.
In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by…
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…
It’s not my fault! My foremothers were strong, capable, compassionate women. Angry with the silence around women in history, I have been passionate about restoring the voices and contributions of women to history and culture. I have written several books on neglected aspects of women's history that have been translated into 12 languages. While a voracious reader of history, I enjoy historical fiction (when it’s done well). I will never recommend a novel that does not respect this. And I love author’s notes and/or historical notes where the author explains what is real and what is imagined; and resources to learn more about the subject of the novel.
Menewood, the name of the valley where she builds her personal stronghold, picks up where Hild ended. I simply had to find out what happened next! It was a riotous journey of violence, hunger, and work, yet also the raw beauty of her world: trees, birds, valleys, and hills. Her language continues to be rich and abundant with details, good and painful.
The political complexity and even savagery of her time echo our own. Yet Hild remains a unique and complicated woman who is heroic in every sense of the word. Again, the actress who read the book does a stunning job, especially pronouncing some very foreign Saxon names. I look forward to the next book, which I insist must be a series. After all, Hild will become a powerful abbess at Whitby.
In the much anticipated sequel to Hild, Nicola Griffith’s Menewood transports readers back to seventh-century Britain, a land of rival kings and religions poised for epochal change.
Making a much-anticipated return to the world of Hild, Nicola Griffith’s Menewood transports readers back to seventh-century Britain, a land of rival kings and religions poised for epochal change. Hild is no longer the bright child who made a place in Edwin Overking’s court with her seemingly supernatural insight. She is eighteen, honed and tested, the formidable lady of Elmet, now building her personal stronghold in the valley of Menewood.
It’s not my fault! My foremothers were strong, capable, compassionate women. Angry with the silence around women in history, I have been passionate about restoring the voices and contributions of women to history and culture. I have written several books on neglected aspects of women's history that have been translated into 12 languages. While a voracious reader of history, I enjoy historical fiction (when it’s done well). I will never recommend a novel that does not respect this. And I love author’s notes and/or historical notes where the author explains what is real and what is imagined; and resources to learn more about the subject of the novel.
Set in a beguinage in 1310 Paris, which is churning with palace intrigue and the pyres of the Inquisition. I felt drawn into the lives of these beguines as they strive to hold their place in society with strong political forces set against their independent lifestyle.
I felt the smells, sights, and sounds of medieval Paris. An innocent Maheut arrives, unintentionally stirring up life among the beguines as they and the girl try to outwit the Inquisitors. Maheut is hunted, but the beguines are not sure by whom, and she won’t talk. A great resolution.
'A rich, surprising and devastating story of a female institution long-forgotten' Marj Charlier, author of The Rebel Nun
A heretical text, a vengeful husband, a forbidden love...
It's 1310 and Paris is alive with talk of the trial of the Templars. Religious repression is on the rise, and the smoke of execution pyres blackens the sky above the city. But sheltered behind the walls of Paris's great beguinage, a community of women are still free to work, study and live their lives away from the domination of men.
When a wild, red-haired child clothed in rags arrives at the beguinage…
I have lived in North Norfolk for more than thirty years and grown to love its creeks, dunes, crumbling cliffs, and atmospheric church towers. I’ve spent years working in a shed in the garden of my remote flint cottage (originally built as a hovel), writing features for national newspapers and magazines. I’ve visited grand old mansions with eccentric aristocratic owners; become familiar with the setting for L.P. Harley’s The Go-Between; been fascinated by the steam trains and railways that once linked ocean and fen; listened to skeins of geese flying overhead each winter; and been transported by the spiritual dimension in the vast horizontals of land, sea, and sky.
I love this quirky comic 1959 novel about civil servant Jasper, who is sent off to the fictional village of Arcady on the Norfolk/Suffolk border to assess unusual goings-on in a big country house. It has all the fun of Nancy Mitford with top notes of P.G.Wodehouse.
Jasper falls in love with both daughters of eccentric legless aristocrat Lord Flamborough, who lives on a steam train on his own private railway. There is a fete, cricket on the green, and many romantic misunderstandings.
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…
I have lived in North Norfolk for more than thirty years and grown to love its creeks, dunes, crumbling cliffs, and atmospheric church towers. I’ve spent years working in a shed in the garden of my remote flint cottage (originally built as a hovel), writing features for national newspapers and magazines. I’ve visited grand old mansions with eccentric aristocratic owners; become familiar with the setting for L.P. Harley’s The Go-Between; been fascinated by the steam trains and railways that once linked ocean and fen; listened to skeins of geese flying overhead each winter; and been transported by the spiritual dimension in the vast horizontals of land, sea, and sky.
