Here are 82 books that Shrine fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was twelve years old when I first read Jane Eyre, the beginning of my love for gothic fiction. Murder mysteries are fine, but add a remote location, a decaying old house, some tormented characters, ancient family secrets, and I’m all in. Traditional Gothic, American Gothic (love this painting), Australian Gothic, Mexican Gothic (perfect title by the way), I love them all. The setting in gothic fiction is like a character in itself, and wherever I travel, I’m drawn to these locations, all food for my own writing.
So much so that I’ve read it several times since I first encountered it as a teenager. (Plus watched both movie versions, twice each.)
The first line, "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again," drew me in and refused to let go. I wanted to return to Manderley. I wanted to find out what dark secrets would be revealed there. The unnamed, naive young heroine is haunted by the all-pervading presence of her husband’s first wife, Rebecca… and so was I.
And although some of the social attitudes are jarring to a 21st-century reader, and although I know the plot by heart now… I will still return to it.
* '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…
Killing me Softly is the beginning of a fast-paced new series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Allison and Sergeant Mark Stringer who have the chilling task of tracking down a serial killer who is to terrify a city with his bizarre and cold-blooded murders of innocent women.
Horror was never something that appealed to me when I was younger. However, in adulthood, I realised the fascination of the unsettling. As I began writing, I realised that true horror is not all about monsters and gore but about breaking our everyday complacency and realising the possibility that the world is bigger than us and how we are unprepared to deal with it. This is why I write horror. Not to shock you with a jump-scare, but you leave you thinking about my words long after the lights have gone out.
Looking to move past the social shame of her suicide attempt, Margaret Prior begins visiting a woman’s prison to conduct rehabilitative charity work. But when she meets the young spiritualist Selina Dawes, she finds herself pulled into a world of smouldering passion and the realisation the world may be more than she ever realised.
In this book, Sarah Waters takes Victorian gothic romance and brings it into the modern age. Reading this book involves peeling away the layers and interpreting the unspoken. Nothing is spelt out, as none of the characters would ever deign to say such things out loud. But by looking at what isn’t said, we gradually learn the hidden truth.
'Affinity is the work of an intense and atmospheric imagination . . . Sarah Waters is such an interesting writer, a kind of feminist Dickens' Fiona Pitt-Kethley, Daily Telegraph
Set in and around the women's prison at Milbank in the 1870s, Affinity is an eerie and utterly compelling ghost story, a complex and intriguing literary mystery and a poignant love story with an unexpected twist in the tale. Following the death of her father, Margaret Prior has decided to pursue some 'good work' with the lady criminals of one of London's most notorious gaols. Surrounded by prisoners, murderers and common…
An avid reader, I began a project in 2012 to read one short story a week in supernatural mysteries, ghost stories, and quiet horror genres. I began with the classic authors: Poe, MR James, Lovecraft, Shelley, Stoker, du Maurier, etc. I began a blog, Reading Fiction Blog, and posted these free stories with my reviews (I’m still posting today). Over the years, it turned into a compendium of fiction. Today, I have nearly 400 short stories by over 150 classic and now contemporary authors in the blog Index. I did this because I wanted to learn more about writing dark fiction and who better to learn from than the masters?
If ever there was a perfect ghost story, this is it. Gothic with atmospheric language and vivid scenes that still haunt me. I suppose this could have been written by Jane Austen because of its nightmarish ghostliness on the English moors. So masterfully done—the wreaths of moving fog and haunted cries.
I love the unknown fear of it all. Susan Hill is highly skilled in making ghosts present on the page: the eerie sound of the rocking chair in the old nursery is a spine-tingler, albeit a cliché. Written in a sublime fashion, it fits the “quiet horror” genre. Quiet horror is so savory to me because it digs into the imagination with shadowy phantoms without slamming the reader viscerally. I love that kind of artful creation.
The classic ghost story from the author of The Mist in the Mirror: a chilling tale about a menacing spectre haunting a small English town.
Arthur Kipps is an up-and-coming London solicitor who is sent to Crythin Gifford—a faraway town in the windswept salt marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway—to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of a client, Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. Mrs. Drablow’s house stands at the end of the causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but Kipps is unaware of the tragic secrets that lie hidden behind its sheltered windows. The routine business trip…
Killing me Softly is the beginning of a fast-paced new series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Allison and Sergeant Mark Stringer who have the chilling task of tracking down a serial killer who is to terrify a city with his bizarre and cold-blooded murders of innocent women.
