Here are 100 books that The Enchanted fans have personally recommended if you like
The Enchanted.
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I am a lifelong lover of books. As a child, one of my most prized possessions was my library card. It gave me entrance to a world of untold wonders from the past, present, and future. My love of reading sparked my imagination and led me to my own fledgling writing efforts. I come from a family of storytellers, my mother being the chief example. She delighted us with stories from her childhood and her maturation in the rural South. She was an excellent mimic, which added realism and humor to every tale.
This book is part odyssey, part ghost story, and part passion play. Toni Morrison is one of the patron saints of American literature whom I was fortunate to discover at an early age. This is her masterpiece, an example of what is possible when a writer’s heart, mind, and spirit are aligned.
The fact that the unfathomable sacrifice around which Beloved is imagined is based upon an actual event speaks volumes about the innate horrors of slavery. In matters of race, America’s skeletons are buried in shallow graves.
'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heart-breaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times
Discover this beautiful gift edition of Toni Morrison's prize-winning contemporary classic Beloved
It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
In 1971, when I graduated from law school, I received a fellowship to help staff a Legal Aid office on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I lived there for nearly four years, representing tribal members in tribal, state, and federal courts. I then worked for 45 years on the National Legal Staff of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). One of my major responsibilities was helping Indian tribes and their members protect and enforce their rights, and I filed numerous cases on their behalf. During that time, I taught Federal Indian Law for more than 20 years and also published The Rights of Indians and Tribes.
This novel won the National Book Award and it’s easy to see why. Written by a Native author about reservation life, it discusses a crime that occurred that—like many reservation crimes—went unsolved for a long time.
The book is informative and compelling, and it weaves Native practices and culture into the story. I found it particularly interesting because it includes characters and themes that resonated with my experiences.
Winner of the National Book Award • Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book
From one of the most revered novelists of our time, an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface because Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal…
I grew up as a fundamentalist Christian in the rural South of the United States. Gradually, I began to see the good and the bad in the church community and social community I loved as a child (and still love). My realizations led to tension in my heart, and that led to the creation of stories, both fiction and non-fiction. My list of five books is a kind of cornerstone (or touchstone?) of some of my present notions about our lives on earth before we each join the Majority.
This book, about racism, among other matters, helped open my eyes to the humanity of all people and showed me, in particular, the ways that cruelty and racism exist in our cultures and subcultures. When I read this book, I was fresh out of five years in the Air Force (1971) and had just experienced the caste system of military life.
Prior to that, I'd lived, as a child and teenager, in a community in which racism and fundamentalist religion were taken for granted as givens of the universe. When I read this book, I realized the power of literature to open a person to meanings previously absent in their life.
Reissued to mark the 80th anniversary of Native Son's publication - discover Richard Wright's brutal and gripping masterpiece this black history month.
'[Native Son] possesses an artistry, penetration of thought, and sheer emotional power that places it into the front rank of American fiction' Ralph Ellison
Reckless, angry and adrift, Bigger Thomas has grown up trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago. But a job with the affluent Dalton family provides the setting for a catastrophic collision between his world and theirs. Hunted by citizen and police alike, and baited by prejudiced officials, Bigger finds himself…
This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…
I grew up as an African American in the Maryland Appalachian valley, a town that was ninety-five percent white. My father worked for the paper mill and would bring home reams of paper, pens, pencils. I began playing with the stuff—making up stories and stapling them into books, the raw beginnings of a future novelist. Separately, I created dialogue, using clothespins as people: a burgeoning playwright. (We were notdestitute—my sister and I had toys! But those makeshift playthings worked best for my purposes.) So, given my working-class racial minority origins, it was rather inevitable that I would be drawn to stories addressing class and race.
I was searching for some good fiction by a Latinx author regarding immigration at the southern border when I discovered this gem. The narrative begins in Texas with an undocumented family—the mother’s constant dread of authorities; the aching memory of the father’s deportation; sickness and abuse engendered by farm work. Some youthful mischief by the two sons accidentally, and in an instant, splinters the household and transforms the mise en scèneto Mexico and the nightmare that, as the author eloquently demonstrates, NAFTA and the American drug wars have wrought: routine brutality, lethal superstition, destitution, desperation. Peña’s graceful prose packs into two hundred pages an epic journey of love and sacrifice, of terror and survival, of three people struggling under the most insurmountable circumstances to maintain their humanity.
Uli’s first flight, a late-night joy ride with his brother, changes their lives forever when the engine stops and the boys crash land, with “Texas to the right and Mexico to the left.” Before the accident, Uli juggled his status as both an undocumented immigrant and a high school track star in Harlingen, Texas, desperately hoping to avoid being deported like his father. His mother Araceli spent her time waiting for her husband. His older brother Cuauhtémoc, a former high-school track star turned drop-out, learned to fly a crop duster, spraying pesticide over their home in the citrus grove.
