Here are 100 books that The Big Rewind fans have personally recommended if you like
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Of course, every mystery needs a perfect crime, but what about the perfect setting? I’m fascinated by how authors manipulate time and place to add to the heightened emotions of their murders, thefts, blackmail, and frauds. It’s the juxtaposition of truth and fantasy—what we believe times were like and how they actually were—that makes setting such an essential detail of every whodunnit. Doing research on my own novel, I wrenched apart the facts and fictions of Post-War America, and grew even more ravenous for mysteries that leveraged their settings for the utmost entertainment.
Months ago, I was on Twitter, openly wishing for a Thin Man remake, with Mahershala Ali and Lupita Nyong'o as Nick and Nora. A friend immediately suggested Nekesa Afia’s Harlem Renaissance Mystery debut, Dead Dead Girls. Afia’s understanding of the tightly-knit community plays an essential role in the story, with main character Louise fighting against perceptions and a cold-blooded murderer. Couple all the expected roadblocks with glam nightlife and Prohibition antics. This entire series comes together like a perfect cocktail.
“In this terrific series opener, Afia evokes the women’s lives in all their wayward and beautiful glory, especially the abruptness with which their dreams, hopes and fears cease to exist.”--The New York Times
The start of an exciting new historical mystery series set during the Harlem Renaissance from debut author Nekesa Afia
Harlem, 1926. Young Black women like Louise Lloyd are ending up dead.
Following a harrowing kidnapping ordeal when she was in her teens, Louise is doing everything she can to maintain a normal life. She’s succeeding, too. She spends her days working at Maggie’s Café and her nights…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Of course, every mystery needs a perfect crime, but what about the perfect setting? I’m fascinated by how authors manipulate time and place to add to the heightened emotions of their murders, thefts, blackmail, and frauds. It’s the juxtaposition of truth and fantasy—what we believe times were like and how they actually were—that makes setting such an essential detail of every whodunnit. Doing research on my own novel, I wrenched apart the facts and fictions of Post-War America, and grew even more ravenous for mysteries that leveraged their settings for the utmost entertainment.
Try as I might, I can’t get into Marple. But T.E. Kinsey’s Lady Hardcastle series, beginning with the debut A Quiet Life in The Country turns the cozy genre on its head. In this case, the dithering, older busybody is Lady Emily Hardcastle, with her trusty ladies’ maid, Florence Armstrong. As the book and series progress, we find that neither woman is quite the helpless Edwardian female the neighbors believe. Come for the murder mystery and stay for the… knife throwing?
Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life.
But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...
As Lady Hardcastle and Flo delve deeper into rural rivalries…
Bad things happen to good people every day, and it seems unfair. I’ve lost friends to cancer, heart disease, and accidents, and I always wonder why it had to be someone who was decent and good and kind. At the same time, other people get away with all sorts of crimes, including murder. I can’t change the way the world works. So, in my own books and the books I like to read, the good guys might have some tough times, but in the end, they win. And the bad guys get what they deserve.
I love learning how people lived in other times via historical fiction, and Cadfael, a Benedictine monk who practiced healing arts in England in the 1100s, is one of my favorite characters.
I like hearing his opinions about the civil war that raged at that time and the church’s role in it. I like the fact that he’s a bit of a maverick who pushes beyond the bounds of his role as a monk to solve mysteries.
In the gentle Shrewsbury spring of 1140 the midnight matins at the Benedictine abbey suddenly reverberates with an unholy sound - a hunt in full cry. Pursued by a drunken mob, the quarry is running for its life. When the frantic creature bursts into the nave to claim sanctuary, Brother Cadfael finds himself fighting off armed townsmen to save a terrified young man. Accused of robbery and murder is Liliwin, a wandering minstrel who performed at the wedding of the local goldsmith's son. But his supposed victim, the miserly craftsman, is still alive, although a strongbox lies empty. Brother Cadfael…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
Of course, every mystery needs a perfect crime, but what about the perfect setting? I’m fascinated by how authors manipulate time and place to add to the heightened emotions of their murders, thefts, blackmail, and frauds. It’s the juxtaposition of truth and fantasy—what we believe times were like and how they actually were—that makes setting such an essential detail of every whodunnit. Doing research on my own novel, I wrenched apart the facts and fictions of Post-War America, and grew even more ravenous for mysteries that leveraged their settings for the utmost entertainment.
