89 Books Like Murder in the Family

I write psychological thrillers, and I find stories where the main character thinks they’re going crazy, particularly gripping, especially when it’s caused by (supposed) loved ones. I suspect it’s because these stories share an element of "this could happen to me." I’ve only written three books, but I’d say all of them have an element of gaslighting, probably because I sit down and think things like, What would it feel like if your best friend came back after many years, and you’re the only one who can tell it’s not her? It’s a deliciously creepy way to pass the time. 

I first started walking in cities at night in my late teens – mainly London but also the Italian cities I travelled through alone when I went interrailing after leaving school. I discovered that cities have a quite different character at night, and that you cannot know the streets of one intimately if you don’t explore it – safely! – after dark. In my professional career as a scholar and lecturer, I have for decades almost unconsciously been drawn to those writers who themselves discovered, to their horror or delight, that the city at night is a foreign country. The books I’ve listed, fictional or non-fictional, are postcards from this foreign land. 

I am a journalist who spent 15 years reporting from all over the world – Kabul, Baghdad, New Delhi, Beijing, Washington D.C. – returning to London in 2015 to report on the UK’s relations with Europe. Then Brexit happened. As a reporter, I’d chronicled the rise of China and India after 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, but I’d failed to understand how far Britain had been consumed by the forces of populism that have roiled all Western democracies. I’ve spent the last eight years reporting on the fallout, from both sides of the English Channel; trying to unpack what went wrong, and see what we can do about it.

I was born in Santiago, Chile, took my first steps in Antwerp, Belgium, and grew up in British Columbia, Canada. In other words, I was a third culture child with an identity crisis that carried on into my twenties. These books have helped me turn my past mistakes into a craft others can enjoy. Like many of the authors on my list, I’ve said yes to just about anything and lived with people from every walk of life. I’m an expert in making mistakes, but I have done one thing well, and that’s learning from people who think differently than I do. 

I have spent my entire working life tied to the virtuous cycle of reading, writing, and (I hope) thinking. Since my own first novel came out over twenty years ago, I have never lost my passion for reading, as I suspect that if I did, I would also lose my passion to write, and the fascination with other people and the world that fuels it. All these books have informed, gently or severely, my new novel, High John The Conqueror, encapsulating the incongruous mix between the given and the unbelievable that I find in life, and try to employ in my own work. 

I have been fascinated by the weather since as a schoolboy I avidly followed the cricket scores and the fate of tomorrow’s match. This co-dependence of my passion for cricket with the state of the weather turned into a professional career as, first, a research scientist and then later a professor of geography, I studied the idea of climate and the many ways in which it intersects with our social, ecological and imaginative worlds. As human-caused climate change became a defining public and political issue for the new century, my interests increasingly focused on understanding why people think so differently about the climate, its changes, its future trajectory—and what to do about it. 

Memoirs have crept up on me as favorites. I could list many more. Please let me! As a psychoanalyst, I listen to the pains and struggles of individuals trying to become more at ease with themselves. They engage with their demons and try to make sense of how to manage the way their personal history has created their worldview and how to expand it enough to enter a present. Memoirs are another way of addressing such struggles. They have an elegance and a universality that emerges out of their individual stories. We learn about the other and we learn about ourselves.

It's a pleasure to share these books with other readers because they so elegantly convey love in a way for young readers to easily understand. They contain elements of reassurance that both children and parents need, especially during times of transition. I didn't comprehend how much love I could have for another person until the birth of my daughter. My love for her was so immense and all-consuming that it brought an unfathomable joy to my life. I read these books to her during transitional times as a way to articulate the infinite love I have for her. I hope they bring as much comfort and closeness to other readers as they have to us.

Dave has lived with bipolar disorder and severe anxiety all of his adult life. He has also worked with over 800 people with mental illness in a certified peer support role. Dave is a blogger with Bp Magazine for Bipolar and a mental health influencer. His blog posts have been read by over a million people. Dave has been hospitalized, had most of the treatments available for bipolar disorder including ECT. Dave has come out the other side and has the rare ability to put all of his emotions and experiences in his writing with complete openness and honesty, making him a best-selling author about bipolar disorder.

If there was ever one word that seems to have changed the foundations of modern Britain it is the word 'Brexit': something that had seemed so antediluvian shifted from being impossible to becoming reality. I could not believe this was happening and I wanted to explore the influence of language in creating this reality. I decided to apply the approach I had originally authored known as Critical Metaphor Analysis to unravel the metaphors through which the arguments of Leavers and Remainers were articulated. In doing so I tried to tell the story of Brexit through its metaphors because the role of language itself is often overlooked in accounts of persuasion.