Books like The Lake House — picked by fans

It starts with arguably the most famous first line any novelist has ever written, and I certainly couldn’t stop reading once I had absorbed that.

Rebecca is a classic for all sorts of great reasons. For me, the house is a character here. Manderley is as Gothic as I could ever wish for (and I LOVE Gothic).

Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, is one of the most sinister characters ever written. When this novel was first published (1938), certain subjects were pretty much taboo. In the light of today's increased awareness of people’s differing sexualities, I think it’s probably easier to understand her motives – not that it makes her any less scary.

For me, this is a masterpiece of storytelling that defies genre categorization and puts du Maurier firmly in my top favourite authors list.

This is the best novel I’ve read about bubonic plague.

Student historian Kivrin travels back in time to England of the Middle Ages—unknowingly at the start of the Black Death. The cause of Black Death was the plague bacteria, unknown to people of that time.

What makes the book memorable is its depiction of everyday life, where children who get lost in the forest must find their way home by the tolling of the village church bell. Ultimately, the bell tolls for all the plague’s victims.

The vivid characterization makes me experience people of a time so distant their minds feel alien to us, yet still deeply human.

I love a dramatic setting. This is the first in Kate Mosse's Languedoc trilogy (the second is also dual-timeline). From the very beginning, I felt as if she had picked me up and dropped me in the heart of the fortified city of Carcassonne, which has a history as dramatic as its setting.

I’m also quite interested in archaeology, so moving between a modern narrative that takes place on an archaeological dig and an 800-year-old crusade in what is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site was a perfect combination.

This remarkable ‘novel’ opens (and closes) with the author being given a journal written by Roger, Duke of Lunel, ‘l’Escrivel’, from whom he claims to be descended. This diary forms the bulk of the novel, and it seems to be a translation of a real diary, an intimate and detailed account of the penitent Roger’s journey to Jerusalem in company with other pilgrims on the First Crusade. At times poetic and beautiful, Roger lays bare his innermost reflections on his faith, his sexuality, his guilty love for his friend’s wife, and his search for his soul and for redemption. In excruciating detail, we also learn of the venality, ambition, and greed of those in charge of the various crusader armies who seek power and position in their conquered territories, and the absolute brutality of the conquering crusaders who, in the name of Christ, slaughter, behead and burn all those men,… show more.

I’m so glad that I didn’t have a lot of big deadlines looming when I started reading this epic story, because I would have failed to meet them. I couldn’t put it down–all 757 pages of it!

I’ve since visited many of the places and some of the castles that feature in Matilda’s story, and I’ve walked in her footsteps with her voice still ringing inside my head. I found the sinister re-telling in the modern-day story of cynical journalist Jo Clifford equally gripping.

As the past starts to manifest in the present, it becomes a psychological thriller to rival the best of that genre. It is simply a masterpiece of dual-timeline fiction.

All right, I have to confess: I love Gothic novels set in England—they can be so atmospheric.

This one takes place in the 1920s. Maddy Clare is a ghost, a very angry ghost, and Sarah Piper has been hired to look into the spirit of Maddy, who died at the all-too-young age of nineteen.

The story chilled me and kept me guessing. Why is Maddy full of vengeance, and how far will she go to exact revenge? It’s dark and haunting. Read at night if you dare.

Whenever people think of Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House springs to mind, and, for many years, I stopped right there. I was wrong.

In my opinion, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is actually a much better book – better in terms of plot and characterization. In telling the story of the decidedly disturbed and disturbing Blackwood family and their sinister home, Shirley Jackson explores small-town prejudice as well as the creeping impression that, while something awful has already happened, there is much worse to follow.

Merricat is a character I identified with. She is strong, determined, and a fighter. With the odds stacked so firmly against her, she needs to be. Jackson’s last novel is, for me at least, her greatest.

I was sixteen when I first read Jane Eyre, and I was thoroughly unprepared for how it would change the course of my life.

My mother died when I was eleven, so I found a kindred spirit in the orphaned main character Jane. By the time she grew up and became a governess for the brooding Mr. Rochester, I cared deeply about her happiness.

As intense chemistry sparked between Jane and her employer, I realized that my true joy in life would be to write “can’t put it down” love stories like this one.

To be honest, I could have picked multiple books by Lisa Jewell. She’s my favorite thriller writer, and many of her books use close-knit communities to set up mysteries in which I constantly change my mind about who I can trust. Exactly what I love about domestic noir!

In this book, the setting is a picturesque village in the Surrey Hills, where teenage parents Tallulah and Zach head out on a date to the local pub and never come home. There are two aspects of the seemingly idyllic community that really sucked me in: a mysterious mansion just outside the village known as Dark Place and a boarding school with its own long-kept secrets. Jewell uses the setting not only to heighten the sense of mystery–there are secret tunnels, woods where bad things happen, clues in old paintings, all the good stuff!–but also to explore themes of class, sexuality, and… show more.

If you love to unravel a mystery with a hint of suspense, I’ll Never Tell is an exemplary example of a tale told from multiple points of view, with the requisite family secrets, lies, and betrayal, and a messy past getting mired into the present. A cleverly plotted, fast-paced read.