Here are 66 books that The American Scene fans have personally recommended if you like
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At a crucial point in the twentieth century, as Nazi Germany prepared for war, negotiations between Britain, France, and the Soviet Union became the last chance to halt Hitler's aggression. Incredibly, the French and British governments dallied, talks failed, and in August 1939 the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Germany. Michael Carley's gripping account of these negotiations is not a pretty story. It is about the failures of appeasement and collective security in Europe. It is about moral depravity and blindness, about villains and cowards, and about heroes who stood against the intellectual and popular tides of their…
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…
Writing is about the metaphysical as well as the rational if it’s any good. As an author, I am always more interested in the wreckage of a crisis than the crisis itself—in the aftermath. Survivors search for purpose above all else. They undertake long sojourns, seek spiritual counsel, or find solace in art or politics. As a writer who has dealt with illness for most of my adult life, I think one path that is shared by all these novels is the discovery of agency—over one’s body, one’s choices, and one’s own life and death. There lies meaning.
What does it mean to be forgotten and to be remembered? This brilliant collection of short stories is anchored by the title story about a walk through rural Maine directly after World War One by two male lovers, both musicians and one a returning soldier, recording folk songs ostensibly for his conservatory.
Each story has a companion in the compilation, which I found to be an incredibly effective device for exploring the emotional impact of memory. The writing is so dispassionate yet devastating in its exploration of how even long-ago relationships can be brought to the surface by rediscovered artifacts or found objects.
I found the descriptive world-building second to none, and what it means to survive tragedy, inspirational.
Now a major movie starring Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor
'Triumphant' The Times
'Stellar' Daily Mail
'Exceptionally accomplished' The Scotsman
'Sublime' Observer
'Exquisite' Sunday Post
In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations. In Ben Shattuck's ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.
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…
The Everlasting Life of Charlie Wall
by
Paul Wilborn,
It’s 1985, and Ronald Armstrong, known in the magic mushroom trade as “Trip,” takes a “sober” job as a driver for a retired Tampa mobster. His boss, Charlie Wall, has survived four attempts on his life, the last one in 1955. When Charlie falls into depression, Trip rebuilds his boss’…
As a computational sociologist, I’m fascinated by the patterns people create, the signals they miss, and the stories they build when the world doesn’t make sense. That’s also why I’ve always been drawn to grounded horror: not monsters crashing through windows, but the quiet dread of a room, a street, a sound, or a thought that won’t behave. As a writer, I love books that make fear feel intimate and human, the kind that crawls under your skin because it’s real. These are the stories that stay with me: books where reality tilts, trust gets shaky, and everyday life becomes the scariest place imaginable.
I love this book because it proves fear does not have to shout to own the room.
Shirley Jackson makes dread feel elegant, patient, and almost polite, which somehow makes it worse. I admire how much she trusts atmosphere, silence, suggestion, and character discomfort.
That is the kind of horror I respect most: not just “what is happening?” but “why does everything suddenly feel wrong?”
Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story "Sardonicus," considered by Stephen King to be "perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written," to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and…
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.
I recommend this book because of its evident understanding of the psychology of fear.
From the very first, there is an ominous atmosphere—evil characters, and above all, misunderstanding. Everything in this novel is pointed toward a ambience of fright. The characters are, aside from Rebecca, who is quite innocent, mysterious and dark.
Everything in the novel, the house, the furnishings therein, the weather, everything is portrayed as sinister. This is a tour de force of maintaining a consistent and frightening atmosphere.
* '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…
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?
Even though this is a period novel, I read this story for its Gothic horror and literary acumen. Repression of memories, feelings, and guilt struck me throughout. Dr. Faraday discovers ghostly mysteries at Hundreds Hall, and his romance with Caroline is spooky enough, but this ghost story is grounded in reality.
Who is the little stranger haunting the premises? I sunk deeply into this story, drinking up the beauty. But the ending! Wow. Brilliantly revealed and aptly placed on the final page. Sarah Waters hides the ghost in plain sight, and yet I was surprised at the conclusion—delightfully so. I’m a sucker for one-liners that grab the reader by the throat, metaphorically speaking, at the last line. I plan to read it again because it’s that good.
After her award-winning trilogy of Victorian novels, Sarah Waters turned to the 1940s and wrote THE NIGHT WATCH, a tender and tragic novel set against the backdrop of wartime Britain. Shortlisted for both the Orange and the Man Booker, it went straight to number one in the bestseller chart. In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable…
Delve into this internationally best-selling series, now complete! A fast paced laugh-out-loud mix of Urban Fantasy and Mystery.
