Here are 100 books that Midwives fans have personally recommended if you like
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I first became interested in the subject of my novel after reading about the prosecution and sentencing of Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub. My curiosity led me to Dr. Spinelli’s book, and the studies and scientific information told me there was a book there. Having lived on the St. Clair River, I knew it had to be part of the story. As a retired lawyer, I had plenty of knowledge of the court system, so I decided to write the novel from the lawyer’s point of view and include her personal growth as she connects to her client in unorthodox ways.
Although considered a classic, I only read this book while working on my novel, and it has haunted me ever since. The injustice of the girl’s treatment versus that of the father (who is never publicly identified in the story) left a serious impression and kept me at my writing desk.
Although English law has recognized the emotional changes a woman experiences during and after birth, the U.S. has never done so.
'Our deeds carry their terrible consequences...consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.'
Pretty Hetty Sorrel is loved by the village carpenter Adam Bede, but her head is turned by the attentions of the fickle young squire, Arthur Donnithorne. His dalliance with the dairymaid has unforeseen consequences that affect the lives of many in their small rural community. First published in 1859, Adam Bede carried its readers back sixty years to the lush countryside of Eliot's native Warwickshire, and a time of impending change for England and the wider world. Eliot's powerful portrayal of the interaction of ordinary people brought…
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 first became interested in the subject of my novel after reading about the prosecution and sentencing of Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub. My curiosity led me to Dr. Spinelli’s book, and the studies and scientific information told me there was a book there. Having lived on the St. Clair River, I knew it had to be part of the story. As a retired lawyer, I had plenty of knowledge of the court system, so I decided to write the novel from the lawyer’s point of view and include her personal growth as she connects to her client in unorthodox ways.
I loved this book because it tells the story of a topic about which I had already formed an opinion, but through her strong narrative, my opinion was changed.
Although this book's plot is similar to mine, this one does not focus on the relationship between the lawyer and the client.
From the bestselling author of My Sister's Keeper comes the riveting story of a murder that shatters the picturesque calm of Amish country -- and tests the heart and soul of the lawyer defending the woman at the center of the storm.
The discovery of a dead infant in an Amish barn shakes Lancaster County to its core. But the police investigation leads to a more shocking disclosure: circumstantial evidence suggests that eighteen-year-old Katie Fisher, an unmarried Amish woman believed to be the newborn's mother, took the child's life. When Ellie Hathaway, a disillusioned big-city attorney, comes to Paradise, Pennsylvania,…
I first became interested in the subject of my novel after reading about the prosecution and sentencing of Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub. My curiosity led me to Dr. Spinelli’s book, and the studies and scientific information told me there was a book there. Having lived on the St. Clair River, I knew it had to be part of the story. As a retired lawyer, I had plenty of knowledge of the court system, so I decided to write the novel from the lawyer’s point of view and include her personal growth as she connects to her client in unorthodox ways.
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.
First published by St. Martin's in 1958, Robert Traver's Anatomy of a Murder immediately became the number-one bestseller in America, and was subsequently turned into the now classic Otto Preminger film of the same name, starring Jimmy Stewart and Duke Ellington.
It's not only the most popular courtroom drama in American fiction, but one of the most popular novels of our time.
A gripping tale of deceit, murder, and a sensational trial, Anatomy of a Murder is unmatched in the authenticity of its settings, events, and characters. This new edition should delight both loyal fans of the past and an…
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…
I first became interested in the subject of my novel after reading about the prosecution and sentencing of Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub. My curiosity led me to Dr. Spinelli’s book, and the studies and scientific information told me there was a book there. Having lived on the St. Clair River, I knew it had to be part of the story. As a retired lawyer, I had plenty of knowledge of the court system, so I decided to write the novel from the lawyer’s point of view and include her personal growth as she connects to her client in unorthodox ways.
This book is full of studies and statistics from experts on the topic of infanticide. It fascinated me, particularly the chapter that included neonaticide. With much poetic license, this became the basis for the defense in my story.
Maternal infanticide, or the murder of a child in its first year of life by its mother, elicits sorrow, anger, horror, and outrage. But the perpetrator is often a victim, too.
The editor of this revealing work asks us to reach beyond rage, stretch the limits of compassion, and enter the minds of mothers who kill their babies-with the hope that advancing the knowledge base and stimulating inquiry in this neglected area of maternal-infant research will save young lives.
