Here are 90 books that The Foundling fans have personally recommended if you like
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My interest in medieval history comes from a love of language. My favourite Old English word is wordhord, which refers to a poet’s mental stockpile of words and phrases. My word hoarding (and sharing) started with tweeting the Old English word of the day in 2013. This spread to other social media platforms, a blog, an app, and now two books. I have a PhD in English from King’s College London (my thesis was on blood in Old English, even though blood actually makes me squeamish). I enjoy histories that make me think about the past from a different perspective.
This book is filled with fascinating facts about medieval medicine, surgery, humoural theory, disease, and diagnosis. But what is surprising is how many other aspects of the Middle Ages are covered through the theme of bodies.
We learn about strange creatures like blemmyae (who have no heads and faces in their chests) and cynocephali (dog-headed people), saints and relics, race relations and politics, manuscript manufacture, religion, literature, travel, eating habits, love, sexuality, and gender identity.
I love how the chapters are organized by body part, from head to feet, a clever approach I have never seen in a history book before. Hartnell demonstrates how the medieval past is "an uncanny place at once startlingly different from and strangely familiar to our own."
Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love, and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different from our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or where the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule.
In this richly illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored, and experienced their physical selves in the…
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…
Living in Istanbul, I fell in love with glimpses of Ottoman life still visible there, not only the mosques and palaces but neighborhoods of old wooden houses, like the one where I lived on the upper slopes of the Bosphorus, the small villas and hidden gardens, and quaint customs that have disappeared in modern society. Beginning in my twenties, I spent many years as a social anthropologist in Turkey studying contemporary Turkish society, but I also read about the Ottomans, whose diversity, rich customs, and colorful lifestyles were tragically erased by nationalism and war. The books on my list will let you experience it all.
I still think about the elephant and his trainer years after reading this novel, and I sometimes reread it to visit with them again. There is something so charming, so vibrant about their relationship through all their adventures and dangerous intrigues at the Ottoman court.
I love to climb aboard the author's wonderful, evocative writing and let it carry me through stories peopled with fascinating places and characters. These stories have deep currents—love, devotion, rivalry, and the push and pull between religion and science.
A dazzling and intricate tale from Elif Shafak, Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World - chosen for the Duchess of Cornwall's online book club The Reading Room
'There were six of us: the master, the apprentices and the white elephant. We built everything together...'
Sixteenth century Istanbul: a stowaway arrives in the city bearing an extraordinary gift for the Sultan. The boy is utterly alone in a foreign land, with no worldly possessions to his name except Chota, a rare white elephant destined for the palace menagerie.
I’m the girl who loved school excursions to historical parks and the middle-aged author who cannot keep away from a house museum. Like most Australians, I love to travel (you’ll meet us everywhere), gravitating towards historical sites and weighing down my luggage with museum-shop trophies from Beijing to Bath and Cusco to Athens. All novels are mysteries the reader wants to solve, but stories with multiple timelines add an extra layer of puzzle to the mystery. As a writer I get to craft those puzzle pieces. And as a reader, I love solving them!
Of course, the title leapt out at me from the bookshop shelf! And on reading the first page I fell in love with Shafak’s lyrical writing.
As I read further, I was drawn into the stories of love in many guises within its pages. I was intrigued by the way the author wove a modern narrative of a deeply unhappy American housewife with a story about the historical character, thirteenth-century Sufi poet, Rumi, and his friendship with wandering dervish, Shams of Tabriz.
The story took me to a place and time far from mine and I learned about a very different culture—yet in its philosophical concerns and themes, not so different after all. And I really loved that both Shams and Rumi were storytellers so that the novel had layers of nested stories.
The international bestseller from the author of the Booker-shortlisted novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, The Forty Rules of Love is part of our Penguin Essentials series which spotlights the very best of our modern classics
*One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped the World'*
"Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough..."
Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is…
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…
My passion for this topic of women overcoming the odds stems from having worked with powerful, resilient women as a life coach and therapist for the past 15 years. I witness and continue to be inspired by women who surpass what they or those around them believe is possible internally and externally. Women are powerful in unimaginable ways, and I love to read a great story that depicts this truth.
I fall in love with any book that can bring details of the setting and time frame to life in my mind. This one was a movie in my imagination of Lucrezia de’ Medici’s world in the 16th century, what we now call Italy, from beginning to end.
The mystery of the story was mesmerizing. It was one of those novels that gives you a glimpse of the ending at the opening and keeps you guessing and rooting for the female protagonist. Once again, Lucrezia was the tenacious young woman everyone overlooked and underestimated, and the reader could not help but fall in love with her.
WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.
“I could not stop reading this incredible true story.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)
"O’Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you…
I have always been fascinated by stories that use darkness in plot and character growth. As a former funeral director, I find stories with death—whether it’s the power of death, the death of a loved one, or something similar—to be really poignant. I always write books that embrace the darkness, and I love to see how characters come out on the other side. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do!
When I tell you I gasped at the end of this book, I am not exaggerating. I am not one to be surprised by books, but this one kept me guessing the entire time.
I was surprised multiple times throughout the book, and the complicated relationship between Anna and her aunt is fascinating from the very first page. I also really loved the worldbuilding and magic system as it is expertly woven into the story.
I find that many fantasy books have a magic system that is just there, but this one drives the plot.
The International Bestseller
Within the boroughs of London, nestled among its streets, hides another city, filled with magic.
'Magic and love. Love and magic. They destroy everything in the end ...'
Anna's Aunt has always warned her of the dangers of magic. Its twists. Its knots. Its deadly consequences.
Now Anna counts down the days to the ceremony that will bind her magic forever.
Until she meets Effie and Attis.
They open her eyes to a London she never knew existed. A shop that sells memories. A secret library where the librarian feeds off words. A club where revellers lose…
Like any writer, I’m fascinated with what makes people tick and why they act the way they do. Naturally, this means I read a lot of history. I love reference reading; I love researching arcane questions for a tiny detail that will bring a character or their world to life. Creating epic fantasy is an extension of both my drives as a reader and a writer. Pouring myself into characters who inhabit different settings is a deeply satisfying exercise in both craft and empathy, and each history book has some small bit I can use to make my settings more compelling, more enjoyable for readers, and more real.
I hadn’t thought seriously about the problem of rubbish, sewage, and waste disposal before reading Jackson’s work.
I think it’s important, even crucial, for a fantasy writer to know where the poop and detritus go in the societies they’ve built; it’s part of the worldbuilding that gives an imaginary culture enough weight and heft to convince a reader.
Plus, Jackson’s prose is always marvelously clean, concise, and dryly funny.
In Victorian London, filth was everywhere: horse traffic filled the streets with dung, household rubbish went uncollected, cesspools brimmed with "night soil," graveyards teemed with rotting corpses, the air itself was choked with smoke. In this intimately visceral book, Lee Jackson guides us through the underbelly of the Victorian metropolis, introducing us to the men and women who struggled to stem a rising tide of pollution and dirt, and the forces that opposed them.
Through thematic chapters, Jackson describes how Victorian reformers met with both triumph and disaster. Full of individual stories and overlooked details-from the dustmen who grew rich…
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…
There was a time when women had to use pseudonyms or otherwise pretend to be men to get published. These days, especially in the urban fantasy genre, it seems like there are more female authors and female main characters than male ones! I love dynamic main characters, male or female, and every one of these books has stellar characters with a great story. I wanted to mention so many other authors, but I have narrowed it down to these five. I hope you enjoy my list.
The Alex Versus series's world-building, magic, and plots are very complex and layered. This is some seriously well thought out urban fantasy.
The main character, Alex, is basically an instant seer, able to see multiple consequences of diving left versus right, shooting someone, running, etc. He doesn’t always have time to evaluate his choices before having to make a decision. And often, there’s no out without loss or a high price to be paid.
