Here are 90 books that Lucky You fans have personally recommended if you like
Lucky You.
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From when I first got lost in a book—I think it was Herman Wouk’s Winds of War—I discovered I really loved stories which thrust me into their world. From favorites like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which I read to my kids, to Peter Benchley’s Jaws, I loved getting lost in the snowy world of Narnia or out in the water in the small boat with Brody. When I read any new author, I notice how well they paint the scene and how skillfully they describe the what and where of their tale. Does the story capture the details, idiosyncrasies, and nuances of this place and time? If it does, I’m in.
I love listening to Evanovich’s hilarious tales of Stephanie Plum’s misadventures as a wannabe bail/bondsman. These books are my wife’s and my favorite distraction on long road trips. While her mysteries may be thin, her characters are so real and her stories so crazy, I didn’t miss the whodunit. I included her in this August list because she captures the seedy side of Trenton, New Jersey, with amazing clarity, even while laughing at the place.
I picture myself riding in one of her cars—which she destroys regularly—along with her friend, the former ho, LuLu, hair flowing in the stinky wind blowing off deserted warehouses, sleezy girl joints and questionable car repair shops. This is the first in a series that is now at 31.
Stephanie Plum is down on her luck. She's lost her job, her car's on the brink of repossession, and her apartment is fast becoming furniture-free.
Enter Cousin Vinnie, a low-life who runs a bail-bond company. If Stephanie can bring in vice cop turned outlaw Joe Morelli, she stands to pick up $10,000. But tracking down a cop wanted for murder isn't easy . . .
And when Benito Ramirez, a prize-fighter with more menace than mentality, wants to be her friend Stephanie soon knows what it's like to be pursued. Unfortunately the best person to protect her just happens to…
“It’s going to be a good year for readers if William Durbin’s funny and timely new novel is an example of what’s to come.” Book Editor, St. Paul Pioneer Press
Luke Collins, an eighth grader who’s previously been a slacker in school, becomes engaged when an English assignment leads him…
Born and raised in New York City, my plans to become an artist got sidetracked by an interest in psychology. While in school, I graduated college, majoring in Fine Arts and Psychology, combining my two interests. I continued my education as a Graphic Designer at The School of Visual Arts. I worked as a freelance graphic artist for a while before starting a career in the creative arts therapies. While I enjoy a dark, brooding, suspenseful mystery, sometimes I need a little humor to round out those dark edges. Despite some bad things happening in the world, most people do silly, goofy, and often stupid things and you have to laugh.
Though David Handler’s The Cold Blue Blood plays out much like a traditional whodunit, it has a dash of East Coast humor. The Berger and Mitry Mysteries have been one of my favorites for years. Handler’s strong descriptive style, unique characters, and colorful book titles always had me searching for the next installment. Handler’s main character, Mitch Berger, a New York City film critic, plays the perfect fish out of water, now living on a wealthy private island called Big Sister. A dead body in his garden introduces him to his other partner in crime, Lieutenant Desiree Mitry. This odd couple is both charming and disarming as they sleuth through the snobs of Big Sister.
Mitch Berger, a top film critic with a major New York newspaper at a surprisingly young age, has become almost a recluse since his wife died one year ago. He spends his time secluded in his apartment or in the dark recesses of a screening room. Although he continues to dazzle moviegoers and the film elite with his criticisms, his editor and good friend is alarmed about him. As a scheme to pull him out of the doldrums of his grief, she gives him a non-film assignment - to do a color story on the wealthy and social homeowners on…
Born and raised in New York City, my plans to become an artist got sidetracked by an interest in psychology. While in school, I graduated college, majoring in Fine Arts and Psychology, combining my two interests. I continued my education as a Graphic Designer at The School of Visual Arts. I worked as a freelance graphic artist for a while before starting a career in the creative arts therapies. While I enjoy a dark, brooding, suspenseful mystery, sometimes I need a little humor to round out those dark edges. Despite some bad things happening in the world, most people do silly, goofy, and often stupid things and you have to laugh.
The first time I read David Rosenfelt’s Andy Carpenter series, I immediately thought that Groucho Marx had moved to North Jersey, gone into law, and adopted a rescue dog. Rosenfelt’s reluctant lawyer hero goes at his oddball cases with a collection of even odder associates. Dry, witty, and a little self-effacing, Rosenfelt’s style brings to life a cast of characters that made me reluctant to put his books down. I started the series with the third book, Bury the Lead, first but quickly caught up. The first book in the series is Open and Shut. Mystery and animal lovers will find a place in their heart and funny bone.
