Books like The Lost Child — 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.

Another incredible rewriting of Wuthering Heights and one that’s as dark and Gothic as Emily’s momentous original. In Ill Will, Michael Stewart picks up Emily’s narrative at the point when Heathcliff, having heard Cathy declare that it would degrade her to marry him, departs the Heights. Stewart unravels the tale of where Heathcliff went during the three years that he was missing from Cathy’s world and imagines what happened to him to make him return in such a vengeful guise. Ill Will is also a rewriting that takes up the issue of race, for here, Heathcliff is a young black man and his departure from the Heights prompts him to trace Mr. Earnshaw’s walk to Liverpool in the hope of finding out who he is. 

This is probably the most powerful example of literary pastiche novels I’ve read, not just because it takes on one of the most beloved novels in English literature—Jane Eyre—but because it brutally turns that novel’s premises on their gentrified heads.

I am truly awed by how vibrantly Rhys inhabits Antoinette, Rochester’s doomed wife, weaving in themes of colonialism and gendered power into Charlotte Brontë’s Gothic romance and, in the process, making it a kind of subversive and gritty feminist and anti-colonial manifesto.

Rhys’s depiction of Antoinette’s descent into madness is so visceral and believable that you are (or at least I am) all but cheering as she literally burns the patriarchy to the ground. I also love that while it’s generally considered Rhys’s masterpiece, she wrote it in her seventies. 

Tracy Chevalier edited this incredible anthology of short fiction to mark the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth. Comprising contributions from sixteen authors, including Helen Dunmore, Sally Vickers, Susan Hill, Emma Donoghue, and Audrey Niffenegger, among others, these incredible stories are far more than fan fiction. Indeed, while the anthology’s title is the infamous first line of the final chapter of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, don’t be fooled into thinking that this is a romantic collection, for Chevalier’s contributors may take inspiration from Jane Eyre, but they rework it in a huge variety of ways, producing stories that unsettle as much as they celebrate Brontë’s novel. And if you like that, the companion volume, I Am Heathcliff edited by Kate Mosse, operates in the same spirit but is dedicated to Wuthering Heights.

Everything about this book feels exquisite for me, from the rich worldbuilding, the slow burn romance, to the intricate magic system.

I rooted for the main characters from the beginning–a village girl in possession of forbidden magic, trying to protect her grandmother, and an exiled prince looking for vengeance. They start off as reluctant allies, but as they go through hardship and danger together, their relationship develops into something beautiful and meaningful.

I love how the story focuses on their personal growth, dealing with their past and coming to terms with what the future may hold for them.

Newberry Honor book winner Gail Carson Levine beautifully captures the life of eleven-year-old Dave, a troublemaking orphan in 1926, and his time in New York’s Hebrew Home for Boys.

When I years ago read this book to my son, who was abut Dave’s age, both of us became enthralled with not only the vivid description of the sometimes tough and rigid orphanage in the Lower East Side, but also Dave’s late-night adventures into the beautiful music and among the kind strangers and leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance.

Loosely based on her father’s time in New York’s Hebrew Orphan Asylum, Levine opens a window and lets us hear the Yiddish sounds and lets us peak into the early twentieth-century world of Jewish orphanages, while also celebrating the boisterous joys of friendship with unlikely partners.

The Long Season of Rain (the title refers to the monsoons that afflict the Korean Peninsula at the start of summer) reminds us that in Hell Chosŏn women remain subservient to men in almost every sphere of society, and learn early on to endure silently instead of speaking out. This novel exemplifies the richness of Korean-American young-adult novels, which often focus on coming of age and the quest for identity. Especially poignant is the author’s use of a naïve narrator, the daughter of a woman who learns that her husband has taken a concubine.

I was immediately engaged in the story of a nurse who follows a man to Mayotte and, unable to conceive, adopts a child whom she brings up by herself after the man abandons her. She dies abruptly, however, and the story changes completely, turning into an intense, violent novel about children in the slums. The orphan who fled after his mother's death is horribly abused by another young teenager who is a gang leader, and can free himself only by killing him in the end. I am in awe of Nathacha Appanah for her ability to capture the voice of street children. This is a poignant, powerful, and beautifully written novel about harassment, cruelty, and possession. 

Sometimes a single mansion can contain a world within itself and the one contained here must be explored at your own peril. Intricate passages, decadent décor, and an upstairs/downstairs divide await, along with murder, mystery, and magic. The story centers on a girl who possesses an insidious gift that can save the ones she loves but at a deadly cost. Told against a backdrop full of lavish ballet costumes, this novel left me wondering how far one should go for another, especially when the sacrifice might be fatal.  

Willow is such an important novel for any teen who has gone through a traumatic event.

Willow, a 17-year-old girl is dealing with grief over the death of her parents and the fact that she was driving the car that killed them. She’s had to leave behind her old home, friends, and school. But Willow has found a way to survive, to numb the new reality of her life, she is secretly cutting herself.

For every teen that has either cut themselves, drank to numb the pain, starved themselves, or done any sort of self-harm in order to protect themselves from their inward pain, this book is for you. Not only is this story about grief and guilt, but it is also about love and never giving up.