Here are 90 books that Utopia Avenue fans have personally recommended if you like
Utopia Avenue.
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I've read mystery books since I was a kid in a small Iowa town and my
mother was on the library board and in charge of reviewing books for
purchase. She would bring home mysteries and I grew up reading about
James Bond, The Saint, Miss Marple, and many, many other 'classic'
detectives. I wrote my first mystery 'novel' when I was ten and it took
me forty more years to finally decide to get serious about it. I found I
wanted to write about an older demographic—my heroes and heroines are
usually in their 40s or 50s. I try to make my characters believable and
down-to-earth—except they get involved in the occasional murder!
I love reading books that look underneath what is shown to most people—how things work behind the scenes, or a glimpse into a different world.
This book takes what we think is a modern-day world and gives it a bit of a twist, with a special division of the London police charged with handling supernatural crimes that take place, well, in plain sight.
The thing that was most intriguing about this narrator was that I had the feeling I was learning with him about all the ghosts and goblins and beasties as he discovered them. I was as surprised as he was about the solving of the mystery.
I was my dad's vinyl-wallah: I changed his records while he lounged around drinking tea, and that's how I know my Argo from my Tempo. And it's why, when Dr Walid called me to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognised the tune it was playing. Something violently supernatural had happened to the victim, strong enough to leave its imprint like a wax cylinder recording. Cyrus Wilkinson, part-time jazz saxophonist and full-time accountant, had apparently dropped dead of a heart attack just after finishing a gig in a Soho jazz club. He wasn't the first. No one was…
When sixteen-year-old Ashlee Sutton's home life falls apart, she is beset by a rare mental illness that makes her believe she's clairvoyant. While most people scoff at her, she begins demonstrating an uncanny knack for sometimes predicting the future, using what could either be pure luck or something more remarkable.
I write crime fiction set in the north of England. It’s where I was born and grew up, although for the last 20 years I’ve lived in Spain. I really love novels with a local or regional flavour. The kind of writing that takes you to a specific place, and draws on that place in the action itself. The writers that I chose for this list all do this extremely well. And although their books are set in different locations, they share the sense of the setting almost becoming a character in the story.
Dominic wrote two very good crime books in a short series before publishing Vine Street.
I am including Vine Street on my list because, although it’s set in London and is therefore not ‘regional’, it was one of the great crime novels of 2021-22 and deserves to become a classic. I read this book before it was published, and I knew, like everyone else, that it was something special.
The story spans almost a century, from the seedy streets of London’s Soho in the 1930s, until the present day. There are some really well-researched and vividly depicted descriptions of police investigations in the 30s, and just for that it’s worth a read. But there’s also a twisting, mesmerizing plot that takes us all the way to the present.
What really distinguishes Vine Street, though, is the writing itself, which seems to echo the rhythms of the 1930s jazz clubs, and…
***BEST CRIME BOOKS OF 2021 - THE TIMES/SUNDAY TIMES*** ***CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH - THE TIMES***
'Brings the obsessional dread of James Ellroy to 1940s London.' IAN RANKIN
'Extraordinary...a career-defining performance.' THE SUNDAY TIMES
'This is crime writing of the highest quality' DAILY MAIL
SOHO, 1935. SERGEANT LEON GEATS' PATCH.
A snarling, skull-cracking misanthrope, Geats marshals the grimy rabble according to his own elastic moral code.
The narrow alleys are brimming with jazz bars, bookies, blackshirts, ponces and tarts so when a body is found above the Windmill Club, detectives are content to dismiss the case as just another…
Since spending much of my childhood on the Cornish coast, I’ve been fascinated by the ocean. Fortunately, I get to spend a lot of time at sea these days working as a cruise enrichment speaker! I’ve done 36 cruises so far aboard 15 different ships over the past 8 years. Much as I love visiting ports all around the world, I particularly enjoy a full day at sea with some time to relax and read in. I hope you enjoy your cruise and the books on this list as much as I have!
I found myself reading this exciting murder mystery late into the night and could barely put it down for meals. It’s set in the 1930s on the Queen Mary during a transatlantic voyage.
