Here are 46 books that The Gate House fans have personally recommended if you like
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I like fiction which makes a character confront what the poet Thom Gunn called ‘the blackmail of his circumstances’: where you are born, the expectations of you. I like to think I am very much a self-created individual, but I can never escape what I was born into; the self is a prison that the will is trying to break out of. I like literature which reflects that challenge.
I could have chosen any Raymond Chandler novel for this list; he is such a brilliant stylist, one of the best in the language.
His lugubrious, heavy-drinking, first-person detective Philip Marlowe is my kind of fictional hero, a genre-defining character, perpetually alone though he yearns for the glamorous women he meets.
Raymond Chandler's first three novels, published here in one volume, established his reputation as an unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction.
The Big Sleep, Chandler's first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralysed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail and murder.
In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women.
In The High Window, Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself…
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 have always loved history and art. Combining the two makes perfect sense and provides the inspiration to keep writing. I can spend hours in a museum, just soaking up the magic in Impressionist paintings. I never get tired of researching the artists or their paintings, and I relish the unexpected discoveries.
I love the way there is a mystery within a mystery. A group of actors is staging a play for the benefit of the passengers on a transcontinental train trip across Canada. The protagonist, who is undercover and posing as a waiter, befriends the lead actor and takes a page out of Hamlet, using the play to pressure the villain into making a mistake and incriminating himself. Accurate details about working as a waiter lend a sense of ‘David versus Goliath’ to the storyline.
To the Jockey Club, the racing world would be a better place without Julius Apollo Filmer. An expert in corruption with a devastating line in witness intimidation - and proving to be a slippery character to put behind bars.
Baffled, they call in undercover security agent Tor Kelsey to keep an unflinching eye on Filmer and his associates. A mission that takes him from the finest of English racecourses to the wild Canadian interior - on a luxury transcontinental train journey to end them all.
On board, a troupe of actors are playing out a murder mystery for…
As a thriller writer, I have a simple goal: I want to entertain. I'm not the kind of writer whose name is coupled with the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award. I write the kind of stories people read to divert themselves on a rainy afternoon or on the beach or on airplanes.My hope is that I can divert and delight my readers. Help them forget the real world for a while. Give them an enjoyable reading break. If people have fun while reading my thrillers, I've done my job.
Alistair MacLean’s thrillers have been a guilty reading pleasure of mine since high school, when MacLean churned out bestsellers like The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dareevery year. MacLean creates tough, grim heroes who do whatever they have to do to get the job done. The writing is clumsy but effective, with heavy-handed humor and world-weary cynicism. The women are barely defined. And yet...
The plot, mood, and setting of each book provide one heck of an adventure. Like the crash-landing of a passenger airliner on the Greenland ice cap in Night Without End. A nearby team of scientists rushes to save the survivors.Among whom are the murderous criminals who caused the plane crash. A thoroughly riveting tale of survival in an Arctic wilderness.
From the acclaimed master of action and suspense. The all time classic.
400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, an airliner crashes in the polar ice-cap. In temperatures 40 degrees below zero, six men and four women survive.
For the members of a remote scientific research station who rescue them, there are some sinister questions to answer - the first one being, who shot the pilot before the crash?
Then, with communications cut and supplies running low, the station doctor must lead the survivors on a desperate bid to reach the coast, knowing all the while that there is a…
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…
As a thriller writer, I have a simple goal: I want to entertain. I'm not the kind of writer whose name is coupled with the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award. I write the kind of stories people read to divert themselves on a rainy afternoon or on the beach or on airplanes.My hope is that I can divert and delight my readers. Help them forget the real world for a while. Give them an enjoyable reading break. If people have fun while reading my thrillers, I've done my job.
Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer books were my introduction to the American private-detective novel. Macdonald’s work is psychologically and morally complex, with the sins of previous generations cascading through time to horrific, homicidal effects on Archer’s clients.
In Sleeping Beauty, Archer tries to help a wealthy family with more trouble than any single family should have to deal with—including a missing girl, an oil spill, a ransom demand, and a corpse floating off a private beach. As Archer works his case, he untangles long-lost memories, the results of arrogant decisions, and the pained, twisted relations between parents and children. Sleeping Beauty is gritty and taut. Terrific detective fiction.
