Here are 72 books that A Heart in a Body in the World fans have personally recommended if you like
A Heart in a Body in the World.
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I am convinced that my life would be better if I had read more books by Latina/Latine authors while growing up. To be able to see oneself in a story is powerful. I didn’t have that for a long time. It made me feel invisible. It made me feel like being an author was as realistic as becoming an astronaut or a performer in Cirque du Soleil. Now, as a professor of Creative Writing and author of several books (and more on the way!), I dedicated my life to writing the books I needed as a young Latina. I hope others find something meaningful in my stories, too.
Oh my goodness—this book! I couldn’t see the pages in those final chapters because I was crying for these characters and all they went through crossing the southern border into the United States.
To this day, I still remember vivid images and moments from the novel. I won’t spoil the story for you, but here’s one: a female character wearing a baseball cap and jacket and pretending to be a male because the journey north is often much harder and riskier for women. I know I will think about this trio of characters for a long time.
A poignant novel of desperation, escape, and survival across the U.S.-Mexico border, inspired by current events.
A Pura Belpré 2021 Young Adult Author Honor Book! A BookPage Best Book of 2020! A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best of 2020! A School Library Journal Best Book of 2020! A New York Public Library 2020 Top 10 Best Book for Teens!
Pulga has his dreams. Chico has his grief. Pequeña has her pride.
And these three teens have one another. But none of them have illusions about the town they've grown up in and the dangers that surround them. Even…
When I was eleven, I picked up a book about a girl and a boy who get lost on a backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada. It’s the first book I can remember reading over and over and over again. I wanted to be in that tent and in that forest figuring out how to survive. Since then, I’ve been hooked on books about people facing grueling physical challenges, surviving in the wilderness, and finding out what they’re made of. They’re urgent and compelling and the stakes are high, and I’ll never stop loving the thrill of reading about people being pushed to their physical and mental limits.
This book had me at the premise. College sophomore Avery Delacorte is flying home for Thanksgiving when her plane goes down in the Rocky Mountains. She and Colin, a teammate from her college swim team, survive, along with three young boys. Avery and Colin have to keep themselves, and the boys, alive for five days in the mountains during a snowstorm. I love the way this book shows the struggle of surviving in the wilderness during the winter and explores the complicated feelings Avery has after rescue and the impact those feelings have on her relationships.
An adventurous debut novel that cross cuts between a competitive college swimmer’s harrowing days in the Rocky Mountains after a major airline disaster and her recovery supported by the two men who love her—only one of whom knows what really happened in the wilderness.
Nineteen-year-old Avery Delacorte loves the water. Growing up in Brookline, Massachusetts, she took swim lessons at her community pool and captained the local team; in high school, she raced across bays and sprawling North American lakes. Now a sophomore on her university’s nationally ranked team, she struggles under the weight of new expectations but life is…
When I was eleven, I picked up a book about a girl and a boy who get lost on a backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada. It’s the first book I can remember reading over and over and over again. I wanted to be in that tent and in that forest figuring out how to survive. Since then, I’ve been hooked on books about people facing grueling physical challenges, surviving in the wilderness, and finding out what they’re made of. They’re urgent and compelling and the stakes are high, and I’ll never stop loving the thrill of reading about people being pushed to their physical and mental limits.
This book is tense! Jess is alone in the Canadian wilderness, still injured from the car accident that killed her mom, and now her dad has been murdered and his cabin burned down. Jess must figure out how to survive in the cold with no shelter and no way out when nobody knows where she is. This is part survival story and part thriller. Jess is driven by her desire to survive as much as her desire for revenge. The survival aspect here is enough to keep you reading, but I also loved trying to piece together the mystery of why her dad was killed.
Jess is stranded in the woods. She has few supplies and only her dog for company. Her survival skills are limited, and she has disabilities that make physical labor a challenge. And winter is on its way. How did she get here?
Alternating between the past and the present, this tightly-paced novel tells the story of a girl who survived a car crash that killed her mother, then was pulled from foster care and sent to live with her estranged survivalist father in the remote Canadian wilderness. Jess was just beginning to get to know her dad when a secret…
No matter the genre, I have always loved surprises in a story. I want characters to do the unexpected and plots to take me to, “Oh, I didn’t see that one coming.” Because that’s how life is, how my own life has been. Due to connections we didn’t understand and secrets people around us have kept (or we didn’t bother to uncover) the unexpected always jumps out in front of us. I also like characters who are either discovering or re-focusing their power in ways that are beneficial to themselves and others. Again, this has been my life’s story and I want my characters to search for that same balance.
