Here are 93 books that The Wee Free Men fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a romance writer who moved around often as a child. Whenever I started a new school, I’d bring a book with me. Even now, I always run errands with a print book and my Kindle as I’m a writer, wife, and mother of four. Two of my children have medical conditions, and I’ve spent time in various doctor and hospital waiting rooms. I’ve taken books into MRI booths where I’d read while my daughter underwent an MRI. I gravitate toward emotional romances that keep me entertained while possessing a thread of humor or something unique about them so I can lose myself in their world anytime, anywhere.
If you are a kindred spirit, you know immediately why I’m recommending this book! I first picked this book up without knowing anything about it when I was a teenager. I immediately fell in love with Anne, Gilbert, Marilla, Matthew, and everyone in Avonlea. I can read this book anywhere and at any time.
Anne Shirley is an orphan who winds up at Green Gables and is given a trial basis to prove to Marilla Cuthbert why she should keep Anne, who is not a boy. Imaginative, romantic, and funny, this book (and its sequels) kept me laughing and crying, sometimes at the same time. Most of all, it reminds me that every morning is the start of a new day with no mistakes in it.
Anne of Green Gables is the classic children's book by L M Montgomery, the inspiration for the Netflix Original series Anne with an E. Watch it now!
Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert are in for a big surprise. They are waiting for an orphan boy to help with the work at Green Gables - but a skinny, red-haired girl turns up instead. Feisty and full of spirit, Anne Shirley charms her way into the Cuthberts' affection with her vivid imagination and constant chatter. It's not long before Anne finds herself in trouble, but soon it becomes impossible for the Cuthberts to…
I’ve never really felt like I belonged in this world. From early childhood independent play to building out entire backstories for my Lego creations, I dreamt of other worlds. As I grew, that developed into a love of history, mythology, philosophy, and the other components of worldbuilding. And being naturally inclined to ask, “What if,” there’s nothing I love more than exploring these alien worlds. What if there was a world with a dozen sentient species? What if humans didn’t even exist in that world? What if that world was overflowing with magic? It’s these sorts of questions I most enjoy pondering.
I only recently read this book based on a friend’s recommendation (and because I wanted to read it before watching the movie). I was blown away by the depth and breadth of the world-building in Dune.
Though my general agreement with Herbert’s social philosophy might impact this pick, there’s no denying his prodigious world-building skills.
Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.
Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.
I am an academic at the University of Queensland whose research areas include horror films, screen trauma theory, the cinematic representation of urban spaces, and the collision of romanticism and postmodernism in fantasy literature. My first book, POV Horror: The Trauma Aesthetic of the Found Footage Subgenre, was adapted from my PhD thesis. I am an avid member of the A Song of Ice and Fire fandom, and my second book represents over a decade of talking and writing about George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy series, having grown out of conversations in forums, podcasts, symposiums, and fan conventions, as well as my own background in literary analysis and research.
The Fifth Season is set in a world plagued by intermittent climate catastrophes and inhabited by a group of people called orogenes, who possess the ability to control energy and, therefore, thwart these catastrophes.
It follows two talented oregenes named Syenite and Alabaster, who are forced by the ruling class to marry and undertake a dangerous mission together. Jemisin’s story is a riveting exploration of environmental ethics, transhumanism, and the concept of the Anthropocene. She challenges her characters and readers to consider their responsibility for the earth and the other organisms that share it. She also depicts the role that social oppression plays in the exploitation and destruction of the environment.
At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times)
This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time.
It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.
Maximilian Tundra is about to have an existential crisis of cosmic proportions.
When a physical duplicate of him appears in his living room, wearing a tight-fitting silver lamé unitard and speaking with an English accent, Max knows something bad is about to happen. Bad doesn’t cover it. Max discovers he’s the only human being who can prevent the end of the world, and not just on his planet! In the multiverse, infinite Earths will be destroyed.
★★★★★ "Funny, yet deep, this is definitely worth venturing into the multiverse for."
Amazing Stories says: "Snarky as Pratchet, insightful as Stephenson, as full of scathing social commentary as Swift or Voltaire, and weirdly reminiscent of LeGuin, Alpha Max is the only multiverse novel you need this month, or maybe ever."
Maximilian Tundra is about to have an existential crisis of cosmic proportions.
