Here are 20 books that The Wren, the Wren fans have personally recommended if you like
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Ever since spending a year on a Fulbright teaching grant on the island of Cyprus, where Aphrodite arose from the seafoam, I’ve been enticed by the Greek mythic world, a fascination that began much earlier with reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. Subsequent trips to Greek islands, museums, and archeological sites enhanced those ancient resonances, as did Mother Goddess studies and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Recent writing residencies at Cyprus College of Art and on Evia island immersed me in the Greek atmosphere and mythos as I edited Serpent Visions. My career was spent as a community college teacher, where my courses included ‘World Literature, Homer to Dante,’ and Shakespeare, another keen interest.
The ‘girls’ are the Trojan women, voiceless in Homer’s Iliad except, briefly, Andromache, Cassandra, and Hecuba.
Women drive the plot, from Helen, the Spartan queen abducted by the Trojan prince Paris, who is blamed for starting it, to Briseis, the Trojan captive Agamemnon takes from Achilles, but they say little.
Most of the chapters in Silence of the Girls are first-person in Briseis’ voice, with interspersed third-person chapters focusing on Achilles and Patroclus. We see the war from a broad, realistic perspective, but the tragedy in the center is of the women—as the Greek playwright Euripides recognizes in his play ‘The Trojan Women’ among others.
Pat Barker gives us the full, moving story in this novel and its sequels, The Women of Troy and The Voyage Home.
'Magnificent. You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers' Evening Standard
There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan War whose voice has been silent - until now. Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness that history forgot . . .
Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is a slave to the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
What a send-up of the cozy British mystery! Atkinson's genius is her ability to infuse everything she writes with humor and irony. She clusters the cliches of characters (the grand dame, the greedy relatives, the vicar, the servants, the PI) and plot, and transforms them into the wildest mystery ride I've ever taken.
THE INSTANT #1 BESTSELLER (SUNDAY TIMES, UK) • The highly anticipated return of "irresistible" (New York Times) private eye Jackson Brodie in the newest installment of the bestselling series hailed as "unputdownable" by Time
“How delicious to have Jackson Brodie back, this time in a story that starts off in Agatha Christie's world but soon becomes a landscape that could only have been crafted from the pen of the incomparable Kate Atkinson.”–Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus Novels
Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed.
Hailed as a classic upon its first publication in 1934, The Valleys of the Assassins firmly established Freya Stark as one of her generation''s most intrepid explorers. The book chronicles her travels into Luristan, the mountainous terrain nestled between Iraq and present-day Iran, often with only a single guide and on a shoestring budget.
Stark writes engagingly of the nomadic peoples who inhabit the region''s valleys and brings to life the stories of the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East, including that of the Lords of Alamut, a band of hashish-eating terrorists whose stronghold in the Elburz Mountains Stark was…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Winner of the 2024 Hawthornden Prize Shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours
"Ravishingly beautiful." — Joshua Ferris, New York Times
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of…
It's hilarious! The female characters have some of the funniest lines. It's also very erudite. There are so many well voiced point-of-view characters that I don't know how the author managed to keep them in line. It's very clever satire, an even handed excoriation of British society. The plot doesn't really surprise, in that I realised pretty quickly that most of the characters would meet a bad end but the journey in getting them there held plenty of surprises and was hugely entertaining. Most of the characters are unsympathetic but in a weird, twisted way you do feel a bit sorry for them.
'Utterly awe-inspiring.' Douglas Stuart 'Extraordinary.' Marina Hyde 'An utter joy to read.' Monica Ali 'Majestic.' Independent 'A masterpiece.' John Lanchester 'Addictively enjoyable.' Guardian 'Pitch-perfect.' Observer
** Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction ** ** A Sunday Times Bestseller **
From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace.
