Here are 7 books that Something of a Calling fans have personally recommended if you like
Something of a Calling.
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Steadman had to come up with ways that modern technology could work in the story. There are only so many plots readers can tolerate where a cell phone happens to die at a crucial moment when the protagonist is separated from safety. The technology here is diverse. The most crucial element being a camera on a cat collar that unlocks the entire A-story about a woman in danger. This neighborhood is also filled with doorbell cameras, but a couple of blocks away where buildings are more in need of upgrades, there aren’t any cameras.
Catherine Steadman absolutely nails it with her 2026 thriller, Nine Lives! This book is page-to-page curiosity, suspense, action, and difficult decisions.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Kashiwai uses the same format and successful formula in A Serving of Hope (book four) as in previous installments. Each chapter is an independent story broken into two parts. The chapters are named for the assignment: the dish that a client wants recreated. These can be incredible simple, yet full of memories, like fried chicken that was served on a memorable day in someone’s life. In certain instances, clients show up at the Kamogawa Diner and tell Nagare and his daughter, Koishi, that they aren’t sure why they have the urge to find a particular meal. The message comes through as Koishi interviews them and when they finally taste what they’re after.
Since each chapter can be read independently as short stories, there are some repetitions including how Drowsy the cat got his name, the peculiar non-descript two-storey building of the restaurant, and the hallway filled with photos that…
The Kamogawa Food Detectives return in A Serving of Hope, translated from the Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood. This bestselling, heartwarming sleuthing series can be enjoyed separately, i any order, or binged all at once!
Perfect for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
If I hadn't searched for the 'flavours' of my memories, I think I would have spent my life endlessly chasing the past . . .
Near Higashi Honganji Temple in Kyoto, the Kamogawa Diner continues to attract lost souls seeking meaning in their lives. From the morning miso soup before heading to Kyoto for the judicial examination,…
My new thriller centers around a small, mysterious cult and their shocking demise. For years, I’ve read true crime books on the subject, and I wanted to infuse the reality and truth of real-life events into my fictional novel. In a similar vein, these books represent a range of thrillers inspired by true events, ranging from cults to serial killers to teenage criminals. I hope you find these books as gripping and haunting as I do.
I find this book to be an unsettling but impactful read, both thought-provoking and complex. We Need to Talk about Kevin follows the mother of a troubled teenager responsible for a school shooting.
It’s about nature versus nurture, the relationship between mother and child, and deeply seated guilt. It draws inspiration from real events, including the 1999 shooting at Columbine, which wasn’t the U.S.’s first mass shooting at a school, but it would become one of the most infamous.
Shriver’s novel raises unsettling questions about a mother’s guilt and self-justification and a community’s heartache and blame. I consider it to be a captivating and moving book.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to…
One terrible lie, a desperate measure to save her past, just might destroy her future…
Magnolia Merryweather, a horse breeder, is eager to celebrate Christmas for the first time after the Civil War ended, even as she grows her business. She envisions a calm, prosperous life ahead after the terror…
As a horror writer, the evil kid subgenre holds great appeal to me. I’ve written about them a few times, most notably in my novella Sour Candy, which remains the most popular thing I’ve written, perhaps because, like in the books mentioned above, we don’t expect our children to be evil monsters, and when they are, we’re ill-prepared to deal with the threat. They’re still children, after all, and we’re supposed to love and protect them. The emotional quandaries this situation presents are fascinating to write about.
Stage’s wonderfully sinister novel documents the early years of a child who seems to have been born bad. The thrill in this one is the ever-escalating war between a precocious and seemingly sweet child and her anguished mother, who knows she’s being manipulated by her daughter, while the father remains oblivious to the horror. It’s unusual, and fun, to read a book in which we get to see things from the child’s perspective as she tries to drive her mother insane.
