Here are 96 books that The Cornish Captive fans have personally recommended if you like
The Cornish Captive.
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I love to see complicated characters rising to the occasion. People in real life generally have a lot going on just handling the day-to-day, and they aren’t waiting around for adventure, romance, or mystery to find them. It feels very human to me to see characters struggling with more mundane things like social situations, worrying about their appearance, or holding down a job, rather than only focusing on the plot arc, and that’s the type of character I also focus on as a writer. My latest protagonist, Simon, definitely has enough problems without a missing-person case to solve, so he may be what got me thinking of this topic.
I have always loved literary thriller queen Daphne Du Maurier's complex and resilient characters, and Mary Yellan is no exception. Everything’s looking pretty miserable for her after her mother’s death forces her to give up the family farm and her hometown to live in a creepy inn with her miserable aunt and aggressive drunk of an uncle.
So I really enjoy how brave and resourceful she is in getting past violence, danger, miserable living conditions, a desolate setting, and bad taste in men to find out whether something more sinister than smuggling is going on at the empty inn.
After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan crosses the windswept Cornish moors to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience. There she finds Patience a changed woman, downtrodden by her domineering, vicious husband Joss Merlyn. The inn is a front for a lawless gang of criminals, and Mary is unwillingly dragged into their dangerous world of smuggling and murder. Before long she will be forced to cross her own moral line to save herself.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
The collection Little Musings, available on Amazon, covers several decades of Joy's work as poet and painter. It touches on many aspects of her life, including the loss of her mother, in Do Not Mourn Her and Loss - Double Rainbow. Her childhood was spent in Plymouth, and in A Plymouth Girl Reflects, she recalls the aftermath of the air raids. Being in close proximity to Cornwall, that area also a major theme here, especially in Newquay, Cornwall, and On Air, By Melancholy. Four of the poems, "Absent Friends," "Isle of Thanet," "At Jim's Cafe," and "Captain Ahab of Thanet" are focused on the Thanet area of East Kent, where Joy now lives.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles has the dual quality of a being great work of literature, and a polemic which faces the issues of poverty and oppression—an incredibly honest, balanced portrayal of all aspects of rural life. Many of my personal problems reflected the traumas faced by the tragic heroine.
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'My life looks as if it had been wasted for want of chances! When I see what you know, what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am!'
Challenging the hypocrisy and social conventions of the rural Victorian world, Tess of the D'Urbervilles follows the story of Tess Durbeyfield as she attempts to escape the poverty of her background, seeking wealth by claiming connection with the aristocratic D'Urberville family. It is through Tess's relationships with two very different men that Hardy tells…
The collection Little Musings, available on Amazon, covers several decades of Joy's work as poet and painter. It touches on many aspects of her life, including the loss of her mother, in Do Not Mourn Her and Loss - Double Rainbow. Her childhood was spent in Plymouth, and in A Plymouth Girl Reflects, she recalls the aftermath of the air raids. Being in close proximity to Cornwall, that area also a major theme here, especially in Newquay, Cornwall, and On Air, By Melancholy. Four of the poems, "Absent Friends," "Isle of Thanet," "At Jim's Cafe," and "Captain Ahab of Thanet" are focused on the Thanet area of East Kent, where Joy now lives.
The Tide Between Us is similarly typical of many Cornish novels which involve travel to the West Indies. The maritime links between those areas were extremely strong at those times. It therefore relates to the Transatlantic factor in my own novels which involves the West Indies and the slave trade.
1821: Among the thousands of Irish deportees to the Caribbean British Colonies is a 10 year old Irish boy, Art O’Neill. As an Indentured Servant on a sugar plantation in Jamaica, Art gradually acclimatises to the exotic country and the unfamiliar customs of the African slaves.When the new heirs to the plantation arrive from Ireland they resurrect the ghosts of brutal injustices against Art. He bides his time and hides his abhorrence from his new master by channelling his energy into his work. During those years he prospers, he acquires land, he sees his coloured children freed after emancipation as…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
The collection Little Musings, available on Amazon, covers several decades of Joy's work as poet and painter. It touches on many aspects of her life, including the loss of her mother, in Do Not Mourn Her and Loss - Double Rainbow. Her childhood was spent in Plymouth, and in A Plymouth Girl Reflects, she recalls the aftermath of the air raids. Being in close proximity to Cornwall, that area also a major theme here, especially in Newquay, Cornwall, and On Air, By Melancholy. Four of the poems, "Absent Friends," "Isle of Thanet," "At Jim's Cafe," and "Captain Ahab of Thanet" are focused on the Thanet area of East Kent, where Joy now lives.