The back story is cleverly woven into the plot and is never boring. This series has one of my favorite side characters ever written—an arachnid with startling insight and wisdom.
The start of a compelling new urban fantasy series based in Camden, featuring Alex Verus - a mage with a dark past who can see the future . . .
***The million-copy-selling series***
'Harry Dresden would like Alex Verus tremendously - and be a little nervous around him. I just added Benedict Jacka to my must-read list. Fated is an excellent novel, a gorgeously realized world with a uniquely powerful, vulnerable protagonist. Books this good remind me why I got into the storytelling business in the first place' Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden Files
There are so many billionaire romances out there based in America, but as a Brit, there’s nothing quite like reading a contemporary romance based in London. The capital city of Great Britain, there are a great number of reasons why books here are simply to die for. The history, the culture, the mixture of communities, and the potential for passion – in my opinion, there’s no better place to escape to in a book. Even better if there are delicious characters to lose yourself with…
If you adore a second chance romance, then this is the steamy billionaire romance with a trip to London for you.
I adored how Rebecca Castle weaves together hints for the second standalone in this series, and a few of the scenes made me pant! So sizzling. Make sure you grab it now.
Two sassy girls. Two billionaire British brothers. One beautiful city of culture, history. And love.
KINGSLEY Tall, handsome, rich, and British. I thought I had it all as the bachelor son of one of England’s ancient aristocratic families. The girls. The parties. The money. The power. But that was until I spent a semester at an American high school. That was until I met her.
SCARLETT That bad boy Brit, Kingsley Heath-Harding, broke my heart, but that was a long time ago in high school. He fled back to the UK, and I thought I would never see him again.…
It would be fair to say that the deconstruction has firmly taken hold of the Western genre in movies. But while an appreciation of Sergio Leone is omnipresent to the point of cliché for cinema buffs, in literature, Louis L’Amor, Zane Grey, and William W. Johnstone reign supreme. Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic Western horrors being the exception that makes the rule.
But Western books have their own subversion, and I wanted to spotlight those. The men’s adventure, the pulp fiction, the outright smut. These are the books that inspired my own novel, A Man Called Bone, and I hope it does right by its muses.
Before settling into the chronicle of the title character, this first entry in the Undertaker series (from the author of the much longer-running Edge books as well) follows a circuitous course involving an unfaithful wife and a vengeful husband. I won’t spoil the surprises along the way, but the Undertaker himself pushes the Western antihero to its limit. He’s all but emotionless, very nearly a sociopath, but with a certain competence and honor that gives him an appeal. (Even though he’s further saddled by the lame catchphrase ‘Bye-bye.’) I actually find his semi-autistic callousness more bearable than Steele’s more willful nastiness, since it seems the Undertaker was simply born the way he is, rather than choosing it.
You’ll recognize certain plot points from these books remixed into my book, though I found the Undertaker’s continued lack of character development a bit grating from one book to the next. That’s the…
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…
There are so many billionaire romances out there based in America, but as a Brit, there’s nothing quite like reading a contemporary romance based in London. The capital city of Great Britain, there are a great number of reasons why books here are simply to die for. The history, the culture, the mixture of communities, and the potential for passion – in my opinion, there’s no better place to escape to in a book. Even better if there are delicious characters to lose yourself with…
Only one night with a handsome stranger in London? This has been my dream forever, and once I read this blurb, I immediately one clicked.
Sandi Lynn made me feel like I was literally living this, and I found it almost impossible to drag my eyes away. I wanted this book to continue forever, and if you haven't read it already, you need to.
Have sex with a stranger in a foreign country. It was on my list. It was something I’d never done before and I wasn’t sure if I could go through with it. But I did. Don’t tell him anything about yourself. No names. No personal information. Nothing. It’s all about the thrill. The mystery man. Keep him a stranger. That one night was the best night of my entire life. He was sexy, intense, and made me feel things I had never felt before. The next morning, the thrill was over and he was gone before I woke up. What…
