Here are 87 books that The Midnight Feast fans have personally recommended if you like
The Midnight Feast.
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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 find Tom Ripley such a wonderful character—a con man who commits crimes under the guise of someone else, a male protagonist written by a lesbian.
I love the levels of deception the reader is pulled in, so is on the side of the criminal throughout, hoping for him not to get caught in his awful, amoral behaviour.
It is a masterful use of the narrative voice in crime fiction at its best.
It's here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith's five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a "sissy." Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley's fascination with Dickie's debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie's ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game. "Sinister and strangely alluring"…
While I love many novels about individuals, there’s something about weird groups of people—for example, cults—that I’ve always been drawn to. The Book of Fred plays with this dynamic by showing the intersection between a doomsday cult, the Fredians, and the quirky liberal community that foster child Mary Fred Anderson finds herself in. What I find fascinating about cults is how appealing they are, how being part of a group has a seductive quality that can so easily go horribly wrong. I love novels and memoirs that show that seductive side while zeroing in on the complications groups pose to individual identity.
I love all of Tana French’s taut, riveting detective novels, but this book is my favorite.
When Cassie Maddox goes undercover to investigate a murder, she finds herself enmeshed with the dead girl’s quirky group of housemates. As she’s drawn into their lives, she is increasingly emotionally involved with them in ways that charge the atmosphere with exquisite tension and regret.
I loved the way this novel drew me into the exuberant household so that, like Cassie, I fell in love with everyone, wishing fervently for things to turn out okay and knowing there was no way they could.
Still traumatised by her brush with a psychopath, Detective Cassie Maddox transfers out of the Murder squad and starts a relationship with fellow detective Sam O'Neill. When he calls her to the scene of his new case, she is shocked to find that the murdered girl is her double. What's more, her ID shows she is Lexie Madison - the identity Cassie used, years ago, as an undercover detective. With no leads, no suspects and no clues to Lexie's real identity, Cassie's old boss spots the opportunity of a lifetime: send Cassie undercover in her place, to tempt the killer…
I am always enthralled by stories about people who are faking it. I want to read any story where someone either inflates their importance to get their foot in the door, scrambles to keep their secrets from being revealed, or flat-out lies and scams people out of millions. Lying is incredibly human, and witnessing how long one will keep a lie going is fascinating to me because it’s always a house of cards that will eventually tumble. Most crime stories and mysteries revolve around someone desperately trying to keep something in their life secret, and often that comes from a space of gaining access to affluence or making sure you keep your affluence.
It’s a young adult novel series that has a lasting appeal because these are privileged characters dealing with grief while also desperate to keep their secrets under wraps. The series still maintains an active Reddit forum for fans recently discovering the books and the television series as well as those deep in their rereads and rewatches.
The forum encouraged me to also read the books. I literally kept this TV series on in the background when I would type scenes or plot out ideas, and then found the book series at my local used book shop and read through the first one quickly.
Sloane Cheney has no intention of returning to the South Carolina island town where she grew up. She enjoys her life in the big city and teaching at the college there. The thought of revisiting the place where her mother deserted her family is too painful.
I am always enthralled by stories about people who are faking it. I want to read any story where someone either inflates their importance to get their foot in the door, scrambles to keep their secrets from being revealed, or flat-out lies and scams people out of millions. Lying is incredibly human, and witnessing how long one will keep a lie going is fascinating to me because it’s always a house of cards that will eventually tumble. Most crime stories and mysteries revolve around someone desperately trying to keep something in their life secret, and often that comes from a space of gaining access to affluence or making sure you keep your affluence.
To be clear, Belle Gibson is not fabulous because lying about having cancer and pretending to have the cure is not just despicable but also dangerous. However, there is a glamour and allure to becoming Insta-famous or social media famous which many people still crave. We never ask the question if someone is “doing something for attention”: what’s going on that they feel like they need so much attention? Why are they addicted to that dopamine rush?
Gabbi in Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder is a character who wants to be Insta-famous because she longs so much for everyone to see her and for someone to choose her. She wanted to be picked above all others.
Belle Gibson convinced the world she had healed herself of terminal brain cancer by eating a healthy diet. She built a global business based on her story. There was just one problem: she never had cancer in the first place.
