Here are 100 books that Let's Tell This Story Properly fans have personally recommended if you like
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The Cold War has never been a passion for me, but rather a kind of horror. It was ongoing all through my childhood, and I had nightmares about nuclear attacks and Soviet spies. We lived in the middle of a Suffolk pine forest during the 60s and 70s. There was an American air base on the edge of the forest, surrounded by a tall wire fence. It seemed a spooky place with its concrete bunkers and keep-out signs. Later, as an author on the lookout for good stories, I remembered my childhood terrors and the atmosphere of menace surrounding the base. It gave me an idea for a story set in a similar airbase.
While doing research into Ruby’s backstory, I discovered this book. It reads like a novel but tells the stories of four real women who married American servicemen and left war-torn Britain for the more lavish lifestyle available to Americans in the 50s. But the arduous journey by sea, the intrusive and humiliating health examinations waiting on the other side, and the strangeness of a strange land provided challenges and difficulties. Each woman’s experience is different, but each is determined not to give up on their dream. An epilogue tells of how their marriages and lives worked out. Fascinating.
From the bestselling authors of The Sugar Girls, G.I. Brides weaves together the real-life stories of four women who crossed the ocean for love, providing a moving true tale of romance and resilience.
The 'friendly invasion' of Britain by over a million American G.I.s caused a sensation amongst a generation of young women deprived of male company during the Second World War. With their exotic accents, smart uniforms and aura of Hollywood glamour, the G.I.s soon had the local girls queuing up for a date, and the British boys off fighting abroad turning green…
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 was in my 40s before I began exploring the topic of the British Empire. It came after I realised it explained so much about me (my Sikh identity, the emigration of my parents, my education) and so much about my country (its politics, psychology, wealth…) and yet I knew very little. It turned out that millions of people feel the same way… and I hope I provide an accessible introduction and summary of the massive topic.
In peerless prose, Winder proffers a simple thesis: that Britain is a nation of immigrants.
Despite our German royal family, and all those businesses created by Jews and Indians, we have long been a nation in denial about the immigrant blood flowing through our veins. To such a degree in the Windrush Scandal we have seen actual British citizens being threatened with deportation to countries they barely know.
This important book also challenges the dominant political narrative of my lifetime: that immigrants come here uninvited to take advantage of British hospitality.
If there was one book I could wish onto the National Curriculum, it would be this.
Immigration is one of the most important stories of modern British life, yet it has been happening since Caesar first landed in 53 BC. Ever since the first Roman, Saxon, Jute and Dane leaped off a boat we have been a mongrel nation. Our roots are a tangled web. From Huguenot weavers fleeing French Catholic persecution in the 18th century to South African dentists to Indian shopkeepers; from Jews in York in the 12th century (who had to wear a yellow star to distinguish them and who were shamefully expelled by Edward I in 1272) to the Jamaican who came…
I was Site Supervisor at the Jamestown Rediscovery Project in the late 1990s and early 2000s. My fondness for the people involved with the archaeological excavations is only rivaled by my love for the subject matter that involves the collision of cultures as Chesapeake Algonquians, Spanish Jesuits, and English colonists first encountered one another during the 16th and 17th centuries. Though I have been fortunate to write many books, my first book was on Jamestown, and this topic will always hold a special place in my scholarly heart (there is such a thing, I swear!).
Jennifer Potter’s The Jamestown Brides: The Story of England’s Maids for Virginia is a fascinating account of 56 young English women who left their homes to join the struggling Jamestown Colony in 1621. Though Jamestown is one of the most well-researched historical settlements in the New World, this book offers important new insights into the first permanent English settlement in the Americas and into daily life for women in 17th-century England.
The extraordinary story of the British women who made the perilous journey to Jamestown, Virginia, to become wives for tobacco planters in the New Colony.
In 1621, fifty-six English women crossed the Atlantic in response to the Virginia Company of London's call for maids 'young and uncorrupt' to make wives for the planters of its new colony in Virginia. The English had settled there just fourteen years previously and the company hoped to root its unruly menfolk to the land with ties of family and children.
While the women travelled of their own accord, the company was in effect selling…
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…
My interest in exploration and cross-cultural encounters is rooted in the experience of travel itself, which rests on the disorienting appeal of unfamiliar places and peoples. Exploration was also conducted for more practical reasons; sponsoring agencies sought to open up new markets, access new resources, and gain other material benefits. What interests me about the subject, then, is both its experiential and its instrumental dimensions. What doesn’t interest me is the myth of the explorer as a romantic hero, which was invented mainly to distract from these grubbier aspects of exploration.
