Here are 77 books that The Death of the Heart fans have personally recommended if you like
The Death of the Heart.
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I’ve always been fascinated by the 1930s. In Britain, the decade was haunted by troubling memories of the Great War and growing fears of a more terrible conflict to come. In other words, it was a decade dominated by geopolitics. After more than 30 years as a journalist for the Reuters news agency, I’ve learned that geopolitics will never leave us alone. My novel is the first in a series of stories examining what geopolitics does to ordinary people caught in its grip. This selection of fiction and nonfiction titles is a fascinating introduction to what the poet WH Auden called ‘a low dishonest decade’.
As the 1930s unfolded in Britain, news from Germany increasingly dominated the national conversation. Everyone was talking about Germany. And, as Julia Boyd’s absorbing book reveals, Britons from all walks of life were travelling there, too. I loved the sheer breadth of people featured, from holidaying teenagers and hard-bitten journalists to MPs, academics and curious adventurers.
Thomas Cook was offering holidays in Germany throughout the 1930s, despite proliferating accounts of injustice and downright persecution under Nazi rule. Some British visitors were clearly dazzled by National Socialism, others horrified. Most seemed aware that they were watching history unfold – and their accounts of everything from theatrical mass rallies to brutal street fights are all the more vivid as a result.
This fascinating and shocking history of the rise of the Nazis draws together a multitude of expatriate voices - even Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett - into a powerful narrative charting this extraordinary phenomenon.
Travelers in the Third Reich is an extraordinary history of the rise of the Nazis based on fascinating first-hand accounts, drawing together a multitude of voices and stories, including politicians, musicians, diplomats, schoolchildren, communists, scholars, athletes, poets, fascists, artists, tourists, and even celebrities like Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett. Their experiences create a remarkable three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler—one so palpable that the reader will…
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…
I’ve always been fascinated by the 1930s. In Britain, the decade was haunted by troubling memories of the Great War and growing fears of a more terrible conflict to come. In other words, it was a decade dominated by geopolitics. After more than 30 years as a journalist for the Reuters news agency, I’ve learned that geopolitics will never leave us alone. My novel is the first in a series of stories examining what geopolitics does to ordinary people caught in its grip. This selection of fiction and nonfiction titles is a fascinating introduction to what the poet WH Auden called ‘a low dishonest decade’.
George Orwell is rightly famous for 1984 and Animal Farm. But I heartily recommend this book for its witty, gritty trudge through the social treacle of 1930s Britain. Orwell’s tale of Gordon Comstock, a young writer who embraces poverty in order to defeat the ‘money-god’, also foreshadows key themes of his later work.
Comstock has chucked in a well-paid job as a copywriter so he can write poetry. His disdain for the copywriter’s art allows Orwell to explore the emptiness of words yoked to advertising. ‘Vitamalt’, ‘Truweet’ and ‘Bovex’ are my favourites! Orwell, the journalist-novelist, is reliably strong on those under-the-skin details, from cheap cigarettes to the cost of lodgings in seedier parts of London.
A pre-cursor to his more famous works of Animal Farm and 1984, Keep the Aspidistra Flying is Orwell's social commentary on capitalism's constraints. Orwell captures the struggles of an aspiring writer with almost pitch-perfect attention to psychological detail, exploring the gulf between art and life. Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubby London bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rented room, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the "money world" of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind of security symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits in…
I’ve always been fascinated by the 1930s. In Britain, the decade was haunted by troubling memories of the Great War and growing fears of a more terrible conflict to come. In other words, it was a decade dominated by geopolitics. After more than 30 years as a journalist for the Reuters news agency, I’ve learned that geopolitics will never leave us alone. My novel is the first in a series of stories examining what geopolitics does to ordinary people caught in its grip. This selection of fiction and nonfiction titles is a fascinating introduction to what the poet WH Auden called ‘a low dishonest decade’.
For millions of Britons living through the 1930s, the biggest influence on their lives was the long shadow of the First World War. Frederic Manning’s searing story of ordinary soldiers fighting on the Western Front in 1916 is as good as anything you’ll ever read about the conflict.
Above all, I admire Manning’s frankness in his writing. He served in France, and it tells. His soldiers speak like soldiers: they swear – rhythmically, profanely – again and again. But this novel is about more than swearing. It shows us the daily reality of citizen soldiers struggling to endure the crushing tragedies of war. Burdened by nightmares and debilitating injuries, those who somehow survived the killing were to join a uniquely haunted generation.
'They can say what they bloody well like, but we're a fuckin' fine mob.'
Deep in the mud, stench of the Somme, Bourne is trying his best to stay alive. There he finds the intense fraternity of war and fear unlike anything he has ever known.
Frederic Manning's novel was first published anonymously in 1929. The honesty with which he wrote about the horror, the boredom, and the futility of war inspired Ernest Hemingway to read the novel every year, 'to remember how things really were so that I will never lie to myself nor to anyone else about them.
