Reading the World of Downton Abbey
KC Library has book recs to get you ready for Season 6
Posted on December 28, 2015 by Lindsey Foat
The Kansas City Public Library‘s Director of Reader Services and Downton devotee Kaite Stover shares her top five titles to get you ready for the final season of Downton Abbey.
It’s 1925, and we’re about to bid a fond farewell to one of our favorite British families. We’ve followed them through more than ten years of their tumultuous lives. We’ve celebrated weddings and births, mourned deaths and illness, and fretted over the state of the estate.
Keep yourself immersed in the sudsy, glittering, and soon-to-be-crumbling Edwardian world of Downton Abbey with these books.
“The American Heiress” by Daisy Goodwin: Bright, beautiful American heiress Cora Cash isn’t welcome in Gilded Age New York’s society circles. Her calculating mother sets both their sights on eligible, yet impoverished, bachelors across the pond. Her American money is welcome, her fresh American ways less so. Imagine this Cora’s story is the backstory for Downton’s Cora Crawley.
“Tender is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Set at the height of the Jazz Age, Richard and Nicole live in breathtaking glamour that masks a life of pain and hollowness. If Cousin Rose had married her jazz musician and moved to the French Riviera this might be her story.
“A Star for Mrs. Blake” by April Smith: A little-known slice of American history receives meticulous, elegant treatment in this compelling novel about a group of mothers who travel to post-WWI Europe to visit the graves of their fallen soldier-sons. Mrs. Blake, grieving the loss of her only child, pulls the group together to provide support on the difficult pilgrimage. Isabel, though British, would have been this type of war mother had Matthew died while serving.
“Below Stairs” by Margaret Powell: The classic memoir that inspired both Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey. If Daisy could ever find a moment to write down her observations and experiences, this would be her story. And a tart, eye-opening one it is.
“The House at Riverton” by Kate Morton: On a fateful summer day in 1924 at a sparkling society party, a young poet is shot and only the daughters of the house and their maid are witnesses. Remember Mary and Anna and the Turkish roué in the first season?
