I loved this book because it was about me. Not literally (obviously), but when I put myself into fairy tales, I rarely see myself as the princess—classically beautiful, polite, kind under all circumstances, soft-spoken.
Not that I don’t have these qualities sometimes, but they aren’t the first things that jump to mind when I think of myself, and this book nailed how out-of-place and pushed aside not being the princess character can make you feel. For better or worse, I’m a “stepsister.” I’m messy and loud, and I say things I regret later.
'In an ancient city by the sea, three sisters - a maiden, a mother, and a crone - are drawing maps by candlelight. Sombre, with piercing grey eyes, they are the three Fates, and every map is a human life . . .'
Stepsister takes up where Cinderella's tale ends. We meet Isabelle, the younger of Cinderella's two stepsisters. Ella is considered beautiful; stepsister Isabelle is not. Isabelle is fearless, brave, and strong-willed. She fences better than any boy, and takes her stallion over jumps that grown men fear to attempt. It doesn't matter, though; these qualities are not valued…
I write what I see. Dark Fantasy has been the escape I have needed my entire life. It helped me understand hard topics such as war, greed, and loss. Working through a character's struggles has saved me from the darkest parts of my mind and guided me to where I can love myself.
The strongest creatures have tried and failed to fulfill their destiny. Rather than succumb to the fallout of their actions, they ran away and hid amongst the world separately. All it took was one glance from a stranger to turn their world upside down. Can love break the curse that is their existence?
I found that the bond of family, found or born, can create a bearable existence when all hope is lost.
Seven sons, each with a bloodline of supernaturals that can be traced back to them, but where did they go? Humiliation, pain and hunger become Dabria’s everyday life as a captive but when she is forced to watch the one person in the world she loves die...what will she become?Rising from the blood and ashes, Dabria is tossed into a cell and left to rot...only she isn’t alone. A monster so feared they locked him up and threw away the key...and now, he has his sights set on her. Nothing is safe from him, not her body nor her mind,…
From my early days of reading Fire and Hemlock and various books of mythology, I’ve loved traditional tales from all around the world. In college I didn’t aim to major in things that would be useful to me as a fantasy writer, but anthropology and folklore made a great background for that job. Nowadays, I actively seek out books based on traditional stories, especially those that go beyond the most well-known European fairy tales and myths. Sometimes, they inspire me, in turn, to write my own stories!
I read this when I was starting to burn out on some of the conventions of YA, which made it a delightful breath of fresh air that this book doesn’t follow them.
After using a Korean folktale to launch its plot into motion, it builds a great relationship not only between the protagonist and her love interest (a god who’s forgotten what he’s the god of) but between her and a lot of other characters, her family included.
I really appreciated the romance not dominating the story to the point of sidelining everything else, and Mina’s interactions with the others–including other girls sent to be brides of the Sea God–were excellent.
Deadly storms. An ancient curse. Will her sacrifice save them all?
For generations, deadly storms have ravaged Mina's homeland. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curse them with death and despair. To appease him, each year a maiden is thrown into the sea, in the hopes that one day the 'true bride' will be chosen and end the suffering.
Many believe Shim Cheong - Mina's brother's beloved - to be the legendary true bride. But on the night Cheong is sacrificed, Mina's brother follows her, even knowing that to interfere is a death sentence. To save…
I have always been intrigued by missing persons. I wonder how their family copes with having no closure on the situation and how they can live wondering where their loved one is and whether they are dead or alive. I have read these recommended books many times to satisfy this craving. I enjoy a sense of the macabre even though the story may be about mundane everyday topics. This only adds to the sense of dread and wonder. I enjoy the intriguing twists and turns, keeping me on my toes and wanting more until the end. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have.
I recommend this book and the author’s fabulous writing, comprising of
dread and humour (which I love), all rolled into one. Three separate case
histories, interlinked, each littered with fabulous, memorable
characters. Jackson Brodie, the Detective trying to solve the case, is one of the best, with brilliant detective skills and a haunting
personal life.