The book has charming characters and oozes with the glamour of traditional cruising. I found the smart plot intriguing and well-crafted, with a hint of another favorite author of mine, Agatha Christie.
'Charming characters, a cross-Atlantic setting, jazz, cocktails, sex and a brilliant murder mystery. You couldn't ask for more! I loved it' Harriet Tyce
'This is a cracker. A thoroughly absorbing and thought-provoking historical crime novel that oozes glamour' Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Last Act of Love
'An engrossing read' Guardian
'Hare's well-crafted second novel oozes glamour . . . Did someone mention Agatha Christie? Yes, but with the bonus of subtle reflections on race and class' Observer
* * *
London, 1936
Lena Aldridge is wondering if life has passed her by. The dazzling theatre…
The Gatepost is a new speculative novel that will appeal to readers of Susanna Clarke, Emily St. John Mandel, David Mitchell, Richard Powers, and R.F. Kuang.
Featuring a hidden cave, psilocybin mushrooms, and a mysterious ancient artifact that may act as a portal to the Mesoamerican underworld, The Gatepost blends…
My favorite novels explore the workings of the human psyche. I want to finish a book thinking Damn, that was a good read—and realize only later that I learned something about psychology, medicine, or history. There are dozens of writers I'd like to add to my list, but these are the five I'd choose if I were stranded on a desert island and allowed to take just five books. Sure, I go dark—the human mind is dark; human history is dark. But there must be beauty to balance the darkness, whether that beauty is in the plot and characterizations, or simply in the elegant use of language.
Everything Sarah Waters writes is great, but this one is my favorite.
Waters is highly literary—her command of language and vocabulary is impressive—yet she is not afraid to roll around in the mud as her characters engage in petty deception, then...larger crimes.
Set in the early 1920's, the story is as alive and real and immediate as if it were happening right now. I love the way Waters includes plenty of historical details, from language to furniture and architecture, but she never gets lost in it—her characters are real and nuanced and very human. They are driven by need, greed, lust, anger—the real emotions that often trigger violent crimes.
This novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Little Stranger, is a brilliant 'page-turning melodrama and a fascinating portrait of London of the verge of great change' (Guardian)
It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.
I have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.
The perfect example of the anti-hero somewhat reluctantly taking on the responsibility and, in the end, realizing that who he thought was protecting him, were happy to leave him die, if needed. Harry (unnamed in the book) became the perfect anti-hero who wins through.
Deighton always wrote and understood that actions by simple people could rise calamitous events. In his books he writes of simple, brave, actions which, when viewed from the conclusion of events only then, are realized as globally pivotal.
'A stone-cold Cold War classic' Toby Litt, Guardian
A high-ranking scientist has been kidnapped. A secret British intelligence agency must find out why. But as the quarry is pursued from grimy Soho to the other side of the world, what seemed a straightforward mission turns into something far more sinister. With its sardonic, cool, working-class hero, Len Deighton's sensational debut The IPCRESS File rewrote the spy thriller and became the defining novel of 1960's London.
'Changed the shape of the espionage thriller ... there is an infectious energy about this book which makes it a joy to read' Daily Telegraph
I am the author of five books, including the New Angles Prize shortlisted, Low Country, London’s Lost Rivers and Camden Town: Dreams of Another London. I write about forgotten history, lost places, and strange landscapes in London and on the coast. I have appeared on television (including PBS) and radio and have written for The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, among others. I also write about music and theatre.
In the early 1990s Soho, Robinson is a charming, possibly Satanic character who leads film editor Christo into a world of sleazy bars, drink, drugs, and general depravity.
It is the last gasp of Soho that died with the old century—the mysterious, legendary neighbourhood that London somehow revolved around. Petit makes it gleam darkly.
An intense and thoughtful time-hopping dystopian fantasy where three individuals, psychically linked through time, fight enslavement, exploitation, and environmental collapse. A great read for fans of Emily St. John Mandel.
In 2106, Maida Sun possesses the ability to see the entire history of any object she touches. When she starts…
I grew up in a family of church singers. As a young man, I studied poetry and piano, literature and guitar, listening to Hank Williams and reading William Faulkner while dreaming of becoming a Nashville songwriter. Eventually, I performed as a singer-songwriter myself on three continents, so it’s entirely honest to say that music, language, and stories have always been the fabric of my life. These novels represent everything I love about music and how it connects us—to people, to worlds beyond—and I hope you find them just as meaningful (and occasionally heartwrenching) as I have.