When a physical duplicate of him appears in his living room, wearing a tight-fitting silver lamé unitard and speaking with an English accent, Max knows something bad is about to happen. Bad doesn’t cover it. Max discovers…
I’ve loved both nature and writing since childhood. My birdwatching and prior work as a geologist have taken me to the coasts, forests, and grasslands of New England, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Brazil, and beyond. Through it all, I’ve kept my pen busy writing about my adventures. A former writer-in-residence at the Shoals Marine Laboratory in Maine and beach naturalist with the Seattle Aquarium, I now teach at Smith College in Massachusetts, where I live with my family, many notebooks, and a garden full of native plants and wild birds.
Running away to live for a year alone in the woods–as a kid, I couldn’t have dreamed up a better fantasy.
Twelve-year-old protagonist Sam Gribley makes the dream feel realistic. Carving your own home in a huge hollow tree? Check. Learning how to set traps for fish and game? Check. Stitching your own clothes out of a deer hide “borrowed” from a reckless hunter who couldn’t find the carcass? Check. Learning the daily rhythms of wildlife, from chickadees to raccoons to stoats? Oh yes. I could have lived in Sam’s world forever.
Plus, the author’s line illustrations perfectly evoke an outdoor notebook worthy of a young Thoreau. It broke my heart when Sam’s year of wild freedom drew to a close.
"Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."-The New York Times Book Review
Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods-all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever.
"An extraordinary book . . . It will be read year after…
Where many people would see an empty package of Oreos, I see the remains of a lost civilization, an artifact crafted galaxies away by beings who flit in and out of existence in order to build rainbows for lonely children and who have left the empty bag, filled with dog poop, flaming on someone’s front step and are laughing uncontrollably as the person stomps on it to put it out. I want to find authors who see more than the bag of Oreos. I want them to be wildly imaginative and to paint what they see with cleverness and humor. I try to do the same.
Kage Baker is an Isaac Asimov compared to Terry Pratchett’s Marx Brothers. In the Garden of Iden is more sci-fi than fantasy, including time travel, cybernetics, and nanotechnologies. And love and loss. This book is part of a series of novels that Baker crafted about time-travelling enhanced humans who carry out critical tasks throughout history.
What I loved most about this book is how very human her main characters are. Like Pratchett and Bill Shakespeare, Baker is a master at showing us human nature. Her comedy is high comedy. I laugh because I recognize myself in her characters. Baker has a fine eye for the subtle and the absurd. And yet unlike many humorous authors, the tragedies of the heart are always at the core of her stories.
This is the first novel in what has become one of the most popular series in contemporary Science Fiction, now back in print from Tor. In the twenty-fourth century, the Company preserves works of art and extinct forms of life (for profit of course). It recruits orphans from the past, renders them all but immortal, and trains them to serve the Company. One of these is Mendoza the botanist, who is sent to Elizabethan England to collect samples from the garden of Sir Walter Iden. Her quest is jeopardized by Nicholas Harpole, who stirs unfamiliar emotions within her about her…
I’m of Indian ethnicity and Japanese nationality, so it felt natural to write a book that drew inspiration from both cultures without being adjacent to either one. Like me, my book is a mixed bag. It features an original mythology with a unique religion and mythical beasts that you’ve (hopefully) never seen before. It’s also pretty heavy on themes and tries to provide some context to questions that baffled me as a kid: Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do war and violence exist? I can’t say that I’ve answered those questions, but I hope I’ve provided a multifaceted perspective into the conversation around them.
I loved that this book doesn’t oversimplify challenging themes for a young audience. It mingles magic, action, and fascinating worldbuilding with some heavy philosophical and ethical undercurrents in a unique and compelling way.
The protagonist, Lyra, was a bit of a brat (in the best way), and I loved her mix of naivety and intelligence. I especially enjoyed the portrayal of dust as a conscious particle, and the most fascinating aspect for me was the study of its mysteries.
While I can’t
comment on the specific religious undertones—I am not Christian and
harbor no negative feelings against the church—I did appreciate the
overarching conversation around religion as an institution.
The first volume in Philip Pullman's groundbreaking HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy, now a thrilling, critically acclaimed BBC/HBO television series. First published in 1995, and acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, this first book in the series won the UK's top awards for children's literature.
"Without this child, we shall all die."