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’ve always been fascinated by the 1930s. In Britain, the decade was haunted by troubling memories of the Great War and growing fears of a more terrible conflict to come. In other words, it was a decade dominated by geopolitics. After more than 30 years as a journalist for the Reuters news agency, I’ve learned that geopolitics will never leave us alone. My novel is the first in a series of stories examining what geopolitics does to ordinary people caught in its grip. This selection of fiction and nonfiction titles is a fascinating introduction to what the poet WH Auden called ‘a low dishonest decade’.
If the First World War was the brooding background to 1930s Britain, the Spanish Civil War was the tragic conflict at its centre. Thousands of British volunteers went to Spain to fight, overwhelmingly on the Republican side. Meanwhile, the British government’s dogged adherence to a non-intervention agreement was slowly starving the Republicans of military aid.
I rate Preston’s account of the war because he shows how the brutal civil conflict became a proxy battleground for international forces of right and left while Britain clung to non-intervention. London was in a genuine bind over Spain but ended up adopting a position that paved the way for the appeasement of Hitler, a policy many Britons saw as profoundly dishonest.
Paul Preston is the world's foremost historian of Spain. This surging history recounts the struggles of the 1936 war in which more than 3,000 Americans took up arms. Tracking the emergence of Francisco Franco's brutal (and, ultimately, extraordinarily durable) fascist dictatorship, Preston assesses the ways in which the Spanish Civil War presaged the Second World War that ensued so rapidly after it.
The attempted social revolution in Spain awakened progressive hopes during the Depression, but the conflict quickly escalated into a new and horrific form of warfare. As Preston shows, the unprecedented levels of brutality were burned into the American…
My father was a Civil War historian, and literally, every vacation was spent traipsing over battlefields, with him pointing out the position of cannons and armies and, invariably, what military mistakes were made. Sometimes, we’d squat in the tall grass and imagine what it would look like when the enemy charged over the hill. My father related family tales with great relish, which are the basis of many of my historical stories. As a genealogist and family story lecturer, the past (especially the Civil War) has been a lifelong love. However, I must admit, I wouldn’t want to leave behind present-day comforts to live in the past.
I’ve read this book several times and absolutely loved the protagonist, a 16-year-old orphan who joins the army because he is hungry. The story unfolds through the company journal entries that James is charged with writing.
I was amused by his down-home spin, youthful complaints, observations, and humor, which gave the reader a glimpse into the swing between a soldier’s boredom and excitement. Of course, given that it is written in the vein of a young teen, I didn’t have to look up a single word, making it a fairly quick read.
The Civil War JOURNAL OF JAMES EDMOND PEASE is now in paperback with an exciting repackaging!
Ignorant to the bitter realities of military life, 16-year-old James enlists in the Union Army at the dawn of the Civil War. When his lieutenant assigns him to be the company historian of the G Company of the 122nd Regiment, New York Volunteers, he is initially at a loss as to what exactly he is supposed to record. As the days pass, James settles into his role, but he cannot take comfort in it. His country is divided by a bloody war, and his…
I’m a bibliophile who loves dogs and prefers the country to the city. I’m the kid who yelled at my kindergarten teacher because she hadn’t taught me to read by the end of the year. That same tenacity followed me when, at seven years old, I learned that James Cameron was making a movie based on the Titanic. With righteous fury, I yelled at my befuddled parents, before asking why they had not told me about this ship. I pleaded with my parents to take me to see the movie for my upcoming eighth birthday, and they relented, with my mum buying my first fictional Titanic novel. That’s how my Titanic obsession began.
Written in diary format, presented as something for kids and teens, this was another novel my mum would be for me as a birthday present. Written by Ellen Emerson White, thirteen-year-old Margaret Ann Brady’s innocence immediately captures your heart. When she and her brother are orphaned at a young age, her older brother leaves her on an orphanage’s doorstep while he finds work. Eventually, he makes it to America, where he saves for his sister’s passage. Margaret, in a turn of fate, is offered passage on the Titanic when Mrs. Carstairs requires a companion to travel with her to America. The novel is peppered with real-life facts, with Margaret interacting with JJ Astor and Thomas Andrews (fun fact: when I read this novel as a child, I loved that JJ Astor’s dog was named “Kitty.” I thought it was the perfect name for a dog, and as a result, I…
Margaret Anne dreams of leaving the orphanage behind, and she can hardly believe her luck when she is chosen to accompany wealth Mrs Carstairs aboard the great Titanic. But when the passengers are woken on a freezing night in April 1912, she finds herself caught up in an unimaginable nightmare...
A fake date, romance, and a conniving co-worker you'd love to shut down. Fun summer reading!
Liza loves helping people and creating designer shoes that feel as good as they look. Financially overextended and recovering from a divorce, her last-ditch opportunity to pitch her firm for investment falls flat. Then…
I’ve been an avid reader since I was a child, and my favorite protagonists are readers and writers. The Kansas tallgrass prairie horizons where I grew up fueled my imagination, and I wanted to write like the girls in my novels. I discovered Anne of Green Gables as a teen, and since then, I’ve researched, published, and presented on the book as a quixotic novel. As a creative writer, my own characters are often readers, writers, librarians, book club members, and anyone who loves a good tale. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I do each time I return to them.
