Here are 100 books that The Chestnut Roaster fans have personally recommended if you like
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I love Paris. It is one of my favorite cities on Earth. One of the reasons I adore it so much is because it has such a palpable sense of enchantment. There is magic in its cathedrals and catacombs, its pĂątisseries and feal markets, its rich tradition of art and joie de vivre. You can feel it in your soul as you walk through the city, under the gazes of its gargoyles and the charm of its cafes. Thus, Iâve always been drawn to stories that take this one step furtherâexploring a Paris that harbors actual magic.
If youâre searching for a book that serves up monstrous werewolves in Parisâs catacombs and opera houses, then I highly recommend picking up this book.
I loved how Susan J. Morris used references to Sherlock Holmes and Dracula in her characters, who are racing to find a man-eating beast in 1900s Paris. This was a taut, twisty-turny read!
'A whip-smart, lusciously atmospheric adventure' Frances White
'Fantastic and fresh' Wesley Chu
'Inventive, engaging, and terrific fun' H.G. Parry
In Belle Epoque Paris, a monster is murdering powerful men. Stopping it may be a woman's job.
When the Gendarmes ask the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena for help, they don't expect them to send Samantha Harker.
She's a researcher, more used to papercuts than knife fights. Sam is also the daughter of Dracula's killer and can see into the minds of monsters. It's a perilous power, one that could help her crack this case or have herâŠ
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa storiesâall 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 argueâŠ
I started reading about the 1920s after I read Among the Bohemiansby Virginia Nicholson in 2008. I kept reading about the 1920s, particularly 1920s Paris, through my Masters and then my Doctorate in war fiction. I would read about interwar Europe, or America, or Britain, when I needed to work on my doctorate but was too tired to read about trenches or trauma, and it became an obsession. Then it became the subject of two novels, which involved more and more particular research. I love the period's brittle gaiety, its dirty glamour, a time of cultural and political revolution as people fought for a better world.
In the years between 1919 and 1939, Paris experienced a cultural and intellectual boom. Packed with amazing illustrations, this book explores every aspect of the city during the interwar years, when Paris truly was the City of Light. Featuring a stellar array of artists, writers, composers, musicians, designers and artists, Paris between the Wars covers everything from architecture and technology, to fashion, cafe culture and the gay scene.
I spent my twenties mostly devouring womenâs fiction and romance novels with female leads, but I also stepped outside my preferred genre. Being a strong lead doesnât necessarily mean saving the world or doing something heroic (though obviously that helps!), itâs about strength of character, being real, and being able to fight on when things get difficult. I always dreamt of being an author, but only started writing properly when I developed a debilitating long-term health condition. I used writing to support my rehabilitation and this led to me finally achieving that dream â so in a way, I see myself as a strong female lead in my own story.
That Night in Paris is the second book in Sandy Barkerâs Holiday Romance Series, which is packed with beautifully described holiday destinations and the will-they-wonât-they moments we romance readers love. In That Night in Paris, Cat books an impromptu European coach trip in desperation after she has a few too many wines and sleeps with her flatmate. And what a decision that turns out to be when she bumps into her long-lost teenage crush in Paris.    Â
Catâs on my dinner guest list because sheâs feisty, fun, and oozes sass, while at the same time having a more vulnerable side that would get the deeper conversations going by dessert. Sometimes strong women who are confident and outspoken (in a good way) can be criticised and labelled negatively, but women like Cat should be applauded for being real.Â
Note to self: don't sleep with your flatmate after a curry and three bottles of wine... especially if he's secretly in love with you and wants you to meet his mum.
Cat Parsons is on the run. She doesn't do relationships. After ten years of singlehood even the hint of the 'L' word is enough to get Cat packing her bags and booking herself onto a two-week holiday.
A European bus tour feels like a stroke of genius to dodge awkward conversations at home. But little does Cat realise that the first stop will be Paris, the cityâŠ
Katie's Gamble is an unexpected, unique story about a young woman who's trying to support her younger siblings by keeping her family's confectionery shop open.
In order to do that, she has to take on her older brother, who's a notorious gambler in Louisiana. Additionally, she has to outsmart RowdyâŠ
I started out as a religion major in college, but soon became frustrated with the abstract thoughts of privileged white males. I wanted to understand the passions and struggles of ordinary people, and soon became convinced that the examination of the distant past sheds important light on the present. Itâs not that I donât care about the world around me right now. Rather, I am convinced that those who look only at this decade, this century, or even the last century fail to recognize some of the most powerful cultural forces that have shaped our most fundamental understandings of gender, wealth, poverty, work, and so much more.
