Books like 'Maids'
Readers who enjoyed Maids by Katie Skelly also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical horror mystery crime true-crime historical-fiction family literary-fiction
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Goodnight Lady by Martina Cole
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA tour-de-force thriller of corruption and violence.In the sixties, Briony Cavanagh ran a string of the most notorious brothels in London. Only Briony knew what went on behind those doors, and she never opened her mouth - unless she stood to benefit. Only Briony knew the painful road she'd travelled to get there... -
The Room in the Attic by Louise Douglas
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA child who does not know her name…In 1903 fishermen find a wrecked boat containing a woman, who has been badly beaten, and a young girl. An ambulance is sent for, and the two survivors are taken to All Hallows, the imposing asylum, hidden deep on Dartmoor... -
King of Kings by Wilbur Smith
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe sequel to Wilbur Smith's worldwide bestseller, The Triumph of the Sun.An epic story of love, betrayal, courage and war that brings together two of Wilbur Smith's greatest families in this long-awaited sequel to his worldwide bestseller, The Triumph of the Sun. Cairo, 1888. A beautiful September day. Penrod Ballantyne and his fiancee, Amber Benbrook, stroll hand in hand...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook classics fiction -
The Canterbury Murders by E.M. Powell
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA fire-ravaged cathedral. An ungodly murder.Easter, 1177. Canterbury Cathedral, home to the tomb of martyr Saint Thomas Becket, bears the wounds of a terrible fire. Benedict, prior of the great church, leads its rebuilding. But horror interrupts the work. One of the stonemasons is found viciously murdered, the dead man’s face disfigured by a shocking wound... -
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None Left to Tell by Noelle W. Ihli
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThree women, connected by one of the most brutal mass slayings in US history.Lucy is sick of turning the other cheek. Ten years ago, an anti-Mormon mob drove her family and friends from their homes in Illinois. But now, the tables have turned. Rumor has it, some of those same men are traveling through Utah on their way to California. And this time, Lucy won’t run... -
The Caretakers by Eliza Maxwell
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the isolated estate she’s found the perfect getaway. But there’s no escaping the past in this chilling novel from the bestselling author of The Unremembered Girl. Filmmaker Tessa Shepherd helped free a man she believed was wrongly imprisoned for murder. When he kills again, Tessa’s life is upended.She’s reeling with guilt, her reputation destroyed... -
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsAn extraordinary novel inspired by the real-life sorority targeted by America's first celebrity serial killer in his final murderous spree.January 1978. A serial killer has terrorized women across the Pacific Northwest, but his existence couldn’t be further from the minds of the vibrant young women at the top sorority on Florida State University’s campus in Tallahassee...Categorized as:
historical-fiction crime true-crime literary-fiction family fiction mystery historical -
The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsSarai Walker has done it again. With The Cherry Robbers she upends the Gothic ghost story with a fiery feminist zeal. --Maria SempleThe highly anticipated second novel from Sarai Walker, following her "slyly subversive" (EW) cult-hit Dietland--a feminist gothic about the lone survivor of a cursed family of sisters, whose time may finally be up... -
Judgment of The Witch by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAfter a decade, New York Times bestselling author Robert McCammon returns with an epic novel of suspense that reinstates him as one of the great storytellers of our time.... The Carolinas, 1699: The citizens of Fount Royal believe their town is cursed by a witch... -
Evil Unveiled by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"New York Times" bestselling author Robert McCammon continues his triumphant return with the conclusion of an epic tale of suspense that reinstates him as one of the great storytellers of our time....The Carolinas, 1699: After hearing damning testimony from the townspeople of Fount Royal, magistrate Isaac Woodward sentences the accused witch, Rachel Howarth, to death by burning... -
The Spinster's Fortune by Mary Kendall
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsMoonlit alleys, shadowy tunnels, and buried secrets…Summer of 1929.Of supposed unsound mind without a penny to her name, Blanche Magruder lies alone in a home for the aged and infirm.Meanwhile, her house, a crumbled ruin in the heart of Georgetown, Washington, D.C., is pillaged nightly by thieves looking for treasure rumored to be hidden there... -
The Commandant's Daughter by Catherine Hokin
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratings1933, Berlin. Ten-year-old Hanni Foss stands by her father’s side watching the torchlit procession to celebrate Adolf Hitler as Germany’s new leader. As the lights fade, she knows her safe and happy childhood is about to change forever. Practically overnight, the father she adores becomes unrecognisable, lost to his ruthless ambition to oversee an infamous concentration camp…Twelve years later...Categorized as:
family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book coming-of-age drama -
Nineteen Eighty by David Peace
