100 Books Like The Good Wife of Bath

Have you ever read a book that grabbed you with a character challenged by circumstances you’d never considered? Imagine being blind and trying to survive WWII! I was intrigued by this essentially two-person novel set during World War II, which had a ‘cast’ of millions.

Again, the characters! Marie-Laure LaBlanc is a young blind French woman hiding in her great-uncle’s house in Saint-Malo after the Nazis invade Paris. I found Doerr’s lyrical sensory descriptions of Marie-Laure’s efforts to make her way around town as she’s pulled into the French resistance thrilling. I loved the depth of characterization when I met the second main character, Werner Pfennig, a radio repair savant, and his journey from a Nazi soldier tracking down illicit resistance radio operators to a young man repulsed by the Nazi brutalization of civilians.

The characters and intrigue pulled me through this book; mixed in with the eventual connection of… show more.

When recommending Geraldine Brooks’ multi-layered and intricately crafted March, another book must always be mentioned. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. March is the Pulitzer Prize-winning historical fiction rooted in Alcott’s classic novel that’s been read and loved for centuries. The March of the title is Jo March’s father in Little Women. In real life, his name was Amos Bronson Alcott. And he was the father of Louisa May Alcott. Brooks tells March’s fictitious story masterfully and with great historical acumen. Her depictions of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson are truly historic. Geraldine Brooks is not a historian. Her husband Tony Horwitz was. In Brooks’ case it seems that to fall in love with a historian is to fall in love with history as well. March is the beautiful proof.

Leo Tolstoy’s follow-up project to the massive War and Peace explores the meaning of human existence and the interplay of socio-political events and individual free will through the medium of infatuation, marriage, and love.

It’s also a real page-turner. When she finished it, Elisabeth Elliot called it the greatest book she had ever read, writing that Anna Karenina’s character had held a mirror up to her soul and showed her what her own heart was capable of. 

I am thrilled with any historical fiction that offers another perspective on what popular culture believes to be true. In this case, a man (Darwin) was the only one to posit the theory of evolution. This book explores the life of a brilliant woman who longed to be a scientist in the 18th and 19th centuries. Despite all misogynistic odds, she followed her dream. 

Despite having read this book a decade ago, I can easily recall the scenery, the time frame, and the incredibly luscious botanical-steeped life of the main character, Alma Whittaker, who took me with her to London, Peru, Philadelphia, Tahiti, and Amsterdam. 

Because I am a freak fanatic about all things moss-related, the depth of research in this area was mind-blowing! I loved that the world of mosses became a character, and I could deeply relate to Alma in this way. I was stunned by this entire… show more.

I learned a lot about seventeenth-century Amsterdam when researching The Map Colorist, and I loved how Jessie Burton really brings the time and place to life.

There is the young Nella, caught in a marriage she doesn’t understand, and which will ultimately have dire consequences. There is also her sister-in-law, whom we come to really know only at the very end. Overlapping it all is the mysterious miniaturist, who presents Nella with new figures for the elaborate doll house that her husband gave her. The miniatures seem to predict the future!

Michael Ondaatje’s novel is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It is not a study or analysis of Herodotus’ history, and yet Herodotus’ spirit infuses virtually every page. Taking place during World War II, it explores the intertwined lives of four characters, including the unnamed English patient, who has survived the shooting-down of his plane, although he is severely burned.

He has nothing with him but his annotated copy of Herodotus’ Histories. I loved Anthony Minghella’s 1996 film adaptation of the novel, and it is no criticism of the film to say that it treats only one of the many strands one finds in the book. Meditating on space, time, identity, and truth, The English Patient is a book that I think Herodotus would have loved.

Manhattan Beach is less experimental and more conventional than Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and The Candy House, but it is every bit as moving, rich, and textured as those justly celebrated novels, and it contains one of the most touching father/daughter relationships that I've ever encountered in fiction.

A historical novel set in Depression and World War II-era New York City, Manhattan Beach begins with almost 12-year-old Anna Kerrigan accompanying her rakish father, Eddie, on a mission to a wealthy gangster. A few years later, Eddie disappears after abruptly walking out on his family with no warning or explanation.

Has he been killed? Is he in hiding?  Why did he abandon a family he ostensibly loved? Plucky, brave Anna devotes herself to the search for her missing father with the ingenuity and zeal of the detectives she reads about in fiction.

I reviewed Manhattan Beach for… show more.

Thompson’s novel is another story about strong, intelligent, and powerful women who are manipulated and used by men. There have been numerous retellings of the birth of Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein. The fact that it occurred on a dark and stormy night is literary folklore. However, Thompson’s tale is the first time it has been told for a YA audience and he puts a wicked spin on the well-known origin story. This appealed to me as an English teacher. The characters—Mary, the poet Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and Lord Byron—are given a contemporary vibe. Mary is a lonely and moody teenager, swept off her feet by Shelley who is characterised as the 19th century’s version of a brooding and insatiable rock star, part Mick Jagger and part Nick Cave. 

When I arrived in Oxford in 1998 to begin my doctorate, I knew a bit about English medieval history, but almost nothing about the histories of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. That deficiency was corrected by Prof Rees Davies, at whose feet I was lucky enough to sit. Earlier that same year Rees had delivered the prestigious Ford lectures in Oxford, and they were published two years later as The First English Empire. Deeply learned, but also beautifully written, they are a powerful meditation on centuries when English power expanded aggressively into the rest of the British Isles, and the effects this had on national identities, which continue to resonate to this day.

I have read a lot of history and archaeology books and more often than not they can be a little dull, dry and in some cases work better than a sleeping tablet.

Not with this book, here you learn about parts of medieval England you just wouldn’t think about, written from a more personal point of view its less about political stuff like kings, queens, and those pesky archbishops and much more on the practicalities of living in medieval England.

Would you know what to eat, wear, or where to go to the toilet? Would you know how to address a lord or lady? Would you know what to do if you got sick? This is a vital guide for all time travelers!