Here are 100 books that The Painted Kiss fans have personally recommended if you like
The Painted Kiss.
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I am a lifelong art appreciator. When I connect with a piece of art, I want to know more about the art, the time period, and the artist. I read history and biography to learn facts, but when I want to experience the art at the heart-level, I dive into historical fiction. I'm especially interested in the connection between love and creativity. As a writer, I know firsthand that love is what fuels me. I love it when I encounter stories that show I'm not alone in this; others across history have also been inspired to create by their own great emotions, whether love or anger or something else.
I was immediately drawn into Artemisia's world and imagined myself as her—a young woman artist struggling to create in a man's world. I ached for her and rooted for her and enjoyed every minute of the beautiful language and emotion of this telling.
Her mother died when she was twelve, and suddenly Artemisia Gentileschi had a stark choice: a life as a nun in a convent or a life grinding pigment for her father's paint.
She chose paint.
By the time she was seventeen, Artemisia did more than grind pigment. She was one of Rome's most talented painters, even if no one knew her name. But Rome in 1610 was a city where men took what they wanted from women, and in the aftermath of rape Artemisia faced another terrible choice: a life of silence or a life of truth, no matter the…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I am a lifelong art appreciator. When I connect with a piece of art, I want to know more about the art, the time period, and the artist. I read history and biography to learn facts, but when I want to experience the art at the heart-level, I dive into historical fiction. I'm especially interested in the connection between love and creativity. As a writer, I know firsthand that love is what fuels me. I love it when I encounter stories that show I'm not alone in this; others across history have also been inspired to create by their own great emotions, whether love or anger or something else.
I was immediately drawn into the book from the girl's eyes staring back at me on the cover.
I expected an emotional reading experience, and it did not disappoint! The character the author created as Vermeer's muse feels 100% real. Great mash-up of fact and fiction.
'A phenomenon' Jessie Burton
'Dazzling' Daily Mail
'Truly magical' Guardian
Those eyes are fixed on someone. But who? What is she thinking as she stares out from one of the world's best-loved paintings?
Johannes Vermeer can spot exceptional beauty. When servant girl Griet catches his eye, she soon becomes both student and muse. But then he gives her his wife's pearl earrings to wear for a portrait, and a scandal erupts that could threaten Griet's future...
Vivid and captivating, this timeless modern classic has become a successful film and an international…
I am a lifelong art appreciator. When I connect with a piece of art, I want to know more about the art, the time period, and the artist. I read history and biography to learn facts, but when I want to experience the art at the heart-level, I dive into historical fiction. I'm especially interested in the connection between love and creativity. As a writer, I know firsthand that love is what fuels me. I love it when I encounter stories that show I'm not alone in this; others across history have also been inspired to create by their own great emotions, whether love or anger or something else.
Harriet Scott Chessman takes us into the world of Mary Cassatt's early Impressionist paintings through Mary's sister Lydia, whom the author sees as Cassatt’s most inspiring muse. Chessman hauntingly brings to life Paris in 1880, with its thriving art world. The novel’s subtle power rises out of a sustained inquiry into art’s relation to the ragged world of desire and mortality. Ill with Bright’s disease and conscious of her approaching death, Lydia contemplates her world narrowing. With the rising emotional tension between the loving sisters, between one who sees and one who is seen, Lydia asks moving questions about love…
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
I am a lifelong art appreciator. When I connect with a piece of art, I want to know more about the art, the time period, and the artist. I read history and biography to learn facts, but when I want to experience the art at the heart-level, I dive into historical fiction. I'm especially interested in the connection between love and creativity. As a writer, I know firsthand that love is what fuels me. I love it when I encounter stories that show I'm not alone in this; others across history have also been inspired to create by their own great emotions, whether love or anger or something else.
No artist fascinates me more than Vincent van Gogh, and this classic from the '80s holds up.
I fell in love with Vincent (again) and saw him in all his (human) glory. His story is a great reminder of the link between brilliant creativity and hardship.
Lust for Life is the classic fictional re-telling of the incredible life of Vincent Van Gogh.