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDecember 1980, the Yorkshire Ripper murders his thirteenth victim, while Assistant Chief Constable Peter Hunter struggles even deeper in the mire of a culture tainted with dark and sordid detail to solve one of the country's most hellish crimes... -
The Ghost Tree by Barbara Erskine
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsBefore you follow the path into your family’s history, beware of the secrets you may find…The new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author.Ruth has returned to Edinburgh after many years of exile, left rootless by the end of her marriage, career and now the death of her father. She is now faced with the daunting task of clearing his house... -
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The Thicket by Joe R. Lansdale
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLove and vengeance at the dark dawn of the East Texas oil boom from Joe Lansdale, "a true American original" (Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box). Jack Parker thought he'd already seen his fair share of tragedy. His grandmother was killed in a farm accident when he was barely five years old...Categorized as:
crime family historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure audiobook book coming-of-age -
The Headless Horseman by Thomas Mayne Reid
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsTexas in the 19th century. The War with Mexico is still a recent memory, marauding Comanches are a daily threat for new settlers of the Lone Star State. Louise Poindexter, a beautiful newcomer, is courted by two men - the arrogant and vindictive Cassius Calhoun and the dashing but poor mustanger Maurice Gerald...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure book children classics fiction -
The Werewolf of Bamberg by Oliver Pötzsch
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsIn 1668, hangman Jakob Kuisl, his daughter Magdalena, and her husband Simon are traveling to the town of Bamberg. But what was planned as a family vacation soon becomes a nightmare: there is a murderer in Bamberg who is leaving the severed limbs of victims in the trash outside the city... -
My Brother's Keeper by Marcia Davenport
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBased on the true story of the Collyer brothers.Inspired by the 1947 New York Times articles detailing items taken from the Collyer's brownstone after their deaths, Davenport constructs a tale of the Holt brothers, one a failing concert pianist and the other a naval architect, and the events that prompted them to become recluses in later life... -
Two Storm Wood by Philip Gray
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn this thriller set on the battlefields of the Somme after the end of World War I, a woman investigates the disappearance of her fiancé.The Great War has ended, but for Amy Vanneck there is no peace. Her fiancé, Edward Haslam, a lieutenant in the 7th Manchesters, is missing, presumed dead. Amy travels to the desolate battlefields of northern France to learn his fate and recover his body...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult book drama -
Kissyman & the Gentleman by Scott Sigler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsNew York City, 1946. No one knows his real name, but when the job is too dirty, too dangerous, they call Kissyman. Once an elite Nazi SS commando, an honorable soldier, a taker of lives. When he was assigned to Dachau and saw what he was actually fighting for, he went AWOL and ran as far away as he could — to America. He still makes his living with a gun, but he no longer kills for his country... -
Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins, Catherine Pope
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsHarriet Ogilvy is a young woman with a small fortune and a mental disability, making her the ideal target for the handsome and scheming Lewis Oman. After winning Harriet's love, Lewis, with the help of his brother and mistress, sets in motion a plan of unspeakable cruelty and evil to get his hands on her money...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction true-crime 20th-century adult book british-isles -
Ten Great Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Pit and the Pendulum...The Purloined Letter...The Tell-Tale Heart...A Descent into Maelstrom...and six other choice chillers by the acknowledged master of mystery, fantasy, and horror. These ten absorbing stories, selected by a famed anthologist of science-fiction and the supernatural, prove that even after a century Poe's imagination still works it macabre magic... -
The Hound of the Baskervilles, with "the Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Arthur Conan Doyle
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02) is Arthur Conan Doyle’s most celebrated Sherlock Holmes adventure. At the end of the yew tree path of his ancestral home, Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead. Close by are the footprints of a gigantic hound. Called to investigate, Holmes seems to face a supernatural foe...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction classics mystery fiction industrial-era victorian -
House of Echoes by Barbara Erskine
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe past isn't always dead or buried...When Joss Grant, adopted at birth, inherits Belheddon Hall – a beautiful old house on the East Anglian coast – it is like a dream come true. Eager to begin a new life there with Luke, her husband, and Tom, her small son, she is also impatient to find out about her newly discovered family who lived there for generations... -
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Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAn award-winning author makes her fiction debut with the coming-of-age story of three young black children during the Atlanta child murders of 1979.Its summer in Atlanta and black children are disappearing. By the time the heinous killing spree is over, 29 will be dead...Categorized as:
crime family historical-fiction literary-fiction true-crime 21st-century audiobook bildungsroman -
The Beast Within by Émile Zola
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsHis haunting, impressionistic study of a man's slow corruption by jealousy, Emile Zola's The Beast Within (La Bete Humaine) is translated from the French with an introduction and notes by Roger Whitehouse in Penguin Classics.Roubaud is consumed by a jealous rage when he discovers a sordid secret about his young wife's past... -
The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBy chance, John and Jean--one English, the other French--meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance to each other is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking - until at last John falls into a drunken stupor. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, Jean has stolen his identity and disappeared...Categorized as:
crime family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
Folly by Laurie R. King
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn acclaimed master of suspense creates a heroine you will never forget in this superbly chilling novel of a woman who begins a desperate undertaking that may transform her life--or end it.WHAT HAPPENS IF YOUR WORST FEARS AREN’T ALL IN YOUR MIND?Rae Newborn is a woman on the edge: on the edge of sanity, on the edge of tragedy, and now on the edge of the world...Categorized as:
crime family historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure adult audiobook book -
Estudio en escarlata/El sabueso de los Baskerville by Arthur Conan Doyle
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLa popularidad de Sherlock Holmes ha sido inmensa e incesante... si muchos le parodiaron (a Conan Doyle) casi todos los escritores posteriores han moldeado sus héroes conforme a uno de los poliédricos aspectos del gran Sherlock. Este dejó de ser un personaje literario, se convirtió en una criatura viviente y borró la memoria de su creador...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure adult book classics fiction -
Resurrectionist by James McGee
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood brings his own form of justice to the salons and slums of Regency London in the gripping sequel to 'Ratcatcher'. For the body snatchers, death is a lucrative business. But it's the corpse they leave behind, horribly mutilated and nailed to a tree, which sets Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood on their trail...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure adult book fiction historical -
Entwined by Lynda La Plante
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNo matter how cruelly twins are separated, their lives will always be entwined.In the newly liberated streets of modern Berlin two women, a pampered, beautiful Baroness, losing control of her mind, and a fearless wild animal trainer, facing the greatest challenge of her career, are drawn together by a series of tragic and extraordinary coincidences... -
The Big Blow by Joe R. Lansdale
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratings“The sea had turned black as a dutch oven, the sky the color of gangrene, and between sea and sky there appeared to be something rising out of the water, something huge and oddly shaped, like a horrible sea god, and then Simmons realized what it was.”Galveston, Texas. September 4, 1900. A giant hurricane—destined to be remembered as the storm of the century—is brewing offshore... -
Orpheus Builds a Girl by Heather Parry
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsBased on a true story, Orpheus Builds a Girl is a novel of sisterly love, sinister obsession, and the battle for control of the story. A dark, chilling debut novel from award-winning writer Heather Parry.German doctor Wilhelm Von Tore shares with the reader the story of his one true ove; a love written in the stars, decades in the making, a love so strong it transcended death itself...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction horror fiction gothic retellings historical dark -
The Burial Plot by Elizabeth Macneal
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsFrom the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Doll Factory, The Burial Plot is an unstoppable historical thriller about murder, manipulation, and a young woman trying to wrestle power from the hands of a dangerous man. But he’s always one step ahead . . .London, 1839...Categorized as:
historical-fiction crime literary-fiction gothic historical fiction mystery industrial-era -
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The Mad Wife: A Novel by Meagan Church
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWith odes of The Bell Jar comes a searing historical suspense following a 1950s housewife who, when a mysterious new wife moves across the way, begins to unearth dark secrets about her neighborhood and her own mind. In the 1950s, nothing is valued more than conformity, and Lulu Mayfield has spent the last five years molding herself into the ideal housewife...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction family fiction horror mystery historical feminism -
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov, Gilbert Adair
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn this powerful and brutal short story, Leskov demonstrates the enduring truth of the Shakespearean archetype joltingly displaced to the heartland of Russia. Chastened and stifled by her marriage of convenience to a man twice her age, the young Katerina Lvovna goes yawning about the house, missing the barefoot freedom of her childhood, until she meets the feckless steward Sergei Filipych...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction adult anthologies audiobook classics drama -
Crippen by John Boyne