All the wonders of the thousands of geese that fly through the winter across the enormous Norfolk skies, baggy fields, and marshes are here.
Acheson spent lockdown cycling furiously along the coast on his mother’s old red pushbike following the pinkfeet and many other species of geese, describing his great love affair with them.
On his epic journey, he talks to ecologists, farmers, birders, and scientists. He writes with an encyclopaedic knowledge, uncontrolled passion, and great vulnerability.
WINNER - BOOK OF THE YEAR - East Anglian Book Awards 2023
The Telegraph
As seen on BBC Winterwatch 2023
'Honest, human and heart-grabbing. I loved this book so much.' Sophie Pavelle, author of Forget Me Not
'Delightful' Stephen Moss, author of Ten Birds that Changed the World
'Fascinating and thought-provoking' Jake Fiennes, author of Land Healer
'Awe-filled and absorbing' Nicola Chester, author of On Gallows Down
The Meaning of Geese is a book of thrilling encounters with wildlife, of tired legs, punctured tyres and inhospitable weather. Above all, it is the story…
I have lived in North Norfolk for more than thirty years and grown to love its creeks, dunes, crumbling cliffs, and atmospheric church towers. I’ve spent years working in a shed in the garden of my remote flint cottage (originally built as a hovel), writing features for national newspapers and magazines. I’ve visited grand old mansions with eccentric aristocratic owners; become familiar with the setting for L.P. Harley’s The Go-Between; been fascinated by the steam trains and railways that once linked ocean and fen; listened to skeins of geese flying overhead each winter; and been transported by the spiritual dimension in the vast horizontals of land, sea, and sky.
A heroic poem woven around the tides and spires of North Norfolk.
Jess Streeting tells her own story of returning as an adult to Cawston in Norfolk and remembering fun-filled childhood days with her father, an inspirational vicar, in the mid-70s. One single terrible event ripped her father away from her, and only now is she confronting what happened. There are shy girls, smart lads, and a great hammer beam church roof with carved angels.
The foreword is by one of those smart boys, Sir Stephen Fry.
Jessica Streeting and her family - sister Alice, mother Judith and father Revered Paul Farnham - move east in their ancient London taxi to the deep countryside of Norfolk. It is 1975 and the rector has a new position at the church of St Agnes in the village of Cawston. Here they find a world populated by people who embody both the ancient and new of late 20th century rural life. Children of the soil, whose parents work it and depend on it, living a simple life as old as their church. The musical ones. The clever ones. The artists,…
It was during the epistemological craziness around the year 2000 that I christened myself a truth warrior. I was already a scientist. Yet I knew there were other important truths, not of the mind but of the heart, truths we discover and marvel over in the realm of art. So as a biology professor I was granted a sabbatical to write the second of three of my novels, about Pliny the Elder. It is through literature, some of my own making, that I find new ways of seeing and experiencing the world: and of discovering and validating what is true, and what is not.
It’s hard for me to imagine myself in Sister of the Cross’ place, overcome with spiritual experiences so intense they are almost unbearable.
Like Saint Teresa of Avila’s ecstasies or experiences under the influence of psychedelic drugs, ordinary language cannot describe her journeys outside the normative experience of her spiritual sisters. They are, to herself and her community, barely believable.
In the end she faces an unbearable choice: to allow herself to collapse into that other, wonderful world, or be “cured.”
Mark Salzman's Lying Awake is a finely wrought gem that plumbs the depths of one woman's soul, and in so doing raises salient questions about the power-and price-of faith.
Sister John's cloistered life of peace and prayer has been electrified by ever more frequent visions of God's radiance, leading her toward a deep religious ecstasy. Her life and writings have become examples of devotion. Yet her visions are accompanied by shattering headaches that compel Sister John to seek medical help. When her doctor tells her an illness may be responsible for her gift, Sister John faces a wrenching choice: to…
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…
In my book, the character learns that death is not a permanent phenomenon, but something more cyclical – so it’s no surprise that The First Time I Died sits at the top of my list. The novel centers around Garnet McGee, who returns home for the holidays and gets swept away in a cold case involving the death of her boyfriend. That is, until she falls into a frozen pond and drowns. This story is a dark roast coffee with just the right sprinkle of sugar – a tragic death interwoven with memories of a once-in-a-lifetime love.
When Garnet McGee returns to her small Vermont hometown for the holidays, she vows to solve the mystery of the murder which shattered her life ten years ago. Then she dies.
After she's resuscitated, she starts hearing voices, seeing visions and experiencing strange sensations. Are these merely symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and an over-active imagination, or is she getting messages from a paranormal presence?
Garnet has always prided herself on being logical and rational, but trying to catch a killer without embracing her shadow self is getting increasingly difficult.…