Written to help remedy today's dearth of up-to-date, research-based literature, this unique volume brings together a multidisciplinary group of 17 experts-scholars,…
I wear so many hats that if I murdered you, you wouldn’t know which one of me struck. I am a crime fiction writer, a producer, a public speaker, and an entrepreneur. I have to admit I am an accidental writer who wanted to leave a legacy behind and, ergo, wrote a book in 2010. But I found writing crime fiction so addictive I became a serial killer…err…writer. In my spare time, I read—spoiler alert!—crime fiction and binge-watch crime shows. I am an avid golfer, I love music and traveling, and I find something in the sound of water that encourages me to write and murder a few more people (fictionally, of course).
Remember
Presumed Innocent? I remember finding it one of the most astonishing
legal thrillers at the time. But the sequel Turow wrote after 23 years is the
mother of all sequels.
Judge Rusty Sabich is suspected of murder yet again
(wife, this time; it was his mistress in the previous one). Presumably, Rusty’s
wife has died of a heart attack induced by one of her own medicines. Rusty is,
once again, prosecuted by the same relentless prosecutor, Tommy, who has
had a hard-on for Rusty since they were both prosecutors. He believes Rusty got
away with murder the last time around. To add to Tommy’s anguish, Rusty hires
the same devious and deceitful defense attorney, Sandy Stern.
If you, like me, think that sequels are never
as good, this one will change your opinion too.
Scott Turow's Innocent is the eagerly anticipated sequel to the huge bestselling landmark legal thriller Presumed Innocent.
Twenty years ago, Tommy Molto charged his colleague Rusty Sabich with the murder of a former lover; when a shocking turn of events transformed Prosecutor Rusty from the accuser into the accused. Rusty was cleared, but the seismic trial left both men reeling. Molto's name was dragged through the mud and while Rusty regained his career, he lost much more . . .
Now, Rusty - sixty years old and a chief judge - wakes to a new nightmare. His wife Barbara has…
My mother’s family is descended from both Afrikaner and English South Africans, and the inherent tension between those two groups has always fascinated me. From Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm to Andre Brink’s Devil’s Valley, books that examine the reclusive, defensive, and toughened attitudes of white settlers make for the kind of discomforting reading that I find immensely compelling.
I've loved just about everything that I've read by Gordimer, so it's hard to pick a favorite (The Lying Days is on another of my Shepherd shortlists!), but I've chosen one of her later titles here for balance.
One of the Novel Laureate's great post-apartheid works, this is a book with implications sadly not particular to South Africa—about freedom and accountability, love and family, and the normalization of violence. The style is a little unorthodox and can be tricky to follow, but Gordimer rewards readers who make the effort, which, to my mind, is very much worth the struggle.
How else can you defend yourself against losing your hi-fi equipment, your TV set and computer, your watch and rings? A house gun, like a house cat; that is a fact of ordinary life in many cities of the world as we come to the end of the twentieth century, especially in South Africa. At this time the successful, respected executive director of an insurance company, Harold, and his doctor wife, Claudia, for whom violence could never be a means of solving personal conflict, are faced with something that could never happen to them: their son has committed murder. What…
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…
My writing often focuses on motherhood and the difficult choices mothers are asked to make every day. I search for books to help me understand the points of view of other women. What they're thinking and feeling and the revelations that shape them and change the trajectory of their lives. I decided a long time ago, that if I'm going to invest the amount of time it takes to write a novel, then I have to have a passion for it. I strive to write characters that resonate, with those who are often marginalized in society because I want to shine a light on all the facets of humanity, not just the pretty ones.
This book has so much to teach us about race and misconceptions. Faced with the decision of intervening to save a newborn baby’s life and the orders she’s been given not to touch the child of white supremacists, a NICU nurse, Ruth, hesitates for a moment then provides care. Her hesitation causes her to be charged with a serious crime. She is assigned a white public defender who wants to plead out and keep race out of the equation, but Ruth stands her ground. The women have to learn to trust each other and to find common ground. This is the most beautiful struggle about race from both perspectives that leaves you with a deeper understanding of both sides of the issue.