In 2015, journalists uncovered the truth behind Gibson's lies. This hero of the wellness world, with over 200,000 followers, international book deals, and a best-selling mobile app, was a fraud. She had lied about having cancer - to her family and friends, to her business partners and publishers, and to the hundreds of thousands of people who were inspired by…
I think there are two great mysteries in our lives: the mystery of the world and the mystery of how we live in it. The branches of literature that explore these conundrums magnificently are science fiction for the world and murder mysteries for how we live. So, it is no wonder that the subgenre that most excites me has to be the science fiction murder mystery, in which, as a reader, I get to explore a strange new world and find out how people live (and die!) in it. This is why I read and, it turns out, what I write.
In my view, a great murder mystery should have a lot of possibilities, and science fiction just adds deeper layers of intrigue, and this is what The City and The City has in spades – literal layers and intrigue.
Here, two cities exist in the same place, yet the citizens of each one must ignore the citizens of the other. It is a crime to notice the citizens of the other city. When a murder occurs and our detective investigates, he only has jurisdiction in one city.
But what really blew my mind about this book was that, though it is science fiction, there is no physical or scientific reason that the cities are separate and occupy the same place. The division is only in the minds of the inhabitants!
With shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, the multi-award winning The City & The City by China Mieville is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.
'You can't talk about Mieville without using the word "brilliant".' - Ursula Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series.
When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to…
I don’t consider myself specifically a horror reader (or writer for that matter!) any more than I consider myself a fantasy, mystery, or science fiction reader. As a writer (under my real name John Mantooth as well as my pseudonym, Hank Early), much of my work has been classified as horror, though I take pride in my novels appealing to people who aren’t typically well-versed in the genre. So, it got me thinking… what are some novels that may or may not be classified as horror that will appeal to a wide range of readers? I call these books horror-adjacent, and no matter what you typically read, I think you’ll enjoy them.
This one is truly unique. It’s a true crime story operating under the guise of a horror story that is really neither. Instead, it grapples with teenage alienation and the way stories transform the truth, while offering an insightful meditation on empathy. Darnielle is one of the most unique and stylistically adventurous writers we have. And this may be his best.
“It’s never quite the book you think it is. It’s better.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
From John Darnielle, the New York Times bestselling author and the singer-songwriter of the Mountain Goats, comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling.
Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success—and a movie adaptation—to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the…
Christopher Jope was supposed to be the next great celebrity heartthrob. But then he was demoted to third wheel in the supernatural throuple romance he starred in years ago. Now, he’s a B-list celebrity at best, struggling to find success in his work or love in his personal life.
As a teenager, I loved reading past my bedtime, getting lost within a story, then having it fill my dreams and leaving me on the hunt for another book just as good. The best books to read are those that draw me in with their voice and storytelling and leave me needing to turn page after page. Getting in trouble as a kid for reading too late was the best type of trouble to get into and even now, when I need to make a second pot of coffee after a night of reading, I walk away with no regrets.
I love a good story about a therapist having to not only battle her own demons but also her patients – and Creep has this covered. I went to bed thinking I’d start the book and read a few chapters – I ended up finishing it with only a few hours to spare before my alarm went off.
Psychology professor Dr Sheila Tao is an expert on human behaviour, so when she begins an affair with charming graduate student Ethan Wolfe, she's well aware she's playing with fire. Consumed by lust and riddled with guilt, Sheila ends their three month fling when she becomes engaged to a kind and loving man who adores her. But Ethan has different plans...
NO ONE CAN.
When a star student is stabbed to death, it's clear someone is raising the stakes of violence, sex and blackmail on campus. Before long, Sheila is caught in a terrifying cat-and-mouse…
I’ve been a lover of historical mysteries ever since I realized it’s possible to read mystery fiction and learn history at the same time. Every time I pick up a mystery set in the past, whether it’s the ancient past, the more recent past, or somewhere in between, I know I’m going to be intrigued and challenged by a great story and come away with a greater understanding of the people, culture, customs, and events of that time period. It’s a win-win. I write historical mysteries because I want to share with readers what I’ve learned about a particular time or place in a way that’s compelling and engaging.
I picked up this book because I loved the cover (who says we don’t choose books by their covers?) and shortly thereafter found myself completely immersed in a 17th-century English Restoration mystery. I would visit that era in my time machine provided it’s fully stocked with soap and hand sanitizer (this time period being the one during which the Great Plague took place).