Ashley is lost in the woods, an emotional and physical wreck, and she’s got to figure a way out. The two things she has going for her are serious survival skills and a fierce determination to never give up. Some of her challenges border on the unbelievable, but then, so do so many real-life stories we’ve all read about.
The reader gets to know and understand Ashley, with all her flaws exposed, as the worsening events force her to dig deep into who she is and what she’s capable of.The author might push the limit of what qualifies as YA, and as an adult I loved it, but when I was fifteen, I would have loved it even more.
Hatchet meets Wild in this harrowing YA survival story about a teenage girl’s attempt to endure the impossible, from the Edgar Award-winning author of The Female of the Species, Mindy McGinnis.
The world is not tame. Ashley knows this truth deep in her bones, more at home with trees overhead than a roof.
So when she goes hiking in the Smokies with her friends for a night of partying, the falling dark and creaking trees are second nature to her. But people are not tame either. And when Ashley catches her boyfriend with another girl, drunken rage sends her running…
I’ve had a passion for weirdness in mundane settings since my childhood days watchingThe Addams Family in a boring suburb. I grew up with the Apollo program, but as I realized I’d never be an astronaut, I increasingly turned to writing science fiction and fantasy set on Earth. I discovered role-playing games shortly after D&D came out, but when I became bored with characters who were only after money and mayhem, I found other RPGs and began writing for them. FGU’s Bushidointroduced me to Japanese mythology, which inspired my first urban fantasy novel, The Art of Arrow Cutting, which led me to being invited to write Shadowrunnovels.
Wizard is one of Seattle’s homeless magicians, a seer who tells the truth to those who need it, haunted by a nebulous menace and hiding from his past. Apart from its (often ambiguous) fantasy elements, it’s a beautifully-written guide to urban survival and to downtown Seattle (as well as the setting for my latest novels).
The fifth book in the Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb) backlist.
Seattle: a place as magical as the Emerald City.
Subtle magic seeps through the cracks in the paving stones of the sprawling metropolis. But only the inhabitants who possess special gifts are open to the city's consciousness; finding portents in the graffiti, reading messages in the rubbish or listening to warnings in the skipping-rope chants of children.
Wizard is bound to Seattle and her magic. His gift is the Knowing - a powerful enchantment allowing him to know the truth of things; to hear the life-stories of ancient mummies locked…
Austen-inspired works are nothing new (think the movie Clueless or "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" vlog) but unless you’re walking around the Austen fan world, you might not realize just how many books are out there. I became immersed in that world around 2006, and since then, I’ve written four Austen retellings, one Austen-inspired original novel, and several short stories. I’ve read countless other works (both published and on the internet,) and now run a little website called Austen Through the Ages. Below I list 5 Pride & Prejudice-inspired novels that ring true for me—they bring Austen’s themes and characters into modern settings, each putting a unique spin on the classic tale.
Audrey Ryan’s debut novel joyfully leaps off the page, shouting, “I wanna tell you a story about some Millennials!”—in all the best ways. I’m always up for a well-written coming-of-age story, and this one made me, a jaded GenXer, once again feel the bittersweet hope (and fear) of figuring out your life on your own terms.
Lizzie Venetidis is confident in her decisions. Moving to Seattle with her sister Jane after she graduated from Stanford, for instance, was a no‑brainer. Adult life, however, turns out to be more difficult to navigate than she expected. What career should she pursue with a bachelor’s degree in art history and no marketable experience amongst a tech-heavy job market? How responsible is it to drink that fourth cocktail while out with friends? And what should she do about Darcy — the aloof yet captivating guy she met her first night in town? "All the Things I Know" is a one-mistake-at-a-time…
I am the author of two novels, and I currently teach fiction writing in the MFA program at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. I’ve long been fascinated with journeys both real and literary. In the early 1990’s I lived in Taiwan and traveled across China—from Guangzhou to the far northwestern desert province of Xinjiang, an extraordinary journey that informed my first novel.
It’s 1764 on Manhattan Island, and a stranger from London arrives at a small town called New York. He expects to receive a thousand pounds. A cast of dynamic characters appear. There are intrigues and adventures. All writers try to be vibrant on the page—to write smart, vivid, witty descriptions and dialogue. And then you come upon a writer like Francis Spufford, who is able, somehow, do it a degree or two better than everyone else.