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsJuly 1910: A gruesome discovery has been made at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden.Chief Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard did not expect the house to be empty. Nor did he expect to find a body in the cellar. Buried under the flagstones are the remains of Cora Crippen, former music-hall singer and wife of Dr. Hawley Crippen. No one would have thought the quiet, unassuming Dr... -
The Buried Book by D.M. Pulley
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWhen Althea Leary abandons her nine-year-old son, Jasper, he’s left on his uncle’s farm with nothing but a change of clothes and a Bible.It’s 1952, and Jasper isn’t allowed to ask questions or make a fuss. He’s lucky to even have a home and must keep his mouth shut and his ears open to stay in his uncle’s good graces. No one knows where his mother went or whether she’s coming back...Categorized as:
crime family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century abuse action-adventure adult -
The Lost Girls of Willowbrook by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFact, fiction, and urban legend blend in this haunting story about a young woman mistakenly imprisoned at Willowbrook State School, the real-life institution later shuttered for its horrendous abuses.Sage Winters always knew her sister was a little different even though they were identical twins... -
What Lies Beneath by Sarah Rayne
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWhen the village of Priors Bramley was shut off in the 1950s so that the area could be used for chemical weapons-testing during the Cold War, a long history of dark secrets was also closed off to the outside world. Now, sixty years later, the village has been declared safe again, but there are those living in nearby Bramley who would much rather that the past remain hidden... -
The Savage Instinct by Marjorie DeLuca, M.M. DeLuca
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsEngland, 1873. Clara Blackstone has just been released after one year in a private asylum for the insane. Clara has two goals: to reunite with her husband, Henry, and to never—ever—return to the asylum... -
Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejide
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWith echoes of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Yejidé’s novel explores a forgotten quadrant of Washington, DC, and the ghosts that haunt it.Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying ill-fated passengers in a haunted car: a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk... -
Rules for Being Dead by Kim Powers
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"Kim Powers's haunting and spellbinding novel Rules for Being Dead reads like an intoxicating blend of the best of Shirley Jackson, Alice Sebold and Fannie Flagg. --STARRED Review, Shelf AwarenessIt's the late 1960s in McKinney, Texas. At the downtown theater and the local drive-in, movies--James Bond, My Fair Lady, Alfie, and Dr... -
The Lives of Shadows: An Illustrated Novel by Barbara Hodgson
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn the spring of 1914, a restless young man leaves England for a tour of the exotic east. A bit of Egypt, a glimpse of Syria, a nod to Constantinople -- that's all that was supposed to happen. Instead, Julian Beaufort becomes mesmerized. Wandering in idle admiration through the labyrinthine streets of Damascus, he stumbles upon Bait Katib, a house that takes possession of his heart... -
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The Mercy of the Tide by Keith Rosson
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsRiptide, Oregon, 1983. A sleepy coastal town, where crime usually consists of underage drinking down at a Wolf Point bonfire. But then strange things start happening—a human skeleton is unearthed in a local park and mutilated animals begin appearing, seemingly sacrificed, on the town’s beaches...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction alternate-history audiobook book coming-of-age corruption -
Will Starling: A Novel by Ian Weir
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Reckoning of WM. STARLING, Esq., a Foundling, concerning Monstrous Crimes and Infernal Aspirations, with Perpetrators Named and Shrouded Infamies disclosed to Light of Day, as set down by his Own Hand in this year 1816London, 1816. The Napoleonic War is over, Romanticism is at its high tide, and the great city is charged with the thrill of scientific discovery and Regency abandon... -
Dodging and Burning by John Copenhaver
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA lurid crime scene photo of a beautiful woman arrives on mystery writer Bunny Prescott's doorstep with no return address—and it's not the first time she's seen it. The reemergence of the photo, taken fifty-five years earlier, sets her on a journey to reconstruct the vicious summer that changed her life... -
The Coven by Graham Masterton
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThey say the girls were witches, but Beatrice Scarlet, the apothecary's daughter, knows they were victims... London, 1758: Beatrice Scarlet has returned to London and found work at St Mary Magdalene's Refuge for fallen women. Beatrice enjoys the work and her apothecary skills are much needed... -
The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsThe Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction family horror fiction historical mystery fantasy -
A Dark Dividing by Sarah Rayne
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsJournalist Harry Fizglen is sceptical when his editor asks him to investigate the background of Simone Anderson, a new Bloomsbury artist. But once he's met the enigmatic Simone, Harry is intrigued...
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