'Small Great Things is the most important novel Jodi Picoult has ever written ... It will challenge her readers ... [and] expand our cultural conversation about race and prejudice.' - The Washington Post
When a newborn baby dies after a routine hospital procedure, there is no doubt about who will be held responsible: the nurse who had been banned from looking after him by his father.
What the nurse, her lawyer and the father of the child cannot know is how this death will irrevocably change all of their lives, in ways both expected and not.
I’ve always loved mysteries and the detectives that solved them. Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot were heroes to me, but as I grew older and the world grew more complex, I started reading novels where it was not so easy to separate the good guys from the bad. The world was not black and white anymore, and justice was not so simple. Characters who had to work around the law or took matters into their own hands to earn justice became my new heroes. Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade, while not saints themselves, did whatever they had to in order to serve justice, and I admired them for it.
I loved the way Scott Turow navigates the law and the courtroom in his fiction, and this novel especially.
Not only is this story a breathtaking page turner, it pins down the fine points of the law and behavioral nuances of the people who practice it.
This was one of the books that kept you up all night and then you found yourself wanting to read again—to find the trail of breadcrumbs you missed the first time through. Justice is served, just not as expected.
Rusty Sabich is a prosecuting lawyer in Chicago who enters a nightmare world when Carolyn, a beautiful attorney with whom he has been having an affair, is found raped and strangled. He stands accused of the crime.
This 'insider' book by a Chicago lawyer was one of the great novels of the 1980s, selling more than nine million copies, and was made into a famous film starring Harrison Ford. It's a supremely suspenseful and compelling courtroom drama about ambition, weakness, hypocrisy and American justice.
Like a caricature, satire lets you see reality better by exaggerating it. When satire is done right, every element, from the overall plot to the characters to paragraph-level details, is there to cast an exposing light on some part of our real world. They are books that exist on many levels, expose hubris and essential misunderstandings, and generally speak truth to power. They should leave the reader reassessing core assumptions about how the world works. I’ve written a best-selling nonfiction book about machine learning in the past, and I probably could have taken that approach again, but AI and American politics are both ripe for satire.
I was blown away by the sheer scope and precision of the observation in this book. No part of New York life in the 1980s or the then-iconic finance industry is left unexposed. From the pretensions of the plutocrats to the dishonesty of the activists, this book mercilessly skewers it all.
It’s like being in a pleasantly dimly lit room when someone turns on a bright floodlight, and suddenly, you see all the ugliness and tawdriness of the people and things in it. Not for the weak of heart.
An exhilarating satire of Eighties excess that captures the effervescent spirit of New York, from one of the greatest writers of modern American prose
Sherman McCoy is a WASP, bond trader and self-appointed 'Master of the Universe'. He has a fashionable wife, a Park Avenue apartment and a Southern mistress. His spectacular fall begins the moment he is involved in a hit-and-run accident in the Bronx. Prosecutors, newspaper hacks, politicians and clergy close in on him, determined to bring him down.
Exuberant, scandalous and exceptionally discerning, The Bonfire of the Vanities was Tom Wolfe's first venture into fiction and cemented…
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…
I’m a fiction writer interested in exploring big historical moments through the lives of ordinary people. The extensive fight for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy for women, specifically black women, has long been a concern, admittedly for selfish reasons. This ever-shifting terrain—from eugenics and sterilization to coerced birth control and the rise in maternal mortality rates—was initially perplexing to me and it took a great deal of reading to make sense of it. Such research not only informed my historical novel, Night Wherever We Go, but much of how I understand the world. I’d argue one can’t fully comprehend the current abortion rights moment without understanding how race and reproduction are so deeply intertwined.
I love books that help us understand our present and Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s latest novel, Take My Hand, helps us do just that.
Civil, the protagonist, is a young nurse who’s just secured her first job at a federally funded reproductive health clinic in her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. When she’s sent out on a house call to administer birth control shots to the Williams sisters, ages 11 and 13, Civil must grapple with what she’s being asked to do and why.
Loosely based on the Relf sisters, the two young defendants at the heart of the Relf vs. Weinberger case, which exposed the involuntary sterilization of thousands of poor women and women of color across the South, this novel takes on a weighty subject with great finesse and care.
Montgomery, Alabama. 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference in her community. She wants to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies.
But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a tumbledown cabin and into the heart of the Williams family, Civil learns there is more to her new role than she bargained for. Neither of the two young sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for…
