Here are 100 books that Telling Lies for Fun & Profit fans have personally recommended if you like
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I grew up in a family of writers; my parents and three sisters were all successful writers, and I was the odd one out with a passion for teaching. I love to simplify, diagram, and make the complex graspable. And what’s not to like about a career in which people listen to you tell them what to do? I began writing after years of teaching, and my first novel was a mystery—a genre that no one in my family had yet written and which I’d been loving since my first Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie. Now, I combine the two: teaching and writing. Playing to both strengths and passing along what I’ve learned.
Another book that focuses on story structure, and explains the difference between literary and commercial fiction without talking down to those of us who aspire to the latter. I found it full of illuminating visuals, excellent examples, and exercises to help me immediately apply his advice. And above all, remember that advice weeks later as I write more and more pages.
It works because he does more than expound. He *engages* the reader–mentally and physically. Reading the book is like taking a master class.
How does plot influence story structure? What's the difference between plotting for commercial and literary fiction? How do you revise a plot or structure that's gone off course?
With Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure, you'll discover the answers to these questions and more. Award-winning author James Scott Bell offers clear, concise information that will help you create a believable and memorable plot, including:
• Techniques for crafting strong beginnings, middles, and ends • Easy-to-understand plotting diagrams and charts • Brainstorming techniques for original plot ideas • Thought-provoking exercises at the end of each chapter •…
"In AIsRYourFriends, John J Jessop continues the hilarious adventures of the PI firm run by Dr. Jason and Chelsea Longfellow. The loving but dysfunctional couple this time wrestles with Florida gators who are killing corporate executives with their mistresses. Added to the mix are AI-run devices that are taking…
I grew up in a family of writers; my parents and three sisters were all successful writers, and I was the odd one out with a passion for teaching. I love to simplify, diagram, and make the complex graspable. And what’s not to like about a career in which people listen to you tell them what to do? I began writing after years of teaching, and my first novel was a mystery—a genre that no one in my family had yet written and which I’d been loving since my first Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie. Now, I combine the two: teaching and writing. Playing to both strengths and passing along what I’ve learned.
It was a wake-up call to me when I was a newly published author, and having researched and plotted and written and endlessly revised my book, I was also responsible for selling it. This is compounded by the fact that the ins and outs of the book business are changing at what seems like warp speed. For instance, self-publishing, which used to be poo-pooed as a last resort, has gone mainstream.
Jane Friedman is an expert on what’s happening, the good news and the bad, along with gory details and hard-nosed advice. And her book (and her blog…) helps would-be blissfully ignorant writers like me stay afloat and possibly even make a living writing. Jane doesn’t pull her punches.
Writers talk about their work in many ways: as an art, as a calling, as a lifestyle. Too often missing from these conversations is the fact that writing is also a business. The reality is, those who want to make a full or part-time job out of writing are going to have a more positive and productive career if they understand the basic business principles underlying the industry. The Business of Being a Writer offers the business education writers need but so rarely receive. It is meant for early career writers looking to develop a realistic set of expectations about…
I grew up in a family of writers; my parents and three sisters were all successful writers, and I was the odd one out with a passion for teaching. I love to simplify, diagram, and make the complex graspable. And what’s not to like about a career in which people listen to you tell them what to do? I began writing after years of teaching, and my first novel was a mystery—a genre that no one in my family had yet written and which I’d been loving since my first Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie. Now, I combine the two: teaching and writing. Playing to both strengths and passing along what I’ve learned.
Probably the #1 challenge for me as a mystery writer is holding the readers’ attention and keeping them engaged from Page One to The End. The answer is: create suspense. Keep the reader wondering What’s going to happen next. Ask unanswered questions. Not so much “Whodunnit?” but the more complex: “What’s going on here?”
This book contains interviews with Alfred Hitchcock, the premier master of suspense, talking to the great director Francois Truffaut and dissecting the how-to of creating suspense. His examples and explanations made me truly understand the choices I make when I structure a plot, a scene, or even a moment in the book. Do I want the reader to inhale or exhale or gasp, and why does it matter?
One is ravished by the density of insights into cinematic questions...Truffaut performed a tour de force of tact in getting this ordinarily guarded man to open up as he had never done before (and never would again)...If the 1967 Hitchcock/Truffaut can now be seen as something of a classic, this revised version is even better. Phillip Lopate The New York Times Book Review
Farrah Wethers struggles with her new midlife career as a massage therapist. Her wealthy client is murdered on her table making her suspect number one. Can Farrah and her best friend, June Cho, sort through the suspects to find the real killer?
I grew up in a family of writers; my parents and three sisters were all successful writers, and I was the odd one out with a passion for teaching. I love to simplify, diagram, and make the complex graspable. And what’s not to like about a career in which people listen to you tell them what to do? I began writing after years of teaching, and my first novel was a mystery—a genre that no one in my family had yet written and which I’d been loving since my first Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie. Now, I combine the two: teaching and writing. Playing to both strengths and passing along what I’ve learned.