If we want to understand medieval or modern Paris, we need to gain some familiarity with all of the stages along the way. Robb provides some episodic portraits of some of those stages, and the chapter on the eighteenth-century architect Charles-Axel Guillaumot is one of the most arresting discussions Iâve ever seen of how the actions of those living in one epoch can reverberate for generations to come. Guillaumot literally saved Paris from collapsing in on its medieval past by bracing up the swiss-cheese-like network of tunnels that had been left behind by its medieval quarry workers.
This is the Paris you never knew. From the Revolution to the present, Graham Robb has distilled a series of astonishing true narratives, all stranger than fiction, of the lives of the great, the near-great, and the forgotten.
A young artillery lieutenant, strolling through the Palais-Royal, observes disapprovingly the courtesans plying their trade. A particular woman catches his eye; nature takes its course. Later that night Napoleon Bonaparte writes a meticulous account of his first sexual encounter. A well-dressed woman, fleeing the Louvre, takes a wrong turn and loses her way in the nameless streets of the Left Bank.âŠ
The greatest mystery I face in life is, how is it that when I've just packed the dishwasher, I have to pack it yet again? But I love stories. Thereâs nothing more healing than a well-told story with characters and jokes and twists and turns. Each of these books contains some form of fictionalized domestic world where murders happen, but marriages and babies and falling in love do, too. We live in a time when the world is hard to navigate. All of these writers bring a mystery, the best of company, and the idea that even in the darkest of times, everything can turn out quite spiffingly.
Who doesn't want to be Posey Parker? Sheâs smart, she eats loads, and never gets tubby. Sheâs always gorgeous, though sheâs not at all arrogant about it. Give Posey a compliment or a sandwich; sheâll take the sandwich every time.
On the negative side, she lives in the 1920s with the world still reeling from the first world war, and womenâs rights decidedly sketchy. Also, sheâs trapped on the Night Train to Paris with a sense of impending doom. (I totally identify with that, having traveled on the Glasgow to London sleeper.)
L.B. Hatheway has crafted a book that offers the best kind of mystery and a great understanding of the time's history, and Clare Wille voices it flawlessly.Â
What if the City of Light holds nothing but darkness?
January, 1926
Invited aboard the glamourous Night Train to Paris, and tasked with investigating the disappearance of her best friend, Dolly Cardigeon, Posie Parker suddenly finds herself right in the middle of a murder!
Controversial society beauty, Lady Caroline Greenlow, is on her way to Paris Fashion Week. She always has a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way, but things take a dreadful turn when she is poisoned at dinner, and then another murder occurs soon after.
Just who exactly are their fellow passengers? Why is the NightâŠ
Iâm an urban designer, author, and host of The Life-Sized City urbanism series - as well as its podcast and YouTube channel. Iâve worked in over 100 cities, trying to improve urban life and bring back bikes as transport. I came at this career out of left field and am happily unburdened by the baggage of academia. I've famously refrained from reading most of the (probably excellent) books venerated by the urbanism tribe, in order to keep my own urban thinking clear and pure. My expertise stems instead from human observation and I find far more inspiration in photography, literature, cinema, science, and especially talking to and working with the true experts: the citizens.
We are coded as homo sapiens to look at each other. To observe, study, analyse our fellow creatures. One of the reasons Iâll never live in the country is that Iâll miss observing urban life.Â
A city-dweller regards their city. This book is at once nothing and yet it is everything about urban life. I found in Perec a comrade in arms. The romantic in me insists on believing that the seeds for my later urban observations lieâŠ
"Take it with you to any cafe in any city, and Perec will be both your drinking partner and your tour guide, drawing your attention to each little detail coming and going.â âIan Klaus, CityLab
I love Paris. This city endlessly stimulates both my head and my heart. Always in movement, everchanging, it, like all cities, is a living organism, manifesting the spirit of all those who live here, past and present. Through a bunch of different projects and a handful of books, Iâve been trying to map its creative DNA, seeking out and championing the people and places who contribute to forging Parisâs own distinctive identity today. Makers Paris (Prestel) and Makers Paris 2 (Ofr. Ăditions) evolved out of more than a decade running slow-travel pioneer Gogo City Guides, and my latest book The Paris Flea Market (Prestel) is a new stop on this journey.
As the much-missed Karl Lagerfeld once said, âFashion is a train that waits for nobody.â And that train comes whooshing through Paris quite a lot.