'Best book of the century' Richard Osman 'Just wonderful' Jan Morris 'Dazzlingly written' Sunday Times 'Every bit as superb as everyone says' Sarah Perry
Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2016 Winner of the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2017 Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2017 Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2017 Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2017 Shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2017 Shortlisted for the British Book Awards Debut Novel of the Year 2017
A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
I’ve always looked at the world with a sense of wonder. As a child, I was drawn to the magical and the fantastical, but a budding fascination with the scientific method eventually led me to discover the beauty and wonder of the natural world. I assumed science fiction would scratch that itch, but too many genre novels left me feeling empty, like they were missing something essential—what it feels like to be human. Novels that combine a wonder of the world with an intimate concern for character hit just the right spot for me. Maybe they will for you as well.
This book is probably the most out-of-place of the five novels on this list. Where the others make their high-concept elements obvious early, the author chooses a different route in this one.
Like so many of his novels, Bret Easton Ellis opens his story with shallow and vapid characters behaving in absurd ways and uttering dialogue so outrageous I wondered if the entire enterprise was a joke. But despite the hilarious parody of substance-free celebrity and the inane repetition of idiotic phrases like “baby,” this story ultimately has more to say than, ahem, less than zero. It’s a takedown of capitalism and a bankrupt culture, so biting it would make Philip K Dick proud.
The second half of the novel, in fact, reads like PKD himself.
The New York Times bestselling author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero delivers a gripping and brilliant dissection of our celebrity obsessed culture. • “Arguably the novel of the 1990’s…Should establish Ellis as the most ambitious and fearless writer of his generation…a must read.” —The Seattle Times
Set in 90s Manhattan, Victor Ward, a model with perfect abs and all the right friends, is seen and photographed everywhere, even in places he hasn't been and with people he doesn't know. He's living with one beautiful model and having an affair with another on the eve of opening the trendiest…
Sister Bernard, the main character in my novel Obedience, is ninety. I’ve always been fascinated – and afraid – of what it means to grow old, particularly as a woman, and I like exploring the perspectives that age can bring. I enjoy seeing older women given a voice, especially when they don’t turn out to be the easy, likeable characters we might expect. There aren’t that many books with really old women as the main characters, because age is not glamorous or comfortable, but that’s why it’s interesting. I hope the novels on this list go some way towards redressing the balance.
Seventy-five-year-old Florence is clever, outspoken and belligerent, sharp-witted, and sharp-tongued. Reliving memories of the American Feminist Movement at its height, she’s a great character forced to confront her own aging and the difficult dynamics of her family life. Crackling dialogue makes this book a slick and entertaining read.
In this award-winning novel that Maureen Corrigan of NPR’s "Fresh Air" deems “exquisitely crafted...witty, nuanced, and ultimately moving,” a wise, septuagenarian woman who has lived life on her own terms finds herself thrust into the center of her family’s various catastrophes. ¶ A Best Book of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, The Millions, the Christian Science Monitor · Finalist for the Kirkus Prize · A Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice · An Indie Next Pick ¶ Meet Florence Gordon, a blunt, brilliant feminist. At seventy-five, Florence wants to be left alone to write her memoir and shape…
I'm an ‘expert’ when it comes to books because I've been ‘reading’ books since before I could talk – even at two years old, holding the books upside down, but somehow still immersed. I presume all of you are experts, too. Your love of books has brought you to this site. Books became my escape when the world seemed too large and too cruel to cope with. But what makes me even more of an expert, was my dedication to books….that two-year-old loved books so much he would tear out pages and eat them, he would stuff pieces in his nose….Grossed out? Well, what can I tell ya’, I was dedicated lol.
This book takes us on various modes of public transportation through Seattle, following an overweight, diabetic grocery store cashier struggling to make ends meet after losing his boyfriend to mob violence during a BLM rally. I love the way this book mirrors the moments of hilarity and the moments of sleaze that anyone who has ridden a bus in a metropolitan area will immediately recognize. It took me back to my own trips on the New York City subways, reading a book while a homeless man sang "Sexual Healing" in the aisles, lol. This book is totally of our moment, as the passengers argue about wearing masks vs. not wearing masks, or ride the light rail to the latest rally advertised on Facebook.
The book is broken into short little vignettes, moving us (seemingly) randomly through unconnected encounters with a rag-tag group of fellow passengers. The joy is that the…
Todd Tillotson is struggling to move on after his husband is killed in a hit and run attack a year earlier during a Black Lives Matter protest in Seattle.
In this novel set entirely on public transportation, we watch as Todd, isolated throughout the pandemic, battles desperation in his attempt to safely reconnect with the world.
Will he find love again, even casual friendship, or will he simply end up another crazy old man on the bus?
Things don’t look good until a man whose face he can’t even see sits down beside him despite the raging variants.
