59 Books Like The Annals of the Parish

I have re-read this classic several times since I was a child.

The abridged version I read in 4th grade. RLS himself said, “The characters took the bit in their teeth; all at once they became detached from the flat paper, they turned their backs on me and walked off bodily…”

Not long after being introduced to Alan Breck Stewart, we hear him exclaim, in a ship’s cabin filled with the blood of villains he has shed, “Ah Davy, am I no’ a bonnie fighter!” How often, as a lad, I imagined myself taking on that crew with my broadsword!

Young David Balfour, in his quest to get back his inheritance, learns from Alan and his complex character that the Jacobite cause in Scotland is not clearly a matter of right and wrong. Did Alan kill “the Red Fox”? This is debated among Highlanders to this day! 

Truly magical realism at its finest, Carlos Ruiz Zafón weaves a sweeping story into the most breathtaking setting.

I’ve not read anything like Shadow of the Wind. I was so immersed that my review in 2016, the minute after I read it for the first time, I wrote that I was a ten-year-old boy discovering books for the first time.

I fell in love and grew up and solved a mystery. I experienced it, not just read it. I got lost in the pages and came out gasping, having just been through so much. It was a gift that you should give yourself too.

I’m a huge fan of Dickens but this was a serendipitous Covid discovery.

In 1841, Dickens set his tale at the time of the 1780 Gordon Riots. I hadn’t realised how virulently anti-Catholic they were, nor how violent, the most destructive in the history of London. Barnaby himself, a vulnerable ‘innocent’, is sympathetically drawn. Above all the descriptions of the riots are so real that I found myself wondering if Dickens had spoken to somebody who had witnessed them in his youth – which would have been perfectly possible.

This is as vivid a depiction of what it feels like to be caught up in violent insurrection as you’re likely to find anywhere. You’ll also find out the origin of the ‘Dolly Varden hat’ along the way.

I came across this novel when I was researching my book, although I had been aware of author Neal Ascherson’s expert writing about Poland and Ukraine for many years.

This is a big, engrossing piece of fiction, based on real events, moving deftly between wartime Scotland and Poland, skilfully portraying the complexities of conflict. As well as an engrossing story, it is one of the best evocations I have read of the unholy muddle of war, where so much that happens is down to fallible human beings trying to cope with appalling situations.

For me, it also made sense of so much that I had found hard to understand about my Polish family history but I suspect anyone whose forebears were refugees might find it enlightening and moving.

I absolutely love thrillers and stories filled with suspense.

The problem with that is, all I can ever seem to find are thrillers about washed-up detectives, which are fine and all, but sometimes I want to read a suspenseful story in a different genre. If a story can do that and weave in history, war, and the Bible, I’m in.

Ted Dekker checks every box with A.D. 30, and he’s just a master of storytelling. Dekker keeps you on the edge of your seat and brings together unlikely worlds in unexpected ways that are just so much fun to read.

Even better, this book really made me think about different cultures and the things we all have in common. 

This is another book for fans of ‘Faction’. This focuses on the lives of several Victorian Scottish miners and their families. The author based her book on research gleaned from her own McMurdo ancestors, and you are transported immediately to the two-roomed cottages where large families lived cheek-by-jowl and TB, miner’s lungs, and many other diseases were rife and women were worn out by the time they were 40. Fascinating glimpses of times past.

Another fine novel by a great writer who, like me, hailed from Ayrshire. I quote from it in my book. I became aware of William McIlvanney when I attended Kilmarnock Academy between 1967 and 1969 and his first novel Remedy is None was passed around the students in their final year at the school, before heading for University. Having a living, breathing novelist living in the town was really something, and it made us all think that perhaps we could become writers too! All of his books are excellent but Docherty touched me personally because it describes a mining community, similar to the town I grew up in, Galston. It also explores the linguistic tension between Scots and English which is the experience of most people growing up in the Lowlands of Scotland.

Definitely not as grim as the title might suggest. All churches are crammed full of memorials to the dead, and many dozens of books have been written that focus upon the people who lie in these tombs, or beneath the elegant grave slabs. However, sometimes little attention has been given to these memorials themselves, and the craftspeople who made them. This book is the culmination of a lifetime's research and will fascinate anyone who has an interest in church decoration - or dead people.

I was struck by this when I read it decades ago, and returned to it while researching. The Humbler Creation, written in the ’60s and set in the ’40s, gives a vivid depiction of that physically and morally shattered and patched-over post-war era.

Maurice, a repressed clergyman, lives with his wife Libby and her widowed sister, Kate, but right from the get-go, there’s the feeling that he and Kate would be better suited. But because of convention, this is not to be, and the frustrated Maurice and Kate seek satisfaction elsewhere. Passion, scandal, and tension ensue.

The characters, the dynamics between them, the sparky dialogue, and the 1940s setting all contribute to making this an addictive read. I was even more riveted the second time around.

Another perfectly realised novel, in which the ancient traditions of an isolated English village are lovingly resurrected and described – before being savagely undermined by enclosure. Harvest has both a murder and plenty of mystery but it’s really about desperation in the face of unstoppable, inhuman change. Crace writes prose as if it's poetry, most movingly about the villagers’ bewilderment and fury in the face of incomprehensible threats – and the sheer speed at which an entire way of life can disappear. It’s enough to make you wonder what, if anything, will remain of our most cherished traditions.