please help me choose some books

[whensteaready]

I really need some inspiration, I love contemporary fiction, nothing too heavy, I love Maggie oFarrell, just reaInto the Darkest Corner and Room. I also like crime like Jo Nesbo, Mo Hadyer
Does anyone have any ideas.
thanks

what about Ruth Dugdall, really enjoyed a couple of hers here

or Lesley Glaister, this is my favourite

If you like crime/mystery stuff, I would recommend Lee Child and Harlan Coben. I have also bought a couple of Camilla Lackberg books, who is another scandi crime writer.

Carol Sheilds is very good.

Happenstance is my favourite and it tells the story of the same five days, first seen from the point of view of Brenda and then by her husband Jack. Brenda is going to a craft convention and Jack is left at home to look after the children. This is the 70's, so it's kind of a first for their marriage.

The Republic of Love is also very good. This one tells the story of Tom and Fay, who live in Winnipeg. Tom has twenty seven mothers and three failed marriages, Fay is researching a book about mermaids and has high expectations of any man she falls in love with. They meet at a time of crisis in Fay's life and just as Tom feels he has met a woman he can truly love, Fay feels that love is not for her.

Unless is semi-autobiographical and tells the store of Reta and her family. Reta's eldest daughter Norah has, for a seemingly inexplicable reason, dropped out of college and walked out on her family and the boyfriend she lived with, to beg on a street corner holding a sign saying Goodness. Reta examines her own life while she strives to find out what happened to her daughter. Although it sounds like quite a bleak book it actually is really lovely.

Michael Connelly, especially the Harry Bosch ones

Nelson DeMille

Sue Grafton

johnathan Kellerman

Faye Kellerman

Robert Crais

Second Lee Child and Harlan.

J A Kerley

Dennis Lehane

Is it crime fiction you are after or just contemporary fiction?

Are you Scottish/familiar with Scottish dialects? Christopher Brookmyer is fun if you like that kind of think - quite violent and very sweary but with a good crime story running behind it all.

I have just read Glasshopper and it is great. Not crime and not light hearted I don't suppose. It will seem very familiar to any child raised in the 70s and 80s though.

The Help is a great story: funny, sad, shocking, empowering etc Well written and a fluid read.

The Long Song by Andrea Levy is also funny and harrowing in equal measure. It follows slaves in Jamaica as they are emancipated and the influence of this, from the point of view of one particular slave.

Do you like Science Fiction or Fantasy at all. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake and The Waterless Flood are all excellent reads.

There is also Cloud Atlas which has many different layers to it.

Oh more police ones set in Britain Peter Robinson, Ian Rankin, Peter James, Stuart McBride. If you like crime with a laugh Janet Evanovich and Carl Haisen (sp)

I have been thinking and wondered if you had read The Crow Road by Iain Banks. It is a fantastic book with a mystery/crime story running through it. Brilliant read.

peter may black house

just lok at all the threads on this topic
thats what i do

I am reading a great book called Maine by Courtney Sullivan.....about a matriarch and her dysfunctional children/grandchildren who meet at their beach house in Maine