7 Tantalizing Tales That Will Ease Your Downton Abbey Withdrawal

Nancy Mitford’s most enduringly popular novel, The Pursuit of Love, has all the shock, awe, and dry wit of a tumultuous season of Downton Abbey. In this classic comedy about growing up and falling in love among the privileged and eccentric, we are introduced to the Radletts through the eyes of their cousin Fanny, who stays with them at their Gloucestershire estate.

At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire. Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities.

This wildly creative tale about second chances and alternate histories follows the many lives of one woman who lives her life over and over, instantly returning to where her former life left off each time she dies. Life After Life is inventive, darkly comic, and startlingly poignant.

Creator of the sensational Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes establishes himself as an irresistible storyteller and a deliciously witty chronicler of modern manners with Snobs. In this wickedly astute portrait of the intersecting worlds of aristocrats and actors, the characters of Downton Abbey we've come to love so dearly come to life in modern-day England.

In the summer of 1924, at a glittering society party held at the Riverton House, a young poet shoots himself. Only three witnesses — the Hartford family’s servant, Grace, and the Hartford sisters, Hannah and Emmeline — know the truth. Kate Morton's gorgeous debut, The House at Riverton, is full of secrets, some revealed, others hidden forever.

Spanning from the 1930s to the present day, from the Wharton Park estate in England to Thailand, the atmospheric and poignant novel The Orchid House tells the tale of a concert pianist and the aristocratic Crawford family, whose shocking secrets are revealed with devastating consequences.

Welcome to Downton Tabby, where the aristocrats of the animal kingdom dwell in stately splendor. Sleeping, grooming, sleeping some more, and being fed by their downstairs cats, they are unaware that their way of life, providing work for others, is about to be swept away by the tides of history . . . and runaway cars.

Here are more great book recommendations from our friends at Off the Shelf:

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• 11 Binge-Worthy Literary Series
• Star-Crossed Lovers and Bygone Times