The Books That Made Me
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The first book I became utterly obsessed with was Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. I had been struggling to muster up much enthusiasm for reading when I overheard my teacher recommend it to another, probably much older, pupil. I started it on the bus home and I remember wanting to stay on past my stop so that I could continue. I was 13, a year younger than the heroine Celie, when the book starts. Celie’s life was so different to anything I had ever experienced and yet Walker’s voice was so distinct and the writing so powerful, that she felt completely real to me. Through Alice Walker I discovered Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou and transformed from a reluctant reader to a voracious one.
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
In 1995 I was 17 and studying for my A-levels when Colin Firth burst onto my TV in a wet shirt and changed my life forever. The next day, I asked my English teacher who Jane Austen was and if we could study her instead of yet another white male author. He sent me to the library (probably to prevent me from disrupting any more of the lesson), where I found Northanger Abbey. In Austen’s time, novels were often disparaged as ephemeral and feminine – even by novelists themselves. But in Northanger Abbey, the narrator anticipates this criticism and gives a fervent defence of the artform. She even appeals to her fellow novelists:
Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body… there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.
I have a visceral memory of reading this passage for the first time and feeling as if this young woman had reached through two hundred years of history and grabbed hold of my heart. It is a defiant celebration of women’s writing, of women’s tastes, of women themselves. I went on to read all of Austen’s novels in rapid succession and became a ‘Janeite’ for life.
Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes
By the late 1990s I was at university, making my way through the stolid canon of English literature, when I stumbled across Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes. Opening that book was like inviting a gust of fresh air to blow the cobwebs off my dusty old reading list. As well as teaching me to keep a careful eye my addiction-prone personality and go to the dentist regularly, Keyes gave me a healthy respect for commercial fiction and demonstrated that serious topics could be handled with a light touch wicked sense of humour. Since then, I have devoured every single Keyes’ novel the moment it was released.
Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James
I began working part-time at the public library while I was still at school. My favourite aspect of the job was chatting to people about books and taking recommendations. I was really surprised to discover our most popular section by far was crime and I quickly became hooked on the Queens of detective fiction, including Minette Walters, Patricia Cornwell and Val McDermid. When P.D. James published Death Comes to Pemberley in 2011 it was doubly exciting as it merged two things I already loved: the world of Austen and a classic murder mystery.
Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
In March 2020, when the pandemic hit and all our lives were disrupted, I turned to Austen for comfort. After I’d reread all her work, I turned to reading about her life, beginning with Lucy Worsley’s Jane Austen at Home. It was realising just how hard Austen struggled to get published – with a lack formal education, moving from home to home, suffering from a chronic illness, writing longhand and sometimes even brewing her own ink – which inspired me to write fiction again after a hiatus of almost ten years. With Austen as my inspiration, I doggedly pursued my dream of getting published. After a couple of ‘practice novels’, she evolved from my inspiration to my muse. Miss Austen Investigates is my attempt to capture the vibrant, witty, and joyfully irreverent woman she was, and to demonstrate how hard she worked to achieve her place in our hearts as the most beloved novelist of all time.
Jessica Bull, Author of The Austen Christmas Murders
Fiction Book of the Month for December
Jessica Bull lives in South East London with her husband, two daughters, and far too many pets. Her debut novel, MISS AUSTEN INVESTIGATES, was shortlisted for the Crime Writer’s Association ILP John Creasey First Novel Dagger. The second book in her Jane Austen murder mystery series, second A FORTUNE MOST FATAL, was published in March 2025 and the third, THE AUSTEN CHRISTMAS MURDERS, will be published on 13 November 2025. Social media & links: Find out more at Jessica Bull Author: https://jessicabullauthor.com/ Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessicabullnovelist/
