Here are 100 books that Notes from an Exhibition fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a UK bestselling writer of historical fiction who has often used Cornwall as a setting. I wrote about a lost garden and a colony of Edwardian artists in The Memory Garden, about the Second World War in A Gathering Storm and The Hidden Years. My father was Cornish, which meant wonderful childhood holidays spent in the county. I fell in love with its breathtakingly beautiful landscapes - rugged cliffs, picturesque fishing villages, expansive sandy beaches where the sea thunders in. I’ve feasted on its history and legends, and on stories of danger, romance, and adventure set in the region. It’s fulfilled a dream to have written my own.
As a writer I admit that I’m beguiled by Cornwall as a literary setting for high romance and adventure, yet it’s important to me to remember that ordinary people live and work there.
I was impressed by In Her Wake because it manages to encompass both extremes. Its overarching gothic narrative about a stolen child is used by the author to examine the extraordinary experience of some very humble, loving people whose lives have been put into suspension by tragedy. It’s incredibly moving and truthful.
A perfect life ... until she discovered it wasn't her own.
A tragic family event reveals devastating news that rips apart Bella's comfortable existence. Embarking on a personal journey to uncover the truth, she faces a series of traumatic discoveries that take her to the ruggedly beautiful Cornish coast, where hidden truths, past betrayals and a 25-year-old mystery threaten not just her identity, but also her life.
Chilling, complex and profoundly moving, In Her Wake is a gripping psychological thriller that questions the nature of family - and reminds us that sometimes the most shocking crimes are committed closest to…
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’ve always been preoccupied with how personal tragedy, loss, and grief can ultimately teach us truths about existence and our own strength that we might never have learned otherwise. As a child, I was confounded by the fact of death and the transience of life, and as an adult, I’ve spent much time contemplating how literature is able to testify to the magnitude of these things in ways that ordinary language cannot. This interest led me to complete a PhD on the topic of elegiac literature and has also influenced the themes of my own fiction. I hope you find connection and inspiration in the books on this list!
This book is a masterwork of psychological suspense that I love for its unreliable narration, emotional intensity, vivid rendering of character and place, and ingenious plot twists. Just as compelling and atmospheric as du Maurier’s earlier Rebecca, this novel similarly features a central enigma in the form of a shape-shifting woman. Still, its narrator and protagonist is a young man.
Philip Ashley, heir to a Cornish estate, is reckoning with the sudden overseas death of his beloved cousin and guardian, Ambrose, under mysterious circumstances. As he increasingly questions the role Ambrose’s new wife—a mysterious widow named Rachel—might have played in the months leading to his death, the grief-stricken Philip is drawn into a drama of conspiracy, romance, and obsession that will test the limits of his sanity.
NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING RACHEL WEISZ AND SAM CLAFIN
'Du Maurier is a storyteller whose sole aim is to bewitch and beguile' NEW YORK TIMES
'Du Maurier has no equal' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
' One of her best novels, ingeniously contrived as to plot, successfully realized as to characters' KIRKUS REVIEWS
'I threw the piece of paper on the fire. She saw it burn . . . '
Orphaned at an early age, Philip Ashley is raised by his benevolent cousin, Ambrose. Resolutely single, Ambrose delights in making Philip his heir, knowing he will treasure his beautiful Cornish estate. But…
I’m a UK bestselling writer of historical fiction who has often used Cornwall as a setting. I wrote about a lost garden and a colony of Edwardian artists in The Memory Garden, about the Second World War in A Gathering Storm and The Hidden Years. My father was Cornish, which meant wonderful childhood holidays spent in the county. I fell in love with its breathtakingly beautiful landscapes - rugged cliffs, picturesque fishing villages, expansive sandy beaches where the sea thunders in. I’ve feasted on its history and legends, and on stories of danger, romance, and adventure set in the region. It’s fulfilled a dream to have written my own.
I often write about the Second World War, particularly the roles of women in it. Cornwall is another love, my father being Cornish.
The landscape and the culture have made a huge impression on me and when I read Coming Home I thought, yes, this novel was written for me.
It’s the coming-of-age story of Judith Dunbar. When still a young girl her mother leaves her with an elderly relative near Penzance in order to join Judith’s father in Singapore. After this relative dies Judith has to fend for herself, but is increasingly drawn into the orbit of the charismatic Carey-Lewis family of Nancherrow House. Through her relationship with them she experiences passionate love and betrayal as the storms of war are gathering on the horizon.
For Judith Dunbar, her first glimpse of Nancherrow, her friend Loveday's beautiful family estate on the Cornish coast, is love at first sight - after the rigours of boarding school it spells luxury. She falls in love, too, with all Loveday's family. They treat Judith as one of them. With their generosity and kindness, Judith grows from naive girl to confident young woman basking in the warmth of a surrogate family whose flame of love and affection burns brightly.