Clendinnen’s book is a pleasure to read because it personalizes the first encounter between explorers and indigenous peoples, causing me to care about the two parties and sympathize with the challenges they faced.
Clendinnen tells the story of the first British fleet to arrive in New South Wales, Australia, and the subsequent efforts by Britons and Aborigines to comprehend one another and find grounds of mutual interest. Perhaps her greatest achievement is to provide real insight into the views and aims of the Aborigines, even though they, unlike the British, left no first-hand record of this seminal event.
By humanizing both parties, Clendinnen made me more emotionally invested in this encounter’s tragic outcome.
In January 1788 the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales and a thousand British men and women encountered the people who would be their new neighbors. Dancing with Strangers tells the story of what happened between the first British settlers of Australia and the people they found living there. This 2005 book offers a reading of the earliest written sources, the reports, letters, and journals of the first British settlers in Australia. It reconstructs the difficult path to friendship and conciliation pursued by Arthur Phillip and the local leader 'Bennelong' (Baneelon); and then traces the painful destruction of that…
Steampunk has always been a fascinating genre to me, especially seeing how different creators play with historical elements. But the question that I’m always looking to answer is, “Why is this history different from our own?” What has allowed this alternate Victorian era to create fantastical technology? As I asked this question about my own steampunk books, I found great delight in how other authors have combined magic with their technology to create delightfully refreshing outcomes. I continue to search out these books as I am always surprised at their creativity and novelty.
I was enthralled by the suspense in this book! Multiple levels of mystery–from anti-government plots to supernatural senses–tugged me along and kept me turning pages past my bedtime! I appreciated that the supernatural element was explained scientifically yet subtly enough that I felt really smart putting it together.
The themes of choice, coincidence, and the ripple effect were so fascinating and intriguing, and well-explored in an entertaining, thrilling way.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BETTY TRASK PRIZE 2016 FINALIST FOR THE LOCUS FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2016 An International Bestseller - A Guardian Summer Read - An Amazon Best Book of the Month - A Goodreads Best Book of the Month - A Buzzfeed Summer Read - A Foyles Book of the Month - AHuffington Post Summer Read - A Yorkshire Post Book of the Week In 1883, Thaniel Steepleton returns to his tiny flat to find a gold pocketwatch on his pillow. But he has worse fears than generous burglars; he…
All of my novels explore, in some way, how the characters are affected by trauma or loss, and how they respond to these difficulties over time. This comes partly from my impatience with the notion of “closure” and with the idea that we can ever truly find it after a traumatic event or a significant loss. I’m drawn to fiction and nonfiction that doesn’t shy away from the messiness of finding a way to live with these difficulties, or trying to. In addition to writing fiction, I’ve spent nearly ten years recommending novels and story collections through my Small Press Picks website.
This memoir is one of the most compelling accounts of confronting trauma that I’ve ever read. In the case of the author, the traumas are multiple: fear of deportation due to her “illegal” status; years of sexual abuse by her paternal grandfather; and later in life, the discovery that she carries a gene that leaves her susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer. I was moved as I learned how Talusan found the words—both as a writer and as a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a romantic partner, and a citizen—to speak of these difficulties. Her writing about this journey is both spare and powerful, and it bears re-reading and deep reflection. Whenever I return to this book, I find inspiration.
Winner of The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Grace Talusan’s critically acclaimed memoir The Body Papers, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, powerfully explores the fraught contours of her own life as a Filipino immigrant and survivor of cancer and childhood abuse.
Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather’s nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns…
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…
I’ve always been fascinated by Chinese culture. My great uncle owned an import-export shop in 1920s Montreal and many of the things in his shop decorated my family home. An aunt who worked in Toronto’s Chinatown took me to see a Chinese opera performance and this began my journey to understand Chinese thought and culture first with an MA in Chinese poetry and then with a Ph.D. in East Asian Studies. After I learned that Sun Yatsen had visited Manitoba, where I had moved for work, my attention turned to Chinese nationalism. More than 15 years later, my research and work on KMT culture continues.
Lisa Mar’s rich archival study provides a window into the important role of power brokers in Chinese Canadian political life and culture up until the end of the Second World War. My own book also tells the stories of Chinese Canadian power brokers who were active in political organizations and lobbied for the repeal of the Chinese Immigration Act. Unlike the power brokers of Mars’s study, the men in my study were active and influential beyond Vancouver’s Chinatown and in prairie rural Canada.
