The Travelling Cat Chronicles
by Hiro Arikawa
This a story of an unlikely friendship between an older man and his cat as they travel across Japan to visit people who defined periods of the man's life. I went into this book expecting a few laughs (it's mostly written from the cat's POV) and heartbreak. It gave me both, but it also offered a beautifully pure story of companionship that I would recommend to near enough anyone. This isn't a fictional travel memoir, which the synopsis made it seem. It's a book with heart and though I think you'd get more from this read by being a cat lover, it is also filled to the brim with wonderfully written characters who each hold up on their own. I sobbed multiple times reading this, so it definitely deserves a place on this list.


A Monster Calls 
by Patrick Ness
In this story we follow 12-year-old Conor as he struggles with high school invisibility and more importantly, his unwell mother. One night, he gets a visit from a monster (think of Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, but less friendly.). The monster promises to tell the boy three stories, and says that the young man will tell him the fourth when it's time. Did Conor dream this? Or are nightmares now in his real life? With his mother's health deteriorating with every turn of a page, the young boy tries to make sense of everything. Though technically middle-grade, this book is one that any person can read, no matter their age. It's a timeless story with such a beautiful narrative, if you aren't wiping away tears as the story comes to a close, you're reading it wrong.


Kate and Tully were always more sisters than best friends. Having found each other in that crucial period of adolescence when you think nobody understands you, they practically kept the other going. But as with most friendships, their relationship took a hit when adulthood and life continuously seemed to pull them apart. Can they get back what they once had? This is a hunk of a novel, both in size (over 500 pages) and story. You can't not care about both women as they equally struggle with the difficulties that life throws at us with age. However, the story does sound simple. I get that, but it's so much more than what it seems on the cover. Without giving away a spoiler, this book takes such a heartbreaking turn that you'll find yourself pulling an Anne and reading the last few chapters sobbing on the bathroom floor. In comparison to TV, this is a mix between the girlhood of Gilmore Girls and the agony of This Is Us. If you like either of this, give this book a try. The sequel Fly Away is also very good, albeit not as good as Firefly Lane.


When Breath Becomes Air
by Paul Kalanithi
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decades worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. This is the only non-fiction on this list, but that's mainly because I rarely find myself picking up anything of this genre. However, this book broke me. It's such an impactful book that really shows the hardships of being diagnosed with such a terrible illness. It was very interesting reading about his transition from surgeon to patient, and the foreword by his wife shred my heart. This is the epitome of bad things shouldn't happen to good people.

It's officially Fall! It's that time of year when we cosy under fluffy blankets, keep our fireplaces burning, and digest far too much tea, flavoured coffees, and mulled wine. Spices fill our nostrils and cardigans cover our arms. It's magical, and truly warming for the heart. I personally choose to curl up with a good book as I do all the things, as the atmosphere is just right. If that's also your thing, here are some book recommendations that I think go perfectly with this season. There's a romance, sci-i, retelling, thriller, and Gothic tale. Something for everyone!

The Tattooist Of Auschwitz
by Heather Morris 

In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust.

Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale - a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer - it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too.

So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz.


The Girl You Left Behind
by Jojo Moyes

France, 1916. Sophie Lefevre must keep her family safe whilst her adored husband Edouard fights at the front. When she is ordered to serve the German officers who descend on her hotel each evening, her home becomes riven by fierce tensions. And from the moment the new Kommandant sets eyes on Sophie's portrait - painted by Edouard - a dangerous obsession is born, which will lead Sophie to make a dark and terrible decision.

Almost a century later, and Sophie's portrait hangs in the home of Liv Halston, a wedding gift from her young husband before he died. A chance encounter reveals the painting's true worth, and its troubled history. A history that is about to resurface and turn Liv's life upside down all over again .


Lilac Girls
by Martha Hall Kelly

New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline's world is forever changed when Hitler's army invades Poland in September 1939--and then sets its sights on France.

An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.

For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.

The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents--from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland--as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.


The Alice Network
by Kate Quinn

1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie's parents banish her to Europe to have her "little problem" taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.

1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she's recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she's trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the "Queen of Spies", who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy's nose.

Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn't heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth...no matter where it leads.


The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak 

1939, Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier.

Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.


All The Light We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr

For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic layers within the invaluable diamond that her father guards in the Museum of Natural History. The walled city by the sea, where father and daughter take refuge when the Nazis invade Paris.

And a future which draws her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler Youth.


The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Annie Barrows & Mary Ann Shaffer 

It's 1946. The war is over, and Juliet Ashton has writer's block. But when she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey - a total stranger living halfway across the Channel, who has come across her name written in a second hand book - she enters into a correspondence with him, and in time with all the members of the extraordinary Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Through their letters, the society tell Juliet about life on the island, their love of books - and the long shadow cast by their time living under German occupation. Drawn into their irresistible world, Juliet sets sail for the island, changing her life forever.



The Paris Architect 
by Charles Belfoure

In 1942 Paris, gifted architect Lucien Bernard accepts a commission that will bring him a great deal of money - and maybe get him killed. But if he's clever enough, he'll avoid any trouble. All he has to do is design a secret hiding place for a wealthy Jewish man, a space so invisible that even the most determined German officer won't find it. He sorely needs the money, and outwitting the Nazis who have occupied his beloved city is a challenge he can't resist.

But when one of his hiding spaces fails horribly, and the problem of where to hide a Jew becomes terribly personal, Lucien can no longer ignore what's at stake. The Paris Architect asks us to consider what we owe each other, and just how far we'll go to make things right.

Written by an architect whose knowledge imbues every page, this story becomes more gripping with every soul hidden and every life saved.