This book captures some of the inimitable energy and agitation of Paris Fashion Week, as self-taught photographer Meyabe covers six seasonsâmenâs, womenâs, and coutureâover a single year. It includes an introduction by local fashion hero LoĂŻc Prigent and is published by my friends Alex and Marie from Ofr. (who also published Makers Paris #2).
Ofr. is an indie arts bookshop, gallery and publisher, always in the moment, that channels a certain bohemian spirit proper to Paris: âOpen, Free and Readyâ.
Before I started writing cozy mysteries, like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, I enjoyed a career as a ladiesâ apparel sales executive. Fortunately for my writing, sales execs are also students of human nature. All my life, I have been fascinated by what makes people tick. How do they react, especially when they are out of their lane or comfort zone, such as being away from the safety of home and forced to deal with a crisis? I have taken all I have learned and applied it to my writing.
I was anxious to experience all the excitement, romance, sights, and flavors of Paris, but I couldnât leave the country.
Luckily, French Ghost took me on a fun-filled romp through Paris with descriptions of the food, sights, and social mores so deliciously detailed by the snappy, sassy dialogue of Parisian characters that I had jet lag when I turned the last page of the book.
So, if a Parisian adventure is the same dream for you as it was for me, say Bon Jour to this gem and off you go. Au Voir.
Ghost-writer Melody Layne is stranded in Paris when the over-sexed but unloved French movie star who hired her to produce his memoir accidentally drowns before the interviews begin. It's a major financial relief when his enigmatic Spanish son re-hires her, but the seductive Carlos Ortega is strangely silent about his reasons for funding a feel-good bio about a father that he clearly despised. There's enough amour in the air for Melody to ignore this apparent paradox... at least until she uncovers a hidden cache of death threats addressed to the actor. For the French police, the sexy, secretive Spaniard -âŠ
When my daughter was three years old, I enrolled her in a âcreative movementâ class. I had taken dance lessons for ten years when I was younger, so this felt like an obvious choice. At age eleven, her teacher suggested that she had the facility, talent, and drive to pursue a career in ballet. What followed was seven years of being a âballet mom,â as she studied, performed, competed, and ultimately left home to pursue her career. The Still Point comes from this experience. It's a novel about dark ambition, but it's also a love letter: to my daughter, to ballet, and to the mothers who became my closest friends inside the ballet studio walls.
This novel, besides having a gorgeous cover, offers a sneak peek through the window into the lives of professional dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet.
It follows three young women from their days as students into adulthood. The plot has many twists and turns, but it is primarily a novel about female relationships in the cutthroat world of professional ballet.
Thirteen years ago, Delphine Leger abandoned her prestigious soloist spot at the Paris Opera Ballet for a new life in St. Petersburg -- taking with her a secret that could upend the lives of her best friends, fellow dancers Lindsay and Margaux. Now thirty-six years old, Delphine has returned to her former home and to the legendary Palais Garnier Opera House, to choreograph the ballet that will kickstart the next phase of her career -- and, she hopes, finally make things right with her former friends. But Delphine quickly discovers that things have changed while she's been away...and some secretsâŠ
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 extortsâŠ
I am an award-winning author and illustrator who works in a variety of genres, including Historical Fiction. When historical fiction is well done it conveys times and events as they were lived and breathed by real people. Historical fiction by diverse women tells the stories of those consistently left out of the âhistorical record.â Human life is rich and diverse, and the stories belong to all of us, not just those who have historically had the power to control the cultural narratives. As a writer and student of history, it has been my pleasure to explore characters that are not often represented, characters that are ordinary for their times, and extraordinary as well.Â
Each of the five books in my list either stars or co-stars a young woman, and The Complete Claudine, as the title would suggest, is not an exception. Coletteâs Claudine is a mesmerizing characterâsensual, passionate, fierce, and tender by turns. The ordinary twists and turns of Claudineâs turn-of-the-century life in the French countryside and Paris are made extraordinary by her uncommon self-possession and power of observance. Claudine fairly blisters off the page.
The stories that inspired the film Colette, directed by Wash Westmoreland and starring Keira Knightley.
Colette, prodded by her first husband, Willy, began her writing career with Claudine at School, which catapulted the young author into instant, sensational success. Among the most autobiographical of Colette's works, these four novels are dominated by the child-woman Claudine, whose strength, humor, and zest for living make her seem almost a symbol for the life force.
Janet Flanner described these books as "amazing writing on the almost girlish search for the absolute of happiness in physical love . . . recorded by a literaryâŠ
