Here are 100 books that Pietr the Latvian fans have personally recommended if you like
Pietr the Latvian.
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As both a reader and mystery & thriller author, I’ve always been drawn to stories with a strong sense of place and “atmosphere." I love landscapes that can seduce and threaten in the same breath, and a setting so immersive that it feels like you once lived there. It’s what I always seek in the books I read and what I try to create in the stories I write. There’s no greater compliment than a fan saying they re-read your books just to revisit the world you created, because it’s my own reaction to the books I cherish. Here are some of my favourite reads where the beautiful setting is inseparable from the simmering suspense.
Like many people, I’d heard so much about this classic that I was braced for disappointment the first time I read it.
But no, du Maurier’s rich, atmospheric prose gripped me from that famous first line. While I agree about the power of the iconic cast, such as the infamous Mrs. Danvers, I feel that the setting itself is just as powerful a character. I especially love du Maurier’s way of personifying the setting, so that things such as trees, and plants, and buildings come alive with malevolence.
The opening pages, for example, immediately fill you with unease despite the narrator talking about nothing more than the driveway leading up to the house on the estate! From the woods that “crowded, dark and uncontrolled” and the beeches with “white naked limbs” to the hydrangeas “rearing to a monster height without a bloom, black and ugly” and the nettles that “choked…
* 'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY * 'One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century' SARAH WATERS * 'It's the book every writer wishes they'd written' CLARE MACKINTOSH
'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .'
Working as a lady's companion, our heroine's outlook is bleak until, on a trip to the south of France, she meets a handsome widower whose proposal takes her by surprise. She accepts but, whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I like fiction which makes a character confront what the poet Thom Gunn called ‘the blackmail of his circumstances’: where you are born, the expectations of you. I like to think I am very much a self-created individual, but I can never escape what I was born into; the self is a prison that the will is trying to break out of. I like literature which reflects that challenge.
I could have chosen any Raymond Chandler novel for this list; he is such a brilliant stylist, one of the best in the language.
His lugubrious, heavy-drinking, first-person detective Philip Marlowe is my kind of fictional hero, a genre-defining character, perpetually alone though he yearns for the glamorous women he meets.
Raymond Chandler's first three novels, published here in one volume, established his reputation as an unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction.
The Big Sleep, Chandler's first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralysed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail and murder.
In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women.
In The High Window, Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself…
Like most people I know, I have always been fascinated with serial killers, and more importantly why they do what they do. What makes one man murder multiple victims while another with a similar upbringing sells white goods and wouldn’t attract a traffic ticket. In my books, I am as interested in showing my readers why a killer kills, as I am in the hunt to catch him. My goal is to not so much get the reader to ‘like’ the antagonist but to understand, and dare I say even feel sorry for him. We are all products of our environment and upbringing, yet some of us murder others for fun.
Retired FBI profiler Terry McCaleb is recovering from a heart transplant he required after a heart attack he suffered while hunting a serial killer. When a woman urges him to help investigate the murder of her sister who was shot dead during a robbery, Terry discovers it is her heart he received. Possibly the killer wanted McCaleb to recover so he could resume his pursuit. This is one of the finest stories I have ever read; deeply moving, and a very exciting read.
Terry McCaleb, one of the most effective serial-killer investigators in the history of the FBI, hunts down his heart donor's killer. An unputdownable story from the award-winning No. 1 bestselling author.
'Blood Work' - that's what Terry McCaleb used to call his job at the FBI. Eight weeks ago he was a dead man, but now someone else's heart is keeping him alive. Then a newspaper report of his brush with death brings him an unwanted visitor. Graciela Rivers reveals to McCaleb that the anonymous donor of his heart was her murdered sister, and that the police investigation into the…
Jake Sledge, a rugged ex-cop turned private eye, teams up with his colossal partner Bobo to navigate the gritty streets of River City.
A murdered lawyer drags them into a web of political intrigue, neo-Nazi thugs, and bloody showdowns. With sharp wit and hard-hitting action, Jake tackles scumbags the only…
I grew up in a bookish family. My mother, the Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham, was the last love of F. Scott Fitzgerald and I grew up in the company of authors and editors. The books I loved as a child were the Hardy Boys, Treasure Island, Jules Verne—adventure stories with whopping good plots. My first book was published when I was 23, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, a coming-of-age novel. From here I turned to mysteries because good suspense fiction keeps readers turning pages (or they won't get published.) That's what I like in a novel. I want a great story!