I come from a long line of women who are survivors. Survivors of transportation, imprisonment, assault, poverty, illness. In all of them was a clawing determination to endure. My ancestors were not shrinking violets; they bore their pain with dignity, used their voices and their hopes for a better future to boost the next generation of girls to a better life. I am the recipient of their courage. I believe this is how our sisterhood should roll. What we fight for today, what we give a voice to, should not have to be fought for again. It is this passion that drives my work, my reading, and my life.
This has been my favourite book since I read it as a child.
I love Jane’s courage in the face of adversity, both in her childhood and as a woman. It is her moral compass that guides her through her life, determining the rightness and wrongness of situations. She grows up in a world that believes she should be silent and accept the single path offered to her.
The message in the book emboldened me as I grew up and had to make decisions to challenge the expected norms. I can’t help but find joy in the cyclic nature of the love story here. In patience, in steadfastness, she finds love and does not lose herself in the process.
Little treasures, the FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library. Each stunning, gift edition features deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers and gilded edges. The unabridged text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader.
Perhaps one of the most well-known books in the world, Jane Eyre follows the life of its eponymous orphaned protagonist. From her early life Jane is strong-willed, passionate and kind but comes up against a lot of struggles. She lives with her aunt and uncle during early childhood, where she…
I tell people when I meet them that when I married my husband, I got roots. I moved a lot as a child, living in small country towns to suburbs of big cities, and my favorite place by far is in the country, surrounded by nature, feeling that sense of belonging. My husband and I live in his great-grandparent's house in the country, next door to his mother, who still lives in the house where she grew up and raised my husband. There is nothing I love more than sharing my love for Jesus with readers through fictional situations that could really happen.
Paper Dolls takes place in the fictitious town of Habakkuk, where everyone knows everyone else. Besides feeling as though I’m part of this sisterhood of women, I love how the author’s focus of this book is to allow me to get to know all of the women equally. Most books will start out with one main character, then the next in the series shares about another, and so forth. Kara Hunt steps outside the box and introduces all the women equally in the first book, making me want to read about each one of them more in-depth in the subsequent books. This series is full of humor, romance, suspense, mystery, and a lot of sisterhood love.
I’m a child of the Cold War. Until the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989 this strange standoff between the Soviet Union and the Western allies informed everyone’s life, but my own case was particular because my father served in the Royal Air Force. For three years he was even in command of three squadrons of nuclear bombers. With a background like that, how could I not be interested in the larger picture? Since then I have gone on to write novels with all kinds of settings but the other side of the now defunct Iron Curtain has always held a fascination... and has directly led to at least three of my own books.
Is there a Czech theme going on here? Well, the Czech lands have always produced artists, musicians and writers of the highest calibre and although he may not be widely known, Škvorecký is one of them. From exile in Canada following the Russian invasion of 1968, he wrote this extraordinary and fantastic novel about a miracle (a holy statue is seen to bow its head) in a Czech village in the first year of communist rule. Of course such irrational things couldn’t be allowed and the priest is condemned as a hoaxer. But now we’re in 1968 and everything is up for discussion including this forgotten event. Seen through the eyes of the author’s picaresque character, Danny Smiřický (who was present at the original miracle but unfortunately had dozed off at the vital moment so never actually saw St Joseph move), the whole story is relived and discussed. Part farce,…
This energetic and hilarious novel is made even more important by the current final thawing of the long, Communist winter in Czechoslovakia. Moving between 1948, when our hero Danny Smiricky falls asleep in church while a miraculous event occurs, and 1968, when he observes the miracle of Prague Spring, The Miracle Game is a sharp look at the strange, sad, and silly things people do to survive.
I tell people when I meet them that when I married my husband, I got roots. I moved a lot as a child, living in small country towns to suburbs of big cities, and my favorite place by far is in the country, surrounded by nature, feeling that sense of belonging. My husband and I live in his great-grandparent's house in the country, next door to his mother, who still lives in the house where she grew up and raised my husband. There is nothing I love more than sharing my love for Jesus with readers through fictional situations that could really happen.
This pick was a hard one, to decide which series of this author was my favorite. I picked this one because I absolutely love Jess. She is written in such a realistic and beautiful way. I couldn’t help but see some of myself in her. While this is the third book in this series (I highly recommend you read all three, in order) it was probably the one that stuck with me the longest. Brenda Anderson writes realistic, emotionally filled pages, drawing the reader in as though we belong. The storylines are all different and genuine and the characters all have their own personalities and quirks. There isn’t a book from this author that I don’t love and I highly recommend them all.
