Here are 100 books that Signals fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a great-great-great-great-grandchild of Irish immigrants, I come from a long, proud line of alcoholics, especially on my mother’s side. My childhood was a masterclass in chaos: family scream-fests, flung insults, and someone cracking a joke while dodging a punch. It was painful, yes, but also absurd and often hilarious. That’s where my dark wit comes from. Razor-sharp humor was how we made it out alive. It becomes a lens you’re trained to observe the world through since you were a wee lad. I’ve always been drawn to stories where grief and laughter sit at the same table, clinking pints. Satire and absurdity aren’t interests for me. They’re muscle memory.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or stage an intervention. This book introduced me to Ignatius J. Reilly, a character so insufferable and absurdly grandiose that I kept turning pages just to see how much worse he could get. I was horrified and hypnotized. I couldn’t look away.
What I love about this book is that it doesn’t ask you to like anyone. It asks you to witness the glorious wreckage of human delusion. It is chaotic, bloated, brilliant, and somehow still moving. Toole gave me a character I wanted to strangle, and a novel I wanted to reread. That kind of friction is rare, and I live for it.
'This is probably my favourite book of all time' Billy Connolly
A pithy, laugh-out-loud story following John Kennedy Toole's larger-than-life Ignatius J. Reilly, floundering his way through 1960s New Orleans, beautifully resigned with cover art by Gary Taxali _____________
'This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians . . . don't make the mistake of bothering me.'
Ignatius J. Reilly: fat, flatulent, eloquent and almost unemployable. By the standards of ordinary folk he is pretty much…
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…
Growing up in Scott, Louisiana, I didn’t know that everyone else in the United States did not get Mardi Gras off from school and work. I thought everyone knew some French. Crawfish boils were a natural, expectable part of every spring. South Louisiana is a world unto itself. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate my heritage, my Cajun lineage, and the sometimes-befuddling ways we Louisianians look at that world. Between conversations with elders, reading historical documents, and even looking at land transfer maps, I’ve become even more grounded in what being from this little wet corner of the world means.
This is another book to tackle the uncommon quirks of this region. Lejeune finds the backroads through this part of the world to tie legends, myths, and history together and then bind them to epochs in his own life.
I felt like I was right next to him the whole time, feeling confusion, appreciation, and awe as every dogleg on the bayou or rise over a chenier brought me on a journey inward as well. This is a book I’d like to read again while traveling.
In Finding Myself Lost in Louisiana, author Keagan LeJeune brilliantly weaves the unusual folklore, landscape, and history of Louisiana along with his own family lineage that begins in 1760 to trace the trajectory of people's lives in the Bayou State. His account confronts the challenging environmental record evident in Louisiana's landscapes. LeJeune also celebrates and memorializes traditions of some underrepresented communities in Louisiana, communities that are vanishing or have vanished-communities including the author's own.
Each section in the memoir is a journey to a fascinating place, but it's also a search for LeJeune's own sense of belonging. The book is…
I came to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1988 to serve as a law clerk for a prominent federal judge (played by Martin Sheen in the movie Selma). I was convinced that the death penalty could be justly administered, and seeing Ted Bundy’s final appeal did little to change my mind. Subsequent cases, however, slowly worked a change in my attitude as I saw an execution’s effect on everyone involved in the process. My passion comes from this behind-the-scenes look at capital punishment in America.
I loved this beautifully written book for its depiction of how the death penalty worked in the Jim Crow South. I loved the compassion shown by the characters, both black and white, and the attempt by Gaines to reveal the complexity of crime and punishment in an era that may not be so different from our own.
As a law clerk in the 1980s in the Deep South, I witnessed the legacy of the system that Gaines describes.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A deep and compassionate novel about a young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to visit a Black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.
"An instant classic." —Chicago Tribune
A “majestic, moving novel...an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives" (Chicago Tribune), from the critically acclaimed author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
"A Lesson Before Dying reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines's position…
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
Growing up in Scott, Louisiana, I didn’t know that everyone else in the United States did not get Mardi Gras off from school and work. I thought everyone knew some French. Crawfish boils were a natural, expectable part of every spring. South Louisiana is a world unto itself. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate my heritage, my Cajun lineage, and the sometimes-befuddling ways we Louisianians look at that world. Between conversations with elders, reading historical documents, and even looking at land transfer maps, I’ve become even more grounded in what being from this little wet corner of the world means.