Defence attorney Andy Carpenter has been successfully avoiding taking on new cases until his sometime friend and newspaper owner, Vince Sanders, calls and asks him for a favour. Daniel Cummings, Vince's star reporter, is being used as the mouthpiece for a serial killer. He has been cooperating with the police but Vince wants to make sure both the newspaper and Daniel are protected. Andy thinks the case be a piece of cake...until Daniel is found unconscious in park next to the killer's latest victim. Daniel claims he intended to stop the murder but the police arrest him. Now, with the…
This book is a spy novel with a satirical edge which will take you on a heart-pumping journey through the streets, mountains, jungles, and beaches of Colombia. Our Man in Havana meets A Clear and Present Danger.
Born and raised in New York City, my plans to become an artist got sidetracked by an interest in psychology. While in school, I graduated college, majoring in Fine Arts and Psychology, combining my two interests. I continued my education as a Graphic Designer at The School of Visual Arts. I worked as a freelance graphic artist for a while before starting a career in the creative arts therapies. While I enjoy a dark, brooding, suspenseful mystery, sometimes I need a little humor to round out those dark edges. Despite some bad things happening in the world, most people do silly, goofy, and often stupid things and you have to laugh.
My new best find is the Lacey Luzzi Mysteries by Gina LaManna. Along with smart titles and snappy dialogue, I fell in love with almost stripper Lacey Luzzi and her mafia family. The first book is a lovely introduction to unforgettable characters. Reminiscent of Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, La Manna introduces us to gangsters, secret family history, questionable friends (Meg!), and her cousin. It’s a light and easy read for those dipping a toe into humorous cozy mysteries.
Lacey Luzzi's roller coaster of a life has been filled with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. She just never expected the lows to be so...sparkly.
After falling on her face during an attempt to follow in her recently deceased mother's stripper boots, Lacey realizes she is not cut out for life onstage. She sets out on a yearlong investigation to find her true family, never expecting she'll find it with a capital F.
With a rumbling stomach, a need for money ("check engine" lights don't fix themselves!), and a conscience that operates at 78 percent on…
I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.
I first read this book as a student in the 1990s, and it has always stayed with me, becoming more and more relevant as time has gone by.
Covering films like Rambo: First Blood Part II, Red Dawn, and Top Gun, magazines such as Soldier of Fortune, weekend paintballers, the NRA, and the foreign policy (mis)adventures of the Reagan and Bush administrations, alongside the activities of various white supremacists, Gibson’s book is a wholly enlightening account of the ongoing appeal of guns, violence, paramilitarism, and what we would now call “toxic masculinity” in American life.
Argues that America's defeat in Vietnam and challenges to the status quo have created a crisis in American identity, and have given birth to a reactionary new war culture
I’m a historian of the African American freedom struggle with more than two decades of experience researching and teaching on this topic. My work focuses especially on the connections between race and class and the ways Black people have fought for racial and economic justice in the twentieth century. I write books and articles that are accessible for general audiences and that help them to understand the historical origins of racism in the United States, the various forms it has taken, and the reasons why it has persisted into the present.
In colonial North America, plantation owners were equal opportunity exploiters who mistreated European and African laborers alike, and workers frequently resisted by running away, stealing or destroying property, and engaging in occasional rebellions. Theodore Allen explains how colonial elites invented America’s racial divide through a series of laws that ended up enslaving most African Americans for life and reserving the rights of freedom and citizenship for European Americans. Since then, race and class have been intertwined, laying the basis for white supremacist practices and beliefs that shaped the development of the United States and continue to allocate wealth and power unequally today.
On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, Martin Luther King declared his dream of a racially integrated, non-discriminatory American society. Some three centuries before, that dream had in many ways been a reality, since white skin privilege was recognized neither in law nor in the social practices of the labouring classes. But by the early decades of the eighteenth century, racial oppression would be the norm in the plantation colonies, and African Americans would continue to suffer under its yoke for more than two centuries. In this second volume of his acclaimed study of the origins of racial…
Keelan Cavanaugh is fat. That’s why the government put him in prison.
They placed him in a Calorie Reduction Centre (CRC), where trained staff work to help him and many others slim down. Well, that was the intention, anyway. The powers that be had decided chubby citizens must either go…
For most of my life, I have dedicated myself to confronting, combatting, or deconstructing white supremacy. It impacts everyone. Much of my work is about highlighting the ways Black people have refused and resisted racial discrimination, violence, and harm. We can never have too many tools, and equally important for me was being able to have tools that achieved their purpose. I wrote We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance to remind readers that there has never been a time in the history of this country when Black people have not fought back against their oppression.
When I first read this book, I could not put it down. Taylor is a beautiful storyteller, and it’s no surprise that her book was a finalist for the LA Times book award.
Taylor teaches readers that during slavery sometimes revenge was justice or the closest thing to it. Story after story, we are introduced to women who suffered terribly at the hands of their enslaver. But in each case, women fought back, plotted, and sought revenge against their perpetrators.
What I appreciated about the book is that it pushes back against the idea that Black women were passive or even nonviolent. This book gives us a portrait into the personal relationships that ended in bloodshed because of the violence of slavery.