Main character Lucy Campion is a chambermaid in the home of a London magistrate. Her days are filled with the drudgery of servant duties—that is, until a murder claims the life of a servant in the household and someone Lucy holds dear is accused of the crime. Knowing that person can’t possibly be the killer, Lucy sets out to find out whodunit. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, so I’ll stop there.
I learned more about 1660s England reading this book than I ever did…
In Susanna Calkins's atmospheric debut novel, a chambermaid must uncover a murderer in seventeenth-century plague-ridden LondonFor Lucy Campion, a seventeenth-century English chambermaid serving in the household of the local magistrate, life is an endless repetition of polishing pewter, emptying chamber pots, and dealing with other household chores until a fellow servant is ruthlessly killed, and someone she loves is wrongly arrested for the crime. In a time where the accused are presumed guilty until proven innocent, lawyers aren't permitted to defend their clients, and--if the plague doesn't kill them first--public executions draw a large crowd of spectators, Lucy knows she…
I’ve spent my life recreating myself as many times as Madonna. If things aren’t working, I move on to something new. I’ll go to classes, learn something else, change careers, and struggle the whole way as I look for pieces of life that fit the puzzle of me. It takes me a lot longer to read so when I try to diversify my bookshelf and don’t always stick to my genre (as the professionals tell an author to do). What I “stick to” is finding female characters who struggle and want to give up, but somehow, something deep inside them makes them move forward one step at a time.
Kellye Garrett takes the fake world of reality TV, hashtags, and influencers to circle her reluctant protagonist, Lena Scott. Life and actions are judged to only have value if you have video of it to get clicks. That’s the message that stuck with me.
Lena Scott and her sister Desiree may share a father, but they could not be more different. That father is hip-hop mogul Mel Pierce known in the business as Murder Mel. The family members are in and out of each other’s lives with the same kinds of drama a blue-collar family would have; there are just bigger price tags. Lena steps out and opts for a modest life away from the family fortune and her father’s name.
When Desiree suddenly dies as a fallen from grace celebrity who appears to have overdosed, Lena doesn’t buy it. Even two years without speaking doesn’t erase how well she…
In this "crackling domestic suspense" filled with "wry humor and deft pacing" (Alyssa Cole), no one bats an eye when a Black reality TV star is found dead—except her estranged half-sister, whose refusal to believe the official story leads her on a dangerous search for the truth.
“A mystery that has everything I love most: an intriguing set up; an absorbing storyline that kept me guessing; a satisfying ending; and, most of all, incredibly well-developed characters I kept thinking about long after I finished the book.” ―Jasmine Guillory, Today Show
"I'm Nicky. Your little sister." With these words from a stranger, Hilda's quiet existence in a marshland cottage with her rescue cats is turned upside down. She resolves to find out the truth about her parents' marriage, her father's secret life and her mother's untimely death.
My mother was an avid reader of Agatha Christie, and she gave me my first Nancy Drew book when I was nine, so I’ve loved mysteries all my life—not the ‘true crime’ kind, more the ‘cozy village’ kind, where the focus is on the characters and how they solve the mystery because of who they are and how they understand the people around them. After I wrote an historical novel about John Singer Sargent and his friends, I couldn’t stop thinking about them, even hearing their voices continuing to talk—I missed them! So naturally, I decided I’d turn John and his friend Violet into detectives and write mysteries.
This is the first book in a series that is as witty, complex, charming, and dark as Oscar Wilde himself. (“I can resist everything but temptation.”) The author is steeped in Wilde and his world, quotes him extensively (but appropriately) and also delivers a great mystery set in the fascinating era of Victorian decline and fin de siècle artistic fervor. Arthur Conan Doyle, in a great turnabout, plays “Watson” to Wilde’s “Sherlock” in all the mysteries. A later book in the series takes on Jack the Ripper, with some surprising suspects!
Lovers of historical mysteries will relish this chilling Victorian tale based on real events and cloaked in authenticity. The first in a series of fiendishly clever historical murder mysteries, it casts British literature’s most fascinating and controversial figure as the lead sleuth.
A young artist’s model has been murdered, and legendary wit Oscar Wilde enlists his friends Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Sherard to help him investigate. But when they arrive at the scene of the crime they find no sign of the gruesome killing—save one small spatter of blood, high on the wall. Set in London, Paris, Oxford, and…