I write the West Investigations series, a romantic thriller series, centered around the men and women running a private investigations firm. When I began the series I knew I wanted it to be set in an urban city, not just because I’m a city girl at heart, but because of the eclectic nature, diversity, and color that can be found in the big city. Each of the books I’ve recommended below features a big city PI that jumps off the page, grabs you, and doesn’t let go for 200+ pages.
This book takes place in the windy city of Chicago and Clark is adept at making you feel like you are right there in the midst of the fast-paced, gritty city as you read.
The plotting helps by kicking off with a bang – a priest and a gang member found dead in church. Questions abound. But what really kept me turning the pages of this book (or technically swiping since I read it on my Kindle) was Cass Raines, retired cop turned PI.
Her last case on the police force left her reeling and she struggling to deal with the aftermath.
It’s Cass that makes this book stand out amongst other PI novels, you care about what she’s going through, about this new trauma that has been introduced into her life, and that through it all she’s still working to get justice for people that are often overlooked…
Former cop Cass Raines has found the world of private investigation a less stressful way to eke out a living in the Windy City. But when she stumbles across the dead body of a respected member of the community, it’s up to her to prove a murderer is on the loose . . .
Cops can make mistakes, even when they’re not rookies. If anyone knows that it’s Cass Raines, who took a bullet two years ago after an incompetent colleague screwed up a tense confrontation with an armed suspect. Deeply traumatized by the incident, Cass resigned from the…
I’ve been fascinated by crime since I was young, at first reading historical true crime and then reading widely in the crime fiction genre. What intrigues me about crime is the sense of the world being broken, and although the perpetrator might be caught and punished, their actions forever change the world. I was a member of a crime book group that focused on crime novels, and I’ve reviewed a number of true crime books. I’ve also attended and spoken at the Bristol Crime Fest–an annual festival of crime writing. I regularly give talks on crime writing and how, as a crime writer, I go about picking the perfect poison.
I love the character of Kinsey Millhone because she’s so human and relatable. Her life is messy; she gets herself caught up in situations where she knows she ought to let things drop but just can’t let them go, and she has a kind heart. She also has the endearing quality of being self-deprecating and not taking herself too seriously.
This book is set in the 1980s, and I enjoy seeing Kinsey’s legwork to solve her case without the benefit of mobile phones or the internet. I also love her relationship with her elderly neighbor and how protective she is of him when she feels that new people in the neighborhood are taking advantage of him.
X is the New York Times number 1 bestseller and thrilling, twenty-fourth book in the Kinsey Millhone Alphabet series from Sue Grafton.
In hindsight, I marvel at how clueless I was . . . What I ask myself even now is whether I should have picked up the truth any faster than I did, which is to say not fast enough . . .
When a glamorous red head wishes to locate the son she put up for adoption thirty-two years ago, it seems like an easy two hundred bucks for private investigator Kinsey Millhone. But when a cop tells…
Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.
I've been writing since I learned how to write, first poems, then short stories. I spent a decade in the rock music business, writing about and becoming friends with Elton John, John Lennon, Bryan Ferry, among others. But I grew up reading thrillers and wanting to write novels but seemed hesitant to start. One day, I ran into an old high school friend who was writing westerns for Avon Books. I thought if he can, so can I. So I did. I majored in Sociology in college, so the intricacies of individuals within society always fascinated me. After reading The Outsider, I realized I really wanted to write about the people outsideof society.
I came upon the novels of Philip Kerr later in life.
They were unique in as much as his main character, Bernie Gunther, was a German before, during, and after the Nazi party came to power. The tightrope Gunther had to tread between being a good German cop and having to deal with Nazi higher-ups without himself ever becoming a Nazi is what makes the series thrum with tension.
I had the great good fortune to meet Philip at the L.A. Times Book Fair to which we were both invited some years ago. Spending time with him was for me to meeting a rock star. I was privileged to make his acquaintance.
The time I subsequently spent reading his new novels gave me the distinct sense of standing beside Gunther wherever Philip chose to send him.
When, several years later, I learned that Kerr had died suddenly I was devastated. …
The twelfth book in the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling series, perfect for fans of John le Carre and Robert Harris. 'One of the greatest anti-heroes ever written' Lee Child
France, 1956. Bernie Gunther is on the run. If there's one thing he's learned, it's never to refuse a job from a high-ranking secret policeman. But this is exactly what he's just done. Now he's a marked man, with the East German Stasi on his tail.
