Books like 'A Blunt Instrument'
Readers who enjoyed A Blunt Instrument by Georgette Heyer also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical romance mystery 20th century psychological historical-fiction crime classics law-enforcement cozy
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Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Sally Beauman
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 80 ratingsLast night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...Working as a lady's companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Her future looks bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Max de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise... -
![Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah]()
Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsCan a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother? From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure audiobook book drama fairy-tale -
![Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers]()
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe dons of Harriet Vane's alma mater, the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford, have invited her back to attend the annual Gaudy celebrations. However, the mood turns sour when someone begins a series of malicious acts including poison-pen messages, obscene graffiti and wanton vandalism. Harriet asks her old friend Wimsey to investigate...Categorized as:
classics cozy crime golden-age-mystery historical-fiction humor law-enforcement whodunit -
![Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers]()
Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with a charismatic, married doctor... -
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![Her Last Promise by Kathryn Hughes]()
Her Last Promise by Kathryn Hughes
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA mysterious letter from Spain. A surprising new beginning... Fall in love this summer with Her Last Promise, a gripping, heartwrenching story of how hope can blossom in the ruins of tragedy and of the redeeming power of love. From No. 1 bestselling author Kathryn Hughes. Tara Richards was just a girl when she lost her mother... -
![Honeysuckle Season by Mary Ellen Taylor]()
Honeysuckle Season by Mary Ellen Taylor
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom bestselling author Mary Ellen Taylor comes a story about profound loss, hard truths, and an overgrown greenhouse full of old secrets.Adrift in the wake of her father’s death, a failed marriage, and multiple miscarriages, Libby McKenzie feels truly alone. Though her new life as a wedding photographer provides a semblance of purpose, it’s also a distraction from her profound pain... -
![The Woman in the Wood by Lesley Pearse]()
The Woman in the Wood by Lesley Pearse
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFifteen-year-old twins Maisy and Duncan Mitcham have always had each other. Until the fateful day in the wood . . . One night in 1960, the twins awake to find their father pulling their screaming mother from the house. She is to be committed to an asylum. It is, so their father insists, for her own good... -
![The Marriage of Mary Russell by Laurie R. King]()
The Marriage of Mary Russell by Laurie R. King
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLaurie R. King takes readers way back in her bestselling series with this exclusive ebook short story, as Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes embark upon the riskiest adventure of their their wedding. Includes a special preview of the highly anticipated new mystery from Laurie R... -
![Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie]()
Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsReturning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks. This sudden solitude compels Joan to assess her life for the first time ever and face up to many of the truths about herself... -
![Random Harvest by James Hilton]()
Random Harvest by James Hilton
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCharles Rainier, a prosperous Briton, loses his memory as a result of shellshock in the First World War...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult amnesia audiobook book -
![Now, Voyager (The Vale Novels) by Olive Higgins Prouty]()
Now, Voyager (The Vale Novels) by Olive Higgins Prouty
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"Don't let's ask for the moon! We have the stars!" The film that concludes with Bette Davis's famous words, reaffirmed Davis's own stardom and changed the way Americans smoked cigarettes. But few contemporary fans of this story of a woman's self-realization know its source...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction law-enforcement 20th-century adult audiobook book family -
![The Wedding Tree by Robin Wells]()
The Wedding Tree by Robin Wells
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsNational bestselling author Robin Wells weaves a moving epic that stretches from modern-day Louisiana to World War II-era New Orleans and back again in this multigenerational tale of love, loss and redemption. Hope Stevens thinks Wedding Tree, Louisiana, will be the perfect place to sort out her life and all the mistakes she’s made...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book breakup cheating domestic-drama -
![My Mother's Shadow by Nikola Scott]()
My Mother's Shadow by Nikola Scott
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAddie thinks she knows everything about her mother. But when a stranger appears claiming to be her sister, she realises that her life so far has been a lie. But why? Perfect for fans of Kate Morton and Santa Montefiore. Hartland House has always been a faithful keeper of secrets...1958... -
![The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart]()
The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsYoung, beautiful, and adventurous Nicola Ferris loves her life as a secretary at the British Embassy on the lush island of Crete. Then on her day off, she links up with two hiking companions who have inadvertently stumbledupon a scene of blood vengeance. And suddenly the life Nicola adores is in danger of coming to an abrupt, brutal, and terrifying end .Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book coming-of-age -
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![Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford]()
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsIn 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century 21st-century audiobook book coming-of-age drama -
![Embers by Sándor Márai]()
Embers by Sándor Márai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAs darkness settles on a forgotten castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, two men sit down to a final dinner together. They have not seen one another in forty-one years. At their last meeting, in the company of a beautiful woman, an unspoken act of betrayal left all three lives shattered - and each of them alone...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book drama -
![The Pearl Locket by Kathleen McGurl]()
The Pearl Locket by Kathleen McGurl
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWe’ll Meet Again… When Ali inherits her great-aunt’s house she immediately moves her whole family in, despite the warnings that there is something strange about the place. Unfazed Ali begins redecorating, going through the rooms, making each one her own with the help of her daughter, Kelly... -