But it is a flame soon to be extinguised in the gathering storm of war. In the danger and deprivation of…
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’m a UK bestselling writer of historical fiction who has often used Cornwall as a setting. I wrote about a lost garden and a colony of Edwardian artists in The Memory Garden, about the Second World War in A Gathering Storm and The Hidden Years. My father was Cornish, which meant wonderful childhood holidays spent in the county. I fell in love with its breathtakingly beautiful landscapes - rugged cliffs, picturesque fishing villages, expansive sandy beaches where the sea thunders in. I’ve feasted on its history and legends, and on stories of danger, romance, and adventure set in the region. It’s fulfilled a dream to have written my own.
Zennor is a tiny village perched on the cliffs of Cornwall’s rugged north shore and battered by Atlantic storms. I’ve often visited it, have run my hand over the legendary mermaid chair in its little church and walked the cliff path, which Virginia Woolf reported doing once at night, a dangerous event that inspired Dunmore’s novel.
Zennor in Darkness is based on a true story. D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda settled in a remote cottage on the cliffs during the First World War. They were regarded with suspicion because Frieda was German and the couple kept an irregular lifestyle – were they in fact enemy spies? Their story is tenderly told through the eyes of a young local artist, Clare Coyne.
Dunmore writes beautifully, with lucidity and a suspenseful air.
They stand by side on the rock, facing out to sea. They are hidden from land here. Even spies would see nothing of them.
It is spring 1917 in the Cornish coastal village of Zennor, and the young artist Clare Coyne is waking up to the world. Ignoring the whispers from her neighbours, she has struck a rare friendship with D.H. Lawrence and his German wife, who are hoping to escape the war-fever of London. In between painting and visits to her new friends she whiles away the warm days with her cousin John, who is on leave from the…
I am the author of sixteen novels—six of them set in the mid-seventeenth century. The English Civil Wars and their aftermath is a period very close to my heart—combining as it does fascinating personalities, incredibly complicated politics, and all the drama and bloodshed of civil conflict. My greatest pleasure has been finding and featuring real men whose names are now largely forgotten.
Set in Cornwall, before and during the Civil War, this is a terrific tale based upon the lives of real people—most notably, perhaps, Sir Richard Grenville the King’s General in the West. It’s the story of the Rashleigh Family and Menabilly—where Daphne du Maurier herself lived.
Well written as one would expect of du Maurier—it’s a beautiful story, beautifully told; absorbing, exciting and hard to put down.
Inspired by a grisly discovery in the nineteenth century, The King's General was the first of du Maurier's novels to be written at Menabilly, the model for Manderley in Rebecca. Set in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of a country and a family riven by civil war, and features one of fiction's most original heroines. Honor Harris is only eighteen when she first meets Richard Grenvile, proud, reckless - and utterly captivating. But following a riding accident, Honor must reconcile herself to a life alone. As Richard rises through the ranks of the army, marries and makes enemies,…
Part-Cornish, as a child I spent family holidays in Cornwall and was told family stories of Cornish relatives, especially of great grandfather Philip Henry Hammer and his numerous children who left Cornwall for destinations near – London and Wales – and far–South Africa, Australia, and Tasmania – to make a living. Old family photographs, some from the 1870s helped to bring these men and women alive and inspired me to write The Hammers of Towan. The more I research Cornish history, the more I learn, and the more I want to write about Cornish people and their place in the world.
This book gave me a great introduction to Cornish history from the earliest times to the 21st century and gave me useful information on which to base my research for my book.
It is considered to be a key text for anyone working in the field of Cornish Studies, but is also very readable and I returned to it time and again as my book took shape.
Why is Cornwall so ‘different’ from England? The answer lies in its history, the story of a people whose separate identity was formed in early times and has weathered centuries of turmoil and change to the present day.
The author Philip Payton is Emeritus Professor of Cornish & Australian Studies at the University of Exeter.
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…
I’m the author of 10 books published in the historical genre, and 7 more in other genres (which also feature women who have been tested and hardened in various fires). I have spent years reading first-hand accounts of wartime ambulance drivers, nurses, farm labourers, pilots, and others, and I have uncovered the startling true lives of some remarkable women – it’s furnished me with a desire to showcase women like this in fictional settings, and give them the satisfactory stories they deserve but too often never had. My characters are all fictional, but they couldn’t exist without those powerful examples of strength and courage.
This is book one of a wonderful series: The Spindrift Trilogy. Because it’s set in Cornwall, where I grew up and where I set most of my books, it naturally drew me in quickly. The series features a rich cast of characters, mainly female at the start, although as male children are born, and grow up, the balance shifts a little. It follows the fortunes of an artistic community that springs from a personal crisis, and the rich mixture of characters keeps the story lively and optimistic while still dealing with the darker side of human nature, and the uncertainty in any new venture where so many almost strangers are brought together. This sense of community is something I myself try to convey in my work, and here it’s done beautifully.
'A delightful historical saga which is so beautifully woven together that from the very start I was enchanted' Jaffa Reads Too
From the award-winning author of The Apothecary's Daughter comes a beautifully evocative, family drama, perfect for fans of Santa Montefiore, Lucinda Riley and Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles.
