Books like The Recycled Citizen — picked by fans

I’ve always been fascinated by the “dreaming spires” of Oxford University and enjoy Gaudy Night because it immerses me in the world of a (fictional) women’s college set in 1930s Oxford.

As a former professor, I’m intrigued by the internecine political and personal battles in the Senior Common Room (SCR), or college faculty lounge, as well as the friction between those professors devoted entirely to an academic career versus those trying to maintain the challenging balance of work and family, the same issues women struggle with today, nearly one hundred years later.

Sayers weaves together these tensions with a mysterious “poltergeist” who torments the college with poison-pen letters, pranks, vandalism, and violence into a compelling mystery under the dreaming spires.

My grandmother had this novel on her bookshelf, which is why I read it the first time, but I’ve read it over and over. This is my favorite classic love story that is not really enemies to lovers, but still has lots of emotion and conflict.

I love it because of the conflict and for its educational value in teaching about the French Revolution.

I studied with Jane Kamensky while I was working on a MA in American History. Little did I know that she had a wicked historical character hidden inside. Learning that inspired me to write good history inside a realistic and sexy historical plot. This is a story of hidden identity and unexpected love. 

The characters are a portrait artist and his apprentice. The apprentice appears to be a young man, as only young men would take such a position in 18th-century Boston, and the artist is surprised at his yearning for him. 

I began to write my own series in response to Jo Beverley’s Mallorens. These novels are set in Georgian England with its Barons, Dukes and their gambling, their rakes, and their strict inheritance laws and traditions. I invented those same rakish sons of dukes, but made them the third and fourth sons – the ones barely mentioned in classic British historical romances. I put these adventurous men on merchant vessels, and in the red uniform of the British army. Then I sent them across the Atlantic to fight a war for the King and have their adventures in America. I regret that Ms. Beverley died before I had a chance to talk to her about our connection, but her books have been a great inspiration. 

Many writers use dramatic openings to bring you into a book, and Ms. Beverely gets behind you and kicks you in. It has been very… show more.

Here’s another PI series set in Boston, and while Carlotta Carlyle is nowhere near as well-known as Spenser, Linda Barnes is every bit as readable as Robert Parker. In her first outing (an Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel), ex-cabbie and ex-cop Carlyle takes on a missing person case that has her tangling with IRA gunrunners. A Trouble of Fools is my pick because it brings the ‘80s Boston I remember to life, and because of the light, humorous voice Barnes lends the proceedings.

This is the third of Barbara Neely’s mysteries about a peppery African-American housekeeper, Blanche White, and the dirt she finds while she’s cleaning other people’s houses. It’s a different house in each of the novels – and a tough task to choose just one, I can tell you. This time, we find Blanche in Boston working for the Brahmin-ish Brindle family, who have got “too-good-to-be-true” written all over them. There’s a nifty plot, but what I love (and this can’t be a surprise after the first four books, surely) is Blanche’s take on everything from how a spice-rack is organised, to why rich people have such ugly art. She is irresistible. I wish somehow she could meet Frances Wray (from The Paying Guests) and share some of her moxie. I’d kind of love to hear her thoughts on the Mortmains too.

Civil lawsuits often get second-billing to criminal cases, but this book about a case of mass environmental contamination in a small town in Massachusetts one has all the traits of a legal thriller: an astonishing injustice, stunning twists and turns, and enormous consequences for all involved.

More than once, I gasped while reading this, and it’s one of the few books I ever re-read. This has since become a major-release movie (starring John Travolta), but the book is even better.

Though this book has a terrific storyline, a finely fleshed-out cast of characters, and a very appealing writing style, what mattered to me most was a tacit bond of honor between the main character (the well-known private detective, Spenser) and his cohort in danger (Hawk). Their banter and ripostes are Parker’s trademarks that have made him a bestseller.

But what lies beneath that friendship is a code of honor that appeals to me in a powerful way. In this story, a young boy must rise above the pettiness of his parents’ friction and divorce. Spenser and Hawk provide the physical protection that he needs, but just as important is what the boy comes to understand about friendship and loyalty by observing his protectors’ interactions.

This is a complex young adult contemporary novel that spotlights Mini as she singlehandedly organizes the wedding-of-the-year for her older sister and her fiancé. Amidst the primary plot of Mini pulling together the wedding and falling in love with the handsome Vir Mirchandani, there is a unifying theme of family. Nandini Bajpai does an incredible job of unpacking the elements of an Indian family, specifically in how they support each other after the loss of a loved one. It was heartwarming to see Mini come into her own by the end of her story, and I highly recommend this book to anyone with a penchant for Indian weddings, Indian culture, and young love. 

Spenser is a hard-nosed private detective living and working in Boston. When his girlfriend Susan runs off to California with another man, Spenser feels betrayed but understands. She has her freedom. Then his best friend, Hawk, is falsely arrested and jailed in the new man’s town. This sets off a firestorm of murder and violence as Spenser first frees Hawk and then they both attempt to free Susan from an abusive, if consensual, relationship. And then the CIA gets involved. A Catskill Eagle is the twelfth of forty Spenser novels written by Parker.