Here are 61 books that The Hired Man fans have personally recommended if you like
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I grew up dreaming of other worlds, both real and imagined. I’ve since had the great fortune of living in Angola, Bangladesh, Gambia, Italy, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Tanzania—each country as fascinating to me as the next. Yet there’s so much more of the world I want to experience! This is why I love novels that immerse me in the history and culture of foreign lands. By entering the hearts and minds of characters with different life experiences than myself, I feel a sense of connection that expands my own worldview. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
This heartwarming, multigenerational drama about the Korean community in Japan swept me into another time and place. Born and raised in a poor fishing village in Japanese-occupied Korea, Sunja makes an impulsive decision in the pursuit of love that transforms the trajectory of her life.
Thoughtful, resilient, and fiercely independent, Sunja was a relatable character whom I desperately wanted to see thrive. I felt her heartache when she left her beloved Korea and shared her indignation at the discrimination she and her family experienced in Japan. Expertly crafted and keenly observed, Pachinko shows us how history and politics shape the lives of ordinary people, often for generations to come.
* The million-copy bestseller* * National Book Award finalist * * One of the New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2017 * * Selected for Emma Watson's Our Shared Shelf book club *
'This is a captivating book... Min Jin Lee's novel takes us through four generations and each character's search for identity and success. It's a powerful story about resilience and compassion' BARACK OBAMA.
Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja…
Winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel, The Golden Land digs deep into the complexities of family history and relationships.
Etta Montgomery is a Boston-based labor lawyer coming to terms with the love and loss she experienced as a teenager during a 1988 family reunion in Burma. When Etta’s…
I am the product of a love triangle—an unusual one, between a French Holocaust survivor, an African student from France’s colonies, and a black GI. My parents came of age during really turbulent times and led big, bold lives. They rarely spoke about their pasts, but once I began digging—in the letters they exchanged, in conversations with my grandmother and aunts, with their childhood friends—I realized that all three had witnessed up close so much of the drama and horrors of the twentieth century and that what they had lived together merited being told. My parents’ love triangle is at the heart of my love of love-triangle stories.
This is so much more than a love triangle story that I hesitate to reduce it to merely that. The novel explores interracial relationships, “blackness” in both an African and an African-American context, and the ways in which those worlds collide, etc., etc. At its broadest, the book describes the story of the Nigerian diaspora writ large. But at its core, this is the story of a love triangle—the sort of story I love most.
(I grew up a bit of a mama’s boy, and in our household, we loved love stories…)
As in Ishiguro and Jones, cited above, and in Garcia Marquez, noted next, the characters here submit to pressures and make difficult choices—as thoughtfully as they can, under the circumstances. And those choices have life-changing consequences that the characters eventually come to regret.
Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.
How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria. Self-assured Ifemelu heads for America. But quiet, thoughtful Obinze finds post-9/11 America closed to him, and plunges into a dangerous undocumented life in London.
Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria,…
I grew up dreaming of other worlds, both real and imagined. I’ve since had the great fortune of living in Angola, Bangladesh, Gambia, Italy, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Tanzania—each country as fascinating to me as the next. Yet there’s so much more of the world I want to experience! This is why I love novels that immerse me in the history and culture of foreign lands. By entering the hearts and minds of characters with different life experiences than myself, I feel a sense of connection that expands my own worldview. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
Set in Baghdad in 2002, this book introduced me to a part of the world that I knew little about. The novel is written as a braided narrative of three interconnected women—Huda, Rania, and Ally—each harboring their own secrets and lies as they navigate life under Sadaam Hussein’s authoritarian regime.
I found myself holding my breath as the three women’s lives became increasingly entangled and endangered. This compelling and suspenseful novel asks how much we are willing to compromise our values in order to protect the people we love. I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot about Iraq in the process.
“Breathtaking…Riveting and profound! I adored this book!” —Ellen Marie Wiseman, New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Collector
“A deeply involving and important novel by a master storyteller.” —Susan Wiggs, # 1 New York Times bestselling author
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
In this moving, suspenseful debut novel, three courageous women confront the complexities of trust, friendship, motherhood, and betrayal under the rule of a ruthless dictator and his brutal secret police. Former foreign correspondent Gina Wilkinson draws on her own experiences to take readers inside a haunting story of Iraq at the turn of the millennium and the impossible choices faced…
Winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel, The Golden Land digs deep into the complexities of family history and relationships.
