Here are 100 books that Spencerville fans have personally recommended if you like
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I love including social issues and controversial topics in my plots. I love underdogs and the downtrodden. I enjoy unique and quirky characters with excellent, appropriate, and sometimes noir-ish voices. Twists and major reveals in genre books and movies are also very important to me. I’m not a subject matter expert in much of anything I write about (thank goodness for the internet), except for one novel yet to be published, which is a major catharsis for me.
I was overwhelmed by this crazy, lovable, frightening novel. It fit right in with my paranormal/horror bend when I read it many years ago, and it provoked my interest in writing a few titles in the genre.
It fits the unique, quirky character theme perfectly with a first person narrative by a young, charismatic fry cook-writer-memoirist named Odd (real name) Thomas with a sixth sense, able to see demons when they arrive just before tragedy occurs. Yowza. His accomplice is his girlfriend and love interest, aptly named Stormy, who is not similarly gifted and seems to have more common sense than Odd.
Meet Odd Thomas, the unassuming young hero of Dean Koontz’s dazzling New York Times bestseller, a gallant sentinel at the crossroads of life and death who offers up his heart in these pages and will forever capture yours.
“The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why.” But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Sometimes the silent souls who seek out Odd want justice. Occasionally their otherworldly tips help him prevent a crime. But this time it’s different.
A stranger comes to Pico Mundo, accompanied by a horde…
Little does attorney Hiram Garbuncle know the danger he’s getting into when he reluctantly defends an immigrant brutally beaten by two policemen during a traffic stop and charged with resisting arrest.
Plot twists and turns take the reader on a suspense-filled roller coaster ride as the attorney’s negligence causes a…
A year after taking an art history course in college, I visited the Impressionist Museum in Paris and felt I could recall all my professor’s lectures—word-for-word. It was as if the paintings were talking to me. Exhilarated by that experience of connection, I went on to get a master’s degree in art history and have since traveled the world in search of great art. As a timeless human expression, both stimulating and comforting, art gives me a profound sense of emotional satisfaction that I believe the books on my list beautifully explore.
I loved being immersed in the Middle Ages with characters so emotionally real I didn’t want to leave them. I’m fascinated by the complexity of Gothic architecture and agonized along with the builders as they struggled to complete their masterpiece.
I also loved how the cathedral’s slow, steady construction provided a solid framework for decades of interwoven stories, like a tall, straight tree growing from tangled roots. The author’s passion for the timeless magnificence of Gothic architecture made me feel as if I were standing before it, spellbound and transported.
The "extraordinary . . . monumental masterpiece" (Booklist) that changed the course of Ken Follett's already phenomenal career-and begins where its prequel, The Evening and the Morning, ended.
"Follett risks all and comes out a clear winner," extolled Publishers Weekly on the release of The Pillars of the Earth. A departure for the bestselling thriller writer, the historical epic stunned readers and critics alike with its ambitious scope and gripping humanity. Today, it stands as a testament to Follett's unassailable command of the written word and to his universal appeal.
I read my first crime thriller at the age of 12, and since then I’ve always had a passion to write my own stories. Although I’ve never worked as a police officer, I spent close to 10 years working as an IT consultant to multiple police forces in Australia before retiring to write full-time. The time spent working closely with law enforcement gave me a ‘feel’ for how police forces operate and helped me gravitate towards the police procedural genre. A book that moved at the pace of most police investigations would never sell and I love the challenge of making the stories authentic but still moving at a pace to keep the reader captivated.
The Jack Reacher character is arguably the best-known protagonist in the mystery thriller genre. In most novels I’ve ever read, the main character has a character arc where the protagonist learns from his adventures, trials, and tribulations and becomes a better person (or in some cases the opposite). Whatever the trajectory, the character changes over time, but in Lee Childs’ books, the Jack Reacher character never changes. Reacher is your quintessential flat line – nothing phases him and nothing ever changes him. He's a drifter, who walks the USA with a toothbrush in one pocket and an ATM card in the other. Reacher likes to stay out of trouble, but he’s not afraid to confront it either when it finds him. It's very hard not to like Jack Reacher and it's even harder not to like Lee Childs books (he's written 27 so far). I always read a Jack Reacher…
A heartland city thrown into terror. But within hours the cops have it solved. A slam-dunk case. Apart from one thing. The accused gunman refuses to talk except for a single phrase:
Get Jack Reacher for me.
Reacher lives off the grid. He's not looking for trouble. But sometimes trouble looks for him. What could connect the noble Reacher to this psychopathic killer?
_________
Although the Jack Reacher can be read in any order, One Shot is the 9th in the series.