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time. I’m Jinx, a PI hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar–yet my gut…
Growing up in theatre, I was completely immersed in plays, which tend to be deep dives of the human psyche, and I latched on to those examinations like a dog with a bone. I’ve always loved the complexities of the human mind, specifically how we so desperately want to believe that anything beautiful, expensive, or exclusive must mean that the person, place, or thing is of more value. But if we pull back the curtain, and really take a raw look, we see that nothing is exempt from smudges of ugliness. It’s the ugliness, especially in regard to human character, that I find most fascinating.
I love love love an unreliable narrator! Especially when that narrator is a beautiful, elegant woman who turns out to have the ugliest soul imaginable. I think as a whole, our society tends to be extra afraid when they see conniving evil existing in a female’s mind, especially when she’s physically beautiful and well spoken.
At certain points in this book, I found myself weirdly rooting for Amy and chomping at the bit to see how far her “crazy” would take her. The twists and turns kept me racing through this book and left me wondering at the end, “What happens to them now?!”
THE ADDICTIVE No.1 BESTSELLER AND INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON OVER 20 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE THE BOOK THAT DEFINES PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER
Who are you? What have we done to each other?
These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on…
Before W. Somerset Maugham became the most popular writer in the world, he spent five years as a doctor in a London hospital. He says it was perfect training to be a novelist: he learned everything about human behavior from his patients. I’ve been a criminal lawyer for more than 33 years, and every day, someone tells me a story I could never dream up. I meet my clients at the point of crisis and work with them through shock, anger, depression, denial, bargaining, and acceptance. It’s the same for my characters, who are as alive to me and my readers as anyone in my life.
Okay, technically, this is not a book. But it is the greatest work in the English language. When I do public speaking, I like to say my ” favorite mystery is Scandinavian.” Everyone nods. “There’s a questionable murder to begin, then a suicide, an attempted kidnapping, and a big fight when the two main characters die.” People nod again. “It’s called Hamlet. Have you ever heard of it?” And everyone laughs.
I then ask the question: what is the difference between a mystery and a thriller? I believe in a mystery the protagonist is ahead of the reader. (Think classic detective novels such as The Big Sleep). But in a thriller, the audience is ahead of the protagonist. (Think a movie such as Wait Until Dark). In Hamlet, we have both. The first half is a mystery. Was his father really murdered? But in the crucial midpoint,…
In Shakespeare's verbally dazzling and eternally enigmatic exploration of conscience, madness and the nature of humanity, a young prince meets his father's ghost in the middle of the night, who accuses his own brother - now married to his widow - of murdering him. The prince devises a scheme to test the truth of the ghost's accusation, feigning wild insanity while plotting revenge. But his actions soon begin to wreak havoc on innocent and guilty alike.
I’ve loved character-focused stories long before I loved horror, which is saying something, because I’ve loved horror for a long time. It’s my belief horror is at its best when a storyteller focuses on the characters, as it adds a new dimension to the scare and forces the audience to worry about the characters. Anyone can do a jump scare; they’re not hard, but a well-crafted character that amplifies the horror is more difficult, and that’s why it’s so special when it works. It’s why authors like Stephen King and William Peter Blatty are timeless – their stories are character-first.
A chilling horror in a small fictional English village.
I love The Woman in Black because it’s more than a ghost story; it’s also a story about love and the connection between family. I’ve read it twice and what I love the most about it is the ambience Susan Hill creates with her well-crafted sentence structure.
There’s a lot of focus on Arthur Kipps, the protagonist, and his life before and after the haunting of Eel Marsh, but it’s not only him the story cares about. The Woman in Black herself is a mystery and has a tragic backstory that turns her from a full-on villain to a sympathetic one.
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…
The authoritative but accessible history of the birth of modern American intelligence in World War II that treats not just one but all of the various disciplines: spies, codebreakers, saboteurs.
Told in a relatable style that focuses on actual people, it was a New Yorker "Best of 2022" selection and…
Placing the reader squarely into the mind and sensibility (if you can call it that) of a sociopathic killer, Ms. Highsmith created an entirely new type of thriller; in this case, the reader is not so much concerned with whodunit as to why hedunit. Following Mr. Ripley across Europe and witnessing his extended string of crimes and the extensive web of lies he weaves--and his appreciation for the finer things in life, I was both enthralled and repulsed by his exploits. In a weird way, I admired him and found myself rooting for him. To create the interior life of such a repugnant human being, and to do it so well, is a great achievement in fiction. Not since Humbert Humbert have I read about such a likable criminal.
It's here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith's five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a "sissy." Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley's fascination with Dickie's debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie's ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game. "Sinister and strangely alluring"…