When flowers and chocolate collide, romance is sure to bloom.
Family has always been the one constant in Jess Beaumont’s messy life, so when her parents separate, she puts “Operation: Planting Hope” into action. All she has to do is recreate the circumstances that helped her parents fall in love. Unfortunately, that includes the daunting task of restoring the family cabin’s gardens. When the handsome candy store owner shows up to help, she’s certain she has all the elements required for her parents’ love to bloom again. After all, flowers and chocolate are the perfect ingredients for romance.
I tell people when I meet them that when I married my husband, I got roots. I moved a lot as a child, living in small country towns to suburbs of big cities, and my favorite place by far is in the country, surrounded by nature, feeling that sense of belonging. My husband and I live in his great-grandparent's house in the country, next door to his mother, who still lives in the house where she grew up and raised my husband. There is nothing I love more than sharing my love for Jesus with readers through fictional situations that could really happen.
When I first began reading Christian fiction, my husband posed a question to me. To my surprise, when wandering the library that week, the exact scenario was the plot for this book! I got the book, read it cover to cover and fell in love with this author’s storytelling. The way she explores the characters' emotions put me right in the story. I went on to read the second book immediately and waited (albeit, not very patiently LOL) for the third in the series, pre-ordering it as soon as possible. Deborah Raney has become one of my favorite authors. She is one of the first Christian authors I ever read and she made me fall in love with the whole genre.
Her Second Husband Healed the Sorrow of a Tragic Loss. Her First Has Just Returned from the Dead. Which Man Has the Right to Claim Daria’s Heart?
After two years of serving as a missionary in a remote area of South America, Daria Camfield has returned to the States to mourn her husband, reportedly killed while providing medical aid to a neighboring Colombian village.
One family discovers how God can redeem any tragedy.
At first, Daria finds comfort only in the daughter born to her after Nate’s tragic death. As she begins to heal, she also finds a listening ear…
I tell people when I meet them that when I married my husband, I got roots. I moved a lot as a child, living in small country towns to suburbs of big cities, and my favorite place by far is in the country, surrounded by nature, feeling that sense of belonging. My husband and I live in his great-grandparent's house in the country, next door to his mother, who still lives in the house where she grew up and raised my husband. There is nothing I love more than sharing my love for Jesus with readers through fictional situations that could really happen.
Sharon Srock introduces us to Garfield, a small town in Oklahoma. Callie is the first woman we meet, along with her friends who have a Bible study with a different variety of cheesecake every week. While Srock may not be as well-known as Karen Kingsbury, she writes such emotion in her pages that I cannot put the books down once I pick them up. This author is amazing as she has created twenty books (and counting) from this one small town, with the characters intertwining with each other’s lives. Each with their own storylines (nothing cookie cutter about her) and each their own voice. Truly remarkable and definitely a favorite of mine.
A baby is dead and Callie Stillman blames herself. Haunted by memories of a tiny coffin, Callie can't understand how God could expect her to put her heart on the line a second time. But the evasive little girl in her Sunday school class is so obviously in trouble that Callie finds her resolve cracking.
They can’t trust anyone
Iris and Samantha Evans are living on borrowed time. Deserted, orphaned, betrayed, and deceived, they need rescuing in the worst way.
As an Indian writer of contemporary fiction revolving around family, relationships, emotions, and hope, I am constantly on the lookout for similar novels to take inspiration from them and learn how to build beautiful, well-etched characters and portray heart-wrenching emotions. I love books that make me cry as they give me a fulfillment like nothing else. I love characters that are likable and make me feel a strong connection with them. And I like to write similar characters in my books as well. The readers of my novel The Fragile Thread of Hope have corroborated the same. I live in Gangtok, a hill station in northeast India.
Based in Darjeeling, my maternal home, Perfect is the story of a fatherless young man Gideon as he wrestles with self-doubt and a dark past as he makes his way into adulthood. It is a beautiful coming-of-age story narrating his special bond with an enigmatic girl Lakisha and his complicated relationship with his father. Highly underrated, extremely moving, and filled with doses of inspiration, this story from the gorgeous hills of Darjeeling will remain with me for a long time.
There are people who strike the right chords in our lives and make our hearts sing.' Living has been all about hiding away and pretentions for Gideon who has always preferred being alone. However when he joins college he comes across people of all sorts and he begins to realise that life may be a sum total of little miracles after all. As he matures and begins to open up he discovers that he is not far from the healing he has always been in search of.