When I was struggling to write my first mystery novel, I realized that I hadn’t a clue what makes a mystery novel a compelling page-turner. My Beta readers thought that my main character was flat. A cipher. I needed to transform the manuscript into a story that made the reader care about the characters (especially the protagonist). Not just present a clever trail of clues and red herrings.
This book focuses on screenwriting, but what McKee says about plotting in general (three-act structure, scene structure, etc.) is completely applicable to writing a mystery novel, and he gives such practical advice. Through this book, I understood the importance of a character arc. Reassuringly, it’s not rocket science.
For more than 15 years, Robert McKee's students have been taking Hollywood's top honors. His "Story Seminar" is the world's ultimate seminar for screenwriters, filmmakers, and novelists. Now, Robert McKee's Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting reveals the award-winning methods of the man universally regarded as the world's premier teacher on screenwriting and story. With Hollywood and publishing companies paying record sums for great stories, and audiences clamoring for originality, McKee's Story gives you the strategies you need to win the war on clichés.
Story is about form, not formula. McKee's insights cut to the hidden sources…
Most of my published titles are about animals or involve them in some fashion. My Cats in the Mirror alien rescue cat series has been winning awards for a decade, and the two dog companion books have won the hearts of middle-grade readers, with a third companion book due out in 2026. Even my science fiction books for adults are about half-tiger/half-human creatures. Cats are definitely my favorite, but give me a book about a cute animal, and I’m happy.
I fully credit “Socks” with not only inspiring my early love of reading but also showing me that cats can be the main character in a book and be thoroughly delightful.
There’s no way I would be writing what I do now if not for this book. I have no idea how many times I’ve read it, but my childhood copy sits on my shelf to this day. There’s a reason it’s still listed as a “Teachers’ Pick” after over 50 years.
1
author picked
Socks
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
8,
9,
10, and
11.
What is this book about?
Newbery Medal-winning author Beverly Cleary charms readers with yet another lovable character—Socks, a jealous cat who must learn to share his owners with their new baby.
Socks is one happy cat. He lives the good life with his affectionate owners, Mr. and Mrs. Bricker. Ever since the day they saved him from a life spent in a mailbox drop slot, Socks has been the center of their world. And he always has everything he needs—tasty kitty treats and all the lap room he could want!
But when a new baby arrives, suddenly the Brickers have less and less time for…
When I produced a recording of lost works by Alexander Zemlinsky with Riccardo Chailly for Decca Records in 1984, I soon realized that a wealth of music had been lost during the Nazi years that had never been recovered. After initiating and supervising the recording series Entartete Musik for Decca, the first retrospective of major works lost during the Nazi years, I headed research in this subject at London University’s Jewish Music Institute. I was a music curator at Vienna’s Jewish Museum. YUP published one of my books, and I am a co-founder of the Research Center and Archive “Exilarte” based at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts.
This is somehow the antidote to Roth’s novel. It is a daunting read, often thought of as a Viennese answer to Proust. What was fascinating was its very unsentimental and often quite funny representation of wealthy Viennese society. Musil is a seductive writer and it is easy to keep reading even while wondering when something might actually happen.
Like Roth, the effect of the novel is cumulative–only after reading it suddenly comes together. It also balances the presentation of Vienna as a city of musicians and poets and gives us the politicians, the mathematicians, the scientists, and the economists. The central character is himself a mathematician with little comprehension of the finer arts.
It is 1913, and Viennese high society is determined to find an appropriate way of celebrating the seventieth jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef. But as the aristocracy tries to salvage something illustrious out of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the ordinary Viennese world is beginning to show signs of more serious rebellion. Caught in the middle of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: youngish, rich, an ex-soldier, seducer and scientist.
Unable to deceive himself that the jumble of attributes and values that his world has bestowed on him amounts to anything…
Have you ever done something on a whim and fallen in love with it? That was how I found Old Norse literature. I was taught the Norse language by reading the prose and poetry of medieval Iceland. In reading their literature, I discovered a rich, vibrant society filled with complex, passionate people. Here were doomed romantics, poets, and philosophers–along with chieftains and priests facing complex political and religious change. I undertook a PhD to study their literary craft. I hope, if nothing else, that my novel might encourage readers to go off and read the sagas themselves. And, if I am really lucky, they may just enjoy my stories too.
Where did J.R.R. Tolkien get his ideas? This book will provide some insight.
I fell in love with the Lord of the Rings when I was 12 when the first Peter Jackson film came out in 2001. It put me on the path to learning more about his works and his inspiration. Elves, dragons, and magical rings? Tolkien got much of it from Old Norse literature, and the Saga of the Volsungs has it all. Based on Viking Age poems, it is filled with myth, legend, and human drama and follows the story of Sigurd, the dragon slayer who is fundamentally changed after a meeting with one of Odin’s Valkyries.
