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Riot Recommendation

Cheers! 14 Of Your Favorite Prohibition-Era Reads

Jamie Canaves

Contributing Editor

Jamie Canavés is the Tailored Book Recommendations coordinator and Unusual Suspects mystery newsletter writer–in case you’re wondering what you do with a Liberal Arts degree. She’s never met a beach she didn’t like, always says yes to dessert, loves ‘80s nostalgia, all forms of entertainment, and can hold a conversation using only gifs. You can definitely talk books with her on Litsy and Goodreads. Depending on social media’s stability maybe also Twitter and Bluesky.

This Riot Recommendation asking for your favorite prohibition-era reads is sponsored by Mariner Books.

This “charming, confident follow-up to Creatures of Will and Temper” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) picks up in 1927 Long Island, where Ellie West fishes by day and sells moonshine by night to the citizens of her home town. But after Ellie’s father joins a mysterious church whose parishioners possess supernatural powers and a violent hatred for immigrants, Ellie finds she doesn’t know her beloved island, or her father, as well as she thought.


From 1920 to 1933 the U.S. banned the sale, production, transportation, and importation of alcoholic beverages. But where there’s a will there’s a way, so people were still doing all of that, just illegally and sneakily. So of course it’s a great time period to set a story! We asked and you delivered by telling us your favorite prohibition-era reads!

The Diviners by Libba Bray

Dollface by Renee Rosen

The Phryne Fisher Murder Mysteries series by Kerry Greenwood

Speak Easy, Speak Love by McKelle George

Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen

Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Flappers, Flasks and Foul Play by Ellen Mansoor Collier

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent

Live by Night by Dennis Lehane

Bitter Spirits by Jenn Bennett

A Certain Age by Beatriz Williams