In Sleeping Beauty, Lew Archer finds himself the confidant of a wealthy, violent family with a load of trouble on their hands--including an oil spill, a missing girl, a lethal dose of Nembutal, a six-figure ransom, and a stranger afloat, face down, off a private beach. Here is Ross Macdonald's masterful tale of buried memories, the consequences of arrogance, and the anguished relations between parents and their children. Riveting, gritty, tautly written, Sleeping Beauty is crime fiction at its best.
If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it is Ross…
I grew up in a troubled, violent family in a violent, Mafia-controlled neighborhood. I did a tour in the Air Force and spent some time in Vietnam, surrounded by unseen enemies. When I got out, I stayed in London, surrounding myself with unsavory characters, narrowly avoiding trouble and wondering if I would ever see the twenty-first century. Having lived through so many troubled times, I can identify with those people in history who have overcome overwhelming odds to accomplish their goals, and I enjoy reading about them. They give me the strength to face each day.
I liked this book so much that I read it three times. Of all of DeMille’s novels, which take place throughout the Northeast of America, I particularly liked this one because it combines mystery, romance, and the Mafia. It was thrilling; he painted the locations so vividly that I felt like I was there.
The Great Gatsby meets The Godfather in this #1 New York Times bestselling story of friendship and seduction, love and betrayal.
"[Demille is] a true master." - Dan Brown, #1 bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code
Welcome to the fabled Gold Coast, that stretch on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America. Here two men are destined for an explosive collision: John Sutter, Wall Street lawyer, holding fast to a fading aristocratic legacy; and Frank Bellarosa, the Mafia don who seizes his piece of the staid and unprepared…
I grew up (at an early age ) reading what turned out to be classic crime writers: Christie, Hammett, Mac Donald, Leonard, Parker, etc. Growing up in Miami, I lived through the Cocaine Cowboy, crime-infested police department, rogue cops, and Mariel refugee crime spree days. I rode shotgun with a friend of mine who was a P.I. while he did surveillance and stakeouts.
With gritty, believable characters and snappy dialog, the main character is someone who I wanted to see persevere. Even though the odds were against her, I could not wait to see how she would come out on top, fighting the Mob against all odds.
Reading this book reminded me of classic crime writers like Dashiell Hammett, John D. Mac Donald, James Elroy, and Mickey Spillane.
A gripping mob thriller from the NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of BE COOL and GET SHORTY.
Gorgeous widow Karen DiCilia just found out what it really means to be married to the mob. Her Mafia husband Frank left her millions and a Florida Gold Coast mansion.
He also left orders that she'd lose everything the day she slept with another man. With his boys as enforcers, Karen was soon a lonely lady. Then she met Detroit's Cal Maguire, a sexy, street-smart ex-con with a scam to get Karen her money and her freedom - or get them both killed.
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…
Though I was born in the U.S., I didn’t wind up living here full-time till I was almost 10. The result? I have always been curious about what it means to be an American. In one way or another, the books on my list explore that question. More than that, all (well, nearly all) insist that black history is inextricably intertwined with American history and that American culture is a mulatto culture, a fusion of black and white. After years of making my living as a journalist, editor, and book reviewer, I left newspapers to write fiction and non-fiction, exploring these and other questions.
I still remember reading James Alan McPherson’s book for the first time. I was a senior in high school, one of a handful of black students in what had been an all-white private school. I closed the book, thinking, “Finally. Somebody understands.”
Like me, McPherson had gone from an all-black school, college in his case, to a majority-white school, in his case, Harvard Law. He began to write fiction there. It was the mid-1960s, but instead of hewing to familiar tropes of the time, black student unrest, black self-segregation, and black victimhood, McPherson cast an unflinching eye on blacks and whites interacting for the first time as equals.
He also depicted blacks in their own world lovingly but without sentimentality. I knew these people. McPherson taught me to see and appreciate them afresh.
The classic debut collection from Pulitzer Prize winner James Alan McPherson
Hue and Cry is the remarkably mature and agile debut story collection from James Alan McPherson, one of America’s most venerated and most original writers. McPherson’s characters -- gritty, authentic, and pristinely rendered -- give voice to unheard struggles along the dividing lines of race and poverty in subtle, fluid prose that bears no trace of sentimentality, agenda, or apology.
