65 books like Apothecary

I fell in love with Murderbot in the first paragraph. Every book afterward in the series just made me love it more.

The hero of the Murderbot Diaries is part robot, part humanoid, and all done-with-everyone’s-crap. Everyone seemed to think that if a construct like it gained its freedom, it would rampage around killing everyone. Instead, it just wanted to be left alone to watch some good shows, and read a book or ten. Been there.

I cracked up at the sarcasm, got pulled in by the action, and felt the compassion that drove Murderbot to jump into the mouth of a deadly creature to save a human’s life. I went through the angst of Murderbot learning how to connect with people without compromising itself, and identified all too well.

Kathryn is the best sci-fi author you haven’t read. How do I know? I was her critique buddy. We traded chapters as we wrote, each acting as advisor to the other.

I really liked Monkey Girl, a great choice for teen girls. But Project Hannibal is my favorite. Kathryn works at a zoo, so she knows a lot about animals. In Hannibal, she asks, could DNA from extinct woolly mammoths be used to impregnate a modern elephant? And if you could produce mammoth offspring, why do it?

As it turns out, mammoths might be exactly the wildlife our neglected planet needs. Join a flying doctor and her teenage assistant in a grand adventure across the wilderness of Alaska.

I normally avoid dystopian, but this story doesn’t dwell in misery like so many apocalyptic stories do.

Last Man Standing is more like Andy Weir’s book, The Martian, because it’s about one man’s survival under extreme conditions. A scientist is stranded on a space station after an attack that has killed everyone else onboard. What happened, and why? He doesn’t know, but he’ll do anything to stay alive and find a way to get back to Earth despite a thousand obstacles in his path and little knowledge of spaceflight.

This story can be intense, but the character stays positive and has a lot of heart.

Rysa Walker offers a grab bag of fiction, from time travel to murder mysteries. Her latest series is an alien artifact story set on Mars.

An eccentric and not-so-honest billionaire is terraforming the planet (sound familiar?) and multiple factions of homesteaders are in conflict with the temporary workers. Enter a principled journalist who just wants to bring the breaking alien artifact story to readers back on Earth. She quickly learns that virtually no one on Mars can be trusted. In over her head, she has no ride home.

I like this story in part because Rysa is such a good writer, but also because it feels supremely relevant to our world today.

I came across this book in the research stage of writing my new novel and from the very beginning I was hooked. I love a good fairytale, in this case Rapunzel, retold as feminist historical fiction. The characters are deliciously multi-faceted, the alternating storylines deftly woven together, and I felt like I was being doled out insights into where we are now as women through the lens of where we’ve been before. Engaging and enlightening. After reading it I felt inspired to read more of her work, write more of my own, and empower as many women as possible.

This book examines the psychology of superstition from the perspective of cognitive science and fallibility of human reasoning. Rather than dismissing superstitious behaviour, Vyse provides a comprehensive explanation of why we continue to hold such beliefs as a function of the way our minds work. This was the book that really inspired me to examine the developmental origins of magical thinking.

The illustrations are marvelous and the story is a peek into what it’s like for a child that is different in Russian culture. As a left-handed child she is forced to write and do nearly everything with her right hand except draw. This is the author’s personal story and you can see from the art that her drawing is amazing. I added this book to my list as Russia tops the headlines these days and remembering that children in Russia are just children with their own stories to tell feels important. Also, it’s an incredible book. 

I was fascinated with the depiction of the 1930s Malaysian dance halls steeped in music, fashion, and dance. As a writer who dabbles in the paranormal, the cultural spirits and supernatural elements were intriguing. The split narrative appealed to me since my Jitterbug Dress series is a dual narrative set in the 1940s and 1990s. The author also set the narrative apart by telling the story in different tenses and POVs (Ren and William’s story is in third person past, while Ji Lin’s story is first person, present). Choo did a great job of juxtaposing the beast or wild animal inside each person, where the line of who we are inside and what we present to society is drawn all while creating tension and suspense, keeping me guessing on how all these narratives intertwine. 

Though Kent’s first novel, Burial Rites, was an absolute triumph, The Good People broke me in ways I am still discovering.

Based on a true story in Ireland, this book places a child at the center, surrounded by superstition and fear. He doesn’t speak or walk, which makes some folks believe he is a changeling. But the women who protect him demonstrate immense empathy as they try to navigate this world plucked out of a Grimm fairy tale.

Reading this book made me more deeply understand the power of kindness.

I love a vengeful ghost. And Dead-Eyed Sadie, who haunts the little town of Burden Falls, is like an eyeless grudge’s Kayako Saeki. I almost expected to hear that horrible death rattle while flipping the pages. After a series of nightmares and a vision of Sadie, and the appearance of a dead body, teen sleuth, Ava Thorne is determined to solve the town’s murder problem before she becomes the main suspect. With a cursed waterfall and a vengeful ghost to contend with, it should be simple… right? Not when the murderer seems to have a vendetta against the Thornes and there’s a ghost on the loose.