And be sure not to miss Reacher's newest adventure, no.27, No Plan B! ***OUT…
I have cerebral palsy, but the list of things that I absolutely can’t do is surprisingly short: I can climb a flight of steps or walk the length of a football field, for example, but those tasks are going to take a lot more time and energy for me than they would an able-bodied person. We all choose where to invest in life, but cerebral palsy makes that process much more deliberate, and I’ve been fascinated by it for a long time. I’m always on the hunt for stories that demonstrate that our choices shape our life, not our limitations, and I’m determined to choose joy.
I love this book because it’s the best fictional example I’ve ever seen of a character’s disability being eclipsed by his talent. Lincoln Rhyme is paralyzed, but his talent as a criminologist is far more important—and Deaver showcases Rhyme’s genius and passion as often as he details the difficulties of disability.
I find the book’s mystery compelling and the characters well-written, and I couldn’t get enough of the relationship between Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs. I’ve never seen a better portrayal of a partnership based solidly on mutual respect and admiration. I’m so grateful for how this story demonstrates that disability doesn’t need to stop you from making a real impact through the gifts and talents you’ve been given.
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Goodbye Man, discover Jeffery Deaver's chilling thriller that inspired the film starring Angelina Jolie and Denzel Washington and is now a major NBC TV series.
Their first case, their worst killer . . .
New York City has been thrown into chaos by the assaults of the Bone Collector, a serial kidnapper and killer who gives the police a chance to save his victims from death by leaving obscure clues. Baffled, the cops turn to the one man with a chance of solving them - Lincoln Rhyme.
In my first career as an actress, I often got cast as the “comic relief” in more serious films and plays. I cut my acting chops on improv comedy before getting my BFA in drama from NYU and performing in everything from Shakespeare to Seinfeld. I wrote and performed in stage shows at Disneyland and Disney World and screamed myself hoarse in B-horror films. As an author, I like to write about serious topics but I just can’t help being funny. I received my MFA from Antioch University and have had over 30 short stories and essays published. While I read voraciously (and genre-indiscriminately), my favorite books are often “darkly comedic” or “funny yet poignant.”
I first came across this book when babysitting at a neighbor’s house as a young teen. I was a giant Judy Blume fangirl and I was confused. I thought I’d read all of her novels. When I picked this one up, I managed to find a “dirty part” quite quickly while flipping through it and I stole the book to show that passage to all my friends. Scandalous! When I was out of college, I actually read the whole book and found it a poignant, but still funny, look at dreams deferred, marriage, motherhood, and sex.
With more than four million copies sold, Wifey is Judy Blume's hilarious, moving tale of a woman who trades in her conventional wifely duties for her wildest fantasies-and learns a lot about life along the way.
Sandy Pressman is a nice suburban wife whose boredom is getting the best of her. She could be making friends at the club, like her husband keeps encouraging her to do. Or working on her golf game. Or getting her hair done.
But for some reason, these things don't interest her as much as the naked man on the motorcycle...
Ghost stories are predominantly one flavor: horror. However, my taste in ghost fiction resembles a smoothie. Blend equal parts of contemporary suspense/mystery and the paranormal; add a splash of science, a pinch of dark family secrets, and a sprinkle of romance; and then spike with a heaping cup of twists. That’s my favorite recipe for the paranormal crossovers I love to read and write. My narration preferences are less typical, too. Ghost stories are usually told by characters being haunted. In novels I love, ghosts participate as storytellers, breathing realism into the supernatural. For me, hauntingly plausible stories generate more goosebumps than those horrifically improbable. (Perhaps because I grew up in a haunted house!)
While Come With Mehas less paranormal in its blend, the book’s recipe is chock-full of foreboding suspense, eerie folklore, amateur sleuthing, and contemporary issues. Aaron Decker’s wife is tragically killed in a mass shooting. After five years of marriage, he thinks he knew her. But then he finds her padlocked hope chest. Inside are files about unsolved murders, all women victims. Is a serial killer on the loose? And why or how was his wife involved? Aaron follows the trail she left behind. Goosebumps suggest he’s not alone. Or are they from the dark secrets he unveils? Aaron’s narration is authentic and close—so close that readers eavesdrop on him speaking directly to his dead wife. Incredibly raw. Come With Me is masterful at building atmospheric and emotional tension.
Aaron Decker's life changes one December morning when his wife Allison is killed. Haunted by her absence-and her ghost-Aaron goes through her belongings, where he finds a receipt for a motel room in another part of the country. Piloted by grief and an increasing sense of curiosity, Aaron embarks on a journey to discover what Allison had been doing in the weeks prior to her death.
Yet Aaron is unprepared to discover the dark secrets Allison kept, the death and horror that make up the tapestry of her hidden life. And with each dark secret revealed, Aaron becomes more and…
I’m an author and a romantic. Put the two together and it makes sense for me to write love stories. I’ve always been interested in relationships and fascinated by how complex our feelings make us when we fall in love. There’s a love story in all my books, but for the last three novels, a love story has been thestory. I’m a Londoner too, and I like it when a city becomes another character in a book, as I hope London has in The Central Line.