![The Wonder Worker by Susan Howatch]()
The Wonder Worker by Susan Howatch
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe inhabitants of a small community are interlinked by the healer at its heart, Nick Darrow. There is Alice, the romantic but also an outcast; Lewis the priest, an irascible traditionalist; Francie, who has a desire to be loved; and Stacy, a young trainee looking for faith and direction... -
![My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier]()
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsPhilip Ashley's older cousin Ambrose, who raised the orphaned Philip as his own son, has died in Rome. Philip, the heir to Ambrose's beautiful English estate, is crushed that the man he loved died far from home. He is also suspicious. While in Italy, Ambrose fell in love with Rachel, a beautiful English and Italian woman... -
![The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell]()
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood.Lexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself. Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London... -
![The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon]()
The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsIt is 1968. Lynnie, a young white woman with a developmental disability, and Homan, an African American deaf man, are locked away in an institution, the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, and have been left to languish, forgotten. Deeply in love, they escape, and find refuge in the farmhouse of Martha, a retired schoolteacher and widow...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century 21st-century abuse audiobook book coming-of-age dark -
![The End of the Affair by Graham Greene]()
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 32 ratings"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..." "This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair, and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles... -
![Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim]()
Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFirst published in 1921, Vera is a darkly comic story about Lucy Entwhistle and Everard Wemyss. Both have recently lost someone close to them as the first chapter opens. They meet and at once believe they have found a soul mate in each other. As their relationship progresses we come to understand more of each character's past. Most importantly we learn about Wemyss' late wife, Vera... -
![The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles]()
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
Rated: 3.87 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsThe scene is the village of Lyme Regis on Dorset's Lyme Bay..."the largest bite from the underside of England's out-stretched southwestern leg... -
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![Crimson Peak by Nancy Holder]()
Crimson Peak by Nancy Holder
Rated: 3.82 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsWhen her heart is stolen by a seductive stranger, a young woman is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood-red clay: a place filled with secrets that will haunt her forever. Between desire and darkness, between mystery and madness, lies the truth behind Crimson Peak. From acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction humor industrial-era 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook -
![Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice]()
Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAnne Rice brings to life the exquisite and otherworldly society of the eighteenth-century castrati, the delicate and alluring male sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices brought them the adulation of the royal courts and grand opera houses of Europe, men who lived as idols, concealing their pain as they were adored as angels, yet shunned as half-men... -
![The Burden by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie]()
The Burden by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLaura Franklin bitterly resented the arrival of her younger sister Shirley, an enchanting baby loved by all the family. But Laura's emotions towards her sister changed dramatically one night, when she vowed to protect her with all her strength and love... -
![Transgression: A Novel of Love and War by James W. Nichol]()
Transgression: A Novel of Love and War by James W. Nichol
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsHow can love survive a brutal time? In 1946 in North America, a child makes a grisly find in a deserted field—a discovery that opens a shuttered window on a secret dating back to the beginning of the turbulent decade...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book drama fiction historical -
![Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, Wanda McCaddon]()
Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, Wanda McCaddon
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe coachman tried to warn her away from the ruined, forbidding place on the rainswept Cornish coast. But young Mary Yellan chose instead to honor her mother's dying request that she join her frightened Aunt Patience and huge, hulking Uncle Joss Merlyn at Jamaica Inn. From her first glimpse on that raw November eve, she could sense the inn's dark power...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction industrial-era 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![The Gentleman's Madness by Summer Devon, Bonnie Dee]()
The Gentleman's Madness by Summer Devon, Bonnie Dee
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 9 ratingsTwo men imprisoned. One in body, the other in mind. Caught in the throes of passion with another man, scholar John Gilliam agrees to asylum treatment for perversion at the request of his worried parents. He intends to fake a cure then return to his normal life, but an attack on his person leads him down a darker path... -
![Detection Unlimited by Georgette Heyer]()
Detection Unlimited by Georgette Heyer
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSlumped on a seat under an oak tree is old Sampson Warrenby, with a bullet through his brain. He is discovered by his niece Mavis, who is just one of ten people in the village in the running for chief suspect, having cause to dislike Warrenby intensely. Only Chief Inspector Hemingway can uncover which of the ten has turned hatred into murder...Categorized as:
classics cozy crime golden-age-mystery historical-fiction industrial-era law-enforcement regency -
![The Spectre of Alexander Wolf by Gaito Gazdanov]()
The Spectre of Alexander Wolf by Gaito Gazdanov
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"Among all my recollections, among all the numberless sensations of life, the memory of the one murder that I had committed weighed heaviest on my mind ..."On a searing hot day in 1919, a young Russian soldier shoots another in self-defence. As the other man lies dying, the young soldier takes his horse and rides away... -
![To the North by Elizabeth Bowen]()
To the North by Elizabeth Bowen
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA young woman’s secret love affair leads to a violent and tragic act in one of Elizabeth Bowen’s most acclaimed novels. To the North centers on two young women in 1920s London, the recently widowed Cecilia Summers and her late husband's sister, Emmeline. Drawn to each other in the wake of their loss, the two set up house together and gradually become more entwined than they know...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction romance fiction 20th-century literary-fiction mystery suspense -
