100 Books Like King Hereafter

I love this book so much, I have read it at least three times. It is a classic gothic novel with an eerie setting and interesting characters, including those with psychosis that add to the mystery of he novel.

While the film version is undoubtedly a classic, the novel is by far better.

This was the first series of heroic historical fiction I ever read. Forester’s narratives had the power to pull me into the stories as if I was serving alongside Horatio Hornblower.

The series follows the exploits of seventeen-year-old Midshipman Hornblower in 1794 as he rises in rank and responsibilities to flag rank by 1815. During the course of the series, we watch Hornblower mature from an unsure, bookish teenager to become a self-confident and bold commander. Forester’s ability to meld true historical events and personages into his narratives captured me from the start and is a quality that I strive to accomplish in my own writing. I read these books decades ago and still keep them on my bookshelf for when I need inspiration or want to understand how Forester resolved certain authorly issues.

I love learning how people lived in other times via historical fiction, and Cadfael, a Benedictine monk who practiced healing arts in England in the 1100s, is one of my favorite characters.

I like hearing his opinions about the civil war that raged at that time and the church’s role in it. I like the fact that he’s a bit of a maverick who pushes beyond the bounds of his role as a monk to solve mysteries.  

Set in Cornwall, before and during the Civil War, this is a terrific tale based upon the lives of real people—most notably, perhaps, Sir Richard Grenville the King’s General in the West. It’s the story of the Rashleigh Family and Menabilly—where Daphne du Maurier herself lived.

Well written as one would expect of du Maurier—it’s a beautiful story, beautifully told; absorbing, exciting and hard to put down.

Caroline Todd was born and raised in North Carolina, and Charles lived much of his adult life there. We love the Tarheel state, and Ingles Fletcher exposed us to the history of our home! It, too, speaks to my love of the ocean and the Outer Banks. Inglis Fletcher wrote the almost-forgotten Carolina Series, an early history of the coast of North Carolina, carrying it from its development through the Revolutionary War, with such a wealth of rich detail and a mixture of real people and well-drawn characters that the reader knows them intimately. The story begins with Roanoke Hundred, continuing through Men of Albemarle and Raleigh’s Eden, to The Scotswoman, which tells the story of Flora MacDonald’s years in the state after the Stuart Rebellion. 

I first read this in my teens and was utterly blown away. It tells the story of the young Prince Rupert of the Rhine, most famous for fighting for his uncle, King Charles the First in the English Civil Wars. I knew little about “Roundheads and Cavaliers” at the time but had the vague idea that cavaliers were silly dandies with long hair who deserved to lose, and that Rupert was a mere mercenary desperate to make money out of someone else’s war. The Rupert of this beautifully written and impeccably researched novel is so much more—dashing, yes, and fascinated by war, but also skilled, thoughtful, honourable, loyal, and unexpectedly vulnerable to those he loves. I believed in Ms. Irwin’s Rupert utterly. After my own studies, I still do.

I discovered this in my early teens, which perhaps explains why I didn’t bat an eyelid that the heroine is only fifteen years old when she marries our hero. It’s based on the true story of Harry and Juana Smith during the Peninsular war and is a very appealing novel, brilliantly researched and written in Georgette Heyer’s inimitable, light-hearted style. Harry shines as the brave and lovable young officer. Both main characters, their friends, and Wellington himself, leap off the pages fully formed. I’d probably blackball a book written now about a 25 year old man marrying a fifteen year old, yet I can still easily buy into this one, accepting the different customs of their time and simply enjoying their story. 

I think this is a brilliant and, for me, unforgettable novel. It took an aspect of Ottoman history that I knew about as dry fact and imprinted it on my heart. I was fascinated by the daily lives of varied peoples in one small Ottoman town, how intertwined they were, even writing one language in the alphabet of another.

They tell their own stories of love and ambition, family and friendship, and how the Great War and its aftermath tore them apart. It reads like an epic unfolding through the eyes and voices of ordinary people, humane, evocative, humorous and brutal. 

I love this book because it takes me to the far north (where I used to live).

It takes me back to the wide skies, jagged cliffs, pounding waves, miles of rough open land, and seals gazing at you from every bay and cove. I love reading old traditional tales because, as a writer, they feed me, and give me ideas for new stories.

This is the story of a woman who is having a hard time personally, and she swims to heal herself. She swims to reconnect with her wild nature. And she is brave. She swims in all seasons, all weathers, all conditions. Once she was almost pushed against craggy rocks.

I swim too. I love seals, and know this act of taking to the water - our small bit of wild - to reconnect with my wild nature.

I loved the vulnerability that shines through in this book and I like to read of strong women who dare connect with nature to empower themselves. I feel I do that (a bit) and people like Victoria inspire me to push those wild boundaries a little more.