An intriguing mix of family drama and mystery, giving it
more depth than just an ordinary thriller. I have read this book many
times, and it’s always new, never boring, and the ending is still a surprise.
Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night. Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack. Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge ...
I’m an author of over seventy romance books and have been a romance reader all my life. I think the first book I wrote (at the age of eight) featured a kiss. Yes, I was precocious, but in my defense, I was spying on my much older sister and her boyfriend at the time. Reading and writing romance is my passion, and I love spending my days creating independent, intelligent, and feisty heroines and hot, smart, modern men. I’m lucky enough to spend my days doing what I love. I hope you love the books on my list, and that they bring you as much pleasure (and an escape from reality) as they did me.
This is a seriously funny book full of great dialogue. It’s also a great premise…the hero who makes a bet with his friend to sleep with said friend’s very cranky ex-girlfriend.
Min has just been recently dumped by a man she didn’t love, but she’s not in the mood to deal with any man’s ****. Cal is stupidly handsome, successful, and charming, but he needs to be brought down a peg or ten. This is opposites attract romance with lots of heart!
I rediscovered my love of romantic fantasies when my mother went into the hospital, and I needed a place to go to escape the horror of watching a parent’s health fail. I not only buried myself in reading fantasies filled with magical love stories, I started writing them again. Throughout my life, I’ve reached for fantasy novels whenever life got tough. As a child, I would read nearly every fantasy I could find. As an adult, my tastes have changed, and I’m looking for fantasy novels with a romantic twist. But still, it’s the heroine overcoming adversity despite the worst odds that gives me hope and comfort exactly when I need it.
This book is the start of a spicy romantic fantasy series that hooked me from the first page. It fed into my love of spooky vampires, dark mysteries, and a fun love story with snarky dialogue.
I devoured this book and the rest of the series during the pandemic lockdown. The complicated Kingdom of Solis provided the perfect escape. The high drama of this fantasy echoed the stress of the uncertainty of the stressful time I was living through. The promise that things can work out, even when everything is falling apart, proved to be the balm I so desperately needed. When things get stressful, I pull out this series for a reread.
“I hope you guys love this book as much as I do!! (Let me just say...Hawk *swoon*!!)” ~ NYT bestseller Sarah J. Maas
Captivating and action-packed, From Blood and Ash is a sexy, addictive, and unexpected fantasy perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Laura Thalassa.
A Maiden…
Chosen from birth to usher in a new era, Poppy’s life has never been her own. The life of the Maiden is solitary. Never to be touched. Never to be looked upon. Never to be spoken to. Never to experience pleasure. Waiting for the day of her Ascension, she would rather…
I began studying philosophy, both western and Asian, as a college freshman, and I never stopped. Much of my career in philosophy was devoted to building bridges between western and Buddhist traditions. The best philosophers try to make their ideas as clear as possible. But standards of clarity can differ across traditions, and this sometimes makes it difficult to present the theories and arguments of one philosophical tradition to those who think in terms of another. I have struggled with this in my own efforts at bridge-building, and I am always appreciative when I see other scholars of Buddhism achieve the sort of clarity I aim for.
A key claim of Buddhist philosophy is that all the facts about persons are causally determined. This claim leads people to wonder where Buddhists stand on the so-called ‘free will’ problem: can someone whose actions are determined by earlier events be held responsible for what they do? This question never arose in Indian Buddhist philosophy, but modern scholars have had much to say about whether Buddhism’s causal determinism is compatible with the practice of praising or blaming people for what they do. This book collects some of the best attempts to answer the question.
Throughout the history of Buddhism, little has been said prior to the Twentieth Century that explicitly raises the question whether we have free will, though the Buddha rejected fatalism and some Buddhists have addressed whether karma is fatalistic. Recently, however, Buddhist and Western philosophers have begun to explicitly discuss Buddhism and free will.