1891. Spindrift House, Cornwall.
Talented painter Edith Fairchild is poised to begin a life of newlywed bliss and artistic creation in the inspiring setting of Spindrift House, freshly inherited by her charming husband, Benedict, and overlooking the stunning harbour of Port Isaac. But when her honeymoon turns sour, her dreams are…
Although known more generally as a mum of four and teacher, I am also a lover of story (with a First Class degree in English Literature from the University of Cambridge, and a Masters of Education). According to Tolkien, an internally consistent reality should allow you to immerse yourself in another world so as to return to your own with refreshed sight. In this, he discerned between ‘the flight of the deserter’ (a criticism often levelled at sci-fi and fantasy) and ‘the escape of the prisoner’. These novels achieve inner consistency with sophistication and charm, allowing you to regain your courage, hope, and curiosity when you return to real life.
It seems that there is no detail of life in the late 1700s and early 1800s that Winston Graham doesn’t know. From aspects of history, geography, social class culture, medicine, ship-building, mining… Graham is ‘The Man’. But he is also a composite storyteller, weaving a compelling, generations-spanning narrative that charts the turmoils and triumphs of Ross Poldark and his family. One detail that I love is the representation of genuine female experience in a mode that is not about feminist agendas; Graham writes his women with compassion and complexity, making them far more than the housewives and bodice-rippers characteristic of some historical fiction. Quintessentially English, but never rose-tinted, these novels are a treasure that deserve greater acknowledgment.
This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of Ross Poldark features an afterword by novelist Liz Fenwick.
Ross Poldark is the first novel in Winston Graham's sweeping saga of Cornish life in the eighteenth century. First published in 1945, the Poldark series has enthralled readers ever since serving as the inspiration for hit BBC TV series, Poldark,
Returning home from grim experiences in the American Revolutionary War, Ross Poldark is reunited with his beloved Cornwall and family. But the joyful homecoming he had anticipated turns sour; his father is dead, his estate derelict, and the girl he loves has become engaged…
The collection Little Musings, available on Amazon, covers several decades of Joy's work as poet and painter. It touches on many aspects of her life, including the loss of her mother, in Do Not Mourn Her and Loss - Double Rainbow. Her childhood was spent in Plymouth, and in A Plymouth Girl Reflects, she recalls the aftermath of the air raids. Being in close proximity to Cornwall, that area also a major theme here, especially in Newquay, Cornwall, and On Air, By Melancholy. Four of the poems, "Absent Friends," "Isle of Thanet," "At Jim's Cafe," and "Captain Ahab of Thanet" are focused on the Thanet area of East Kent, where Joy now lives.
The Cornish Captive makes a powerful portrayal of abduction and imprisonment, as well as describing the forces of mental stress under the elemental pressures of Cornish life of that time. Cornish society then was unbelievably brutal. I identify so strongly with the sufferings of any sensitive soul under those conditions.
The sixth novel in a stunning series set in eighteenth-century Cornwall, perfect for fans of Bridgerton
Cornwall, 1800.
Imprisoned on false pretences, Madeleine Pelligrew, former mistress of Pendenning Hall, has spent the last 14 years shuttled between increasingly destitute and decrepit mad houses. When a strange man appears out of the blue to release her, she can't quite believe that her freedom comes without a price. Hiding her identity, Madeleine determines to discover the truth about what happened all those years ago.
Unsure who to trust and alone in the world, Madeleine strikes a tentative friendship with a French prisoner…
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 love to write about the places, folklore, nature, and above all the magic of Cornwall. I have lived in Cornwall most of my life, I learned to crawl along the rockpools of Cornish beaches and I went to school in a moorland village. Now, I live on the edge of Bodmin Moor and write in the Cornish wilds, I live close to both the moors and the sea. I began writing for Cornish folklore project Mazed in 2013 and I have been retelling Cornish Folk Tales and writing poetry and stories inspired by Cornish folklore ever since.
Ninety-year-old Marvellous is a river goddess, her whole being is immersed in a Cornish creek, she lives in a caravan beside the water and loves a swim.
Marvellous lives on in my imagination. Nature is an organic part of the novel, time and seasons move with the tide; the reader knows it is spring because the ransoms (wild garlic) are out. I love rivers, they wind their way into my own writing, West Looe River is often my muse as a poet.
I met Sarah Winman when I stumbled upon her book signing at my local bookshop. I only had enough money to buy Marvellous Ways or shoes to wear to an awards ceremony that evening. I realized no one would notice my old shoes so I bought the book and loved every page.
A YEAR OF MARVELLOUS WAYS is the unforgettable and completely captivating new novel from Sarah Winman, author of the international bestseller WHEN GOD WAS A RABBIT.
Marvellous Ways is eighty-nine years old and has lived alone in a remote Cornish creek for nearly all her life. Lately she's taken to spending her days sitting on a mooring stone by the river with a telescope. She's waiting for something - she's not sure what, but she'll know it when she sees it.
Drake is a young soldier left reeling by the Second World War. When his promise to fulfil a dying…