This book has so many different elements—humor, the struggles of poverty, Cassandra’s dreams of success as a writer, quirky family members, and a tumbledown castle where the Mortmain family lives.
I identified with Cassandra’s efforts to keep a journal to hone her writing skills, having done so myself as a teen. I also enjoyed the unconventional take on a castle and Cassandra’s honesty in depicting (or “capturing”) it and its inhabitants with her words.
The dilapidated castle and the family’s foibles make this story approachable and enjoyable. It is one that invites the reader into the castle and the story as a welcome guest.
A wonderfully quirky coming-of-age story, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians is an affectionately drawn portrait of one of the funniest families in literature.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is illustrated by Ruth Steed, and features an afterword by publisher Anna South.
The eccentric Mortmain family have been rattling around in a…
I have always straddled between the worlds of fiction and poetry. I received my MFA in poetry in 2016, but during my time in the program, I was often told my poems were too narrative. Sometimes in my fiction workshops in undergrad, I was told my stories were too poetic. So when I finally jumped into the world of verse, I really fell in love with the intersection of poetry and story. Finally, there was a medium that felt “just right!” There are so many fantastic novels in verse out there—with so many more to come—but I hope you’ll enjoy these five favorites of mine!
Lawless Spaces uses the novel in verse form to capture multiple voices over several generations, voices of women who all carry the same trauma of being sexualized as women in a patriarchal world.
The verse allows readers to see the patterns between characters in a really compelling way, and think about what has and hasn’t changed in our world regarding how women are viewed.
Perfect for fans of Deb Caletti, this “powerful, absorbing, and beautiful” (Booklist) coming-of-age novel in verse follows a teen girl who connects with the women of her maternal line through their journals and comes to better understand her fraught relationship with her mother.
Mimi’s relationship with her mother has always been difficult. But lately, her mother has been acting more withdrawn than usual, leaving Mimi to navigate the tricky world of turning sixteen alone. What she doesn’t expect is her mother’s advice to start journaling—just like all the woman in her family before her. It’s a tradition, she says. Expected.…
I grew up during the civil rights movement in the US, and my ancestors—the lucky ones—escaped pogroms in eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century and made it to North America. (The unlucky ones were slaughtered in the Holocaust.) So I suppose it is natural that I would be drawn to write stories about the struggle to overcome persecution, racism, and injustice. I love creating characters who, at the beginning of the story, don’t know that they have what it takes to fight for justice, but then slowly build the confidence and courage to make a difference. And writing about these triumphs is fun, too!
Before I read this book, in the 1990s, I had never heard of Canada’s residential school system for Indigenous children. I was horrified, and also ashamed to have been so ignorant. Over the years, I have heard many Indigenous authors speak and have read many books on the subject, and have come to realize that the residential school tragedy is parallel to the Holocaust for Jews—my family’s story. This is the book that opened my eyes.
Her name was Seepeetza when she was at home with her family. But now that she's living at the Indian residential school her name is Martha Stone, and everything else about her life has changed as well. Told in the honest voice of a sixth grader, this is the story of a young Native girl forced to live in a world governed by strict nuns, arbitrary rules, and a policy against talking in her own dialect, even with her family. Seepeetza finds bright spots, but most of all she looks forward to summers and holidays at home.
“Rowdy” Randy Cox, a woman staring down the barrel of retirement, is a curmudgeonly blue-collar butch lesbian who has been single for twenty years and is trying to date again.
At the end of a long, exhausting shift, Randy finds her supervisor, Bryant, pinned and near death at the warehouse…
When I think of what it means to come of age, I think of the sacrifices one makes to be the best at what he/she enjoys doing against the challenges of life to experience the joy of living. When I failed not being successful as an actor after studying it for ten years in New York City, I came back home and finished college to become a writer. Now, I write the thrill of young characters with a talent to confront society to fulfill a dream, and if they fail, how to overcome it with the help of others, prayer, and hard work.
The novel Sold Out is a favorite book of mine because Carlson’s main female character, Chloe Miller, forms her own band while struggling early on until they become a hit in their community. Success, however, brings them problems of finding out who their real friends are. Even when the band is discovered by a talent scout from Nashville, conflicts erupt amongst the band members and attitudes start clashing, and Chloe’s dream is falling apart. However, she refuses to give up, and she finds the strength through God and prayer to make the decisions necessary to be proud of her accomplishments.
Chloe Miller and her fellow band members must sort out their lives as they become a hit in the local community. Accustomed only to being scorned and marginalized, Chloe suddenly has to decide who her real friends are, and who's just along for the ride. Now her generosity gets her in more trouble than ever. And all too soon after a talent scout from Nashville discovers the trio, their explosive musical ministry begins to encounter conflicts with family and school. Exhilarated yet frustrated, Chloe puts her dream in God's hand and prays for Him to work out the details.