At this time there was extensive maritime traffic between Cornwall and the West Indies. The Lip also has an affinity with my own experience, which included going on a Transatlantic Voyage, described in my own book, and a collection of poems I wrote on board.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS' GUILD BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD | SHORTLISTED FOR THE HOLYER AN GOF LITERARY FICTION AWARD | LONGLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD
'This unsparing debut novel portrays the unromantic side of Cornwall few visitors see and which so many novelists choose to overlook. Charlie Carroll inhabits his damaged heroine completely' Patrick Gale 'A moving and affecting novel about life on the edge, with a very special flavour of wild and rugged Cornwall.' Emma Stonex, author of THE LAMPLIGHTERS
Away from the hotels and holiday lets, there is an unseen side of Cornwall, where…
I was named after my father’s aunt, who moved from Canada to Switzerland in the 1920s to join a travelling church. Family lore remembers she rode a bicycle in the mountains and when she was dying, her sisters sent her maple leaves in the mail to remind her where she started. As a child, I was fascinated by this mysterious other Katie. Why did my father choose her name for me? Would I be like her? Did I get to choose? As a novelist, I love choosing names. Their power is subtle but strong, and when a writer gives a character more than one name, new layers emerge and stories bloom.
Like Alias Grace, Falling Creatures is a reimagining of a famous Victorian murder, this time set in Cornwall on Bodmin Moor. In 1844, Charlotte Dymond was a pretty, domestic servant, working on a farm on the edge of the moor, and her murder was the news sensation of the day. Stansfield’s central character, the fictional Shilly, shares Charlotte’s name and work and, after her death, plays a significant role in revealing what happened, working alongside the enigmatic detective, Mr. Williams. Stansfield plays skillfully with names and shifts in identity throughout this novel, and I was compelled by the strange balance she creates between early scientific reasoning and the lasting folk traditions of supernatural awareness. Falling Creatures is the first in Stansfield’s Cornish Mysteries series.
Cornwall, 1844. On a lonely moorland farm not far from Jamaica Inn, farmhand Shilly finds love in the arms of Charlotte Dymond. But Charlotte has many secrets, possessing powers that cause both good and ill. When she's found on the moor with her throat cut, Shilly is determined to find out who is responsible, and so is the stranger calling himself Mr Williams who asks for Shilly's help. Mr Williams has secrets too, and Shilly is thrown into the bewildering new world of modern detection.
I was five when we moved to Australia, and soon after I discovered two things: I am the seventh child of a seventh child, with magic powers including the ability to see ghosts. My mother’s brother Dennis drowned when he was six. Naturally I started talking to him. Mind you, Mum also told me if the wind changed my face would stay like that, so the ghost thing probably wasn’t true either. Technically she only brought two of us to term. Dennis and I still talk, but we don’t have much in common anymore. With that in mind, please enjoy my ghosty best friends book recommendations.
Okay, so this one is a cheat, because the ghost isn’t actually dead, only wishes he was dead. When I was a teenager I borrowed this one from one of my mother's friends, not long after it was published, and “forgot” to give it back I liked it so much.
Regency romances can be a little overwrought, but I read it again recently, and it holds up to the passage of time. But, it tells us, that no matter how bad things seem, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. Life is what you make it, even if it takes all your courage, you have to keep adjusting and moving forwards.
The fascinating stranger who visits a young lady in the dead of night is no ghostly spirit in this spellbinding Regency romance by award-winning author Elizabeth Mansfield
After scandalizing London with her improper behavior and jilting two suitors, Nell Belden is about to do it again. This time she rejects the very wealthy, utterly insufferable nobleman her financially strapped guardians have been pressuring her to marry. Banished to their isolated Cornwall estate, Nell is awakened one night by an unusual apparition.
But her midnight visitor is no phantom. He is Captain Henry Thorne, sixth Earl of Thornbury. The new Lord…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I love writing about the dark side of human nature, and the devastating secrets and resentments that can simmer beneath the surface between friends before reaching boiling point in the most dramatic and sinister way. It’s a theme pivotal to my latest thriller, which sees friends reuniting in a beautiful yet isolated location for the seemingly perfect celebration, but where things go horribly wrong. I enjoy exploring this topic through multiple characters, all with their own dubious backstories that stir suspicion in readers’ minds and keeps them guessing, while the settings I use play a key role in enhancing that sense of unease and tension conducive to the classic whodunnit.
I really enjoyed this clever Young Adult whodunnit mystery centering on three families reuniting for their annual summer holiday in Cornwall.
When one of the teenage daughters goes missing following a game of hide and seek, her doting, yet secretly envious, best friend tries to piece together what happened.
The story is told between present and past events, but also through letters written by the main protagonist to the missing girl, phrased in such a way I wasn’t quite sure how much or little she really knew about what happened to her friend, which elevated the mystery.