"Vincent is not dead. He will never die. His love, his genius, the great beauty he has created will go on forever, enriching the world... He was a colossus... a great painter... a great philosopher... a martyr to his love of art. "
Walking down the streets of Paris the young Vincent Van Gogh didn't feel like he belonged. Battling poverty, repeated heartbreak and familial obligation, Van Gogh was a man plagued by his own creative urge but with no outlet to express it.…
I’m chronically ill. Whether I’m swept up, terrified, swooning, or trying to solve a mystery, I love my fiction to take me elsewhere. The dichotomy of wanting to share my experiences, discuss disability, open up the conversation around the topic, and have others lose themselves in story has been a fine line I’ve walked with all of my work. With Joyce, I wanted to bring grief and disability to life in a more resonate way. The words pain and fatigue mean drastically different things to different people. When magic is involved, it transcends your definition or mine, allowing us to focus on the experience with less personal context.
Have you ever read a book that makes your mouth and eyes water at the same time? That makes you laugh and takes your breath away and pisses you off and has you telling your partner every single detail of it, assuring they’ll never need to read it, but they want to anyhow? That’s Like Water for Chocolate.
The opening scene sets the whole tone of the book, and from then on, it sways between emotional heartbreaker, hilarious romp, devastating family drama, and magical realism that is so brilliant it feels real. What I’m saying is, it’s a delight.
THE INTOXICATING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ABOUT LOVE, COOKING AND MAGIC. PERFECT FOR FANS OF JOANNE HARRIS AND ISABEL ALLENDE.
'This magical, mythical, moving story of love, sacrifice and summering sensuality is something I will savour for a long time' MAUREEN LIPMAN
Like Water For Chocolate tells the captivating story of the De la Garza family. As the youngest daughter, Tita is forbidden by Mexican tradition to marry. Instead, she pours all of her emotions into her delicious recipes, which she shares with readers along the way.When Tita falls in love with Pedro, he is seduced by the magical food she cooks.…
Since I was a tween, I’ve been fascinated by romance. That happily ever after has always taken my breath away. Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, suspense and mystery have always surrounded my life, and intertwining these two elements in my own stories was a norm, but reading them was required and loved. I’m a part of several groups that focus on these genres and I share my readings with them along with my own group on Facebook. I know you will enjoy reading these books as much as I have.
I really loved these characters that pushed and pulled me throughout the story. I found myself engrossed in their lives, loves, and moments that could make or break them, and I found myself hopelessly in love with them, never wanting this story to end.
I recommended this book to my book club, and each member enjoyed this book as well.
Lily hasn't always had it easy, but that's never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She's come a long way from the small town where she grew up-she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. And when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily's life seems too good to be true.
Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He's also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn't hurt. Lily can't get…
"Witches take on the patriarchy in this epic feminist fantasy." Spirit Sight book 1 volume 1 is an award-winning debut epic fantasy novel written by Ross Hightower, the first in the six-book Spirit Song series. Winner of numerous awards, including the Readers Favorite Fantasy Finalist and the Eric B Hoffer…
Due to the inopportune circumstances of my birth (i.e., not being born into generational wealth), I have sadly been forced to join the working world instead of being allowed to live full-time in my imagination. Happily, the situation has allowed me to collect a treasure trove of workplace gossip. Described by my coworkers as “a great listener,” “overly curious,” and “most likely to start a cult,” the things I have heard and seen in a STEM-related office would truly leave an HR rep gagged. However, I have chosen to channel my penchant for mischief and genetic predisposition for drama into writing office romance novels instead of destroying careers.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when talking to a stranger online, one immediately hopes that they are seriously good-looking (and also hopefully kind of tall). It is also a truth universally acknowledged that Ali Hazelwood will deliver big, hulking, hot guys who seem grumpy but have hearts of gold in her novels. Love on the Brain combines these two universal truths into a workplace enemies-to-lovers romp that is stuffed with fluffy STEM goodness.
This book is off the rails in the best way. It delivers secret penpals who don’t realize that they are grad school enemies and current coworkers, a NASA lab setting, an alternative heroine who faints all the time for swoony rescue-me moments, cats, nerdy references, terrible puns, and spicy scenes. But truly, the romance wasn’t even my favorite part.
What I enjoyed most was putting on my HR hat and trying to investigate just who…
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis comes a new STEMinist rom-com in which a scientist is forced to work on a project with her nemesis—with explosive results.
Like an avenging, purple-haired Jedi bringing balance to the mansplained universe, Bee Königswasser lives by a simple code: What would Marie Curie do? If NASA offered her the lead on a neuroengineering project—a literal dream come true after years scraping by on the crumbs of academia—Marie would accept without hesitation. Duh. But the mother of…
I have lived primarily in Vermont, but my relationship to a remote portion of Maine wilderness is the one geographical consistency in my 81 years. Trained as an academic, I did have literary influences, but my chief influences derived from my early decades among men and women whose arduous existences in the great North Woods preceded electricity, power tools, and modern household conveniences. These men and women had to make their own entertainment, and they did so by way of storytelling, and their stories became a kind of community property. Whatever the genres of my 24 books, I have sought to emulate the timing and precision that these masters commanded.