Lyra Belacqua and her animal daemon live half-wild and carefree among scholars of Jordan College, Oxford.
The destiny that awaits her will take her to the frozen lands of the Arctic, where witch-clans reign and ice-bears fight.
Her extraordinary journey will have immeasurable consequences far beyond her own world...
I struggled a lot with reading as a kid, I would not call myself a natural reader at all. When I was young, fantasy and magic stories were one of the few genres that could grip me enough to make me actually focus and attempt to read but I always hated the ones that took themselves too seriously (they always felt impossibly long to get through). Now, as a children’s author, myself, it’s my hope and passion to serve fellow young-readers-who-don’t-consider-themselves-readers with fun accessible stories. I hope you enjoy!
Special collector's film tie-in hardback of the best-selling classic, featuring the complete story with a sumptuous cover design inspired by THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY and brand new reproductions of all the drawings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End.
But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey 'there and back again'. They have a plot to raid…
I’m a lifelong fantasy reader, but all too often, I find myself grousing at the characters: “Listen! You could solve all your problems with a really confident lie!” Or: “...by revealing the truth in a public campaign before the villain gets you!” Or: “May I suggest a well-placed arrow?” Or: “Is he really the villain? The infrastructure seems pretty sound, and you have no expertise in governance!” Every now and then, I’m delighted to find characters as pragmatic as I am (or as I would be if I were a fantasy hero). These are my favorites.
Jude Duarte, a human girl living in Faerie, is a cold-hearted ball of ambitious rage. Never have I rooted for a character so much.
Although picking fights with the clever and cruel Fair Folk is not pragmatic – on the surface – when the choice is between waiting for a random death on a bully’s whim or fighting back with every weapon at her disposal, Jude will always fight. I may have cheered out loud when she stabbed an enemy who broke into her bedroom and then stuffed his body under her bed until she could bury him. She does what she has to do to survive–and, in the end, to make Faerie a (slightly) better place.
Holly Black’s writing is so poetic, so smart, so sharp, like a honed fairy blade. She is a master.
"Lush, dangerous, a dark jewel of a book . . . intoxicating" - Leigh Bardugo, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Six of Crows
Of course I want to be like them. They're beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.
And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.
One terrible morning, Jude and her sisters see their parents murdered in front of them. The terrifying assassin abducts all three…
I have always been fascinated by stories that use darkness in plot and character growth. As a former funeral director, I find stories with death—whether it’s the power of death, the death of a loved one, or something similar—to be really poignant. I always write books that embrace the darkness, and I love to see how characters come out on the other side. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do!
Naomi Novak could write anything, and I would read it, but I am a sucker for dark academia.
Well, this one takes the cake with a school that is actively trying to kill the students. While this book is pretty dark in parts, it was the instances of light that really kept me reading the entire series.
There were many times I wasn’t sure where it would lead, but I was never disappointed by what I discovered.
Enter a school of magic unlike any you have ever encountered.
There are no teachers, no holidays, friendships are purely strategic, and the odds of survival are never equal. Once you're inside, there are only two ways out: you graduate or you die.
El Higgins is uniquely prepared for the school's many dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out untold millions - never mind easily destroy the countless monsters that prowl the school.
Except, she might accidentally kill all the other students, too. So El is trying…
I’m a trope-obsessed author who counts found family among her favorite Ao3 tags. I cannot get enough of books which read like fanfiction, and I’ll recommend my favorites every chance I get. I also do my part to put more queer found family books into the world—my debut adult fantasy The Sins On Their Bones is being published by Random House Canada in May 2024. When I’m not writing, I’m a full-time servant to my two enormous cats.
No list of queer-found family fantasies would be complete without mentioning the Dregs. Leigh Bardugo’s book, set in a gritty city called Ketterdam, is the first book that made me fall in love with a found family.
If I could join any fantasy-found family, it would be this one. If you’ve ever wanted to join the ultimate heist crew, you’ve got to read Six of Crows.
*See the Grishaverse come to life on screen with Shadow and Bone, now a Netflix original series.*
Nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2017, this fantasy epic from the No. 1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of the Grisha trilogy is gripping, sweeping and memorable - perfect for fans of George R. R. Martin, Laini Taylor and Kristin Cashore.
Criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams - but he can't pull it off alone.
A convict with a thirst for revenge. A sharpshooter who can't walk…
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