The families are brimming with resentments, tensions & jealousies, heightening the intrigue and potential culprits, but what I loved most was the hugely unexpected denouement. A very clever twist I didn’t see coming!
Shared family holidays at Creek House have been the backdrop to Millie's summers since forever. Hanging out with the other kids - Matt, Charlie, Jem and her best friend Kat - has made it her favourite time of the year.
But this holiday things are different - the childhood games that once filled their days have lost their appeal to everyone except Millie. It's not until the final night that the others agree to a game of hide and seek. But in the time it takes Millie to count to twenty, Kat vanishes.
One year on, and struggling to come…
I love to write about the places, folklore, nature, and above all the magic of Cornwall. I have lived in Cornwall most of my life, I learned to crawl along the rockpools of Cornish beaches and I went to school in a moorland village. Now, I live on the edge of Bodmin Moor and write in the Cornish wilds, I live close to both the moors and the sea. I began writing for Cornish folklore project Mazed in 2013 and I have been retelling Cornish Folk Tales and writing poetry and stories inspired by Cornish folklore ever since.
Enys Tregarthen’s tales have bought Cornish magic into every home for a hundred years.
I have spent a lot of time with her books and retold many tales in my book. North Cornwall Fairies and Legends is a basket full of piskeys, (the Cornish fairy folk.) One of my favourites is the Piskey’s Revenge, which I retold for Cornish storytelling project Mazed. It is illustrated by Steven Lambert, and used in Cornishibai street storytelling.
It tells how Granfer accidentally digs up the piskey beds, in revenge, the piskeys eat all Granfer’s birthday biscuits. Enys writes about the children of Cornwall and what they encounter: they meet piskey friends up on the moors, little stone figures come alive in towns and aways there is an excuse for piskey mischief.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank…
Within the caste into which I was born, daughter of a daughter of a daughter, I was ‘nobody’—no dowry, an awkward brain, and unfashionable looks—dark hourglass, not blonde beanpole. Unless I married the right kind of man, of course–an eldest son with a big house. This was the 70s, and you probably don’t believe me, but many girls still went the full Jane Austen. So I’m perfectly qualified to tell you about the best books that centre on a big house as metaphor, a major character or a massive plot point in a novel. And, reader, I swerved marrying a man for his house too.
Susan Howatch walked away from her career as a highly successful novelist some years ago, but she’s well worth a read. Penmarric is the name of another Cornish mansion that is the fixed point in a swirling family saga. She took as her template the lives of the Plantagenet King Henry II and his powerful wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, plus their warring sons, with the house Penmarric standing in for the throne they fought over. You don’t need to know medieval history to enjoy the yarn.
Divided into five sections, each is narrated by a different family member. The action kicks off in 1890 with Mark Castallack clapping eyes on his complicated, older, future wife, Janna, in a churchyard. His mother, Maud, has directed her whole life towards regaining possession of the family estate, left to her cousin Giles instead of her because of primogeniture, and Maud was the wrong…
From the acclaimed author of Cashelmara: the “grippingly readable” New York Times–bestselling saga of a noble English family torn apart (The Sunday Times).
Overlooking the bleak cliffs of Cornwall is Penmarric, the ancestral home of Mark Castallack. The stunning gothic manor is the picture of English nobility, wealth, and comfort. But as the twentieth century unfolds, those behind Penmarric’s towering walls face nothing short of disaster. As Mark and his children struggle to save their home and their aristocratic way of life, they must engage in a bitter fight against greed, ambition, betrayal, and even murder.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I love horses and I love the magic that exists in the world. I have always been drawn to both. My maternal grandmother had the ‘second sight’ as they called it, and I have inherited that from her. My books and poetry reflect my sincere belief that magic and wonder are alive and well and that we need to nourish them by acknowledging their existence in our everyday lives. The miracle of life, the sun rising and setting every day, the dance of the stars and moon across the sky, the glory of the northern lights—who can claim that isn’t magic?
de Lint creates a magical mix of myth and reality that is totally believable, his characters stay with you long after the book is done. The glowing mists of magic lingering long after the pages are closed. He makes you wonder if what you thinkyou saw out of the corner of your eye is actually real.
When Celtic folk musician Janey Little discovers a secret manuscript in an old attic trunk, strange and frightening things begin to happen. Janey’s perilous story, and the one she is reading—about spunky adolescent Jodi Shepherd, beset by the witchery of the evil Widow Pender—expertly weave two separate plot threads. A steadily mounting tension makes two small seaside villages in Cornwall come alive with danger, magic, and mystery. One of de Lint’s best-loved novels, The Little Country is a fantastic escape dealing with ancient standing stones, the power of music, and the warmth of true friendship.