Campbell Flynn - art historian and celebrity pundit - is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the…
From Rachel Kushner, Booker Prize finalist and two-time National Book Award finalist, comes a new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France
'The most exciting writer of her generation' BRET EASTON ELLIS
'Reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture' HERNAN DIAZ
'Compulsively readable... Kill Bill written by John le Carre' OBSERVER
Sadie Smith - a thirty-four-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics and bold opinions - is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists influenced…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
From an early age, I was steeped in stories. My mother is a great storyteller and would tell vivid and exciting stories of her childhood, giving me a great sense of my own life as a part of the story of generations. We moved around a lot for my father’s job, which was sometimes disorientating and could lead to loneliness, and I took refuge in libraries and in writing stories of my own. By the time I left school, literature was my big love and mainstay, and I took a degree in English and later taught it in schools. Reading and writing stories has since become my life.
I was engrossed by this beautifully written book about the way that things that happened in a previous generation can affect one’s happiness without one even knowing about them.
I totally identified with protagonist Veronica as she looks for clues as to why her brother committed suicide by imagining scenes from her parents’ past.
When I registered the subtle moment that was crucial to it all, everything fell into stark and terrible place, and it took my breath away. Both witty and sad, the book left a deep impression on me.
'Witty, original, inventive...utterly compelling' Daily Mail
Winner of the Man Booker Prize
The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968.
The Gathering is a novel about love and disappointment, about thwarted lust and limitless desire, and how our fate is written in the body, not in the stars.
'It is clearly the product of a remarkable intelligence, combined…
From an early age, I was steeped in stories. My mother is a great storyteller and would tell vivid and exciting stories of her childhood, giving me a great sense of my own life as a part of the story of generations. We moved around a lot for my father’s job, which was sometimes disorientating and could lead to loneliness, and I took refuge in libraries and in writing stories of my own. By the time I left school, literature was my big love and mainstay, and I took a degree in English and later taught it in schools. Reading and writing stories has since become my life.
I honestly felt my life had more meaning after I first read this book, as it touched on so much that was close to my heart.
I totally identified with the protagonist’s emotional journey: a childhood imbued with a sense of things lost and hidden, which, in adulthood, he tries to quell with erudition before the past erupts and he learns the truth of his tortured origins.
I found it really haunting and more in touch with the truth about the human condition than most books I’ve read. I’ve read it three times, once with my reading group, and I’m sure I’ll read it again.
This tenth anniversary edition of W. G. Sebald’s celebrated masterpiece includes a new Introduction by acclaimed critic James Wood. Austerlitz is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he…
I started my motherhood journey when I was barely out of my teens. For the next two decades, I only knew myself as a wife and mother. As my brood of five children grew into adults, I found myself poorly equipped to parent independent Gen X and Z’ers. Then, at 46 years of age, when perimenopause hit me like a hurricane, I found myself evolving into another woman altogether. The good news was – I really liked her! I hope you enjoy these books about mid-life women parenting adult children and rediscovering themselves in the never-ever-done-aftermath of motherhood.
'Exceptionally brilliant and powerful' Marina Hyde
'This book is a hilarious memoir, a passionate polemic, and a moving manifesto on how to be a decent person and try, in the face of countless stresses, to live a full open-hearted, joyous life' Sunday Times
A decade ago, Caitlin Moran thought she had it all figured out. Her instant bestseller How to Be a Woman was a game-changing take on feminism, the patriarchy, and the general 'hoo-ha' of becoming a woman. Back then, she firmly believed 'the difficult bit' was over, and her forties were going…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
This was a reread for me, but somehow, I enjoyed it more than the first time through! What an incredible story. I love how Emily Brontë makes use of two characters, both somewhat removed from the central actions of the story, to tell the central story.
Sometimes, when a story changes main characters half-way through, I get lost as a reader, or stop caring so much; but with Wuthering Heights, it's the opposite. Because of the way the first half of the novel plays out, I couldn't help but want to know what happened to the two, new characters—these descendants of the originals. It's heartbreaking and hopeful all at the same time.
One of the great novels of the nineteenth century, Emily Bronte's haunting tale of passion and greed remains unsurpassed in its depiction of destructive love. Her tragically short life is brilliantly imagined in the major new movie, Emily, starring Emma Mackey in the title role.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition of Wuthering Heights features an afterword by David Pinching.
One wild, snowy night on the Yorkshire moors, a gentleman asks…