First published in 1968, this collection includes the Atlantic Prize-winning story “Gold Coast” (selected by John Updike for the collection Best American Short Stories of the Century). Now with…
As an independent traveller, and throughout a career supporting international nature conservation, I’ve been fortunate to see many far-flung places of the world. Over the years, technology (eg. smartphones, internet, social media) has radically changed the way we travel, and indeed our expectations. Nowadays we want instant access, instant answers, instant results; we hate waiting for anything. However, long-haul travel still demands us to wait... in airport lounges, at train stations, bus stops, and onboard our transport while we endure long hours before reaching our destination. While some aspects have changed, patience, humour, and a good book still remain the best companions for any long journey.
Bryson’s various travelogues give you such colourful views of the places he visits and, if you’re journeying to Australia, Down Underis a must-read. Expertly combining sharp observations, unusual factual snippets, and incisive wit, the pictures he paints will inspire you to travel and see it for yourself... or alternatively, persuade you to avoid it at all cost. Whichever the result, you will be amply entertained.
Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door memorable travel literature threatens to break out. His previous excursion up, down, and over the Appalachian Trail (well, most of it) resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. Now he has traveled across the world and all the way Down Under to Australia, a shockingly under-discovered country with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet. In a Sunburned Country is his report on what he found there--a deliciously funny, fact-filled, and adventurous performance by a…
Atmosphere can play a critical role in crime fiction, and I always find the most satisfying and memorable stories convey a strong sense of place. My own mysteries are set in the Thousand Islands, where many residents live in island homes built by gilded age titans of industry, and this setting is integral to Death in the Family and the entire Shana Merchant series. For twenty years I’ve been a regular visitor to the area, which extends from Upstate New York to Ontario, Canada. The human dangers in my books may be imagined, but the remote and rugged nature of the region always contributes to my contemporary, Agatha Christie-style plots.
This is an evocative mystery with not one but two atmospheric settings: Long Island’s Suffolk County, and Ireland’s County Clare. When an Irish national is found dead on a Long Island beach, Detective Maggie D’arcy’s planned vacation to Ireland becomes a tense investigation into the mysterious victim’s death, and a fight to keep her young daughter safe both abroad and back at home. I found A Distant Grave to be deeply chilling and impossible to put down.
In the follow up to the critically acclaimed The Mountains Wild, Detective Maggie D'arcy tackles another intricate case that bridges Long Island and Ireland in A Distant Grave.
Long Island homicide detective Maggie D'arcy and her teenage daughter, Lilly, are still recovering from the events of last fall when a strange new case demands Maggie's attention. The body of an unidentified Irish national turns up in a wealthy Long Island beach community and with little to go on but the scars on his back, Maggie once again teams up with Garda detectives in Ireland to find out who the man…
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…
As an author, I write both serious nonfiction and literary fiction. As a journalist, I have lifelong associations with The Atlanticand the Washington Monthly.I didn’t plan it, but four of my nonfiction books make an extended argument for the revival of optimism as intellectually respectable. A Moment on the Earth(1995) argued environmental trends other than greenhouse gases actually are positive, The Progress Paradox(2003) asserted material standards will keep rising but that won’t make people any happier, Sonic Boom (2009), published during the despair of the Great Recession, said the global economy would bounce back and It’s Better Than It Looks (2018) found the situation objectivity good on most major issues.
Steinbeck is one of my favorite novelists (Willa Cather, the other) but boy did he run off the rails with this, his final book.
He describes an American society locked in irreversible decline, with everything getting worse and our polity doomed. Sixty years later the United States remains the envy of the world and almost every America today lives better materially, with more freedom and security, than almost everyone of 1961.
The novel is a reminder of the extent to which ideological negativity is ubiquitous in literature.
The Nobel committee claimed that while giving John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature that he had "resumed his place as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased feel for what is authentically American" with The Winter of Our Discontent.The main character of Steinbeck's final book, Ethan Allen Hawley, is a clerk at a grocery shop that his ancestors formerly ran. Ethan's wife is restless now that he is no longer a member of Long Island's aristocratic society, and his teenagers are pining for the enticing material comforts he is unable to supply. Then, one day, in…