Etta Montgomery is a Boston-based labor lawyer coming to terms with the love and loss she experienced as a teenager during a 1988 family reunion in Burma. When Etta’s…
I grew up dreaming of other worlds, both real and imagined. I’ve since had the great fortune of living in Angola, Bangladesh, Gambia, Italy, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Tanzania—each country as fascinating to me as the next. Yet there’s so much more of the world I want to experience! This is why I love novels that immerse me in the history and culture of foreign lands. By entering the hearts and minds of characters with different life experiences than myself, I feel a sense of connection that expands my own worldview. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
I found this novel about a young, widowed mother living through Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War both eye-opening and deeply touching. Having recently moved to Bangladesh myself, I welcomed the chance to learn more about my host country’s history while at the same time being transported into the fictional lives of Rehana and her two adolescent children, Maya and Sohail.
Tahmima Anam’s expert storytelling and razor-sharp observation made me feel as if I were right there with the characters, facing the same impossible choices but also experiencing the same unexpected moments of passion and beauty.
Spring, 1971, East Pakistan. Rehana Haque is throwing a party for her beloved children, Sohail and Maya. Her young family is growing up fast, and Rehana wants to remember this day forever. But out on the hot city streets, something violent is brewing. As the civil war develops, a war which will eventually see the birth of Bangladesh, Rehana struggles to keep her children safe and finds herself facing a heartbreaking dilemma.
I have read adventure, crime, and thriller books all my life. Reading is a huge relaxation for me and a good novel will transport me from the stresses and strains of daily life into another place in my head. A place where I feel involved with the characters and the environment, a place where I can imagine I could be. A good storyteller is different from a crime writer. They take the reader on a journey that might be through history or different continents. A journey that the reader wants to travel as well. I try to emulate this in my writing.
The story of the young orphan Pip, the escaped convict Magwitch, the recluse Miss Haversham, and her adopted daughter Estella. Dickens weaves the story back and forth between the characters.
You could pick many of Dickens’ books, but I think this story has everything: murder, love, intrigue, and tragedy. A storyteller extraordinaire. I’d go as far as to say that he is Britain’s greatest storyteller.
'His novels will endure as long as the language itself' Peter Ackroyd
Dickens's haunting late novel depicts the education and development of a young man, Pip, as his life is changed by a series of events - a terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - and he discovers the true nature of his 'great expectations'. This definitive edition includes appendices on Dickens's original ending, giving an illuminating glimpse into a…
Since I was a child, my imagination would run rampant with ideas and fantasies I had no idea how to channel. Then, when I was fifteen, I joined my high school’s creative writing class, and suddenly, every fantasy I’d ever concocted in my head had somewhere to develop. Sweet romance books have always fulfilled me, and I love it when, from the first page, you can feel the sparks between the main characters. They have a wholesomeness that leaves me feeling refreshed and hopeful, and I love that, for a few hundred pages, I can dive into another world and experience love through someone else’s eyes.
Jenn Bennett’s depiction of communication—or lack thereof—in relationships was so real that I found it to be one of the most compelling subplots I’ve read. She details how neglecting to talk about issues not only causes rifts in romantic relationships, but in familial ones as well.
Mixed with the sweet romance between the main characters, it made for a story that I quickly became invested in.
A swoon-worthy story of first love, making mistakes and finding out who you are, from the author of Night Owls.
Budding photographer Josie Saint-Martin has spent half her life with her single mother, moving from city to city. When they return to her historical New England hometown to run the family bookstore, Josie knows it's not forever, so there's no reason to change her modus operandi-keeping to herself, dreaming of the day she can leave.
But after a disastrous summer party, a poorly executed act of revenge lands her in big-time trouble. As in, jail...alongside the last person with whom…
I came of age reading Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier, and Phyllis Whitney by flashlight after my school night bedtimes. Their plots mingled romance and murder so elegantly, heightening the already incredible stakes of whether they would physically survive intertwined with the anxiety over the couple’s relationship surviving. All these years later, I still love a good story that makes me wonder how in the world the pair will make it through danger—and if there’ll be a kiss at the end.
I do love a good revenge story, and Dylan—the main character—is all about vengeance. Aided and abetted by her best friend, Daniel, that she’s carrying a torch for, the will-they-or-won’t-they as they try to bring down the bad guy has the propulsive plot exploding in more ways than one. This is set in the Bay Area, so it feels like a little mini-vacation if you’ve never been!