Fleeing across Europe, he remembers the last time he worked with his pursuer: in 1939, to solve a murder at the Berghof,…
As the author of the Dr. Josephine Plantae Paradoxes, a historical mystery series based on my grandmother, an early trailblazing woman doctor, I stay true to the facts. I remember entering her apothecary filled with strange bottles of little homeopathic white pills, giant stills, and finding poisonous plants in her atrium. In my novels, Dr. Josephine Reva fights for woman’s equality and practices a mix of botanical and modern medicine, and moonlights as a sleuth to solve paradoxical ‘poison cure’ crimes. An award-winning journalist, author, and former professor with an MS from Columbia University, I studied botany. I currently live between France and New England with my family, furry friends, and lots of plants.
Hemlockcontains much information about this poisonous botanical, famous for killing Socrates.
The mystery revolves around the disappearance of a rare and valuable volume of A Curious Herbal by the botanist Elizabeth Blackwell.
There’s a novel within a novel framework, and the second novel concerns the difficult life of Mrs. Blackwell as she attempts to save her family from debtor’s prison by publishing her botanical treatise.
Interestingly, Sussan Wittig Albert is a successful self-published author, and very original. Hemlockis sure to please for its exciting dual-arc stories, both concerning poisonous plants.
From Susan Wittig Albert, the New York Times bestselling author of A Plain Vanilla Murder, comes a tightly crafted novel that juxtaposes the disappearance of a rare, remarkably illustrated 18th-century herbal with the true and all-too-human story of its gifted creator, Elizabeth Blackwell.
Herbalist China Bayles' latest adventure takes her to the mountains of North Carolina, where her friend Dorothea Harper serves as the director and curator of the Hemlock House Library, a priceless collection of rare gardening books housed in a haunted mountainside mansion that once belonged to Sunny Carswell, a reclusive heiress. But the most valuable book-A Curious…
Having taken up the brush myself, I can attest to some sort of mystical, out-of-body experience that sometimes surfaces as an artist creates. Emotions and senses become directly connected to one’s hands, releasing the unconscious, allowing the artist to bring something to life that was buried deep inside. My favorite class in art school was Aesthetics, which explored the philosophy of art – what possessed the artist to paint – and what passions and beliefs were behind some of the art movements, including Surrealism, Dadaism, and Futurism. Books that delve into the craft and passion behind great works of art are my favorite reads.
Peter Lovesey’s detective discovers the power of art in this recent mystery set in Bath, England.
This book in the series is unusual, since most of the story is told through the eyes of a cheap private detective, who views Diamond as a grumpy old man. A body found in an antique sarcophagus and the disappearance of the antique dealer is at the start of the mystery, but the piece of art which was purchased in an antiques roadshow drives the plot.
Greed and ambition, stirred by the provenance of the art, results in several murder attempts which confound Diamond’s and the private detective’s investigation.
Of all the weird characters Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has met in Bath, this one is the most extreme: a twenty-first-century private eye called Johnny Getz, whose office is over Shear Amazing, a hairdressing salon. Johnny has been hired by Ruby Hubbard, whose father, an antiques shop owner, has gone missing, and Johnny insists on involving 'Pete' in his investigation.
When Diamond, Johnny and Ruby enter the shop, they find a body and a murder investigation is launched. Diamond is forced to house his team in the dilapidated Corn Market building across the street. His problems grow when his boss…
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'm an actor turned journalist and writer. After a series of roles on low-budget movies and forgettable soap operas, I moved to Latin America to write about travel and life and all the heartbreak and humour it entails. El Flamingo follows the misadventure of a struggling actor who gets mistaken for a rogue assassin in Mexico and is forced to assume the mysterious identity in order to survive. It is a preposterous plot that could never happen in real life, yet the essence of it all was inspired by places I went, people I crossed paths with, and a sense of adventure that, to me, was authentic.
Elvis Cole is the first-person narrator of a classic private eye series set in Los Angeles.
It is fun and unpretentious while being full of sociological truisms. The novels are first and foremost crime thrillers, but the comedic voice and observations make for a somewhat genre-bending experience every single read.
The second blistering Elvis Cole novel from the bestselling author of RACING THE LIGHT
'Brilliant... read this, then read all his others' Mirror
Bradley Warren had lost something very valuable, something that belonged to someone else: a rare thirteenth-century Japanese manuscript called the Hagakure.
Everything PI Elvis Cole knew about Japanese culture he'd learned from reading SHOGUN, but he knew a lot of crooks - and what he didn't know, his sidekick Joe Pike did.
Together, Cole and Pike begin their search in L.A.'s Little Tokyo, the nest of the notorious Japanese mafia, the Yakuza - and find themselves caught…