From the colonial through the antebellum era, enslaved women in the US used lethal force as the ultimate form of resistance. By amplifying their voices and experiences, Brooding over Bloody Revenge strongly challenges assumptions that enslaved women only participated in covert, non-violent forms of resistance, when in fact they consistently seized justice for themselves and organized toward revolt. Nikki M. Taylor expertly reveals how women killed for deeply personal instances of injustice committed by their owners. The stories presented, which span centuries and legal contexts, demonstrate that these acts of lethal force were carefully pre-meditated. Enslaved women planned how and…
I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.
Harrowing, haunting, and utterly compelling, Langer’s superb investigation of the murder of an Ethiopian immigrant called Mulugeta Seraw by racist skinheads in Portland, Oregon, in 1988 always reminds me of the importance of good journalism, the demands of justice and the power of empathy.
It is a book of focused, local history with a much wider story to tell.
A riveting account of a skinhead killing and a chilling look at the world in which it happened
On November 12, 1988, a group of Portland, Oregon, skinheads known as East Side White Pride met for an evening of beer and racist banter. Later that night, they encountered three Ethiopians; a street fight broke out and Kenneth Mieske brutally beat Mulugeta Seraw with a bat. In the early-morning hours, Seraw died.
Drawing on more than ten years of original research, award-winning journalist Elinor Langer takes the Seraw case as the occasion for a thorough investigation of the Nazi-inspired racist movement…
You’ve got to root for the underdog, right? And there’s no bigger underdog than fictional villains. While real-life criminals are doing very nicely, thank you very much, in fiction, the bad guy is screwed from the start. What could be more relatable than knowing on a bone-deep, existential level that you’ve already lost? And what could be more heroic than stepping out onto the field of play knowing that no matter how hard you play, you’re still going down? Keep your flawed anti-heroes; they’re just too chicken to go over to the losing side. I’ll cheer for the doomed bad guy every single time.
I am haunted by the story that Richard Allen heard skinheads were a thing, went to a pub, bought a couple of local skinheads a few pints while he pumped them for stories and then went away and wrote Skinhead in a weekend.
A weekend?! It totally shows. Skinhead is as rough, nasty, and real as pulp fiction gets. Titular skinhead Joe Hawkins is a horrendously violent teenage thug, but beyond the aggro is a beautiful pen portrait of working-class London in the 70s. All chipped formica and smashed in faces.
It’s the sort of raw crime writing I find terrifying and compelling all at the same time. It’s so short, visceral, and urgent I inhaled it in one sitting.
Sixteen-year-old Joe Hawkins is the anti-hero’s anti-hero. His life is ruled by clothes, beer, football and above all violence – violence against hippies, authority, racial minorities and anyone else unfortunate enough to get in his way.
Joe is a London skinhead – a member of a uniquely British subculture which arose rapidly in the late 1960’s. While other skins were driven mainly by music, fashion and working-class pride, Joe and his mob use their formidable street style as a badge of aggressive rage, even while Joe dreams of making a better life for himself.
The Everlasting Life of Charlie Wall
by
Paul Wilborn,
It’s 1985, and Ronald Armstrong, known in the magic mushroom trade as “Trip,” takes a “sober” job as a driver for a retired Tampa mobster. His boss, Charlie Wall, has survived four attempts on his life, the last one in 1955. When Charlie falls into depression, Trip rebuilds his boss’…
As a queer person from a once-colonized country, I have long had an interest in struggles for emancipation and liberation. My scholarly work has been invested in understanding how structures of oppression sediment over time, and how time itself can be less than straightforward. The time we call the present is haunted by the past but also by anticipations of the future. My work explores how this temporal slipperiness makes itself felt in contemporary struggles around nation, gender, sexuality, race, and caste. As a scholar of international politics, I am interested in how yearnings for freedom manifest in different places and look to each other for inspiration and solidarity.
This book tells the story of when, why, and by whom Confederate monuments were erected in the United States.
I love its careful attention to race and class, which helps us to understand how this process consolidated white supremacy but also undermined a revolutionary working-class politics. There is a terrific chapter on Stone Mountain in Georgia, which has been described as "the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world."
The historical context provided by the book helped me to make sense of what was at stake in the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, and in the white supremacist backlash to it that we are currently living through. Most memorable sentence: "Shuffling statues around our cities is like moving an abusive priest to another parish."
An urgent and fractious national debate over public monuments has erupted in America. Some people risk imprisonment to tear down long-ignored hunks of marble; others form armed patrols to defend them. Why do we care so much about statues? And who gets to decide which ones should stay up and which should come down?
Erin L. Thompson, the country's leading expert in the tangled aesthetic, legal, political and social issues involved in such battles brings much-needed clarity in Smashing Statues. She traces the turbulent history of American monuments and its abundant ironies, starting with the enslaved man who helped…