Revenge meets Promising Young Woman in this thrilling debut about a vigilante on a mission to take down predatory men, perfect for fans of Jeneva Rose and Layne Fargo.
Dylan Truman, better known under her alias Lady Justice, is the bane of every grifter, cheater, and bully in the Bay Area. Alongside her best friend and hacktivist, Daniel Haas, she works as a revenge-for-hire vigilante, seeking retribution on behalf of her (predominantly female) clientele. When a prospective client brings up a fraud complaint against pharmaceutical CEO Brent Wilder, Dylan's business becomes personal: Years earlier, Wilder assaulted Dylan’s sister and got…
As a published author, Debra’s passion for fast-paced, unputdownable novels is unquenchable. She can be ruthless in her criticism, applying the rule, “three strikes and you’re out!” A firm believer that life is too short to read mediocre books, if she isn’t grabbed by chapter 3, she puts the book down and moves on. She wants a book to make her life better, she wants to feel excitement at picking it back up again, and burying herself in the characters and moods, twists and turns, of a great story. Her writing reflects this same trait, if her words won’t keep the reader totally engrossed, then she won’t write them.
Simon Kernick is a master at keeping the reader engaged. His books have an amazing pace, and you will 100% commit to the story. Relentlessmoves you seamlessly through an array of emotions, as you read. You feel desperately for the protagonist, willing him to escape his torment and tormentors. This book twists and turns and gallops you from the first page, right to the last. Prepare to feel exhausted!
John Meron, a happily married father of two who's never been in trouble, receives a phone call that will change his life for ever: his friend Jack Calley, a high-flying City lawyer, is screaming down the phone for help. As Meron listens, Calley is murdered. His last words, spoken to his killer, are the first two lines of Meron's address. Confused and terrified, Meron scoops up his children and hurries out of the house. Just in time. Within minutes, a car pulls up outside, and three men get out. It's clear that they're coming for him. He's being hunted and…
I’m a Canadian writer who has always had a love for fantasy books. Particularly fantasy books with badass female characters who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, which is why my first published novel, It Ends With Her, is just that. I hate reading books, fantasy or otherwise, where the female lead simply waits around for someone else to fix her problems. Or even worse, lets someone else run her life entirely. No thank you, I’d much rather read about someone taking matters into her own hands and doing what’s right, no matter the cost.
For one thing, this Greek mythology fantasy begins with our main character, Lore, beating up someone during an underground boxing match. How much more badass can you get? Throughout the standalone YA novel, Lore tries to navigate a deadly game of the Gods and the constant deceit of those closest to her. But she keeps going, no matter the sacrifices she must make. This is a great story about strength and putting others before yourself for the greater good.
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From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Darkest Minds comes a sweepingly ambitious, high-octane tale of power, destiny, love, and redemption.
Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals. They are hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.
Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world, turning her back on the hunt’s promises of eternal glory after her family was murdered by a rival line. For years she's pushed…
I have a close girlfriend who was once involved with a man she wanted to marry. The trouble was, the guy was always hanging out with this other woman who he’d known since childhood. Just friends, he said. Nothing going on. Ha! The shenanigans they got up to were unbelievable, and extremely upsetting to my girlfriend, who eventually broke up with the cad. Her unlucky experience got me interested in the psychology of the love triangle, and why some people remain mired in these dead-end relationships. My reading jam is anything twisty and suspenseful, and what’s more fraught than a three-way competition for someone’s affections.
Beware the replacement wife! Those folks we envy because they appear to have it all (flawless family/home/career, etc…) are often frantically treading water, desperate to keep that facade of perfection afloat. I know because I’ve been there, in a seemingly idyllic marriage where underneath the trappings of material success was, well, crap.
In this novel, the second wife thinks she’s got it goin’ on with the first wife’s ex, but things are not as they seem (are they ever in domestic thrillers, or real life??) I got a vicarious kick out of the two wives’ scheming and revenge-lust, and the dry humor laced throughout the story had me snickering with snarky delight!
There is no limit to the lies, suspicion, and secrets that can poison the perfect marriage in this twisting novel of suspense by USA Today bestselling author Kaira Rouda.
Kate Nelson had it all. A flourishing company founded with her husband, John; a happy marriage; and a daughter, Ashlyn. The picture-perfect family. Until John left for another woman. Tish is half his age. Ambitious. She's cultivated a friendship with Ashlyn. Tish believes she's won.
She's wrong.
Tish Nelson has it all. Youth, influence, a life of luxury, and a new husband. But the truth is, there's…
