I’ve been told I live under a rock. I don’t know much about popular media, I can’t name any actors, and when I catch onto a trend, it’s usually five to six years after said trend has died out. People alert me of my lack of knowledge like it’s a bad thing, but I think if they could see all the books they’re missing out on, they’d feel otherwise. There are hundreds of thousands of fantastic stories that are neither glamorous nor gritty enough to make it to the forefront of the internet, and every time I find one, it changes my life. Living under a rock: 10/10 would recommend.
After a powerful wizard tears Elle’s soul apart and steals her memories, she’s locked in a house to rot. Her only remaining memory is of falling from the sky, though even that raises more questions than it answers. Upon her escape, she falls into a world that’s equal parts vicious and beautiful. Magic is everywhere, everyone is out for themselves, and every truth is accompanied by a lie. She’s positive the key to recovering her memories is the sky-castle from her dreams, but getting there requires magic she doesn’t have. Traversing an enchanted painting, stealing from a dragon, and outwitting a demon are only the beginning. And this time, she’s got more than freedom and memories on the line.
This book is one of my earliest inspirations, and I’ve never met anyone else who’s even heard of it.
Poisonis the very first book that made me think, “Wow. I want to be able to write something like this.” I loved the story, but what I’ll never forget is how the ending made me feel. This book is both simple and complex; a wild, unpredictable journey and a natural progression of events.
I write with the hopes of someday completing something as lovely as this.
Perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman and Tim Burton, this is no ordinary fairy tale.
When Poison's baby sister is stolen by phaeries, Poison sets off on an incredible and dangerous journey to get her sister back from the Phaerie Lord.
But as Poison travels to the Realm of Phaerie, she discovers that her story - and her destiny - is not in her control, and that she will need all her wits about her to survive.
A fantasy where the power of story maybe the only thing that will save you, and where imagination knows no bounds.
The Keys to the Kingdomis another oft-overlooked series, which I recommend to anyone I can.
I’ve yet to meet anyone else who’s read it. This is the series that made me fall in love with magic systems and worldbuilding. I’ve always enjoyed fantasy more than other genres—something about magic existing in the grass and little monsters hiding behind the trees just made sense to me—but it wasn’t until reading this series that I realized a fantasy world can be more than just a setting.
Magic and the way the world functions can be characters in and of themselves. Whenever I need inspiration for building an intricate, interactive world, I reread this series.
This is a great time to reprint the spellbinding start to The Keys to the Kingdom!
Best-selling author Garth Nix creates a magical world and an intriguing mystery in this new blockbuster series.Seven days. Seven keys. Seven virtues. Seven sins. One mysterious house is the doorway to a very mysterious world -- where one boy is about to venture and unlock a number of fantastical secrets. This is another thrilling, triumphantly imaginative series from Garth Nix, the best-selling author of THE SEVENTH TOWER, SABRIEL, and LIRAEL.
I know what you’re thinking. “Howl’s Moving Castle? Everyone loves that.” And you’re right—to an extent.
Everyone I know hasseen the Studio Ghibli adaptation, but I’ve only met one other person who’s read the book. And believe it or not, the book is different from the movie. What I love about this book isn’t the fantasticism, but the whimsy. It’s an adventure that isn’t about wars or saving the world, and there’s no central antagonist.
This book reminds me that stories can just be fun, and I come back to it every time I need a quick trip through a magical countryside—no angst required.
Now an animated movie from Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, the oscar-winning director of Spirited Away
In this beloved modern classic, young Sophie Hatter from the land of Ingary catches the unwelcome attention of the Witch of the Waste and is put under a spell...
Deciding she has nothing more to lose, Sophie makes her way to the moving castle that hovers on the hills above her town, Market Chipping. But the castle belongs to the dreaded Wizard Howl, whose appetite, they say, is satisfied only by the souls of young girls...
There Sophie meets Michael, Howl's apprentice, and Calcifer…
Gaiman has received a lot of acclaim for a lot of his books, and one of the stories most commonly left in his more famous works’ shadows is The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
What I love about this book is that the story spans across a lifetime. I tend to get so focused on the here and now that I sometimes forget that the past, present, and future are all a part of the same great big tapestry.
What I did yesterday impacts who I am today, and the choices I make today affect who I’ll be tomorrow. This book helps me remember that life is a journey, and today is only one step on a much larger, more intricate path.
'Neil Gaiman's entire body of work is a feat of elegant sorcery. He writes with such assurance and originality that the reader has no choice but to surrender to a waking dream' ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
'Some books just swallow you up, heart and soul' JOANNE HARRIS
'Summons both the powerlessness and wonder of childhood, and the complicated landscape of memory and forgetting' GUARDIAN
---
'My favourite response to this book is when people say, 'My childhood was nothing like that - and it was as if…
This book is a standalone story that takes place in the Wayward Children series.
Due to its nature as a standalone, people who read the series skip over it, and people who haven’t read the series avoid it. This is one of my favorite books of all time. More than the magic or adventure, I love how human it feels.
No people are good or bad, and decisions are made from the heart. This book fuels my passion for storytelling, reminding me that the heart of a story isn’t intricate plots or crazy settings, but relatable characters.
I strive to make my characters feel more real and act more human because of this book.
This fourth entry tells the origin story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should. When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, she thinks she's found her paradise. Alas, everything costs at the goblin market, and when her time there is drawing to a close, she makes the kind of bargain that never plays out well. For anyone...
I became fascinated with 16th-century and 17th-century Europe after reading Don Quixote many years ago. Since then, every novel or nonfiction book about that era has felt both ancient and contemporary. I’m always struck by how much our environment has changed—transportation, communication, housing, government—but also how little we as people have changed when it comes to ambition, love, grief, and greed. I doubled down my reading on that time period when I researched my novel, Dulcinea. Many people read in the eras of the Renaissance, World War II, or ancient Greece, so I’m hoping to introduce them to the Baroque Age.
Dolça Llull Prat, a wealthy Barcelona woman, is only 15 when she falls in love with an impoverished poet-solder. Theirs is a forbidden relationship, one that overcomes many obstacles until the fledgling writer renders her as the lowly Dulcinea in his bestseller.
By doing so, he unwittingly exposes his muse to gossip. But when Dolça receives his deathbed note asking to see her, she races across Spain with the intention of unburdening herself of an old secret.
On the journey, she encounters bandits, the Inquisition, illness, and the choices she's made. At its heart, Dulcinea is about how we betray the people we love, what happens when we succumb to convention, and why we squander the few chances we get to change our lives.