Not a traditional Whodunnit, this queer, YA retelling of Shakespeare’sJulius Caesarleaves the reader wondering what happened to class alpha-lesbian, Jude Cuthbert, when she goes missing under mysterious circumstances. Set just after the 2016 election, this brilliant satire pulls apart the thoughts of each conspirator – Brutus becomes Bronwyn; Cassius, Cass; and Portia is gender-flipped to Bronwyn’s boyfriend, Porter – as well as Jude/Julius’s own perspective on her fall from power.
In this queer YA retelling of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,stakes at Augustus Magnet School are cutthroat, scheming is creative, and loyalty is ever-changing.
Overnight, Bronwyn St. James goes from junior class queen to daughter of an imprisoned felon, and she lands in the care of her aunt and younger cousin Cass, a competitive cheerleader who Bronwyn barely knows. Life gets worse when her ex-best friend, the always-cool Jude Cuthbert, ostracizes Bronwyn from the queer social elite for dating a boy, Porter Kendrick.
Bronwyn and Jude are both running for student body president, and that means war. But after Bronwyn, Porter, and…
I consider myself a disruptor of sorts, both in my life and in the art I make (I’m an actor, too). So I am by nature drawn to novels that bend and reshape (and sometimes ignore altogether) the rules and conventions that are supposed to govern the novelist’s craft and lead me to experience the world—and often the art of writing fiction itself—in ways I have never experienced either before. The novels on my list do just that.
I once heard a friend of mine describe Last Exit to Brooklyn as “a significant minor novel.” He was wrong. It’s a good deal more than that.
Set in the same Brooklyn in which one will find Herschel Cain, the main character in my own novel, before he becomes professional wrestler Haystacks Kane, yet light years away, Last Exit is a searing portrayal of life in the raw amongst the American underclass, profoundly disturbing and terribly, terribly sad. It shook me to my core when I read it not long after it was published in the mid-1960s, and has remained with me ever since.
In countless ways, Selby’s novel thumbs its nose at traditional novel structure and the customary rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation in order to present virtually every moment of its bleak and upsetting narrative with a ferocious immediacy rarely found anywhere else.
Last Exit to Brooklyn remains undiminished in its awesome power and magnitude as the novel that first showed us the fierce, primal rage seething in America’s cities. Selby brings out the dope addicts, hoodlums, prostitutes, workers, and thieves brawling in the back alleys of Brooklyn. This explosive best-seller has come to be regarded as a classic of modern American writing.
From my early days of reading Fire and Hemlock and various books of mythology, I’ve loved traditional tales from all around the world. In college I didn’t aim to major in things that would be useful to me as a fantasy writer, but anthropology and folklore made a great background for that job. Nowadays, I actively seek out books based on traditional stories, especially those that go beyond the most well-known European fairy tales and myths. Sometimes, they inspire me, in turn, to write my own stories!
I’m used to contemporary fantasies where magic is either hidden or open and acknowledged, and this book blew my mind by blowing that dichotomy out of the water.
It retells the Russian folktale of “Vassilisa the Beautiful” but adds a lot of complicated family dynamics that made me like the source narrative even more than I already did. I also loved the utter weirdness of how Baba Yaga and her hut on fowl’s legs neither fits into the ordinary world nor stands apart from it.
In Vassa's neighbourhood, where she lives with her stepmother and bickering stepsisters, one might stumble onto magic, but stumbling out again could become an issue. Babs Yagg, the owner of the local convenience store, has a policy of beheading shoplifters and sometimes innocent shoppers as well. So when Vassa's stepsister sends her out for light bulbs in the middle of night, she knows it could easily become a suicide mission. But Vassa has a bit of luck hidden in her pocket, a gift from her dead mother. Erg is a tough talking wooden doll with sticky fingers, a bottomless stomach,…
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
As a past award-winning weekly newspaper columnist turned business owner, I eventually embraced the love of writing following an auto accident that necessitated more than eight years of rehabilitative therapy. Scripting my first novel proved more of a therapeutic undertaking and it was released in 2020 to moderate success. That experience then compelled me to learn more about the craft of being a novelist. Two years later, the original work was modified and Revised Edition Family Ties: Thicker Than Blood was launched in June of 2022.
This novel is an invigorating thrill ride along the streets of “Old Brooklyn” in a modern-day setting. As a former New Yorker who once listed Brooklyn as a hangout, it is rather easy to empathize with Sydney Green while she witnesses her cherished neighborhood being overtaken by invader investors perusing the streets in the guise of tourists. Something strikes her as peculiar when For Sale signs continue popping up at the existing homes with long-time neighbors suspiciously relocating to the suburbs.