![Named of the Dragon by Susanna Kearsley]()
Named of the Dragon by Susanna Kearsley
Rated: 3.82 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsTormented by horrific nightmares since the death of her baby five years before, literary agent Lyn Ravenshaw agrees to accompany an author to Wales, where she encounters an eccentric young widow desperately afraid for her own infant's safety and a reclusive playwright who could be her only salvation... -
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![Unfinished Portrait by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie]()
Unfinished Portrait by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie
Rated: 3.71 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsBereft of the three people she has held most dear - her mother, her daughter and her husband Dermot, who wants a divorce - Celia is on the verge of suicide... -
![O legado by Katherine Webb]()
O legado by Katherine Webb
Rated: 3.70 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsWhen they were children, Erica Calcott and her sister, Beth, spent their summer holidays at Storton Manor. Now, following the death of their grandmother, they have returned to the grand, imposing house in Wiltshire, England... -
![The Reader by Bernhard Schlink]()
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Rated: 3.76 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsHailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure audiobook bildungsroman book -
![Confession of a Murderer: Told in One Night by Joseph Roth]()
Confession of a Murderer: Told in One Night by Joseph Roth
Rated: 3.58 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn a Russian restaurant on Paris's Left Bank, Russian exile Golubchik alternately fascinates and horrifies a rapt audience with a wild story of collaboration, deception, and murder in the days leading up to the Russian Revolution. “Worthy to sit beside Conrad and Dostoevsky’s excursions into the twisted world of secret agents... -
![A Certain Summer by Patricia Beard]()
A Certain Summer by Patricia Beard
Rated: 3.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"Nothing ever changes at Wauregan.” That mystique is the tradition of the idyllic island colony off the shore of Long Island, the comforting tradition that its summer dwellers have lived by for over half a century. But in the summer of 1948, after a world war has claimed countless men—even those who came home—the time has come to deal with history’s indelible scars...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book family female-mc fiction -
![The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson]()
The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom legendary writer Denis Johnson, The Stars at Noon is a novel of mystery and suspense set during the Nicaraguan Revolution—now a major motion picture produced by A24 and starring Joe Alwyn. Set in Nicaragua in 1984, The Stars at Noon is a story of passion, fear, and betrayal told in the voice of an American woman whose mission in Central America is as shadowy as her surroundings... -
![The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen]()
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
Rated: 3.61 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century audiobook bildungsroman book coming-of-age drama -
![The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier]()
The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsMeet Ella Turner and Isabelle du Moulin—two women born centuries apart, yet bound by a fateful family legacy. When Ella and her husband move to a small town in France, Ella hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife, and start a family of her own...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer]()
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 36 ratings1985. After the death of her beloved twin brother, Felix, and the break up with her long-time lover, Nathan, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she'd been born in a different era... -
![Coral Glynn by Peter Cameron]()
Coral Glynn by Peter Cameron
Rated: 3.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsCoral Glynn arrives at Hart House, an isolated manse in the English countryside, early in the very wet spring of 1950, to nurse the elderly Mrs. Hart, who is dying of cancer. Hart House is also inhabited by Mrs. Prence, the perpetually disgruntled housekeeper, and Major Clement Hart, Mrs. Hart’s war-ravaged son, who is struggling to come to terms with his latent homosexuality... -
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![The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson]()
The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson
Rated: 3.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in the lush countryside of Provence, Deborah Lawrenson’s The Lantern is an atmospheric modern gothic tale of love, suspicion, and murder, in the tradition of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Drawn to a wealthy older man, Eve embarks on a whirlwind romance that soon offers a new life and a new home—Les Genévriers, a charming hamlet amid the fragrant lavender fields of Provence... -
![The Lives of Stella Bain by Anita Shreve]()
The Lives of Stella Bain by Anita Shreve
Rated: 3.42 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom bestselling author Anita Shreve: An epic story, set against the backdrop of World War I, of a woman searching for the secret of her identity. When a young American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in the exclusive garden of London's Bryanston Square, residents August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in... -
![Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence]()
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Rated: 3.51 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsLawrence's frank portrayal of an extramarital affair and the explicit sexual explorations of its central characters caused this controversial book, now considered a masterpiece, to be banned as pornography until 1960... -
![Derrière la porte by Sarah Waters]()
Derrière la porte by Sarah Waters
Rated: 3.44 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsIt 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... -
![The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore]()
The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore
Rated: 3.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA terrifyingly atmospheric ghost story by the Orange-prize-winning Helen Dunmore. In the summer of 1954, newly wed Isabel Carey arrives in a Yorkshire town with her husband Philip. As a GP he spends much of his time working, while Isabel tries hard to adjust to the realities of married life... -
![A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay]()
A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay
Rated: 3.31 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis stunning novel from Tatiana de Rosnay, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Sarah's Key, plumbs the depths of complex family relationships and the power of a past secret to change everything in the present. It all began with a simple seaside vacation, a brother and sister recapturing their childhood...
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