It's 1969, Phyllis is married to a kind man, with two children and a large house in suburban London. Her domestic world is not far removed from a dutiful 50s housewife’s. Then a much younger man, dashing, selfish, and a family friend, kisses her in a dark garden, and her life explodes. She abandons her family and moves to a shabby flat in Ladbroke Grove. A new world opens to her – she meets people of colour, artists, activists, drinkers, and idealists. She experiences sexual freedom and romantic love. Phyllis’s teenage daughter joins her in her new life, and mother and daughter must work out a different kind of relationship. I found myself feeling furious with Phyllis at the same time as emphasising with her.
“Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book. She writes with authority, and with delicacy: she explores nuance, but speaks plainly; she is one of those writers a reader trusts.”—Hilary Mantel
From the bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past comes a compulsive new novel about one woman’s sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London.
1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their…
In 2012, a publisher asked me if I wanted to write a book about Joseph Smith's assassination. I leapt at the chance, in part because I was fascinated by Smith and the Latter-day Saints, and in part because I appreciated how many of the important contributions to Mormon history --- including Fawn Brodie’s famous biography of Joseph Smith, or the first honest and comprehensive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre -- sprang from the pens of women and men with no formal academic training. By contrast, many “scholars” have disgraced themselves with prevaricating or pusillanimous accounts of the religion’s raucous and fascinating 190-year history. So jump in! Never a dull moment with the Latter-day Saints!
These heart-wrenching biographies of 33 of Joseph Smith’s wives were the first, in-depth exploration of the social and emotional costs of Mormon polygamy. Loneliness appeared in 1997. The church waited until November 2014, six months after the publication of American Crucifixion, to officially acknowledge that Joseph had up to 40 wives.
Beginning in the 1830s, at least thirty-three women married Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. These were passionate relationships which also had some longevity, except in cases such as that of two young sisters, one of whom was discovered by Joseph’s first wife, Emma, in a locked bedroom with the prophet. Emma remained a steadfast opponent of polygamy throughout her life.
The majority of Smith’s wives were younger than he, and one-third were between fourteen and twenty years of age. Another third were already married, and some of the husbands served as witnesses at their own wife’s polyandrous wedding. In…
My first experience with divorce happened when I was still in diapers with the highly contentious separation of my parents, who were far too young to do it any differently. Mostly because there was no guidance for how to divorce well back in the 1950s. Shame, victimization, and unresolved rage were the atmosphere I grew up in. I’d like to say they eventually worked it out, yet it wasn’t until 60 years later that they could be in the same room and be civil. When my husband (now affectionately called my wasband) and I divorced, I’m beyond grateful that we decided it doesn’t have to be that way.
Who doesn’t love the brilliant and creative Elizabeth Gilbert?
While this book is not one of her most popular, as a closeted cultural anthropologist, I found it fascinating. I loved learning all about the history of marriage, largely because it helped me to question certain assumptions we have about marriage. Assumptions that I think get a lot of us into trouble! I enjoyed how much Elizabeth shared about her own marriage and its uncoupling as well.
Elizabeth is a truth teller, and her searing honesty helped me be more honest with myself as I was processing the loss of my own marriage.
'Like Eat, Pray, Love, her follow-up ... feels irresistibly confessional ... I found myself guzzling Committed, reading it in mighty chunks, far into the night. Whenever I put it down, it was pinched by my mother or sister' - Sunday Times
'An unblinkered consideration of what marriage really means' - Woman & Home
'Gilbert delves deep into the history and cultural meanings of marriage, as well as into her own relationship' - Financial Times
'Insightful ... She speaks for many who question the bliss in conjugal bonds, or, at least, those who want to understand how the tradition still…
I began writing after reading multiple novels and watching the masters unfold stories page after page. With a background in homicide (working them, not committing them) and the move to forensics, a homeless man’s murder prompted me to write my first novel after I identified the deceased by skin removed from his thumb. I was hooked. Experience in the medical examiner’s office taught me how inciting incidents develop into an abundance of mystery, suspense, and thrills. It’s never as bad as it seems; it’s worse. The dead, unlike witnesses, tell the truth about what happened. More ingenious ways to die than ever imagined. This is why I write.
The reality of the scene described by the author resonated with me in ways only someone who has witnessed similar events can appreciate.
I saw myself amid the carnage, questioning the investigators, sensing the emotional turmoil of survivor’s guilt, and wanting the guilty punished. I empathized with the victim who endured years of waiting for the satisfaction of justice.
“Olsen will scare you—and you’ll love it.” —Lee Child
Hannah Griffin was a girl when tragedy struck. She still remembers the flames reflected against the newly fallen snow and the bodies the police dug up—one of them her mother’s. The killer was never found….
Twenty years later Hannah is a talented CSI investigating a case of child abuse when the past comes hurtling back. A killer with unfinished business is on the hunt. And an anonymous message turns Hannah’s blood cold:
