If I like these books, what should I read next?

[MildLifeCrisis]

Need to get back into reading. Can you please recommend me a few titles to get me hooked again?
Some of my fav books/genres are:

• dystopian novels (loved 1984 and Handmaid’s Tale for example)
• All Jane Austen’s
• Jane Eyre possibly my fav book ever
• all Agatha Christie
• Not into sci-fi at all but have loved reading Jurassic Park
• loved a few Annie Ernaux books lately

What I dislike: generally never like recent best sellers, I never find them well written imo. I didn’t like Osman’s murder series, found it boring and unnecessarily complicated the plot for no real reason.
Not into fantasy or sci-fi (although as I said above, Jurassic Park is one of my fav books!)

If you like dystopian novels, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World would the obvious choice. I suppose Burgess’ Clockwork Orange could be considered dystopian as well. Both books are great.

If you liked Jurassic Park, how about Conan Doyle’s The Lost World?

As for Jane Austen and Jane Eyre, clearly you enjoy 19th-century fiction, which means you are spoilt for choice. The novel arguably peaked in the 19th-century. How about George Eliot’s shorter stuff? (Many consider Middlemarch the greatest novel in English, but it’s hard going.) Thomas Hardy? Wuthering Heights? Dickens, of course, is a world of his own.

Austen has a very distinctive voice - sharp and urbane and very knowing. Have you tried Virginia Woolf? Maybe give Mrs Dalloway a try. Iris Murdoch reminds of Austen in some ways - the same sharp, knowing eye. I love Murdoch’s stuff. She was my big discovery of 2025, and I’m now an obsessive who won’t shut up about her.

I’m not a crime fiction fan, but if you like Christie, Sherlock Holmes is the obvious choice. I do love listening to Stephen Fry read Holmes on audio. A lot of people rave about Sansom’s Shardlake novels, though they are set in the Tudor period. Maigret perhaps?

I’m wondering if you’d like Dorothy Whipple…they’re all reissued by Persephone so easy to get hold of.

Tokyo by Mo Hayder

I absolutely hated this.

I think it was one of the worst books I have ever read. At one point, I thought of trying to get a refund as I thought it was an absolute pup and had been mis-sold.

@MildLifeCrisis Have you tried the Anne Cleeves series?
I can also recommend, The Painted Veil by Somerset Maughan-there is also a lovely film starring Toby Jones or Other Women by Emma Cline-told in two first person voices-the victim and the murderer's wife.

It is based on a real 1920s murder case-the victim was a "surplus" woman who just wanted to be loved. The period detail and the writing are wonderful.

I've just finished both these and they were excellent.

Wonderful! These books are tremendous. I think she is Persephone's best selling writer and I'm not surprised!

Horses for courses - I've felt like that every time I've tried reading anything by Ann Cleeves. Wouldn't the world be boring if we all liked the same things!

Staying with Persephone, The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sheriff is one that might tick your Dystopian box.

The prelude tells us that the manuscript, named after the writer, has found thousands of years into the future and describes a catastrophic event that ended the world for some time.

It's told in the first person by a very self satisfied, bumptious and foolish man-a much more unpleasant version of Mr Pooter. Set in 1930s England, I couldn't put it down.

It certainly would!😀

Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone, The Woman in White.

Dystopian
Trilogy by Hugh Howey
1.Wool
2.Shift
3.Dust

Thank you all for all the suggestions, I am going to look into them all!

My favourite author (who no one else seems to have read) - and you could say it is a bit dystopian - is Russell h Greenan. Can only really get them on kindle. His most famous work is It Happened in Boston?

very popular in France

How about some Sebastian Faulks? George Elliot? Ian McEwan?

Dystopian -
The Wall - John Lancaster
Margarets Ark - Daniel Keohane
On the beach - Neville Shute

John Marr - writes books set in the ‘near future’. I’m not keen on science fiction either but love this author’s books.

Three Hours -Rosemary Lupton - someone mentioned this above. Superb book. (Not dystopian)