Books To Read If You Love “Downton Abbey”

At its heart lie two families—the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the cultured and idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent Helen Schlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, a series of events is sparked—some very funny, some very tragic—that results in a dispute over who will inherit Howards End, the Wilcoxes’ charming country home.

By many accounts, the First World War marked the beginning of the end for the British aristocracy. In this classic novel, the hero must leave behind the orderly world of Edwardian England to face the chaos of war and a changing society. Lord Grantham would sympathize.

The real-life inspiration and setting for the Emmy Award-winning Downton Abbey, Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story behind Highclere Castle and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon.

A must-read for the Carson fans, this is a compelling portrait of an English butler at the end of his career. Over the course of a six-day motoring trip through the countryside, he reflects on three decades of service to his Lordship, and grapples with self-realization.

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham’s most brillant characters – his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham’s novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.

When Kat Holloway takes a position as head cook in the Mayfair mansion of Lord Rankin, she’s unbothered by the family’s eccentricities—as long as they stay away from her kitchen. But trouble finds its way below stairs when her young assistant is murdered. Don’t mess with Mrs. Patmore.

England, 1921. Three years after her husband, Alex, disappeared, shot down over Germany, Jo Manders still mourns his loss. Working as a paid companion to Alex’s wealthy, condescending aunt, Dottie Forsyth, Jo travels to the family’s estate in the Sussex countryside. But there is much she never knew about her husband’s origins…and the revelation of a mysterious death in the Forsyths’ past is just the beginning…

By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady’s maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, “Dear Miss Sweetie.” When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society’s ills, but she’s not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race and gender.

Poor Edith just can’t catch a break. Forsaken in love, jilted at the altar, widowed by her lover while pregnant with his illegitimate child…by Season 6, Lady Edith had become a character as tragic as Lily Bart, whose downward spiral is chronicled in The House of Mirth.

Danielle Steel tells the uplifting story of an ordinary woman embracing an extraordinary adventure, and the daring choice that transforms her world.

Imagine if, instead of killing off Lady Sybil in childbirth, they created a spinoff series in which the feisty aristocrat became the Nancy Drew of Downton and solved murders. With her cat. Lady Cecilia Bates, the heroine of this new historical mystery series, is just as likable and determined as Sybil herself, and we are here for it.

The bestselling author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand returns with a breathtaking novel of love on the eve of World War I that reaches far beyond the small English town in which it is set.

Lucy Honeychurch and Rose Aldrich share much in common. Both are young English beauties who duck the watchful eye of a chaperone and find themselves in a passionate embrace with a socially unacceptable mate. And both must ultimately rely on themselves, and not their families, to forge their own paths to happiness.

Inspired in part by Fitzgerald’s own tumultuous union with his wife Zelda, hauntingly rendered and keenly observed, the characters in The Beautiful and Damned evoke a vivid portrait of a lost world: a city steeped in vice, a society without direction, and the rootless and decadent generation that inhabited it.

What was going on in the servants’ quarters while the Bennets were preoccupied with suitors and scandals upstairs at Longbourn? This is the premise of Jo Baker’s retelling of Pride and Prejudice, written from the perspective of a kitchen maid who’s just as starry-eyed as young Daisy.

A critically acclaimed, multi-layered romance set in the perilous days of World Wars I and II, where gods hold the fates–and the hearts–of four mortals in their hands.

Using diaries and scrapbooks from the castle’s archives, the current Countess of Carnarvon brings to life the story behind Highclere Castle and one of its most famous inhabitants, Catherine Wendell. This real-life Cora Crawley was a beautiful and spirited American woman who married the 6th Earl of Carnarvon and presided over the grand estate during tumultuous times.

For the Cavendish family, Rutherford Park is much more than a place to call home. It is a way of life marked by rigid rules and lavish rewards, governed by unspoken desires…

When the concierge of a historic Atlanta apartment building invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and with each other. Read this with your best girlfriends to relive those old Downton days.