For all of its myth-making, I love this book because of its very human elements: princely jealousy, unrequited love, and how greed corrupts.
The epic Viking Age stories that inspired J. R. R. Tolkien and Wagner's Ring cycle
Written in thirteenth-century Iceland but based on ancient Norse poetry cycles, The Saga of the Volsungs combines mythology, legend and sheer human drama. It tells of the cursed treasure of the Rhine, a sword reforged and a magic ring of power, and at its heart are the heroic deeds of Sigurd the dragon slayer, who acquires magical knowledge from one of Odin's Valkyries. One of the great books of world literature, the saga is an unforgettable tale of princely jealousy, unrequited love, greed, vengeance and…
I teach and publish short stories, novels, and flash fiction. I’m also interested in the language people use to critique writing. Concepts (suspense, for example) can be helpful, but they often co-opt the imagination and become gold standards for what good fiction should be. In addition to the writer’s voice, I’m interested in the alchemy of the story, which is always greater than the sum of its parts. Right now, I’m writing a book called Accordion Fiction. It's about the shape and rhythm of stories—how they contract and expand like an accordion.
Brandt cuts through the mystique that “writing can’t be taught” and encourages writers to discover the creative and rational aspects of their consciousness—an approach that excites me as a writer and a teacher.
Brandt’s approach is useful for beginning writers and also for writers going through a dry period. I recommend it to all my students.
A reissue of a classic work published in 1934 on writing and the creative process, Becoming a Writer recaptures the excitement of Dorothea Brande's creative writing classroom of the 1920s. Decades before brain research "discovered" the role of the right and left brain in all human endeavor, Dorothea Brande was teaching students how to see again, how to hold their minds still, and how to call forth the inner writer.
I have been fascinated by historical fiction since childhood, when I used to read historical stories for children by such writers as Rosemary Sutcliffe and Henry Treece, moving on to Dickens and Austen in my early teens. Many of the great books about girls growing up were written in the Victorian and Edwardian periods by e.g. Louisa M Alcott, L M Montgomery, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I devoured all these since they seemed to take me into a different world. I am a fiction writer rather than a historian since it is the great stories offered by history that spark my passion!
A gripping portrayal of the "house for fallen women" funded by Angela Burdett-Coutts and managed by Charles Dickens in Victorian London.
Urania cottage offers refuge for prostitutes, petty thieves and the destitute who end up there for various reasons and respond to it in different ways.
I loved the way Halls skilfully depicts women from different classes. Josephine is a working-class woman who comes straight from prison, whereas Angela Burdett-Coutts is the richest woman in London, but her wealth cages her in a different way. I found this novel beautifully observed, unsentimental, and absorbing.
'Absorbing' Sunday Times 'Acutely observed and beautifully written' Daily Mail 'A writer of great originality' Kate Mosse 'Compelling' Good Housekeeping
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, SET AGAINST CHARLES DICKENS' HOME FOR FALLEN WOMEN
The house she was promised, is the first clean page in a new book for girls like her . . .
1847, Shepherds Bush. Charles Dickens' home for fallen women is about to open its doors. Part refuge, part reformatory, the house and its location are top secret. Among it first inmates are Martha, arrived from a shelter for prostitutes, and Josephine, a convicted thief. But faced…
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been dismayed by the humdrum monotony of everyday life. Of course, that is why one is drawn to books. The books on this list are historical fiction with otherworldly wonder. The world of the imagination is not an escape; it’s a portal to a new view of life. I’ve written four books set in the Italian Renaissance and two set in ancient Britain. Because of the depth of research, each one has taken about eight years. I’m constantly astonished at how imagination can fill the gaps history leaves. Striving always for plausibility, it is encouraging to count historians and archaeologists amongst my readers, cheering me on.
I was still at school when I came across Mary Renault’s The King Must Die and was absorbed into the world of ancient Greece.
I knew then what was missing from history lessons: any sense of being there, of feeling emotion for the characters, of being gripped. I went on to read all her books and took to philosophy and Platonism because of them.
When I put the book back on the library shelf, I made a vow: let me do for others what this author has done for me.
Theseus is the grandson of the King of Troizen, but his paternity is shrouded in mystery - can he really be the son of the god Poseidon? When he discovers his father's sword beneath a rock, his mother must reveal his true identity: Theseus is the son of Aegeus, King of Athens, and is his only heir. So begins Theseus's perilous journey to his father's palace to claim his birth right, escaping bandits and ritual king sacrifice in Eleusis, to slaying the Minotaur in Crete. Renault reimagines the Theseus myth, creating an original, exciting story.