Let's go Swedish! Henning Mankell and Stieg Larson are the most famous Swedish mystery writers, but my favorite is Håkim Nesser who has written ten books featuring Inspector Van Veeteren, and quite a few other suspense novels as well. Van Veeteren is a subtle, quiet detective who observes life closely and ends up running an antique book store, from where he still solves the occasional crime. I'm not sure why the Scandinavian countries are producing such wonderful suspense authors. Perhaps it's the cold brooding weather, the snow! The introspection!
It’s a sweltering summer in Sweden and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is long overdue for a holiday when a secretive and dubious religious sect comes under investigation. One of its members, a girl on the cusp of adolescence, is found dead in the forest near their holiday camp, brutally raped and strangled; the discovery of her body has been phoned in by an anonymous caller.
The members of the sect, the Pure Life, are led by Oscar Yellinek, a charismatic but unnervingly guarded messiah figure. In an act that mystifies and infuriates Van Veeteren and his associates, the members of…
I have always loved history, from ancient Egyptian times up to recent history (the 1950s and 1960s). Put history in the context of a crime and the history becomes even more fascinating. A book where the history of that time comes vividly alive for the reader is the greatest pleasure a reader can experience.
After Conan Doyle, Georges Simenon is the greatest writer of European crime fiction, especially in his Maigret novels and short stories. This is a wonderful example of Maigret (and Simenon) at his very best, with Maigret and his inspectors coming alive for the reader, and the suspects presenting him with a serious challenge of wits.
While committing what he intends to be his last burglary, "Sad Freddie" discovers something completely out of his line: the body of a dead woman, her chest covered in blood, holding a telephone in her hand. Inspector Maigret is called in to solve the crime, and after an exhaustive search, a psychological duel, a marathon interrogation, and innumerable glasses of Pernod, wine, cold beer, and brandy--a sure sign that this is no easy case--the famous French sleuth triumphs.
Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon
As a child, I was captivated by Christmas's traditions, rituals, meaning, and magic, which always signaled a time for introspection and hope. These books capture all of that. For me, the holiday is a time to pause and reflect, and revisiting these works helps remind me of what is important in life and where we should be pointed, where our humanity lies.
I love this book because it shows the sentimental side of the lauded author known for gritty mysteries and psychological novels—of which I’ve read more than 100. (He published some 400 novels and sold 500 million books.)
It features his earmarked lean prose and affecting Parisian settings and characters. His example and thoughts on craft have greatly influenced my writing, including one key admonition he got from his literary colleague Colette: “Cut, cut, cut!”
Three seasonal stories set in Paris at Christmas, from the celebrated creator of Inspector Maigret.
It is Christmas in Paris, but beneath the sparkling lights and glittering decorations lie sinister deeds and dark secrets...
This collection brings together three of Simenon's most enjoyable Christmas tales, newly translated, featuring Inspector Maigret and other characters from the Maigret novels. In 'A Maigret Christmas', the Inspector receives two unexpected visitors on Christmas Day, who lead him on the trail of a mysterious intruder dressed in red and white. In 'Seven Small Crosses in a Notebook', the sound of alarms over Paris send the…
Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself – one where she can go unnoticed and repay the debt she believes she owes him. But when her brother…
I was an English major in college. In pursuing my love of books and language, I fell into a love of history. The passion for history began with author biographies as I tried to understand how the culture affected various authors’ writings. This is why my history strength resides in European history, because most of my favorite authors come from Europe. The more I read of the biographies, I often came across historical events I wasn’t knowledgeable about and so fell down a rabbit hole of historical research. The more I learn, the more I love history!
I grabbed this historical true crime nonfiction book in order to conduct research for one of my own projects.
This book is about the rampant crime in 1600s Paris and, by extension, the Affair of the Poisons and Louis, The Sun King’s, solution. The king’s solution was to hire a police chief, La Reynie, to bring peace to the city streets. La Reynie ordered candles put in every window in the belief that the light would deter the criminal element, thus creating the City of Lights.
La Reynie was also the central investigator in the Affair of the Poisons and responsible for arresting the key figures in the crimes. Tucker also shows in this fascinating book how many of these criminal incidents were related to witchcraft and black magic.
The beauty of this book is how it reads more like a novel than nonfiction history.