South Louisianians are skeptical of anyone not from here who tries to write about us. We often end up as caricatures. But Mike Tidwell came from the outside and saw us anew.
In his book, he depicts the communities along our coastal areas and wetlands. I was shocked at how he could capture fishermen and traiteurs (faith healers) with such accuracy and respect.
And I can’t forget to mention how he bravely calls attention to one of America’s regions most endangered by climate change, which also happens to be the place I will always call home.
The Cajun coast of Louisiana is home to a way of life as unique, complex, and beautiful as the terrain itself. As award-winning travel writer Mike Tidwell journeys through the bayou, he introduces us to the food and the language, the shrimp fisherman, the Houma Indians, and the rich cultural history that makes it unlike any other place in the world. But seeing the skeletons of oak trees killed by the salinity of the groundwater, and whole cemeteries sinking into swampland and out of sight, Tidwell also explains why each introduction may be a farewell—as the storied Louisiana coast steadily…
I’m a middle grade author, and I believe so much in the power of books to help broker conversations between kids and the adults in their lives, especially if those conversations are about things that are often tricky and tough to talk about. I love how middle grade fiction will fearlessly tackle these difficult topics, but does so well with heart and humor.
I love this book so much! It is about a small town in Louisiana, Fawn Creek (known as Yawn Creek to the residents) where the same 12 kids have been going to school forever until one day a new girl, Orchid Mason shows up and begins to mix things up. It’s about friendship, family, self-deception, and following your dreams. I absolutely loved it. Erin Entrada Kelly is such a master at showing the reader multiple perspectives, which greatly enhances the reading experience.
“A powerful and thought-provoking story.”—Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“An emotionally resonant story about authenticity and belonging.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A raw, real exploration of belonging that’s also sweetly hopeful.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Every day in Fawn Creek, Louisiana, is exactly the same—until Orchid Mason arrives. From Erin Entrada Kelly, the winner of the Newbery Medal for Hello, Universe and a Newbery Honor for We Dream of Space, this contemporary school story set in small-town Louisiana is about friendship, family, deception, and being true to yourself and your dreams.
There are twelve kids in the seventh grade at Fawn Creek Middle…
I am a nerdy economist who studies women and work. I am passionate about using data to understand the real lived experiences of women in today’s economy. Taylor Swift is my muse because she is not only authentic but persistent, a true “reinventionista” in her heart-of-hearts as she moves from era-to-era masterminding her path to long-term happiness and success. I want to live in a world where women’s lives are appreciated, understood, and supported. It’s why I do what I do and, in many respects, I also believe it is why Taylor Swift does what she does.
While Taylor Swift has not written a song about Isabel Allende or her daughter Paula, it may only be a matter of time.
Taylor is known for having a strong, tight-knit relationship with her mother, Andrea. If anyone can write about the tethers and ties that weave through a mother-daughter relationship with such precise detail and sorrowing pain, it is Isabel Allende.
Paula is a memoir about loss and the story about how Isabel lost her adult daughter to cancer. It is the only book to ever make me sob-cry. Once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. I felt Isabel’s pain deep in the depths of my soul in a similar light as when I listen to the song “Soon You’ll Get Better” on her Lover album, which Taylor Swift wrote about her mother’s treatment for cancer.
"Beautiful and heartrending. . . . Memoir, autobiography, epicedium, perhaps even some fiction: they are all here, and they are all quite wonderful."-Los Angeles Times
In this literary classic, New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende recalls the story of her beloved daughter and her remarkable family's past.
When her daughter, Paula, became gravely ill and fell into a coma, Isabel Allende began to write the story of her family for her unconscious child. Bizarre ancestors are introduced; delightful and bitter childhood memories are shared; amazing anecdotes of youthful years are relived, and the most intimate secrets are quietly passed…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
We all have obsessions in life and one of mine has been my mother and the great love and enmity that ricocheted between us for fifty-seven years. Throughout the decades, my mother went from protector to controller to betrayer to ogre to human to an elderly woman in my care. The love and hate, distance and intimacy, estrangement, and reconciliation that we experienced made me a lifelong student of the mother-daughter bond. I‘ve written about my mother for more than 30 years, and love reading mother-daughter stories, not saccharine sweet ones, but complex multi-layered dramas where there’s no villain and no hero—just two humans struggling to love and understand each other.