This novel made me feel like a hungry young rock star. That’s no small accomplishment (let alone via such electric prose), but really, it didn’t feel like fiction. It felt like an intimate docudrama of a world-conquering British rock band whose music, somehow, magically, I already knew and loved.
That’s really what astounded me the most: the music and the musical protagonists were incredibly real. As a story of the rock-and-roll life, I think it’s up there with all the great memoirs, like Keith Richards’s Life. (Disclaimer: this is absolutely a standalone novel, but if you’ve read Mitchell’s earlier novels, namely Cloud Atlas and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, prepare for some astonishing easter eggs and callbacks.)
The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of CLOUD ATLAS and THE BONE CLOCKS, 'one of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any country' (Independent).
Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you've never heard of.
Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin together created a unique sound, with lyrics that captured their turbulent times. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on.
There are so many billionaire romances out there based in America, but as a Brit, there’s nothing quite like reading a contemporary romance based in London. The capital city of Great Britain, there are a great number of reasons why books here are simply to die for. The history, the culture, the mixture of communities, and the potential for passion – in my opinion, there’s no better place to escape to in a book. Even better if there are delicious characters to lose yourself with…
I had a ‘property tycoons’ itch that I needed to scratch, and this book by Rosa Lucas was exactly what I needed.
I adored this enemies to lovers high stakes romance, and the witty heroine was someone I was rooting for from the very instant I met her. With a dash of CEO/employee and a whole host of fire, this book needs to be on your ereader.
I am fascinated by how people communicate. I enjoy when different cultures clash and cooperate. Coming from another country and growing up in California exposed me to my first taste of different groups. Traveling around the country and the world has allowed me to see the vast variety of people and I continue to wonder how we can get along together.
Jade is a being of mysterious power who has traits of shifter, witch, fae, and others. She serves the police force in Winston, in a world in which supernatural beings are everywhere, but are discriminated against. She must solve a mystery and fight to protect herself and her friends. I enjoyed this story. I think you will enjoy it if you like fantasy.
Meet Jade Smith, a magical mutt with a mission. A detective partnered with a shifter named Rolfe, she’s on the case to solve a slew of murders: Vamps are killing humans, and nobody knows why. When London Jane, the most powerful vamp in town, is implicated in the murders, Jade knows something isn’t right. Together with Jill, the Winter Queen of Faerie, Jade and Jane take their investigation underground. On the run, with nowhere to hide, they uncover a secret that could destroy Faerie, as well as the human realm. Will Jade stop the killer in time? Or will she…
In this collection of nine stories, J.C. Gemmell takes readers on a quest into the future.
Tion is a dystopian civilisation built on the wreckage of a drowned Earth. Here, technology saves and oppresses, and mankind clings to survival in a place where the privileged live above the clouds, and…
I’ve loved the Regency era since first reading Jane Austen’s novels, but in writing my series of 19th-century adventure fantasies, I discovered there was so much more to the period than I’d ever dreamed. Though their culture and traditions aren’t like ours, I’m fascinated by how much about the lives of those men and women is familiar—the same desires, the same dreams for the future. I hope the books on this list inspire in you the same excitement they did in me!
Having gotten a taste of the sights of London, delve deeper with this exhibition guide packed with illustrations, paintings, and photographs of the things people owned and used during the Regency period and beyond. My favorite part of this book is the many essays contributed by leading historians who really know their stuff—everything you need to know about Regency art, architecture, science, and culture is right here.
This book provides a portrait of the city of London in a period when Britain enjoyed cultural, artistic, technological and material pre-eminence. It was a time when the foundations were laid for much later wealth and power. The importance of Britain in the early 19th century has been taken up by the Kulturstiftung Ruhur in Essen, who, in co-operation with the Museum of London have mounted an historical exhibition at the Villa Hugel near Essen (June-December 1992), for which this book serves as the catalogue. The exhibition itself is very broad in scope, ranging from artistic masterpieces by Turner and…