In both my novels I explore the cultural, almost exclusively oral history of Maine woodsmen and -women. An old man now, I knew people who worked as loggers, river drivers, and so on before the advent of power tools, electricity, or motorized hauling.
A non-writer friend told me about this book, which is concerned with the same culture across the New Brunswick border, mere miles from where my novels are set. His evocation of that arduous, raconteur-populated, dangerous world bolstered my own seat-of-the-pants knowledge and offered a wealth of specific physical detail and a sense of storytelling’s central importance in the old logging communities.
The book, then, served as a model for my own explorations of a culture whose likes we will never see again and whose preservation in words is among my own most passionate aims.
In his major new novel, The Friends of Meager Fortune, Richards explores the dying days of the lumber industry in the mid-twentieth century. This is a transfixing love story of betrayal, envy, and sexual jealousy, which builds to a tragically inevitable climax. It is also a devastating portrait of a pre-mechanized time, and a brilliant commemoration of the passing of a world. Rich with all the passion, ambition and almost mythic vision that defines David Adams Richards' work, The Friends of Meager Fortune is a profound and important book about the hands and the heart; about true greatness and true…
When I set out to write a novel in the female voice, it was purely intended as an interesting riff on one of my favorite works, Alfie. There were no literary ambitions, or frankly, awareness of other works to benchmark myself against or build upon. My motivation was the rawness of the idea itself and the excitement of an uncharted, enjoyable venture. It wasn’t until I read other reference works—before, during, and after the writing process—that I became aware of the unique and enriching reading experience such an approach can offer. A multi-faceted experience that, for many, ultimately becomes less about the story and more about the introspection and awareness it fosters.
This was provocative in a different way, in that it made me realize how accurately an author can capture the voice of the opposite sex.
Dolly’s portrayal of Andy was, in many ways, both convincing and emotionally resonant, and she achieves this while sustaining a thoroughly entertaining narrative. It was a bittersweet experience because, as enjoyable as the read was, it set an excessively high benchmark for my own attempt.
Thankfully, by the time I got around to reading her book, it was too late to do anything about it, other than make a mental note of how much work would be required if I ever decided to make another run at it.
'Funny - of course it's funny - but also smart, insightful and sincere about heartbreak' David Nicholls, author of One Day
'A novel to be devoured, adored, underlined ... if only more books made you laugh as much as this' The i
'The author of Everything I Know About Love nails the zeitgeist with a witty, relatable and acutely insightful page-turner about the trials and tribulations of the lovelorn' Daily Express
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Every relationship has one beginning. This one has two endings.
Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped.
UNWRITTEN: The Thought Leader’s Guide to Not Overthinking Your Business Book is a business book about how to write a business book. Written by a business owner (a ghostwriter) for other business owners, it shows you the easiest way to fit writing a book into running your business. And most…
When I was six, I wrote an eleven-page epic about an adventurous otter named "Ottiga." The causality between that early effort and my career as a novelist is uncertain, but it did establish a pattern. I was the perpetual new kid on the block, and novels provided a pathway to escape the difficulties of being young and introverted. I learned that fiction is an antidote to loneliness; that it has the power to transport us to entirely new worlds, or to show us the familiar world in entirely new and unexpected ways. The speculative novels on this list did that for me, and I hope they do the same for you!
In a near-future world where one can purchase emotionally intelligent androids or “artificial friends” (AFs) to keep children company, we take the AF’s perspective. Klara, who begins as a display item in a department store, is adopted by Josie, a girl with what seems to be a fatal illness, and dedicates herself to trying to save Josie’s life.
Like all AF's, Klara has been programmed to observe and learn, and she seems to have exceptional abilities in this regard. She also possesses an especially kind disposition, keen emotional intelligence, and a number of other qualities that make her feel more human than most of the actual humans in the story.
For me, Klara is one of the great characters in recent literature, and her unique perspective is one of the things that make this immersive speculative novel such a pleasure to read.
*The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller* *Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021* *A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick*
'A delicate, haunting story' The Washington Post 'This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go . . . tender, touching and true.' The Times
'The Sun always has ways to reach us.'
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges…