In the late 1600s, Louis XIV assigns Nicolas de la Reynie to bring order to the city of Paris after the brutal deaths of two magistrates. Reynie, pragmatic yet fearless, tackles the dirty and terrifying streets only to discover a tightly knit network of witches, poisoners and priests whose reach extends all the way to Versailles. As the chief investigates a growing number of deaths at court, he learns that no one is safe from their deadly love potions and "inheritance stews"-not even the Sun King himself.
Based on court transcripts and Reynie's compulsive note-taking, Holly Tucker's riveting true crime…
Until I did my own animal-accompanied journey with Mollie and Peggy in 1984, my only association with animals on the trail was inadvertently with a collection of cockroaches in my backpack. It was when Bradt decided to add to their anthologies with a collection of stories about travelling with animals in 2018, Beastly Journeys, that I was able to read a wide variety of books on the topic. A delightful exercise!
I discovered this fascinating and extraordinary story when I was researching tales about travelling with animals for Beastly Journeys. Unlike the other four books in my list, this one has the animal as the central character. And what an animal! Zarafa was captured as a calf in what is now Ethiopia in a plan to cement relationships between the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt and Charles V of France. The year was 1826 and a giraffe had never before been seen in France. Zarafa did the first part of her journey strapped to the back on a camel, and then – surely more comfortably – down the Nile and across the Mediterranean on a brigantine.
A hole was cut in the deck which allowed Zarafa to travel with her body in the hold, while her head and neck enjoyed the human company on deck. From Marseille she was walked, with…
In October 1826, a ship arrived at Marseille carrying the first giraffe ever seen in France. A royal offering from Muhammad Ali, Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, to King Charles X, she had already traveled 2,000 miles down the Nile to Alexandria, from where she had sailed across the Mediterranean standing in the hold, her long neck and head protruding through a hole cut in the deck. In the spring of 1827, after wintering in Marseille, she was carefully walked 550 miles to Paris to the delight of thousands of onlookers.
The viceroy's tribute was politically motivated: He commanded the Turkish…
I left home in Melbourne to spend a year travelling in Asia when I was in my mid-twenties. I ended up living abroad for a decade in London, Bangladesh, and Myanmar before returning to Sydney in 2016. My first book is about the four years I lived in Myanmar and I’m currently writing my second, which is about the year I spent backpacking from Cambodia to Pakistan. My third book will be about the three years I worked as a journalist in Bangladesh. My plan is to write a ‘trilogy’ of memoirs. Living abroad has enriched my life and travel memoirs are one of my favourite genres, both as a reader and a writer.
What’s not to love about a book set in Paris about a journalist who falls in love with a Frenchman? This book is a delight. Turnbull writes beautifully, and with modesty and humour about making every faux pas imaginable in Paris. It’s light and insightful at the time. The pages practically turned themselves.
Almost French takes readers on a tour fraught with culture clashes but rife with insight and deadpan humour - a charming true story of what happens when a strong-willed Aussie girl meets a very French Frenchman.
Backpacking around Europe, twenty-something Sarah Turnbull meets Frederic and impulsively accepts his invitation to visit him for a week in Paris. Eight years later, she is still there - and married to him. The feisty journalist swaps vegemite for vichyssoise and all things French, but commits the fatal errors of bowling up to strangers at classy receptions, helping herself to champagne, laughing too loudly…
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
I'm an author currently living in rural southern Vermont, though I’ve also lived in Chicago and New York City. When I was a child I wanted nothing more than to visit the city of lights and when I finally started going, I was awestruck by the beauty and the history of the city of Paris. It’s the little things about Paris, the crooked cobblestone, the myriad of bookstores, the flowers along the boulevards, and those steel metro signs that look like you’re about to enter a terrifying circus. It all comes together in the most lovely ways. My newest novel, Between Before and After, is in many ways a love letter to the city.
This biography of the famous French authoress Collette explores the sensuously Parisian life of the famed and inflammatory author. It explores many of her sensuous love affairs along with her fabulous accomplishments. This biography marches through time in Paris, from the Belle Epoch to the lean years of the World Wars, to the shining beacon Paris became in the later half of the twentieth century. Through the life of the indomitable authoress Collette, the city of Paris truly sparkles as we see that her history is so entwined with the city’s history.
The story of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who, from her first appearance in Paris salons as a child bride in 1900, scandalised and enraptured all of France.