“Unnerving and unputdownable, Baby Teeth will get under your skin and keep you trapped in its chilling grip until the shocking conclusion.”―New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline
One of Entertainment Weekly’s Must-Read Books for July | People Magazine's Book of the Week | One of Bustle's "Fifteen Books With Chilling Protagonists That Will Keep You Guessing" | One of PopSugar's "25 Must-Read Books That Will Make July Fly By!" | One of the "Biggest Thrillers of the Summer"―SheReads | "New & Noteworthy" ―USA Today | "Summer 2018 Must-Read"―Bookish | "One of 11 Crime Novels You Should Read in July"―Crime…
I’ve always been drawn to the small-town milieu, which might seem strange given I’m a product of suburbia. But as a professional travel writer, I’ve visited scores (maybe hundreds) of country towns, so I know what makes them tick—and they come prepackaged with all the ingredients needed to create an unnerving horror experience. The author simply dreams up a charming little village with humble and lovable residents, then either peels back the bucolic veneer to expose the corruption beneath or introduces a hostile outside force. Voilà! An effective horror novel. I love reading those sorts of stories, and I love writing them.
Science fiction and horror go together like a gourmet meal and vintage wine. No one combined them better than the English writer John Wyndham. I was introduced to his fiction in a high school English class, and this was the first prescribed text I gobbled up rather than plodded through.
Horror doesn’t work unless you care about the protagonists, and Wyndham creates an idyllic village populated with relatable characters before introducing the book’s alien interlopers. Also, ‘pregnancy gone wrong’ is one of my favourite tropes and usually it involves body horror, but this is pretty much bloodless—pure, paranoid terror.
A genre-defining tale of first contact by one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant—and neglected—science fiction and horror writers, whom Stephen King called “the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced.”
“In my opinion, [John] Wyndham’s chef d’oeuvre . . . a graphic metaphor for the fear of unwanted pregnancies . . . I myself had a dream about a highly intelligent nonhuman baby after reading this book.”—Margaret Atwood, Slate
What if the women of a sleepy English village all became simultaneously pregnant, and the children, once born, possessed supernatural—and possibly alien—powers?
As a horror writer, the evil kid subgenre holds great appeal to me. I’ve written about them a few times, most notably in my novella Sour Candy, which remains the most popular thing I’ve written, perhaps because, like in the books mentioned above, we don’t expect our children to be evil monsters, and when they are, we’re ill-prepared to deal with the threat. They’re still children, after all, and we’re supposed to love and protect them. The emotional quandaries this situation presents are fascinating to write about.
Hugely influential since its publication in the 1970s, Tryon’s deliciously twisted book about a pair of identical twins who happen to have different birthdays and are left to their own (unusual) devices after their father dies, has often been imitated, but never equaled. Shocking upon its initial release, jaded readers may see the ending coming now, but that doesn’t detract from the sheer ingenuity of the horror leading up to it. A masterpiece of psychological terror.
Holland and Niles Perry are identical thirteen-year-old twins. They are close, close enough, almost, to read each other’s thoughts, but they couldn’t be more different. Holland is bold and mischievous, a bad influence, while Niles is kind and eager to please, the sort of boy who makes parents proud. The Perrys live in the bucolic New England town their family settled centuries ago, and as it happens, the extended clan has gathered at its ancestral farm this summer to mourn the death of the twins’ father in a most unfortunate accident. Mrs. Perry still hasn’t recovered from the shock of…
Pete West, a political columnist, travels to Prague to find a missing diplomat, later found murdered. He attempts to discover more about a cryptic note received from the diplomat and is immediately entangled in the secret Bilderberg Club’s strategy to form a world federation.
I have always been a writer—and hence—a reader. I was an American historian and published eight books on twentieth-century American history. But, dissatisfied with the rigidity of historical research and composition, I became a novelist and have, since retirement, published eight novels, several of them in the Amanda Pennyworth Mystery Series.
Many of the books I read are mystery stories, a genre which I believe often gives the writer an opportunity to explore subjects and characters who are beyond the scope of ordinary literature. The books I have chosen are all classics, each in its own way a wonderful example of the variety and depth of mystery literature. My passion begins with such books.
The great novelist, Henry James, created a mystery story that has been enormously influential in a genre of novels that followed, such as the works of Agatha Christie.
I have always been a fan of Henry James’s style. It’s not for everyone, of course, but for those who love complex, interesting sentences loaded with lots of insights into human behavior, this is a perfect example. And a great ghost story too.
'A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale' Oscar Wilde
The Turn of the Screw, James's great masterpiece of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension, tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something, or someone, malevolent is stalking the children in her care. Is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence, or a manifestation of something else entirely?
Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by David Bromwich Series…
