Here are 10 books that Shakespeare fans have personally recommended if you like
Shakespeare.
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My passion for novels about war with a love-related component is rooted in my upbringing. My father served in the military and suffered from PTSD all his life as a result. He regaled me with stories of his time in the army during World War II, but those stories were wildly comic or compelling tales of adventure in exotic, faraway lands. The darker aspects of his experience came out in his nightmares, and later in life, in the flashbacks he experienced after his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. My mother’s life was also impacted by war. Her first marriage ended when her husband was killed in battle, and she had her own kind of PTSD as a result.
I love a fantastic novel about strong young women and female friendship, particularly when the characters are facing dire situations together, and Code Name Verity is exactly this kind of book.
Set during World War II, the story is action-packed, populated by female pilots and female spies, members of the Gestapo and the French Resistance.
There is a hint of boy-girl romance here, but as the novel proves, war-torn love is not limited to that particular kind of passion. Sometimes the love is platonic in nature, the kind of love shared between best friends.
'I have two weeks. You'll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.'
Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, Code Name Verity is a bestselling tale of friendship and courage set against the backdrop of World War Two.
Only in wartime could a stalwart lass from Manchester rub shoulders with a Scottish aristocrat, one a pilot, the other a special operations executive. When a vital mission goes wrong, and one of the friends has to bail out of a faulty plane over France, she is captured by the Gestapo and becomes a prisoner of war. The story…
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…
After thirty years in corporate America, I retired to learn the craft of writing literary fiction—publishing my first novel at sixty-two. I write about characters faced with seemingly impossible situations whose choices ultimately reveal who they truly are. Through mindful self-awareness, I want readers to search within themselves to think about what they would do in a similar situation. These are five books that shaped my understanding of what literary fiction can do through deep characterization.
A brilliant example of finding meaning in who you are meant to be and finding dignity in it when others may not see it the same way.
When Stevens, the butler, realized his true worth and value, he was able to approach the world from a better place. I think about this every time I write about a character who needs to believe more in himself.
*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available to preorder*
The Remains of the Day won the 1989 Booker Prize and cemented Kazuo Ishiguro's place as one of the world's greatest writers. David Lodge, chairman of the judges in 1989, said, it's "a cunningly structured and beautifully paced performance". This is a haunting evocation of lost causes and lost love, and an elegy for England at a time of acute change. Ishiguro's work has been translated into more than forty languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide.
Stevens, the long-serving butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on…
This book did two things I love in a book: evoked emotion and showed me a setting I was unfamiliar with in a way that I could easily sense myself there. I also loved the blurring of a fairytale into real life. A beautiful story!
A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska, Eowyn Ivey's THE SNOW CHILD was a top ten bestseller in hardback and paperback, and went on to be a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Alaska, the 1920s. Jack and Mabel have staked everything on a fresh start in a remote homestead, but the wilderness is a stark place, and Mabel is haunted by the baby she lost many years before. When a little girl appears mysteriously on their land, each is filled with wonder, but also foreboding: is she what she seems, and can they find room in…
The woman who inspired Don Quixote sets out across the dangerous roads of Spain to honor her dying lover's final plea.
The daughter of a wealthy merchant, young Dolça Llull Prat is besotted with the dashing, bootstrapping Miguel Cervantes from their first meeting. Despite Miguel's entreaties, the ever-practical Dolça, with…
Powerful stories of parallel generations in Ghana and the United States. A whole people's divided history encapsulated, with compelling storytelling. Each story contains pain and heartbreak and yet also a seed of hope.
Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel - the intimate, gripping story of a brilliantly vivid cast of characters and through their lives the very story of America itself.
In My Grandfather's Blessings, Rachel Naomi Remen, a cancer physician and master storyteller, uses her luminous stories to remind us of the power of our kindness and the joy of being alive.
Dr. Remen's grandfather, an orthodox rabbi and scholar of the Kabbalah, saw life as a web of connection and knew that everyone belonged to him, and that he belonged to everyone. He taught her that blessing one another is what fills our emptiness, heals our loneliness, and connects us more deeply to life.
Life has given us many more blessings than we have allowed ourselves to receive. My…
I didn't expect to like a crime novel set in 1829 Iceland, and it is a slow burn but ultimately a gripping account of a woman’s part in the notorious murder of two men. Evocative, powerful writing brings to life the grim, reality of Icelandic life at the time and a society hugely judgemental of women. Family ties and relationships are fluid, life is precarious, held together by unforgiving religious dogma. All this is brought vividly to life through the author’s meticulous research of original documents and a deep knowledge and understanding of the culture and history. I really enjoyed the complexity the author brings to Agnes, the woman at the heart of it all, the women who accommodated her in the months before her execution, and those who were changed by her presence amongst them. The author paints her as an entirely believable survivor of neglect, coercive control, brutality…
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.
Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tv=ti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her.…
Katie's Gamble is an unexpected, unique story about a young woman who's trying to support her younger siblings by keeping her family's confectionery shop open.
In order to do that, she has to take on her older brother, who's a notorious gambler in Louisiana. Additionally, she has to outsmart Rowdy…
Success isn’t about money. It’s about character and personal experiences. I accept Viktor Frankl’s conclusion that fulfillment comes from having a purpose, caring for others, and living life with love. From my earliest movie heroes like Lash LaRue, Tom Mix, and Roy Rogers, to John Wayne, Cary Grant, and George Clooney, my favorite heroes have been modest and kind. Book heroes like Donna Leon’s Inspector Guido Brunetti, Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache, and John Le Carre’s George Smiley are modest and kind. This returns us to Lou Gehrig, my authentic, real-life hero. His early influence is clear in my heroic Duff Malone character.
Dunstan Ramsey is not supposed to be the main character, but the story cannot survive without him.
Ramsey drew my affection during my impressionable thirties. He was modest and kind, and showed an inner strength that was expressed with patience and good humor. He also represented a dramatic figure who was new to me, the obscure hero who stands outside of the spotlight and causes important things to happen.
Ramsey’s story is full and nuanced enough to enrich three complete novels, The Deptford Trilogy, each with its own kind heroes, though not so modest as Ramsey himself.
The first book in Robertson Davies's acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly Link
Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball…
Escaping from sure starvation in Jamestown, the girl named Lamentations had my heart right from the beginning, even though the things she has to eat and the brilliance she needed to survive pushed the limits of my personal gross-out factor.
'Exhilarating' GUARDIAN 'Her writing has a timeless quality' THE TIMES '[Has] a visionary quality' OBSERVER
A profound and explosive novel about a spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive
A servant girl escapes from a settlement. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief of everything that her own civilization has taught her.
The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power…
The Echo of Old Books meets The Lost Apothecary in this evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets.
'The thing about books,' she said 'is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.'
On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found...
For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives.
But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as…
Papyrologist Lisa Emmer's world flips when the Sûreté detains her at her Metro station with news of the savage murder of the esteemed Paris historian Dr. Raimond Foix, her friend and mentor in the study of ancient documents.
Horrified, Lisa finds clues at the crime scene left behind for her…
** FROM THE NY TIMES and Costa shortlisted author, comes a NEW standalone thriller**
The truth can set you free. Or destroy your life
When blood spatter expert Claudia O'Shiel finds herself on stage to talk about the most famous criminal case in recent history, she has a choice to make: explain how her evidence put away the man responsible for the brutal double murder? Or tell them the truth - that the real killer is still out there, and if she tries to expose this conspiracy, it won't just be her life on the line.