Ironically, Sydney encounters an unlikely helpmate in the form of someone whom she considers one of the intruders; Theo, a new neighbor. There’s a mutual distrust between them but it is not enough to override their suspicions about the things that are taking place. Is it overly accentuated paranoia or a genuine fear that compels the unlikely pair of sleuths to discover what is actually happening? Will their homes…
An instant NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
"I was knocked over by the momentum of an intense psychological thriller that doesn't let go until the final page. This is a terrific read." - Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author
*Marie Claire's September Book Club Pick*
Rear Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller from a critically acclaimed and New York Times Notable author, in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning...
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos…
I loved graphic novels even before I became an author/illustrator. But because I create for young readers, I also read a lot of graphic novels aimed at them. I am also a big believer that books with female protagonists are important for all readers: male, female, and non-binary. All of the books I’ve recommended are books I plucked off my own bookshelf, and that I’ve read several times and I think are exceptional in some way.
One night, eleven-year-old Effie (a recent orphan) is dropped off at her aunts’ house.
She doesn’t really want to be there until she discovers that her aunts are witches and she may be one too! This female-driven graphic novel is full of colorful characters who help Effie find the magic within herself.
Graphic novels tell half the story through the art and Witches of Brooklyn beautifully rendered with lines that communicate energy and grace.
There's a new witch in town! Life in Brooklyn takes a strange turn when Effie discovers MAGIC runs in the family.
A middle-grade graphic novel adventure filled with magical hjinks for fans of Phoebe and Her Unicorn and Making Friends.
Could there really be witches in Brooklyn?!
Effie's aunts are weird. Like, really WEIRD. Really, really, really WEIRD! The secretly-magic kind of weird and that makes Effie wonder . . . does this mean she can do magic, too?
Life in Brooklyn takes a strange twist for Effie as she learns more about her family and herself. With new friends…
I have been a mystery reader my entire life, starting with the Hardy Boys series as a child and then progressing to authors like Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Chester Himes, Ellery Queen, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and many, many others. I love trying to figure out the crime or mystery before the reveal, but usually don’t. And, I have always truly enjoyed mystery books which have humor and quirky characters in them. More recently, I have become an award-winning mystery novelist myself, having published both a historical fiction mystery series and stories set in contemporary times in an ongoing anthology series that combines murder, mystery, and music.
Robert B. Parker’s Spenser for Hire is among my very favorite mystery novels.
I love the characters, humor, and crimes to be solved in them – but Double Play is not a Spenser book. So why did I choose it? It’s simply because it’s one of the most fascinating historical fiction mysteries I’ve ever read.
I’m a baseball fan and this book which postulates what might have happened to Jackie Robinson in 1947 when he broke in the major leagues told from the perspective of him and his bodyguard (and with gangsters involved) is just outstanding hard-boiled crime noir.
It is 1947, the year Jackie Robinson breaks major-league baseball's colour barrier by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers - and changes the world. This is the story of that season, as told through the eyes of a difficult, brooding, and wounded man named Joseph Burke. Burke, a veteran of World War II and a survivor of Guadalcanal, is hired by Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey to guard Robinson. While Burke shadows Robinson, a man of tremendous strength and character suddenly thrust into the media spotlight, the bodyguard must also face some hard truths of his own, in a world where…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I love book club.If I could make it a requirement for everyone in the universe to give it a try, I would. I was an English major in college, so that feeling of ending an amazing story and needing someone to discuss it with never fully went away. All book club books should be thought-provoking, but the best add that intricate and wholehearted understanding, I think, that only literature can. Why do the characters you least understood or felt a kinship with suddenly have your heart, what do they want, need, feel, think? I hope these novels help you better understand. The who and what are beside the point.
This book has everything a book club could ask for. Characters that you love, even when maybe you shouldn’t. Relationships that seem both familiar and endlessly fascinating. An epic dilemma that resonates and flourishes until the very end.It’ll definitely have you wondering,what would I do? At the end of the day, that question is all you really need for a lively book club discussion.
Brooklyn, 1947: in the midst of a blizzard, in a two-family brownstone, two babies are born minutes apart to two women. They are sisters by marriage with an impenetrable bond forged before and during that dramatic night; but as the years progress, small cracks start to appear and their once deep friendship begins to unravel. No one knows why, and no one can stop it. One misguided choice; one moment of tragedy. Heartbreak wars with happiness and almost but not quite wins.