I read Wild Game in a weekend—and that’s unusual for me, but I just couldn’t put the book down. Brodeur brought me into a world of treachery, lies, and mother-daughter entanglement that I found absolutely compelling. The mother in this book, Malabar, is a larger-than-life character whose willingness to sacrifice her daughter’s well-being for her own ends was horrifying and believable. I rooted for the daughter all the way through this beautifully crafted book, but it was the mother I found unforgettable.
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER. A daughter’s tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity.
NAMED A BEST FALL BOOK BY People * Refinery29 * Entertainment Weekly * BuzzFeed * NPR’s On Point * Town & Country * Real Simple * New York Post * Palm Beach Post * Toronto Star * Orange Country Register * Bustle * Bookish * BookPage * Kirkus* BBC Culture* Debutiful
On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set…
I have been writing all my life, but was never able to find my voice until I had my daughters. It was for them I wrote “Wrightsville Beach”. I wanted to show them what a good relationship should look like and how their decisions make a difference in where they will go. I want my readers to relive that feeling of falling in love and to be sent in unexpected directions, as life so often does to us. I want you to enjoy it so much, you don’t want to put the book down until it’s finished and once you do, to sit and reflect on it, savoring the feeling it has left behind.
This book is part of a series, but this particular one captured my heart. Cara’s niece, Linnea, is like Jess in so many ways. Having just graduated college, she joins the turtle team that works with the turtle hospital, learns to surf, and of course, falls in love. She also sets out to find her own calling and when she does, it requires sacrifices she did not know she would have to make. It is the pain we all feel when we discover our path does not align with those we love. Mary Alice Monroe has such a strong connection to nature and it comes through in all her books, particularly here when she describes life at the beach and those turtles, oh, those turtles...
The New York Times bestselling author and “skilled storyteller who never lets her readers down” (Huffington Post) returns to her beloved Beach House series with this “authentic, generous, and heartfelt” (Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author) tale of new beginnings, resilience, and one family’s enduring love.
Cara Rutledge returns to her Southern home on the idyllic Isle of Palms. Comforting in its familiarity, it is still rife with painful memories. Only through reconnecting with family, friends, and the rhythms of the lowcountry can Cara let go of the past and open herself to the possibility of a new…
As a psychologist who writes psychological suspense I love reading similar books where other writers bring their knowledge of psychology to their craft. Aside from writing, I enjoy cryptic puzzles, and I find that reading crime and suspense novels exercises similar lateral thinking as I try to identify the red herrings and work out the twist. And don’t we all love it when we get it right? But if you’re like me, you get an even bigger buzz when you’ve been fooled by a clever misdirection or plot twist. And gosh, are they fun to write!
The author was previously a clinical psychologist, and her knowledge is brought to the fore in this novel of a professional grieving for her missing child. The protagonist and mother of the title is a psychotherapist working in a trauma therapy unit where she struggles to keep boundaries between her private emotions and her work with her clients.
As a psychologist myself, I liked the realistic portrayal of her personal/professional struggles and the dynamic of client/therapist relationships and boundaries. A true glimpse behind the scenes.
The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves...
'Excellent . . . A gripping debut.' Sunday Times 'Taut, absorbing and psychologically astute.' Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
Dr Ruth Hartland is the director of a highly respected trauma therapy unit. She is confident, capable and excellent at her job. But she is finding it hard to maintain.
Increasingly preoccupied by her son Tom's disappearance, Ruth is shaken when a new patient arrives at the unit - a young man who looks shockingly like him.
As a therapist, she knows exactly what she should do.…
As a Children’s Librarian for over 30 years, my passion has been for the sound of language. I want children to hear rhythmic, joyful language that will make them fall in love with words. My own career as a storyteller and author continues this same love of language. I try to write my own picture books in such a way that any adult who picks them up will read them out with the same kind of verve and joy that I put into them.
A great Thanksgiving treat. “Dancin’ in the kitchen. The family’s packed in tight. I think we may be dancin’ in the kitchin’ all night!” The family cooks, sets the table, and eats…all while dancing and chanting along. Get your beat going. Hand out spoons to beat on pans and rock along with this joyful picture book. All the way to the end, “Grandpa does the washin’. We all pitch in to dry. We’re still dancin’ in the kitchen, with the radio way up high!”
Dinner time is dancin' at Grandma's house while the chicken and dumplings simmer on the stove and all three generations of the family groove to the music on the kitchen radio, working up generous appetites.