This book incorporates Buddhist philosophy more explicitly into the Western analytic philosophical discussion of free will, both in order to render more perspicuous Buddhist ideas that might shed light on the Western philosophical debate, and in order to render more perspicuous the many possible positions on the…
I have a passion for becoming a better human being and helping others to do the same. I spent 28 years in parish ministry attempting to remind people of the call of Jesus and the needs of the human heart. I left ministry and operated a private practice as a registered psychotherapist for almost 20 years. I am now retired and an author of three books. I'm still working at the task of becoming a better human being and helping others to do the same. The books I have recommended in my book list are all examples of people with similar mindsets.
The Soul's Code is a penetrating psychological and spiritual study of how we get to be who we are and the necessity of listening deeply to the call of your own life.
It will surprise and move you to be more aware of those formative experiences that are intrinsic to human experience. This book assisted me greatly in hearing my own soul's voice and inspiring me to write my own book about this experience.
Plato and the Greeks called it 'daimon', the Romans 'genius', the Christians 'Guardian Angel' - and today we use terms such as 'heart', 'spirit' and 'soul'. For James Hillman it is the central and guiding force of his utterly unique and compelling 'acorn theory' which proposes that each life is formed by a particular image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny, just as the mighty oak's destiny is written in the tiny acorn.
Highly accessible and imaginative, The Soul's Code offers a liberating vision of childhood troubles and an exciting approach…
This is a deeply psychological tale of abuse, hardships, depravity, and murder. A tug of war between good and bad, right and wrong, rages and swirls outside and inside the mind of Harlen LeBlanc.
As I read this book, I found myself comparing the author to the likes of Erskine Caldwell or John Steinbeck. It is gripping and gritty. The author shows both the best and worst sides of humans.
I love the way the author takes the reader back and forth between the present and the past, weaving together the story of two characters, Harlen LeBlanc and young Michael Fischer.
The unexpected psychological twists of this story are raw and disturbingly realistic. They make you question everything you believe about yourself and humanity in general. The true black souls of men are revealed, turning them into beasts of the earth. If you are a fan of damaged characters and…
James Wade, whose first two novels were praised as "rhapsodic" and "haunting," delivers his most powerful work to date--a chilling parable about the impossible demands of hate and love, trauma and goodness, vividly set in the landscapes of Texas and Louisiana.
Beasts of the Earth tells the story of Harlen LeBlanc, a dependable if quiet employee of the Carter Hills High School's grounds department, whose carefully maintained routine is overthrown by an act of violence. As the town searches for answers, LeBlanc strikes out on his own to exonerate a friend, while drawing the eyes of the law to himself…
I write fiction set in the Bronze Age world of the Trojan War and the Hittite Empire. I love to combine history and archaeology with magic and fantasy arising from the ancient beliefs of this period. My novels bring women to the fore—whether the captive Briseis or a remarkable Hittite queen lost to human memory until recently. Armed with degrees in Classics, I have spent too much time exploring the remains of the ancient Greeks and Hittites through travel and research. From the beginning, the Trojan War tradition has left room for many variations. Here are five entirely different “takes” on this iconic war—all masterfully written.
Carosella offers another, refreshing take on Helen. This Helen takes control of her life and tries to defy fate (and the gods do their darndest, as usual in Greek mythology, to make her and everyone else miserable). Carosella’s engaging novel develops the characters’ jealousies, passions, and loyalties, as well as bringing the reader directly into the ancient Greek world. I enjoyed the sense of interconnectedness between different parts of this Greek and Mediterranean world, Troy, Sparta, Egypt, Mycenae, and Athens. This accurately reflects the current understanding of this exotic world. I appreciate a flexible view of all the legendary mythology surrounding this iconic war, and Carosella has flexed some impressive muscle.
Long before she ran away with Paris to Troy, Helen of Sparta was haunted by nightmares of a burning city under siege. These dreams foretold impending war-a war that only Helen has the power to avert. To do so, she must defy her family and betray her betrothed by fleeing the palace in the dead of night. In need of protection, she finds shelter and comfort in the arms of Theseus, son of Poseidon. With Theseus at her side, she believes she can escape her destiny. But at every turn, new dangers-violence, betrayal, extortion, threat of war-thwart Helen's plans and…