Brokering Belonging traces several generations of Chinese "brokers, " ethnic leaders who acted as intermediaries between the Chinese and Anglo worlds of Canada. At the time, most Chinese could not vote and many were illegal immigrants, so brokers played informal but necessary roles as representatives to the larger society. Brokers' work reveals the changing boundaries between Chinese and Anglo worlds, and how tensions among Chinese shaped them.
By reinserting Chinese back into mainstream politics, Brokering Belonging alters common understandings of how legally "alien" groups' helped create modern immigrant nations. Over several generations, brokers deeply embedded Chinese immigrants in the larger…
Growing up in Salt Lake City in the 1950s I was very soon aware that I was living in a world of borders, some permeable and negotiable, and some almost impossible to cross. It was a city of Mormons and a city of those who weren’t; a city of immigrants like my grandparents, and about whom my mother wrote (and wrote well); and a Jim Crow town where Black men and women couldn’t get into the ballroom to hear Duke Ellington play. Finally, it was a city haunted by its Indian past in a state keeping living Indians in its many bleak government reservations. What to make of those borders has been a life-long effort.
Early on David Levinsky, the immigrant Yeshiva boy, the budding intellectual, learns that America is the land of winners and losers, and if he is to be the former, he has to abandon his old self like the ear-locks he left on a barbershop floor in his first days in this new world. To be an alrightnik he must learn to dance the American dance. And dance he does, but his fabulous success as a garment manufacturer has left something unresolved in himself. His search for love at a Jewish resort in the Poconos is a chapter better than anything Philip Roth ever wrote.
Acclaimed by literary critic Carl Van Doren as "the most important of all immigrant novels," The Rise of David Levinsky takes place amid America's biggest and most diverse Yiddish-speaking community during the early 20th century. David Levinsky, a young Hasidic Jew struggling to master the Talmud, seeks his fortune amid the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side. All the energy formerly focused on his religious studies now turns in the direction of rising to the top of the business world, where he discovers the high price of assimilation. Author Abraham Cahan founded and edited the Jewish Daily Forward,…
As an adoptive parent and a Korean-American immigrant, caring for others is my passion. I was only nine months old when I made the journey to America with my parents, so I only felt “American” growing up. It wasn’t until college that I genuinely started to appreciate my heritage. But perhaps, if I had seen more stories that reflected me, sharing family stories with love and finding hope amidst hardship, maybe I would’ve appreciated and even celebrated my difference a little more. That’s why I love sharing my family stories now. Everyone can relate to them on different levels.
I love how hard-working and dedicated this immigrant father is in feeding his family. When the child joins their father early one morning to go fishing for breakfast, hardships from the past are revealed while consistently making the best of today. The resilience of this family gives me strength and hope.
A 2018 Caldecott Honor Book that Kirkus Reviews calls "a must-read for our times," A Different Pond is an unforgettable story about a simple event - a long-ago fishing trip. Graphic novelist Thi Bui and acclaimed poet Bao Phi deliver a powerful, honest glimpse into a relationship between father and son - and between cultures, old and new. As a young boy, Bao and his father awoke early, hours before his father's long work day began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in a Western city. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food,…
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 have a passion for Historical Fiction. It started when I was 12 years old. Before that, I never liked any kind of history. Then, in school, we started learning about King Tut, and I was fascinated. I started having frequent dreams that he would sit and tell me stories about our life together and he believed that I was his wife, Sunni. Into adulthood, I still had these dreams, so I decided to write about the stories that he would tell. Along with exhaustive research, I learned who Sunni (Anukshanamun) was. My book is based on facts mixed with my dreams.
I am actually only part-way into this book, but I love it so far. I have always loved Charles Dickens, and learning more about his family interests me. This book is about his 10th child, Edward. He was a difficult child and was sent to the Outback. He lived among the aborigines and mostly convicts. It is a life story about how he handled it and tried coming out on top. I recommend this book because it gives hope and encouragement to all people. Young and old.
By the Booker-winning author of Schindler's Ark, a vibrant novel about Charles Dickens' son and his little-known adventures in the Australian Outback.
In 1868, Charles Dickens dispatches his youngest child, sixteen-year-old Edward, to Australia.
Posted to a remote sheep station in New South Wales, Edward discovers that his father's fame has reached even there, as has the gossip about his father's scandalous liaison with an actress. Amid colonists, ex-convicts, local tribespeople and a handful of eligible young women, Edward strives to be his own man - and keep secret the fact that he's read none of his father's novels.
