{"id":725,"date":"2025-07-11T05:51:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T05:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/725\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T05:51:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T05:51:03","slug":"mark-billingham-shares-his-favourite-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/725\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Billingham shares his favourite books"},"content":{"rendered":"

The actor and crime writer will be talking about his latest novel, “What the Night Brings”, at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival<\/a> in Harrogate (17-20 July).<\/p>\n

The Beatles: All These Years \u2013 Vol. One, Tune In<\/p>\n

Mark Lewisohn, 2013<\/p>\n

The first volume in a trilogy that promises to be the definitive biography of The Beatles<\/a>. Meticulously researched, it provides an eye-opening portrait of postwar Britain; buttoned-up and grey and more than ready for John, Paul, George and Ringo to bring some life and colour.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to The Week<\/p>\n

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.<\/p>\n

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From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

The Book of Lost Things <\/p>\n

John Connolly, 2006 <\/p>\n

This is a funny, terrifying and deeply moving story about a boy who escapes a traumatic existence by losing himself inside the books on his shelf, by an author best known as a writer of dark crime fiction<\/a>. It’s a remarkable story about childhood and, ultimately, the transforming power of stories themselves.<\/p>\n

Sharp Objects <\/p>\n

Gillian Flynn, 2006 <\/p>\n

When Camille Preaker is forced to revisit her own horrific past, she uncovers enough disturbing secrets to rattle even the most battle-hardened of crime readers. This is “Peyton Place” as reimagined by David Lynch, with a devastating final twist, and I read it with something approaching envy that a debut novel<\/a> could be so good.<\/p>\n

The Big Blowdown<\/p>\n

George P. Pelecanos, 1996 <\/p>\n

This tale of Washington’s immigrant community from the early 1930s through to 1959 has an epic sweep. Young men take hard decisions in a city which goes to war and then struggles to recover from it. Gripping and heartbreaking in equal measure.<\/p>\n

The Death of Sweet Mister<\/p>\n

Daniel Woodrell, 2001<\/p>\n

Shug Akins is a lonely overweight 13-year-old, living in a dirt-poor Missouri town. A slice of southern gothic with a bittersweet taste that will stay with readers long after they’ve finished its 200 pages. A gorgeous and terrible story of innocence corrupted, by a writer who deserves a far bigger readership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The actor and crime writer will be talking about his latest novel, “What the Night Brings”, at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}