100 Books Like Marlena

Lily King’s Writers & Lovers is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1997, where my own novel takes place a century earlier. It’s a fictional coming-of-age story of a young woman who tries to write her way into adulthood.

Casey Peabody works as a waitress in Harvard Square, spends time with her aspiring writer friends, walks along the Charles River, and sits for hours at her desk trying to write, all of which I did in those same places at her same age and often with the same sense of longing—and which, incidentally, Victoria Swann does, too, albeit while wearing a floor-length skirt and using a fountain pen.

Casey, Victoria, and I, (and I assume Lily King herself), were not alone: so many people I’ve met over the years have spent time in their twenties hanging out around Harvard Square, anxious and waiting to become the grown-ups we hoped to be.… show more.

What struck me most is that Russell flips the usual script: instead of everyone telling the victim "this didn't happen to you," everyone is telling Vanessa "this did happen to you."

But she can't admit it. Not even by the end. She clings to the belief that she had power in the relationship with her instructor to avoid the horror of how powerless she actually was. Even though it derailed her life and career.

I couldn't grasp what happened to me either. And in a lot of ways, no matter how much data I've gathered or what literature I've studied, I still don't. It's just that traumatic.

My aunt was a misunderstood social misfit who rode a bucking bronco bareback and held on for as long as she could. One of the two central characters of this book is just like the woman I remember my aunt being–brash, unapologetic, a little self-destructive, and possessing an unshakeable faith in a humanity that didn’t understand or deserve her.

I wish she wasn’t taken from me. I wish I knew her better. When I read this book, I can feel her spirit. 

This book is a luminously honest, unflinching, and brave memoir by the marvelous Dani Shapiro, whose most recent memoir, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love, caused a sensation when it was published in 2019. 

When Slow Motion begins, Dani is in her early 20s, adrift, rebelling against her Jewish heritage, dabbling in acting and modeling, involved in a dead-end affair with a married man. 

Then one night, a phone call changes everything- her parents have been in a dreadful car accident. Her father dies a few weeks later, and her mother requires months of intensive rehab.

Dani's tragic loss of the father she idolized and adored prompts a reckoning with her choices and a reevaluation of her life. Slow Motion is beautifully written, wrenching, and unwaveringly candid.

I wanted to include a work of fiction on this list and if it was to be fiction about the Great Lakes region it had to be Jim Harrison. If it could only be one Harrison book, then The River Swimmer is the book that best captures the freshwater magic of the Lakes.

This is not like the other works on my list—the title story follows the adventures of a northern Michigan teen named Thad who is an adept swimmer and uses his skill as a river traveler to journey all the way to Chicago. Sprinkled with elements of fantasy, Indigeneity, and bawdiness all together, the work is classic Jim Harrison.

But the reason it belongs on my list is because of the way it captures the magic of these interconnected waterways.

You can’t beat this book when it comes to courtroom drama and difficult trial preparation because of uncooperative witnesses and your client. Most of all, the attorney is troubled by the fact that he is not sure his client is innocent. As a former trial lawyer, I faced this dilemma many times.

It’s a battle between one’s conscience and one’s duty to represent a client fully and fairly. The insanity defense has become more complex since this book was written, but its introduction in the novel is still fascinating.

This is the very first book I ever purchased when I became interested in all things paranormal in Michigan. This 1992 classic was one of the first popular books published that focused on Michigan’s ghosts, legends, and hauntings. The author, Marian Kuclo was a well-known storyteller around southwest Michigan and her collection of chilling tales introduced me to Michigan's paranormal world and inspired me to look deeper into some of the stories she wrote about. 

I’m always down for Ms Bev, and jumping into this story ready to be swept up, I definitely got caught up with every word. This book was filled with sensuality and suspense throughout each chapter. I will admit I read this book twice.

Beverly Jenkins is usually a a historical romance writer, but her switch up in a contemporary sub-genre proved what a powerful writer she is in any genre.

I love this book because it has a gripping story that keeps you guessing and flipping pages. I also love it because it showcases a strong, female, Native protagonist solving a mystery and acting with agency, power, and knowledge of self. It does a lot to disrupt the victim narratives about Indigenous people we have often seen in literature.

I also love this one because Angeline Boulley is really connected to her own Native community, and it shows up in the work. It gives you a window into Ojibwe culture rather than an imagining of the culture. 

I like this book because it forces us to rethink what the Cold War really was. The book identifies key figures in anti-communist crusades in post-World War II Detroit: workers, white homeowners, city officials, Catholics, and manufacturing executives, and argues that the core elements of their “anticommunism” were not fears of Soviet incursion, but sociocultural tensions at home that derived from drastic changes in wartime and postwar Detroit, which observed a sudden influx of African Americans, Southern whites, and immigrants. 

Thus, the book argues that Cold War Detroit’s “anticommunism” was not a new development in the postwar era, but a continuation of what had previously been labeled anti-unionism, white-supremacism, anti-secular Catholicism, and anti-New deal sentiments, all of which can be characterized as expressions of ongoing “anti-modernist” tensions within American society. Such a reexamination of Cold War anti-communism is significant because it could open up new territory for rethinking what anticommunism… show more.